Chapter 9

Lucianus

When my servants arrived with the news, I was irritated, but I was also oddly impressed. She must have been conserving her energy, her strength, to be able to take the blade and do so much damage so quickly.

That or the woman there had simply underestimated her. It didn’t matter. The issue was whether or not I was going to allow her to get away with this. She was a blood slave as far as I was concerned, a prisoner of mine. Never have any of my prisoners been allowed to decide on their own freedom, least of all human ones.

I drifted through the hallways as little more than a shadow until I reached the dungeon cell where they had left her. Her arm had been bandaged tightly, but my servants knew nothing of human medicine. No more than me, anyway. I pulled the vial of elixir from my pocket. Once when humanity and vampires had not been at war, we had had something like a peace treaty. They offered us a steady supply of humans in exchange for magic.

Humans had always been greed