King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1)(9)

There was a knock at the door, and Miron, the herald, entered. His uniform was a dark-blue tabard with gold fringe. Usually, it complemented his burnished skin, but today, he looked sallow, and as he spoke, I thought I knew why—he’d just seen the Blood King in the flesh.

He bowed.

“Your Majesty.” His voice trembled, and he cleared his throat. “The Blood King has arrived.”

A strange tension filled the small room. Somehow, this felt different. The Blood King wasn’t just beyond our borders; he was within them. He would rule us from this day forward.

My father looked long at me and then turned, grasping his cloak as he went so it whirled around with him. Commander Killian held out his arm. I’d have rather shoved a knife through it, but I accepted it instead.

“Why are you wearing that?” he asked, dipping his head so that his breath coated my cheek as he spoke.

I should have gone with the knife, I thought.

I did not look at him as I replied. “It is not your place to comment on my wardrobe, Commander.”

His hand tightened on mine.

“You are showing too much skin. Are you trying to tempt the vampire king?”

“Know your place,” I said, my voice just as icy as my father’s.

“That is not how I meant—I only mean to protect you.”

“From what? Hungry gazes?” I asked. We had just come through the doors of the antechamber and into the great hall when I turned to him, challenging. “Yours is just as threatening, Commander.”

I crossed the precipice upon which my father’s throne sat and moved to his left, my gaze sweeping the great hall. It was a grand room, richly decorated with gilded mirrors and elaborate candelabras. A canopy of blue silk curtained us, and throughout the room, gold larks—our house emblem—adorned banners of the same blue that hung from the ceiling.

The room was silent and still, though it was crowded with people—guards and lords and ladies who had come from their estates to watch the surrender. My father had spent weeks in this very room, hearing their concerns, mediating their arguments for and against surrender. By the end of it, I began to loathe many of them whose fears amounted to losing their lands, wealth, and status under the Blood King, as if that mattered when the decision wasn’t between losing status and retaining it. It was between life and death.

“His majesty King Henri de Lara welcomes King Adrian Aleksandr Vasiliev of Revekka.”

This time, Miron’s voice was steady and strong. Holding my breath, I fixed my eyes on the doors at the other end of the hallway. The crowd, who had stood on either side of a carpeted runner, drew farther back as the guards pulled them open to reveal the Blood King.

I swallowed a gasp as a heady flush unraveled within my body, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin as my eyes connected with a familiar, gorgeous face. The vampire who had found me in the clearing, the one who had licked blood from my skin and sent me into a spiral of desire, was Adrian, the Blood King.

He had changed since our encounter, wearing bloodred instead of black. Gold rings gleamed upon his middle finger and pinkie, and upon his head sat a spiked black crown. His status was evident in the way he carried himself—regal and confident—and yet he walked like a predator, his black boots clicking as he took lethal step after lethal step toward my father.

I should have known it was him, I thought, staring at him now, but it had not occurred to me to expect the king of vampires to have gone in search of a strzyga. Were they not monsters born of their kind?

As he approached, his gaze slid from my father to Killian and then to me. Our eyes met, and I let out a slow, quivering breath as he assessed the length of my body. Something about him opened a chasm in my stomach, and I was again overwhelmed by the same keen hunger as before. I wanted to be devoured by this creature.

My legs began to shake, and I shifted my gaze to my father as he spoke.

“King Adrian. It is a grim welcome I extend to you,” he said, his voice resonating within the great hall.

“A welcome all the same,” Adrian said. His voice drew and held my attention, and I watched his lips as he spoke, not with the voice of a monster but the voice of a lover. “I accept.”

“You and your army have quite the reputation,” my father said.

“A reputation that has you contemplating surrender before bloodshed,” Adrian said and inclined his head slightly. “Smart.”

“Some have called me a coward,” Father said. “For considering your proposal.”

The tension in the great hall grew.

“Do you care what others think, King Henri?”

“I care about my people,” he said. “I want them safe. Is that your offer, King Adrian? That you will keep my people safe?”

The vampire stared at my father for a long moment, studying him with a different intensity, as if he were trying to decide if he was being truthful.

“How much freedom do you wish for your people to have?”

My father did not answer immediately. Finally, I shifted my gaze and saw him lean forward.

“Are we bargaining, King Adrian?”

The vampire offered a small shrug. “I have an offer.”

Father waited, and when Adrian did not continue, he prompted, “What is this offer?”

“I want your daughter. To wed, of course,” he added, as if it were an afterthought.