CHAPTER NINE: BLOOD KNOWS

The rogue came from the east gate.

Aldric heard him before he saw him — a shift in the air, a sound pitched just below the range that most people registered consciously but that had always lived clearly inside whatever it was that made Aldric better at this than anyone he'd trained beside. He was crossing the outer courtyard on an errand that didn't matter when his feet slowed without instruction from his brain and he turned.

The vampire was young. Or looked young — Aldric had learned by now that appearance meant almost nothing here. But there was something unformed about his panic, something that hadn't calcified into anything yet, which made him read young regardless of what the years said. He was moving fast and badly, knocking against a wall, catching himself, his eyes gone full dark the way they went when the need had overridden everything else. Two servants who'd been crossing the yard had pressed themselves against the far wall and weren't moving.

Aldric was already between them before he'd consciously decided to be.

"Hey."

The vampire's attention snapped to him. This close, Aldric could see the effort it was taking — the jaw tight, hands fisted at his sides, a tremor in his arms that had nothing to do with cold. He wasn't attacking. He was fighting himself. The distinction mattered, and Aldric noted it with the same precision he noted everything, filed it in the same place he was filing a growing number of things he didn't know what to do with yet.

"Look at me," Aldric said. Quiet. Level. The voice he used when a situation required it to stay exactly where it was. "Not at them. Here."

The vampire looked at him.

And then something happened that Aldric had no framework for.

The vampire went still. Not calm — not yet — but the frantic quality left his movement, replaced by something more like confusion. He was staring at Aldric with an expression that had shifted from hunger to something Aldric didn't have a name for. His nostrils moved slightly.

"You're not —" he started, and stopped.

"I'm not," Aldric agreed, though he had no idea what he was agreeing to.

The vampire took a step back. Then another. His eyes cleared by degrees, the dark receding until they were something closer to normal, and he looked at Aldric with an expression that was equal parts relief and alarm. Then he turned and went quickly back the way he'd come, and the two servants against the wall let out a collective breath and didn't look at Aldric directly when they left.

— ▪ —

Dravon was there in minutes. Aldric didn't know how he'd been alerted so quickly — the palace's internal communication was something he hadn't fully mapped — but he came through the east gate and took in the empty courtyard and then looked at Aldric with an expression that was very controlled and very attentive.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

Dravon looked at him for a moment longer than the question required. "What did you do?"

"Talked to him."

"That's all?"

Aldric thought about it. About the vampire going still. About the specific way he'd stopped and stared and said you're not — "That's all," he said.

Dravon's expression didn't change exactly. Something moved behind it. He looked at Aldric's wrist — the bracelet, briefly, one glance — and then back up. He didn't say anything else about it. He asked Aldric if he could identify the vampire by sight, took the description he gave, and left to handle it.

Aldric stood in the courtyard after he was gone and thought about what the vampire had started to say.

You're not —

Not what.

The bracelet was so warm it was almost uncomfortable. He pulled his sleeve down over it and told himself it was the temperature and went back to work. He was getting very good at telling himself things.