Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

It wasn’t before the dais I’d landed. It was amidst the crowds. Hidden by the grandeur of court dress and the press of many bodies.

Terrified.

I was terrified, and almost screamed like the little girl I had been when a hand twisted into my hair. Pulling black tangles by the root, subjugating me before curious glances, the very bane of my existence put his lips to my ear and snarled, “Think of nothing but the hate you bear me.”

And I did hate Malcom.

How could he drag me here, like this, after what he’d just done to me?

Only seconds ago his tongue had delved demon-deep into my cunt. The bastard had made me come. Arousal, a single bead of hideous, naked, and plain truth, dripped down my thigh for any behind me to view.

I hated.

I hated thoroughly.

To be seen this way. To have my head held in a bow by strength I’d never match. Left kneeling in a crowd where all others stood over me, where they laughed behind their hands at me. Where they hated me. That’s what the Cathedral was. That was the revolting malevolence fostered here and worshiped by all my father collected in his flock.

Pressing against the stone with all my strength, shaking from the strain as hairs tore free from my scalp, I gave over.

Daughter of the Devil.

Unimportant. Completely forgotten once evil incarnate broke the chambers echoless silence. “Vladislov, welcome.”

Straining to catch a glimpse between the knees of those separating me from my father’s gaze, my full attention was caught up in that name. I even felt an echo of my brains busting against the far wall as if reliving that day.

Waved brown hair, long as a woman’s. High forehead, pointed nose, an ugly sort of eternal beauty. An immortal potentially as old as my own sire stood before the throne and didn’t so much as dip his chin in deference.

I knew his eyes, I’d dreamed about them puzzling me back together. I’d drank of that man when he’d come to where I’d gone to die all those years ago. I’d swallowed blood thicker than tar as he’d stuffed handfuls of brain matter back in my skull.

The guest more important than my little life when I’d made the mistake of biting my father before him.

The reason I still lived.

Perhaps I hated him as much as I hated Malcom. He should have let me die.

Corner of thin lips twitching upward, it was as if my mind were as open to the immortal as my skull had been decades before. I think he laughed at me. Not that his face was turned my direction, or that I had been in any way acknowledged

My gaze was forced lower, Malcom still as marble, if marble might vibrate with a threatening decibel too low for even vampire hearing.

Denied another glance of my long-ago secret savior, driven to bend in ways that left joints screaming, I found my nails uneven, dirty, and chipped.

Which troubled me in the oddest way.

That I was not dressed for court—lacquered, scented, draped in jewels for this ancient to see. Because I knew he would. Despite the crowd, he could see me. Under all of it. Just how ugly I was. And maybe he’d give me that last fragment of myself that had been left to rot on the ground when I’d been a silly child who’d thought her daddy adored her.

His voice, like his features, was unattractive in an entrancing way. Making something lackluster pleasing. “My faction accepts these new terms with open arms, Darius. The alliance between our flocks grows stronger with each tithe gathering.”

How long could he have been alive to have learned such a trick? To manipulate so many with so little effort.

“And just what have you brought me, old friend?” I didn’t need to see the throne to know how my father’s immensity sat upon it. There was no more chilling sight to behold.

“We are beyond the age of chests of gold and favored bloodlines. Dreadfully boring as they were. Yet, as you requested, one hundred of my healthiest stock shall be transferred to your pens, for breeding whatever blood vintage you prefer.”

“And one hundred of my human cattle shall be placed in yours.” My father was a greedy man for blood. My own eyes had seen him fell thirty in a single feeding. One hundred was a snack.

All of this was politics, even though I had no idea what took place, it was clear the back and forth were practiced, unimportant yet required.

Father didn’t want Vladislov in his realm.

And that I had never heard of a tithe gathering though I had lived for many years.

Though by the way his fist refused me so much as an inch, Malcom had. Everyone in the chamber understood what this was.

“Where is that precious daughter of yours?” My flesh chilled, the fine hairs on the back of my neck rising. “I have a stud who wishes to woo her. Of course, any offspring would belong to my house should he succeed.”