I’m afraid it will cost this servant girl her life.
I say I’m afraid, but only as an expression, because I’m not afraid at all.
I’m just hungry.
There’s a slat. A gap between the floor and the bottom of the iron door that makes me wonder how many people Abra has chained up in here over the years if she has a door perfectly built for sliding food underneath.
That’s exactly what the servant girl does, careful not to allow her fingers to pass over the threshold as she nudges a tray of boiled potatoes and roasted lamb underneath the door.
The blood is served in a nearly flat bowl rather than a cup, I suppose so it can fit nicely under the slat.
“Thank you,” I say, sliding to my feet from the exam table. My muscles are still sore from the Turning, or perhaps they’re sore from lack of human blood.
I’m not familiar with the nuances of my new body yet.
The servant girl mutters a noncoherent response, clearly not expecting to have such a grateful prisoner.
She’s right to be suspicious.
“Oh, don’t go yet,” I say as soon as I sense her feet tense in preparation to skitter away. “I’m starved for company.”
It’s a horrible pun, and even in my bloodlust, I’m aware enough to cringe at myself. Though it’s probably the least worthy thing to cringe over.
What’s truly disturbing is my voice.
It’s dropped half an octave, into a sultry sort of cadence that drips off my tongue like honey.
I feel the girl still on the other side of the door.
So it does work—this strange compulsion—even if the victim can’t see me.
That’s another question Nox has been hedging these past few days.
I know I should feel something—guilt, perhaps?—for ridding the girl of her free will, but it seems whatever scale inside my chest that used to measure the need for such an emotion is damaged.
“Why don’t you open the door?” I ask, fully aware that this has to be some trick of the queen. Nox knows better than to send a human to feed me when I’m hungry, and so does Abra.
I’m not sure what she’s playing at, but I intend to find out.
Metal scraping against metal, the creaking of rusty hinges, and the door opens to reveal a stout woman only a few years my senior. She has dark curling hair and cheeks that have that look of being permanently flushed.
My teeth ache.
Definitely an intentional ploy sent by the queen. But why? For someone who pretends to value all life, this seems a bit extreme. Though I suppose if I kill the girl, the queen will simply tell herself it was an accident. That she wasn’t at all involved.
If I kill the girl.
I wait for the shudder, to recoil at my own morose thoughts, but it seems I’ll be waiting forever.
“Did the queen send you?” I ask. My neck cranes to the side as I focus on the red blotch staining the girl’s collarbone.
The girl nods, and it causes her neck to fold right around where her pulse gently hammers.
“Did she say why?” I ask.
The girl swallows, her pale throat bobbing. “No, miss. Just that she thought you might be hungry.”
I frown at that. Surely the queen isn’t sending me a gift out of the goodness of her heart. It seems more likely that this is some ploy to get me to break, to drive me to kill. To force Nox to see me for what I really am, for what he made me.
Perhaps she hopes that if I become a murderer, Nox will despise me.
It seems like a fairly hypocritical take, considering Nox is a murderer himself, but given the queen’s opaque view of her own faults, I wouldn’t put it past her to assume everyone else possesses the same lack of self-reflection.
“You should probably go,” I say, my voice silky, if not tinged with disappointment.
There’s nothing I want more than to rip into this girl’s throat, but given that’s exactly what the queen wants from me, I think I’ll pass.
My stomach can twist into knots, my canines can rot from my gums before I’ll make a move that might bring that female any satisfaction.
But when the girl turns to go, something primal takes over. Something that sees the prey beginning to run and reminds me I’m the predator.
That this is my natural right.
Her blood is my natural right.
Heady desire floods my veins, burning with rage as the girl practically flees to the door.
I make it to the threshold before she does.
