Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Chapter 19: Truce and Consequences

Silence and solitude, they walked hand in hand in the days following the incident with the flaming chair. The previous king may have preferred fangs and claws and closed fists, but Keel was all about the silent treatment. Some days this punishment felt worse than a beating; at least beatings had endings, while the loneliness stretched and stretched, like a desolate highway vanishing off into the horizon. A comfortable prison was a still a prison. I read, I paced, I ate my meals, took extraordinarily long showers, and I tried not to let my brain run in its usual frantic circles. I also tried not to think of what might have happened to Arthos. Had his stay in the cells morphed into a public execution? What had I done?

My guilt only re-awakened my anger at Keel, sending it bubbling and frothing to the surface. None of this would have happened if he hadn't locked up Arthos or put cameras in my room. He had acted, I had only reacted.

With no broom or dustpan in my chambers, cleaning up the debris and broken glass was awkward and ineffective. I managed to get the larger chunks into the bathroom wastebasket, but the tiny stuff twinkled on the floor like so many grains of sand, forcing me to keep my shoes on whenever I moved around. The room remained dark too, no one came to replace the fixtures or the bulbs, and by day three I would have sold my soul for a box of candles.

The only Nosferatu I saw was the one who brought me my meals, and by the time a week had ground by, I was sure that Hell was being left alone with your head in your monster ex-boyfriend's bedroom. I'd done the unthinkable. I'd threatened the king I'd pledged loyalty to, and that was a capital crime in the compound. Now all there was to do was "sit and wait for the other shoe to drop," as Fredrick would say. 

I thought about him and Estella and Mikey a lot in those long, excruciating hours. I wondered what Ephraim had told them this time and if Mikey had come clean about that series of texts I'd sent him before I left. My heart ached for them in a way it hadn't since the first time I was here. Their love - my time in their house, as part of their family - seemed so long ago now, as if it belonged to a girl I dreamed up, not a girl I once was. I wondered who I would have become if I'd never been taken by the Nosferatu, and I mourned that Mills. Innocent and human, unscarred by all the ugly the supernatural world had to offer.

Despite the time that had passed, each time those elevator doors slid open, the dread was complete and overwhelming. All I could see at the end of this was the arena, where I'd be made a public spectacle, a warning to all the others, because I realized, if Keel was smart enough to put two and two together, he'd now know how to hurt me too.

On the final day of my solitude, day nine, when the doors opened on the usual tray of steaming hot food, I instinctively relaxed. No danger, just more of the same. But then the deliverer paused just inside my room, and my body snapped back into high alert. This was strange. The usual vamp never hesitated; he made quick business of dropping off the platter and disappearing, stopping just short of using vampire speed. I prodded the bond. Not Keel, he was where he always was, somewhere above me.

"Easy," said the hooded figure, extending a pair of pale palms in my direction. "I'm just here to talk."

I recognized the voice and the black fatigues. Could it really be?

"Arthos?" I said.

He bent down and placed the tray on the floor beside him, then straightened and pulled back his hood, revealing a much healthier vampire. Freedom and food: he'd clearly come out the winner in this whole debacle. Still, I was so grateful to see him, I ran across the room and threw my arms around him, despite his reek. "Oh thank god," I exhaled into his shoulder.

It proved to be an awkward, one-sided hug - affection was largely absent from Nosferatu society - and I soon released him. "I didn't know what was going to happen to you after I- after you-" I tripped over the words in my rush to get them out.