Chapter 3

Glyss's POV

Hestia's blood hunters dragged me from the dungeon and marched me to the execution ground west of the royal city.

"What are you bringing me here for?" I asked Hestia, my voice shaking.

No answer came. Then I saw the iron cage in the corner of the interrogation room.

My brother was locked inside it.

He lay at the bottom of the cage, barely moving — they had clearly already tortured him once.

"Barney!"

"What do you want with him? He's done nothing wrong! He should be in a hospital!"

"Done nothing wrong? Open your eyes and look at him."

The blood hunter beside the cage pressed the tip of his whip under Barney's chin and tipped his face up. I saw his pupils — narrow vertical slits.

"That's impossible! If he'd been given the serum on schedule, he couldn't have turned this fast!" Sick with rage, I looked around at their faces. "Did you cut off his doses?"

None of them answered. That silence told me everything.

"I'll take him away," I said. "We'll never come back. Just don't kill him — he hasn't attacked anyone!"

I tried to step forward. Two blood hunters behind me pinned my shoulders down hard.

A harsh light burned in my face. Every gaze around me was contemptuous, hostile, and it cut into my chest like a dull blade.

"Take him away? Do you two have any idea what crimes you've committed?"

Before I could react, Jodie parted her lips. "He is guilty of desertion. You are guilty of harboring him."

"You're lying! Those charges are invented out of thin air!"

They gave me no time to argue. They seized my hand, pressed my fingers into the ink pad, and stamped them onto a confession written up in advance.

It stated that I, a blood hunter, had known of Barney's intent to desert and failed to report it, that I had helped hide his movements, and that I was therefore an accomplice. It further stated that I had publicly questioned the rules of the blood hunters, spread disaffection, and incited rebellion from within — the crime of sedition.

"I admit nothing! This is a lie! What you're doing breaks every rule — you'll burn in hell for it! I'll report this to the Holy Court!"

I screamed it at them, half mad with grief.

"The Holy Court?" Jodie gave a cold laugh. "You'll be lucky to live through tomorrow, and you're still dreaming of lodging a complaint there? Save it. Take them away!"

Two blood hunters seized my arms and hauled me out, holding me down through every struggle.

…

In the end, Barney and I were brought to the execution ground.

A new year had come. When the sun rose, I would leave this world with Barney. Perhaps that was a good ending for me.

The wind blew across my face, but it could no longer sting a heart already run dry.

I knelt on the platform, my wrists lashed to a post, a black muzzle pointed at my head.

"Anything you'd like to say?"

A tear struck the platform. Slowly, I spoke.

"My brother… he was once the top-ranked Silver Emblem blood hunter… he helped so many people…"

"Five years ago, when famine gripped half the empire, he escorted the grain convoys and put food in the mouths of a hundred thousand people. The vampires he killed on the way set a record no one has touched since. Four years ago, when plague raged and the vampires stole the medicine and left humans to die, he led a raid, fought them off, and took it back. Two hundred crates, by the final count—"

"We brought you here to repent, not to pin medals on yourself!" Jodie snapped, and drove her boot into my stomach, cutting me off.

I spat blood at her feet and laughed. "Then I have nothing to say."

By then Barney had been pushed up onto the platform, a black cloth draped over his cage.

The sun rose slowly. The blood hunter beside him ripped the cloth away.

The light struck Barney's skin, and it burned at once, red as a coal in a forge.

"Barney!"

"Stop!"

Shouts and screams tangled together and echoed over the execution ground. Tears ran down my face; the pain left me unable to speak. The ropes bit into my flesh and blood ran freely.

"You can't do this to him!"

The people around me laughed.

Bang—!

The laughter stopped dead. Every head turned toward the sound.

I looked up. There stood the vampire from the cell, upright in the light, with the rising sun doing nothing to him at all.

Panic swept the crowd. None of them had ever fought a vampire in daylight, let alone one of this rank.

They charged. Blood-red spines burst from the vampire's back, every segment barbed, packed close as curved blades.

Before anyone could react, the serpent-like spines lashed out at once and — like a scythe through wheat — every blood hunter within three paces of him was cut in half at the waist.

On ground running with blood, the severed men screamed and screamed. The rest had lost their nerve and did not dare come near.

I had never seen anything like it. For a moment I thought I had fallen into hell.

The next second, everything went black before my eyes. The vampire — two meters tall — stood over me. He raised a hand, and fingers like steel blades sheared through the post I was tied to.

I dropped from the high post, gasping, blood surging hot through my veins.

Then I heard him speak: "The deal isn't finished yet."