“Really?” she whispers, her eyes wide. “It’s not paid, but I love it too. They are always looking for new assistants. Maybe if we both survive this, I could ask for you?”
I nod, my heart leaping. Another reason to try to survive today—other than the fact I don’t want to die. Not yet. “Isn’t it amazing the Decidere is finally open? It’s been so many years. I’ve been hearing the call for ten years, like so many of us that signed up. Many are still waiting, of course, because not everyone’s allowed to enter.”
“Not everyone has to do this?” I sharply ask, not bothering to whisper this time. A rite of passage for fae, my ass.
She looks down at the ground. “No. It’s only us that want to, who feel a calling. I think they assumed you felt the calling too, turning up on the day you did. The auditorium was full of us, the fae who applied and were waiting, when King Daegan carried you in.”
Daegan carried me in. He also lied to me about this being a rite of passage and gave into what Ziven demanded. Catherine looks up and over my shoulder, quickly diverting her gaze at whatever she sees. I turn to see people parting, like a skipping stone being thrown across the water. Ziven walks in, as casual as always, when his eyes promise death to anyone that stands in his way. I don’t get why they are so clearly frightened of him, other than his obvious fuck-off demeanour. The Sun Dynasty clearly has more people than the Moon, so why are they feared?
He is followed by the rest of his people, all twenty of them. They gather behind him, and Ziven looks over his shoulder, and a man steps to his side. The man is immense like Ziven, but his arms are bigger, his head is completely shaved, and instead of hair, there is a moon marking on his head. Ziven nods at him once, patting his shoulder, and then he purposely looks at me. They both do. The man leaves Ziven, and it looks like he’s walking straight towards me as my heart races. Did Ziven tell this man to kill me before I enter the Decidere? I wouldn’t put it past him. The man walks up right behind me, shoving the poor man who was there before out of the way with a grunt before taking his place in the line so he can loom over me like a shadow.
I quickly shoot my head forward, feeling eyes burning into the back of my head, and sweat trickles down my spine. Why do I feel like I’m being set up here? Daegan lets out a beam of light from his hand, and thousands of sparks fly around the room before shooting straight back into his hands. Pretty trick. The crowd goes silent.
“Welcome. It’s been too long since we’ve allowed newcomers into the stone caves and opened the Decidere. Each one of you has been called to this, heard the dragons below, and proved your soul as strong.” I did none of that. “This is a special year for all of us.” His eyes rest on me for a second before looking around the crowd. “And I’m sure the deities are watching down on us, blessing our flights and battles. The dragons live below, and they are wild creatures. Never forget this. This is their home, their personal hunting grounds. They’ve set up traps of their own making, ways to test your strength. When you go in, there’s a single passageway straight across to a series of stone pillars. If one of them calls to you, walk towards it, stand in front of it and touch the pillar when you’re ready. The test will be revealed to you. If you pass, you will be let out of the stone and return to us with a mark on your hand from the stone. In our history, one only has survived fourteen days, and it is more common to survive four. If you come out of your pillar stone riding a dragon, it is yours. You will know.”
Whispers echo and Catherine flashes me an excited but nervous smile.
“It’s important you do not go off the path. It’s there for a reason. If none of the pillars call to you, walk out as quickly as you possibly can, back to the door. Run if you want to live. The Decidere door only opens on Sundays, so you will have a week between each Decidere to rest and train.” Daegan looks up at the dragon statue. “The ancient fae kings of our dynasties set up the Decidere many years ago with the dragons so our people would forever be blessed with riders. They built our great cities with endless caverns filled with dragon pillars. Any time a fae turned twenty-one, they were taken down there to be tested, and our riders filled the skies. Of course, these times have gone and our cities with them, apparently.” Gasps echo and so many eyes fall on me. “But this does not mean that we will not find a way forward through the darkness and escape this prison. The more riders we have, the better chance we have when we finally are freed from this to take back our world. Freedom is close, my friends and family. Our dynasty will rule in fire and blood, and the vampyres will be destroyed!”
Cheers and shouts mix with the beat of the drums until it is echoing. The cheering doesn’t stop as Daegan steps aside and we make a line to the door. I follow closely behind Catherine, and Ziven’s man stays right at my back. I look over once more at Ziven, and he flashes me a cruel smirk before I face away. He hates me and I’m not a fan of him either, the psychopath. What is wrong with him? It’s like he singled me out as his enemy before we even spoke.
My legs feel like they are full of lead as I walk through the open stone door and into a damp-smelling tunnel. My heart begins to race so fast that I hear it in my ears, hear it rattling my soul. What am I doing? I should run away. I should absolutely run away. I know I won’t get very far, but I’m literally walking to my death by dragon.
The curious side of me wants to see a dragon, not just a statue or a drawing in a book. I’m not sure it’s worth dying for, though. The tunnel leads to a dug-out hollow in the stone. There are big gaps on either side of a bridge to the other side, easily wide enough for five people to walk across. On the other side are pillars, rows and rows of tall rectangular pillars that must be over ten feet tall. There’s nothing on them, they’re just smooth stone that is slightly pushed into the ground. My eyes flicker round the edges of the cave before a roar echoes, so close and loud that cracks form in the walls and bits of rock tumble from the ceiling, crashing at my feet.
Jumping back, I see the stone door is shut behind us, and the roar echoes again, getting louder and causing more rocks to fall. People scream and scatter, and someone slams into my shoulder, shoving me to the ground. I lift my head to see rocks crushing people as they run for the pillars. I have to get to the pillars, get up, Story. I push off the ground, running straight to the bridge just as a dragon lands right on top of the side of the bridge, roaring loudly and shaking everything. It’s huge, absolutely massive, and made of pure crackled stone. I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this. Massive stone wings spread out on either side of the dragon. All over its back is crusted-over stone, and a long lumpy tail has sharp rocks on its end. It roars as its black eyes finally drop and narrow. Red embers flicker off its forked tongue as it opens its mouth, and I feel frozen to my spot.
A stream of burning hot fire sprays out of its mouth, right into the bridge, and it instantly burns up three people before they can even scream. The horrid smell of burning flesh fills my nose as I suck in a breath, taking several steps back only to bump into someone. I turn around to find the man from the Moon Dynasty, Ziven’s friend. He is calm, collected, as he grabs my upper arms in a tight grip, and I struggle to move at all. He leans into me, his deep voice nothing but cruel. “King Ziven expressed how he hoped you die from this.”
“Wait—” He picks me up and throws me straight off the edge of the bridge, into the endless cold air.
Chapter Six
Page Six.
Face the unknown with every inch of courage you have in your bones, in your blood and soul. The dragons can smell courage, and it is your best defence.
“I’m sorry to bring you here, my dear Story.”
I tug my eyes from the looming castle in front of me, from the sheer, tall grey stone walls and the asymmetric crenellations that line the roof, and the six towers that look like they touch the clouds. As I smile softly at Aleksander, my words come out in puffs of fog. “It’s only one day.”
He’s kind enough to know bringing me here, even for one day, is a risk. The royal vampyres…I’ve heard whispers my entire life about their cruelty. They are immortal, the only vampyres that have that gift, and their immortality makes them bored. They kill for fun, and the castle? It’s their hunting grounds. The professor has always tried to hide me from, well, everything that could possibly hurt me, and this place was top on the list until today. I pull my cloak tighter around me, strips of red in my black hair flashing in the beams of sunlight that escape the clouds. I keep my head low, just like he’s told me to do anytime we are outside.
It’s a celebration day for the vampyres…and a day of horror for the fae. They call it the hunt, a tradition they made up, and every vampyre is free to hunt any lessborn fae across the cities. I forgot about this day until Aleksander came rushing into my room this morning and asked me to come with him. “It won’t be safe to leave you alone,” he told me, and I believe him. The breeders never had to worry about the hunt, but news of it was always talked about. “I’m nervous,” I whisper to him. “What if they check me and see I don’t have any bite marks?”
“They won’t. No one would dare, because that would be doubting me,” he explains, his tone as soft as a cat’s meow. “Except for the royals, but they won’t be here this time of year. They’ll be down in their castle in the south, where it’s much warmer.” I glance up at the cloudy skies, thick grey clouds threatening to throw snow down on us at any moment. Summer’s long since passed here, and the air has been cold ever since, the smell of winter hanging in the breeze.
It was my seventeenth birth year only days ago. Aleksander brought me a white chocolate cake because he knew it was my favourite, showed me the new star maps he had learnt about, and he gave me a letter from my mother. It’s a letter I treasure and read over and over again at any chance I get. Aleksander goes to the breeders for me, at significant risk to himself, to pass a letter from me to her and to get one back every year. She misses me as much as I miss her, and if I smell her letter long enough, I can almost imagine she is hugging me. I only get this gift once a year, and the letter has to be burnt, like the others, so it’s not proof of Aleksander breaking the laws. It’s risky, and I appreciate that he does it for me at all. He looks after me even when he has no obligation to do so. I’m always happy to give him my blood every week in a glass, even if it took a while to get used to watching him drink the blood. I threw up the first time I saw him drink. “Hurry your feet and stay close.”
Aleksander already has slowed down for me, and I make sure to walk fast, even though we both know he could move much faster than my fae feet will allow. I tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear as I follow him up the steps at the back entrance of the castle and into the servant quarters. Fae are running around and none of them stop. They’re all wearing thin red gowns, their upper shoulders, neck, and arms all on show, and every single one of them has many, many bite marks marking them. There’s not a trace of brown clothing in here to mark worker fae, which lets me know that they’re free to be fed on whenever the royals and nobles choose. Several cast their eyes my way when we walk in, but they see Aleksander and avert their gaze.
Aleksander leads me through the kitchens, up through a passage, into a small room with a chair and desk that has seen better days. There is a massive window that occupies one wall, with a stone window seat to look out through the glass. I sit down and shiver, knowing it’s going to be cold in here. Aleksander wouldn’t realise that since he doesn’t feel the cold, and I barely notice as he pulls out a new book from inside his cloak. It’s going to be another book about weaponry, how to build something sharp, but I don’t care. It’s a new book! I smile at him, unable to hide my happiness. “Thank you so much, professor!”
He proudly hands me the book. The binding is black; the title is in the language of the old times, but my mother secretly taught me how to read it, just like she was taught as a child by her mother in secret. Some languages shouldn’t be forgotten, she used to tell me, just because the speakers are long lost. “This one details how to make the handle of the blade and how to add certain gems into it.”
“We can discuss it when you’re back,” I answer. He leans over, kissing me on top of the head. At some point, Aleksander has become like a father to me, a father that I never had growing up. He certainly treats me like a daughter. He’s protective like one, too.
“It will be the highlight of a long day.” He opens the door, looking back at me. “Stay in here. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll get a fae I trust to bring you food around midday.” I nod and he seems pleased with that. “I’ll be back before nightfall. Have fun reading.”
I barely get to whisper before the door shuts. “I will.” He leaves quickly, shutting the door behind him, and I hear the click of a lock moments later. I curl up in the small chair after pulling it by the window for some light. Occasionally I lift my head to look out at the castle, across the massive city, and imagine the horror down there, how terrified the people must be. Will it always be like this for the fae? Will it ever stop? For hours I read the book, needing the escape, until it’s finished, and I wish there was more. I’ve always been far too much of a fast reader for my own good. A six-hundred-page book is nothing, not even a proper task. I could read that in a day, even one as boring as this. I put it down on the desk before pulling myself onto the stone window seat for a better view across the city.
From here, I can see the dark trees of the forest on the other side of the city, the beautiful sea right behind it glistening in the midday sun. The mountains behind the castle cast a shadow over here, and there is nothing but trees below the hill of the castle. I scream as a man’s face instantaneously appears at the window, and I fall backwards, straight off the ledge onto the floor, slamming my elbow on the ground. I wince in pain as I roll over, looking up at the man standing on the other side of the window, the wind blowing his silver locks of hair out of the braid at his neck. He is very handsome and very much a vampyre. His skin is almost silver, drained of all light, but his eyes are vividly blue. He looks no more than about twenty, well dressed in a silver shirt tucked into tight trousers.
He knocks the glass with his knuckle, and he points at the lock. I know I should run, but my door is locked, and I have nowhere to go. I’m certain this vampyre would chase me for the fun of it, and he could break the glass if he wanted. Shakily, I climb to my feet, rubbing my elbow as I walk over and unhook the metal lock. He steps to the side to pull the window open before he climbs in, sitting on the ledge of the window seat, the window swinging shut in the wind behind him. “Why are you hiding in a storage room, strange girl?”
“Why are you climbing a castle?” I ask right back, my heart thumping. He must hear it; he must know I’m scared. Some vampyres love fear, feed off it, drown in it.
He grins before he laughs, running his hand through his hair. “Touché. I’m Valerian, a noble visiting and very bored. Who are you?” He looks me up and down. “You smell incredible, and I have never seen you before.”
I take several steps back, looking for anything to hide behind. He holds his hands up. “I won’t hurt you today. I vow it to the deities.”
The professor isn’t a bad person, so maybe this stranger isn’t all that bad too? Vampyres fear the gods just like we do, and I don’t think he would risk their wrath just to hurt me. “My name is Story Dehana, and I’m waiting for my owner to come back. He wanted me somewhere safe.”
“And out of sight. Smart vampyre,” Valerian murmurs. “Name?”
I frown. Should I lie? Is there any point if he is a noble? He could find out easily enough. “I’m Professor Aleksander Wollke’s blood slave. He brought me in because the city’s not exactly safe today.”
