For a long time, the only sound between us was our breathing. The silence was strangely comforting, and I didn’t feel the need to speak. The clock ticked, and in the hallway, soft footsteps walked past.
In here, we were silent. Alone. Just the two of us.
After a while, Sebastian drew in a deep breath. “Did you know I used to be like you?” His voice was soft, and when I glanced at him, his lips were tilted down. “A human, I mean.”
I blinked, wondering where he was going with this. “I had… assumed as much.”
I wasn’t entirely sure how vampires were Made, but it seemed like a reasonable assumption that Sebastian was, at one point, human.
The vampire prince nodded, tracing circles on the stone floor with his index finger. I watched him, mesmerized by the movement. “My father was a wealthy merchant in a small northern town near the Black Sea. When I was a boy, my parents wanted me to take over the business and learn from my father, but I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I was young,” he said. “Stubborn. I didn’t realize how good I had it until it was too late. In my youth, I allowed the call of adventure to shove aside common sense. Stupidity took hold of me, giving me grandiose dreams of what my future could be. In my hubris, I thought I could do better for myself than my parents. I wanted…” He paused, drawing in a shuddering breath. “No, it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” I whispered, twisting the ends of the shawl through my fingers. “What did you want, Sebastian?”
For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer. He lifted his hand, tracing the lines of his Binding Mark, before exhaling loudly.
“I wanted adventure. When I was twenty, I left. My parents begged me to stay, but I didn’t listen to them. I took all the earnings I had from working for my father—he believed in paying his children for their labor—bought a sword and joined the army.” He snorted. “I was wrong.”
A long pause filled the air, and the vampire prince grew tensed.
“What were you wrong about?” I whispered.
“Everything. Being a soldier in Queen Marguerite’s army was all fun and games until the actual fighting began. Back in those days, there was a lot of it going on. In Ithenmyr…” Sebastian’s voice trailed off, and something dark flickered through his eyes. “Well, let it just be said that there were hundreds of refugees coming into the north. Most were good, but some of them had been poisoned by that king of theirs.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked, the academic in me always curious about history.
Pausing, Sebastian moved his hand in between the two of us, and I stared at it for a moment before placing my hand in his. The moment our skin touched, my heart warmed.
Sebastian rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “Three hundred and twenty-seven years ago. After a while, it all…. blends together.”
I blinked, trying to wrap my mind around that number. “That’s a long time.”
He snorted. “Not for a vampire. Mother has seen over two thousand years come and go. Even when she Made me, she was ancient.”
“I see. So you’re… young?”
“Young enough,” he said softly.
“In those days, when I was still mortal, death was rampant in Eleyta,” he said, his hand tightening around mine as sadness tinged his voice.“The world was in flux. I hadn’t even been in the army for a week before I witnessed my first execution. I’ll never forget it. A male elf who wasn’t even Mature had been accused of a petty crime. I can’t even remember the specifics. All I know is that before the night fell, his lifeless body swung off the scaffold in the middle of the square. They left it there for a week as a warning to others.”
I could imagine that far too vividly.
Sebastian rubbed a hand on his neck. “Less than six months after I joined the army, a wave of refugees came through the Koln Mountains. I was told it was the third one in as many years. Elves, humans, werewolves, and even some vampires who had been living in Ithenmyr took advantage of the summer heat and traveled across the deadly passes. The crossing is dangerous, and many died before they made it. If they survived, most were so thin, their skin was like paper against their bones.
“I was in Eastborne with the army, patrolling the border town with three other soldiers. All of them were older and more experienced than me. It had been a long day, and we were all tired. It was nearing suppertime, and we were walking to a tavern, eager for a drink, when a cry for help came from down the snow-covered street. A baker, a big burly vampire covered in flour, was pulling one of the human refugees down the street. The younger male was screaming, and when we got close enough, I could make out the tears streaking down his pale face. He was dressed in rags—it was a miracle he hadn’t frozen to death.”
Sebastian drew in a deep breath, lacing his fingers through mine tightly. It felt like he was holding on for strength. “The refugee was sobbing, begging the baker to let him go. He was trying to feed his family, he said. Wailing, he told us about his wife and baby. They had crossed a few days before, and they needed food. He was just trying to keep them alive.”
A knot formed in my stomach. Steeling myself for what I could feel was coming, I moved closer to Sebastian. “What happened next?”
A long pause ensued, and that knot in my stomach twisted further.
Eventually, the vampire prince pulled his hand out of mine. He traced the threading on his trousers, sighing. “I thought we should bring the thief back to camp and let the commander deal with him. There are laws in Eleyta, you know. Especially for humans. In the castle, it may look like there are only vampires, but there are many human cities and villages throughout the country.”
“Like the ones in the north,” I whispered.