Desires

Chapter Four: Initiative

The room was exactly as I remembered it. The same blood-red walls, the same freaking unbelievably comfortable carpet and bed.

I was already in some pajamas, wearing sweats because on one was here to tell me that I couldn’t. Adrian was hesitant about sleeping on the bed.

I could understand why though. He was trained to be a feeder. He knew better, he knew that I wanted him to be up here with me, but that training was deeply engrained.

His mother was right about one thing. He had forgotten himse

“Come up here already. We need to talk about stuff” I ordered, patting the space next to me where Alex would normally be. This hesitation was pissing me off.

He climbed into bed without any more hesitation, which made me calm down a bit.

“More than half the court supports Jezebel. We’re in serious trouble here” I stated, leaning back on my pillows.

“Yeah but they likely only support her because she wants to let them off their leash, so to speak. If you come up with some plan to safely let them kill humans without consequence, you’ll probably be in favor again” Adrian said, wincing even as he said it.

I considered his words. He was probably right. Jezebel wasn’t exactly the most charming person in the world. She won her support by letting them kill.

That was terrible though. I didn’t want vampires to go out into the world and kill humans. That would hold unthinkable consequences that I didn’t even think about.

So, like Adrian said, I’d need to think about a way to make the whole process safer.

That was just a paradox. I doubted I could find such a thing. How ridiculous, a way to safely kill.

There was no such thing.

But I’d need to find it. Or Jezebel could take control out of sheer popularity.

“We’re going to need some trustworthy people too. You can’t start with nothing. No offense or anything but you haven’t been here that long. The other half of the court who doesn’t support Jezebel is probably hoping Alex will come back. They aren’t going to be won over by someone who just barged in without proving herself” Adrian said, finally relaxing a bit into the pillows.

Another good point and something that I kinda expected.

He was right. I hadn’t proven myself as a ruler. I would need to win over the entire court.

As far as I can understand, the half of the court that isn’t supporting Jezebel is likely doing it because she’s a terrible person who burned all of the feeders alive. Or it could be that they don’t support her crazy ideas of wildly going out to kill in the human world.

Which meant that I’d need to find a way to let vampires kill without actually killing humans.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. I needed help.

But who could I trust?

Anyone who is a hard and fast supporter of Alex might be able to help but I don’t know many people like that. There weren’t even that many vampires at the castle at the moment, not anywhere near our full capacity yet just enough to overthrow me if they wanted to. And none of Alex’s supporters were here. That I knew of, anyway.

I hoped that at least one of them, like Greta perhaps, was hidden around here.

“Your Highness” that guy, one of Alex’s manservants barged in without even so much as a knock.