Evelaena smiled, but a familiar, intoxicating scent—just a whiff of it—dragged my attention away. At first, I thought I was imagining it—but then I swept my thumb over her shoulder, right where Evelaena’s hand had rested.

Warm. Wet.

Blood.

My fake smile withered. My gaze shot to Evelaena, who folded her claw-tipped hands at her lap, leaving little specs of bright-red blood on her dress.

A wave of the exact same emotion that had fallen over me before I ripped Martas’s head off his body stifled me.

Evelaena just kept up that dreamy smile.

“I wasn’t sure that you would be interested in coming so far east. Such a journey! You must be starving. Come. I’ve had a feast prepared.” Her eyes brightened. “More than a feast! A ball! One of the grandest Lahor has seen in decades. Come! Come!”

Well, that sounded morbid.

It was morbid.

When we were brought to the ballroom, I actually stifled a laugh—because honestly, I couldn’t help myself.

The room had been grand once, and still held the distant echo of its long-ago magnificence, albeit all covered with a faint layer of dust. Long tables sat over mosaic tile floors on one side of the room, the windows overlooking the sea beyond them. The other side was a dance floor, a roaring bonfire in the hearth and an orchestra before it, magically enhanced, ghostly music echoing against the ceilings. Yes, this had all the trappings of a ball—the entertainment, the tables of food and wine, the finery.

Except, of the dozens of “guests” that turned to regard us with silent curiosity as we arrived, not a single one appeared to be more than fifteen years old.

Most were far younger—ten or twelve, wearing clothes so ill-fitting that they dragged skirts and pant hems over the dusty floor. Almost all of them were blond, with fair eyes.

Surely these couldn’t all be her children. Or if they were all members of her family, where were the other parents?

Evelaena took no notice of the sudden, awkward silence. She stretched her arms out. “Come! Sit!”

The children wordlessly turned to the tables and took their seats.

I’d witnessed plenty of disturbing things in my time, but the silent, simultaneous obedience with which dozens of children did this would certainly be among the most unnerving.

The seats at the head of the table, closest to Evelaena, were, apparently, ours. She motioned to them and we, ever the respectful guests, took our chairs.

“You must be famished,” she said. Her eyes fell to me and her smile stilled.

Hatred. Easy to see it. I knew how to recognize it by now. That wasn’t a surprise. I’d killed Vincent, after all. There was a reason why Oraya’s name had come first in our letter.

I glanced at Oraya’s shoulder, and the little beads of scabbing red on her shoulders.

Not that that seemed to be going any better.

We couldn’t trust this woman. We had to get what we needed and get the fuck out of—

The smell made my head snap up.

Blood. Human blood. Lots of it. Still beating. The truth was, I was hungry after so much travel—the truth was, even after all this time, when I first smell it, it takes me a minute to collect myself. Ketura’s eyes brightened. The Bloodborn peered over their shoulder.

Evelaena perked up, too, her smile brightening.

“At last,” she crooned, shifting aside so that her child servants could hoist a naked woman onto the table.

20

ORAYA

The woman was still alive. Her throat had been cut, but not enough to make her bleed out fast. Her eyes, big and dark, danced wildly about the room. Landed on me.

A sudden intense wave of nausea made vomit rise in my throat. Images from another feast hall, another table, another human bleeding out on a wooden slab—shown to me by my own father—assaulted me.

I glanced at Raihn. His face was still for a moment—frozen, as if stuck momentarily between masks. Then it softened into a predatory grin.

“What a treat.”

I took a drink from my wine glass because I desperately needed something to do with my hands and immediately choked. Whatever flowed over my tongue was thick and savory, punctuated with an iron bite.

Blood.

My stomach lurched.

And yet—yet my body did not reject it. It accepted it. Some dark, primal part of myself purred as I forced myself to let the blood slide down my throat.

Goddess, what was wrong with me? I swallowed hard just to keep myself from throwing up.

The woman before me kept looking at me, her eyes blurring out and then refocusing. Like she knew that I wasn’t one of them.

Several other humans had been placed on the tables. Most were listless, alive but not moving. Some still weakly struggled and were secured to the table to keep them from moving—a sickening sight, when it was children doing the securing.

Mische sipped blood from her wine glass, doing a poor job at hiding her fascinated disgust. If the Bloodborn were surprised, they didn’t show it, gracefully accepting human wrists and throats, observing the rest of the room with wary interest. Septimus offered a pleasant smile and raised his glass in a wordless toast before setting the goblet down in favor of the woman’s limp wrist.

At the other place settings, children climbed over the tables, clustering around the corpses like starving flies, their only sounds the frantic drinking and the stifled moans of pain of their human offerings.

Raihn cast me a glance so quick I thought I might’ve imagined it. Then he grinned. “You have spoiled us, Evelaena,” he said, placed his hands on either side of the woman’s head, and turned her face towards him. Her eyes widened, a little whimper of fear escaping her lips—more like a gargle, actually. This woman was already dead, I knew. Nothing could save her now. She’d drown slowly in her blood, conscious while the rest of them drained her.

I watched Raihn, a knot of disgust in my stomach. I’d never seen him drink live prey before—let alone from a human. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him do this. He’d tricked me many times before. He was a vampire, after all.

And yet, a little silent sigh of relief passed over me when I saw the shift in his face when he looked into her eyes. I wondered if I was the only one who saw it—the brief trade of the bloodthirsty hunger for silent compassion, intended only for her.

He tilted her head back, lowered his face, and sank his teeth into her throat.

He bit hard—hard enough that I could hear his teeth slicing the muscle. Little flecks of blood spattered my face, which I promptly wiped away. He drank for several long seconds, his throat bobbing with deep gulps, before lifting his head again, crimson at the corners of his mouth and seeping into the lines of his grin.

“Perfect,” he said. “You have fine taste, Evelaena.”

But Evelaena frowned down at the woman—whose eyes now stared half-closed, vacant, to the other side of the room, bare chest no longer fighting for breath.

“You killed her,” she said, disappointed.

A quick, painless death. A mercy.

Raihn laughed, wiping the blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. “I got a bit overzealous. But she’s still plenty warm. Will last the next few hours, at least.”

Evelaena looked put out by this. Then a smile rolled over her lips. “You’re right. No need to waste. Besides, there are many more where she came from.”

His grin stiffened, so tight it looked like it might crack.

A regular occurrence here, then. Then again, wasn’t it a regular occurrence everywhere? I’d just let myself be sheltered from it for so long.

The Oraya of the past wouldn’t be able to hide her revulsion. She’d let it all show on her face, and trigger a messy argument, and we’d all get kicked out of this city before we even had the chance to start looking for what we came here for.