Bound to the Vampire King

Chapter 2: The King's Pettitled Episode

I woke up to silk.

That was the first thing my brain offered me, before the pain and the confusion. Silk under my cheek. Soft. Expensive. Wrong. All my life I'd slept on straw ticking stuffed with old hay, and here I was, cheek pressed into fabric that probably cost more than our cottage.

I sat up too fast. The room tilted, settled.

A real room. Not a cell. Pale stone walls, a fire crackling in a hearth big enough to roast a pig, a window with actual glass. Through it, towers. Black against a sky I didn't recognize. The Bloodlands didn't have mornings like Ashford did. I wasn't sure they had mornings at all.

My wrists ached where the pack had held me. My throat was raw, like I'd been screaming, though I couldn't remember screaming. And my chest.

I pressed my palm over my ribs. Nothing. No second heartbeat. No strange warmth. Just the same stupid human heart I'd had my whole life.

Good. Whatever had happened in the forest had been fear. Fear did strange things. Everyone's blood did that. That's what I told myself, anyway.

The door opened without a knock.

A woman stood there with a tray. Not a vampire, or not obviously one: dark hair pulled back, a hard face, gray dress like she worked the house. She looked at me the way you'd look at a stain on a good rug.

"Eat," she said, setting the tray on the table by the window. "You'll be presented to the Court today."

I swung my legs off the bed. The stone floor was cold. I was wearing a white shift, thin, definitely not mine. The woman's eyes flicked down and away, like the sight of me bothered her.

"Where are my clothes?"

"Burned. They smelled of the border."

Those words landed harder than they should have. "They were my mother's."

"Not anymore."

She left before I could answer.

I stared at the closed door. Then I looked at the tray: bread, cheese, a cup of something dark, and a small knife laid beside the plate. Cutlery for a meal, or a reminder that I could try something stupid and be gutted where I stood.

I ate the bread. It was warm. I hated how good it was.

I found the bath by accident. A door off the bedroom, a stone tub big enough to swim in, steam curling off the water. On the edge, a clean gray dress and boots that looked like they'd been made for me.

There was no mirror. I checked twice.

The boots fit. That unsettled me more than anything else. Someone had measured my feet while I slept. Someone had decided what I'd wear, what I'd eat, where I'd sleep. I'd been in the King's house for one night and already I belonged to it.

I dressed fast, braided my hair the way my mother had taught me, and opened the door into the hall.

A servant passed, carrying linens. She took one look at me and her lip curled.

"The King's pet," she said, not to me. To the air. "Washed and dressed like a doll."

I kept walking. My mother's voice, sharp as winter: Don't start fights you can't finish, Eira. Save your teeth for the ones you can.

"The King's pet," I repeated, loud enough for her to hear. "Is that what they're calling me? I'd rather be the King's headache."

She went still, staring at me like I'd grown a second head. I smiled at her, all teeth, and kept walking.

Small victory. I'd take it.

The hall led to a staircase, and the staircase led to a courtyard, and the courtyard was full of vampires.

Not the border kind. The Court kind. Velvet and jewels and pale hands. They stopped talking when I walked out, one by one, like stones dropping into a pond. Eyes followed me, silver and red and gold, taking my measure.

A woman detached herself from the crowd. Red hair, sharp chin, a sword on her hip that looked like it got used. She walked up calm, hands where I could see them, like I was something that might bite.

"Eira," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Who's asking?"

"Rosalie." She looked me over once, quick, professional. "I run the King's household. I'm the one who'll tell you which spoons are poisoned and which are just decorative."

I blinked. "Is that a real thing? Poisoned spoons?"

"Ask me again after your first Court dinner." She glanced at the crowd, who were pretending very hard not to stare. "They're already placing bets on how long you last."

"How long do they think I'll last?"

"A week, most of them. Two, if you're clever." She smiled, quick and sharp. "I bet you'd last longer. I like money."

There was something honest about her. I couldn't say why. Maybe because she was the first person in this place who'd looked at me like I was a person and not a problem.

"Why are you being nice to me?" I asked.

"Who said I was being nice?" She turned, walking toward a set of tall doors. "The King wants you. Try not to get yourself killed before dinner."

The doors opened into a room that made the eastern wing look humble.

Columns. Tapestries. A fire in a hearth big enough to lose a horse in. And at the far end, on a dais, the King.

He wasn't wearing the black coat from the forest. He was wearing something dark and formal, collar high, and he still looked like the same cold monument of a man. He didn't look up when I entered. He was reading something, head bent, and the silence stretched long enough that I wanted to check my own pulse.

Then he set the paper down.

"You sleep well, little mouse?"

"Like the dead," I said. "Which is convenient, considering how many of you there are."

Something moved in his face. Not quite a smile, too cold for that, but close.

"Good," he murmured. "You'll need your strength." He rose, and he was taller than I remembered, which I hadn't thought possible. He crossed the room in a few strides and stopped close enough that I had to look up. "Tomorrow, you are presented to the Court. As my betrothed."

The words landed like a slap.

"Your—" I shook my head. "No. I'm not—you can't do that."

"I can." He said it flatly, like he was correcting a math error. "The Court will accept what I tell them to accept. You being human is an insult to them. You being my betrothed is a command they'll choke down."

"You said my blood knew you." My voice came out rough. "That doesn't make me your fiancée. That makes me a blood test you didn't ask for."

"The fated bond isn't a test, Eira. It's a fact." He was close now, close enough that I could feel the cold coming off him, and the something dark and sweet underneath. "You felt it last night. In the forest. Your blood reaching for mine."

"I felt nothing." It came out too fast. "I was scared. Scared people feel all sorts of things."

"You can't feel it yet because you don't know what you're feeling." He said it like a teacher explaining a lesson to a slow child. "That will change. It changes for everyone."

"I'm not everyone." I held his gaze, even though everything in me wanted to drop it. "I'm nobody. I keep telling you that. Nobody with a sick mother and a satchel of herbs."

"You keep telling me that." He repeated my words, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "I keep not believing you."

My hands clenched at my sides. "What do you want from me?"

He considered the question for a long moment. That was worse than an answer. The sense that he was weighing something, deciding how much I was allowed to know.

"You were raised to hide," he said, low. "I'm told that's how humans survive. You're good at it. But hiding won't keep you alive here."

"Then what will?"

He was already moving past me, toward the doors. He paused at the threshold, not looking back.

"Report to the training hall at dawn."

"Training hall?" I turned. "I don't—what training? I'm not a soldier. I'm not anything."

"You're mine." He said it the way he'd said it in the forest, like a law being read aloud. "And mine will learn to fight."

I pitched my voice to his, low and flat. "Report to the training hall at dawn," I repeated after him. "Don't keep me waiting, little mouse. Is that the part where I'm supposed to say yes, my King?"

He stopped.

For one breath, the air in the room went wrong: thick, heavy, like the moment before a storm breaks. Then he turned, slow, and looked at me. Those silver eyes, flat as ice, and underneath them something I couldn't name.

"Yes, my King," he murmured, soft. "That is exactly the part."

The doors closed behind him with a sound like a coffin lid.

I stood in the middle of that enormous room, my chest doing something strange, my skin warm in a way it hadn't been since the forest.

Mine will learn to fight.

I'd asked what he wanted from me. He hadn't answered. He'd told me what I was instead.

Training at dawn. A Court that hated me. A king who'd decided I belonged to him.

I had no idea what I was walking into.

That was the thing about cages with a king's name on the lock. You never knew what was waiting inside.