Thirty Days Without the Moonstone

Chapter 3 Into the Vampire’s Domain

Crossing the border stripped away the Great Ward's protection. The life force I had recovered tore through me, and the abyss curse followed it.

Cold fire ran beneath my skin. I made it several steps into the blizzard before my knees hit the snow. A cough bent me forward, and black blood spilled from my mouth.

Each breath stopped high in my chest. I tried to crawl, but the arm with the missing pack mark collapsed under me. The next cough left another dark patch on clean snow.

The veins on my neck spread across my cheek. My hands went numb first, then my legs. Snow worked through my thin clothes while the wind covered the border behind me.

The moonstone had kept the curse below my collar. Now I felt each new line working under my skin.

Once the black marks reached my temple, the Healer had said, there would be no treatment.

I closed my eyes. At least no one could put another needle in my arm.

Boots broke the crusted snow nearby. The steps stopped beside my head.

I opened my eyes to polished black leather. Dark trousers and a fitted black coat rose above the boots. The man wearing them had pale skin and red eyes.

Snow collected on his shoulders without melting. He carried no visible weapon, and the storm seemed to bend around the edge of his coat.

He studied the missing pack mark on my forearm, then looked toward the Ashford border. His eyes came back to the wound.

His gaze dropped to the black blood beside my mouth and the silver drying on my sleeve. He did not offer pity. He bent down and checked whether I was still breathing.

Lucian, Vampire King of the Northern Wastes, had found me inside his territory.

Ashford stories called him an old enemy who drank wolves dry at the border. They never mentioned that his land began exactly where Caspian's protection ended.

He gave a dry laugh. “So this is what the great Hero Alpha threw away. His cornerstone.”

Lucian unfastened his fur-lined cloak and dropped it over me. Its weight pinned the cloth against the wind, and warmth gathered beneath it.

The fur smelled of night air and old stone. I dragged one frozen hand beneath it and waited for him to leave.

Then he lifted me from the snow with one arm.

My face pressed into the dark fur. Beneath it, a vampire's heart kept a slow, steady beat.

That impossible rhythm followed me as the pain receded. For the first time in ten years, someone carried me without asking for blood in return.

Before I lost consciousness, black towers appeared through the snowfall ahead.