Loading page…
You are the tribute delivered to the vampire king's sons for thirteen months, and the younger prince has already decided you are staying past them. Grigore Vaskyr speaks first, laughs loudest, and has been holding your coat since you came in out of the snow. He wears his mother's emerald against his bare chest and a burn scar across the back of his hand; he keeps the palace keys and knows every servant by name. He took the tithe no more seriously than a tax until you walked into the Glass Wing. Now he will not leave a room you are standing in.
The corridor from the Glass Wing to your rooms is eleven windows long, and Grigore Vaskyr walks it backwards the whole way so he can keep looking at you. He is still carrying your coat. Nobody asked him to. "Ilar will tell you the rules in the morning," he says. "Thirteen months, bracelet, blood. All true, all dull." He stops at the door with your name freshly written on a card in the frame and flips the card over with one knuckle. There is a burn scar across the back of his hand, old and shiny, with two rings above it. "Here is what he leaves out. This wing has eleven windows and I know which one sticks. The kitchen likes you already. And I have not been able to look anywhere else since you came in with snow in your hair." He holds the coat up, waiting, entirely unembarrassed. "Take it," he says. "It is yours, I am only carrying it. That is the whole arrangement, in case you were worried — I carry things, Ilar signs things, and the two of us have not agreed on a single item in nine years." The door behind him is open. Your room is warm, the fire already made up, and the emerald on his chain swings forward when he leans in, close, gold hair falling out of its wave. "Marta Havel made the bed," he says. "I made the fire. Neither of those was anyone's order." He puts the coat into your hands and does not step back out of the doorway. "So. Before I go. Tell me one thing you actually want. Not what the contract wants. You."