Hellfire and Honey, page 3
I stepped into the darkness. Zavier followed.
The sun did not penetrate the tent’s thick fabric, casting deep darkness inside. Lanterns lit the space, but I still had to squint. Woven tapestries dangled from the metal poles of the structure, illustrating massive battles and victorious heroes. One particularly muscular man held the bleeding head of an enemy in one hand and the rest of the body in the other. Pieces of papers peeked behind the tapestries, probably maps and documents they had hidden from us.
A long table stretched down the middle of the tent. Rich brown wood reflected the dancing flames of the lanterns. Simple black chairs sat around the table. Crates and boxes stacked at the edges of the room. Labels spelled Food, Swords, Knives in blocky handwriting on the front of each box.
At the head of the table, perched in the chair farthest from the door like powerful warrior ready to strike, was the dark-eyed man. He smiled and stretched both arms out.
“Welcome, Princess. The king of Vari Kolum has decided to grant you an audience. Please sit.”
Chapter Three
My face grew hot. I should have listened to Zavier when he glared at me for my sharp tongue outside the gates. It was too late for standard pleasantries and manners. The king had seen one side of me and switching to a formal tone would make me appear indecisive and dishonest. Zavier couldn’t step in for negotiations, or I would lose the little rapport I had built. I had dug a very large, deep hole, and now I had to lie in it. Fear tightened around my heart, choking me a little more. I was on my own.
I pulled out my chair and sunk onto it. I settled my legs under the table and crossed my ankles, rubbing my hands on the glossy tabletop. Years of etiquette and protocol lessons wasted. I wandered in uncharted territory.
Zavier took the chair at my side. Rayhan stomped to stand behind King Kadence.
I smiled. The king’s grin slipped.
“Are you surprised?” he asked me. He had lit a fire under my feet and expected me to dance. Instead I just stood on the coals. He didn’t know I was willing to do so much more for my kingdom.
“I am no longer surprised at any level the vampires will stoop to in this war.” The words felt sharp on my tongue. Instant regret flooded me. Insults were not the best way to begin this conversation.
The king bared his teeth.
“And the witches have made only civil decisions. I’ve never seen a body wrapped so thick with magic that the vampire’s eyes bulged and their muscles were lacerated through the skin.”
“And the vampires have never bled any of our soldiers dry and left their withered corpses dangling from trees like crusted fruit we had to pick to bring home.”
King Kadence pushed his fists on the table and stood. His chair screeched as it slid across the ground. I stood too, arching my neck to look the vampire in the eyes.
“Your people—”
Rayhan put his hand on the king’s shoulder.
“We get it.” The man’s voice cut us off. “We’ve all done horrible things during this war. Now you both sit down and talk about it. Or, Kadence, we can kill them right now.”
My hands itched for a sword to slice across the king’s neck. Magic bloomed around me, looking for something to strike. I sat back down. The king and I eyed each other across the table.
The magic, though, I kept out. I let it drift through the room like a slow gas, silent and invisible.
The king spoke again, control steadying his voice.
“When my scouts reported two figures walking from the witch kingdom, I expected human defectors. We’ve had a few.” I knew that. The scouts reported everything they saw. We had some humans come from the vampire kingdom as well, although not recently. “Imagine my surprise when it was the Princess and her oldest advisor walking toward our camp as though we weren’t planning their deaths. I thought we’d have to drag you from the castle, kicking and screaming.”
He angled toward Zavier.
“Zavier Croft. My father met you on the battlefield once. He said he barely escaped with his life.”
Zavier bowed his head. “I won’t speak ill of the dead and I don’t have to. Your father was a great warrior.”
King Kadence put his hands on the table, palms up. His armor molded to a body honed to perfection. He looked magnificent, with enough flaws to prevent him from becoming a marble statue. His eyebrows lacked symmetry, his jawline too sharp. He opened his arms, an angel offering us salvation, and he would look just like that if he ran us through with his sword.
My magic slid through the room, a winding river of power. I wrapped it around each lantern, tight but gentle, similar to setting a trigger in a game snare. If the trigger was too tight, the slightest breeze would collapse the trap. Too loose and the prey would never spring it. My magic became a whisper through the room, feeling up the boxes and crates, brushing across rows of paper.
“Why are you here, Princess Salvatore?”
King Kadence held a hand up before I could answer. Rayhan gave him a piece of paper.
“We have enough soldiers to fight two-to-one,” the king said, “Those odds don’t stack up well for you. Your people do better in small battles, with ample time to recharge magic between fights. One massive assault and your soldiers would be spent.”
He met my eyes over the top of his page, then flicked them down and kept reading.
“If you locked yourself in the castle and trapped everyone outside, we estimate you could survive for two months. We also don’t think you would do that. You would stuff people into the castle until it threatened to burst and then reluctantly shut the doors. I’m sure you have plenty of provisions inside, but sewage and wastewater would overflow within a week. People would die by the dozens and you’d, what, eat the bodies? No, you’d stack the dead in the basement until rats and disease amassed. You’d all die around the same time we’d catapult the front door to a million pieces.”
He looked at me again and I settled a stoic expression across my face. “Your supply routes are surprisingly strong, but your army has been cut in half and your people’s loyalty changes every day.” He put the paper on the table with a smug smile. “You cannot win this war. We will crush you until there’s nothing to put back together. I will ask again. Why are you here?”
I set my hands on the table to hide the tremble. “I am here to surrender.”
The words fell from my lips. I thought saying them out loud would be difficult, dredging upstream in high water, but it felt like a lead weight dropping off my shoulders. I could breathe again.
“Zavier.”
He didn’t need a paper. He recited the words from memory.
“We are five thousand soldiers down. Half of our army marched out and never returned. Our trading partners value money more than loyalty and as long as we pay, we will have supplies. Decades of effort prove that our routes cannot be blocked, as many of our people have transportation magic. Your option then, is to fight us directly.”
As Zavier talked, I shaped the magic. The lazy coils of power sharpened, tightened, into rows and rows of invisible strings. I scattered the strings across the room and they wrapped around boxes, papers, lanterns. They swallowed crates of food, maps, tapestries, enveloped them tight in the power, insects trapped in a spider’s web.
The other end of the magic fed into me. I sorted the strings, tapping each one as it clung to something in the room. They twisted and turned at my will. I sent more power, and they thickened, strengthened to wire instead of web.
“If we armed every witch and loyal human that can hold a weapon, your armies will still crush us,” Zavier continued, “There wouldn’t be anybody left standing. If we harbor for a siege, thousands of our people would die outside the castle walls. It is imperative to our country’s survival that we do not engage in direct combat with your amassed forces.”
“You see where our hands are tied,” I said.
“Yes,” King Kadence said, “I do not see how it benefits me to accept your surrender. It sounds like we can, quite literally, swallow all of you.”
In my mind, I gathered the magical wires together in a cluster. I imagined an arched wooden frame, waiting for the delicate strings in my hands. The strings pulsed with power as I drew them into their new spaces, settling one after another into the hollow place etched for each strand. The rolled jumble of wires uncoiled one at a time, by my direction, until they transformed into a beautiful harp. Soft but strong, powerful and graceful, the instrument waited for me. My fingers buzzed, eager to pluck the notes.
The magic connections tied to every lantern in the tent wound together into one string, vertical across the instrument. I plucked it. The magic sang me a rich note and the lanterns flickered out. The tent plunged into darkness.
I strung the cords, pushing power into each string of my invisible harp. One ran through the boxes of food and weapons. Another note carried magic to the pages hidden beneath tapestries. I ran my fingers across the strings and pushed the last of my power into them. The papers, supplies, glass, and wood in the room that my magic touched illuminated with a soft, blue glow. It swirled and danced with the pulse of the music, setting the room in a beautiful and eerie shadow, like being deep underwater and unsure if there was enough air to swim to the surface.
Both vampires had stood in the seconds of darkness. Rayhan gripped his giant axe and the king’s eyes were deathly silver. I kept my palms flat on the table. Zavier sat loose in his seat, as though expecting tea to be served at any moment.
“A little jumpy, Your Majesty?” I asked.
“What is this?” The king strained to look at the pulsing blue lights as they shimmered across the room. About half of the boxes and crates were illuminated and almost all the stacks of paper. Exposed corners of maps peeked behind tapestries, dancing with my power.
“How familiar are you with magic?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“To avoid forcing you to admit you know little about your enemy’s greatest asset, I will explain some of the basics.” My magic dwindled. At full strength, I could keep these items lit for hours. Tonight, exhausted from battle, without any sleep, and as my stomach tried to fold in on itself, I had precious minutes. It would undermine everything I said if the magic collapsed early.
Hurry.
“When magic touches an object, it leaves a residue. A kind of magical fingerprint. Some witches can identify this residue. I used a simple spell to illuminate the objects in this room that were made with the aid of magic.”
“And you had to extinguish the lanterns?” the king asked.
“Yes, for dramatic effect.”
“You’re saying everything that’s glowing was created by magic?”
“It was at some point in the supply chain, made, or handled by witches, yes.”
He looked around, taking a mental inventory.
“As you can see,” I said, “there are a substantial number of your supplies that involve my people. If you destroy us, if you crush our kingdom as you promise to do, the resources and labor to produce these supplies will halt. I am not naive. You would be able to recover these losses. But at what cost and how quickly? If boxes of food are suddenly missing from your haul, how many of your people will starve? Vampires don’t eat much, so the humans would die first. Then your supply of blood would slowly diminish.”
I gestured to other boxes.
“Fuel and oil would become an invaluable resource. People would fight for it, kill each other in the streets. How many more decades of loss do you want to face after declaring victory in this war? Is that your definition of victory, Your Majesty? To watch your children starve because pride consumed your country’s essential supplies?”
I burned. Magic ate away at my nerves as it pulled reserve power from my body. My dress itched like sandpaper on my skin. Muscles twisted. I relaxed my hands on the table, my face calm, while my power consumed me from the inside out.
“How many have the ability to identify the residue, as you called it?” the king asked.
“Not many. It’s rare.”
Please stop asking questions.
King Kadence sat down. He tilted his head, a slight tip, a predator deciding if its prey was worth the effort. I struggled not to wiggle in my seat. The look on his face said he was imagining a thousand ways to kill me.
Rayhan kept his axe in his hand. He shifted from the glowing objects, as though he didn’t want the magic to touch him, yet he didn’t have trouble wearing the spell-engraved armor.
“You can stop now, Princess,” King Kadence said softly. “You’ve made your point.”
“Maybe a few lanterns could be lit first, so the darkness doesn’t startle you again,” I said. I’m not burning away. Please, take your time.
Rayhan lit the lanterns and once the yellow flames deepened to orange, I gathered the magical strings. One at a time, I untied the knots from my mental harp, pulled them away, and let the magic go. I did it theatrically slow, the glow fading from one object at a time.
Sweat trickled down my back. The magic was gone, depleted.
“It is tempting to kill you now, Princess,” the king said. “There is a chance your people would follow me peacefully. Our spies say you’re not exactly popular.”
It was difficult to be popular when my family ran away and left a half-trained replacement to run the country.
“I am not here to beg for my life,” I said. “I am here to negotiate terms of surrender that allow my people to survive, integrate with your kingdom, and eventually thrive. If my death is a condition of those terms, then so be it.”
The king raised his eyebrows.
“You’re telling the truth?”
With the entirety of my being, I was telling the truth. Once I stepped down that hill, I had no intention of returning home.
“Yes.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied me. I returned the stare, my face blank. If he asked me to grovel, I would kneel. If he asked for my head on a platter, I would ask if he wanted a silver or gold one. After my parents abandoned our kingdom, I owed it to the people of Ededen.
Please, please.
“Bring in two scribes. Let’s see if we can agree on the terms.”
Relief flooded me. Zavier’s shoulders sagged. My shaking hands longed to wrap the old man in a hug, but I didn’t dare. Our country might have a chance to survive, grow, and prosper. They would hate me, but they would be alive.
Two people came in, a man and a woman, carrying ink, quills, and blank scrolls. They perched on each side of the table, between me and the king. In unison, they dipped the quills tips into the black ink and sat poised to write.
“Since you made the journey all this way, what is your first term, Princess?” the king asked.
“My first term is that all soldiers are released from duty and allowed to return to their homes as civilians without punishment for serving in our armies. Prisoners of War on both sides will also be released unharmed.” The first few terms were obvious, but needed to be in writing.
“Done,” the king said. “Tell me where your parents are.”
My parents. Their absence was a constant thorn in my back, reminding me that they valued themselves more than their country, more than me. Every day, the thorn cut a little deeper.
“I don’t know where they are. They disappeared six months ago, took half of our army, and we haven’t seen them since. Our scouts are watching for them, but there has been no sign.”
King Kadence pressed his lips together. He didn’t like my answer.
“We’ve heard rumors they’re searching for the Fields of Death.”
The information jolted me. Surely the vampires didn’t know more than our own scouts, who still couldn’t locate my parents. If my parents somehow found the mystical Fields, they would ruin us all. I recalled the terrible stories every child eavesdropped on when they were supposed to be tucked in bed while the adults talked. The tales of demons and blood and death.
“For both our sakes, I hope that is not true.”
He nodded, but a flicker of emotion I didn’t catch ran over his face.
“My first term is that your coronation as queen will be completed immediately. I refuse to accept a surrender that will be overturned if your parents suddenly show up.”
It was an easy term to accept. Tradition dictated waiting one year when a ruler went missing before crowning a successor, even if the individual was presumed dead. Half the coronation was already planned. Pushing it forward would be simple.
“Yes, done,” I said.
The scribes scratched away on their scrolls, feathers dancing in the same rhythm.
“The surrender will be announced at the coronation and I will be presented as the reigning king,” he continued.
“Yes, that’s fine.” Better to get it out of the way.
“Next?”
“Blood will not be unwillingly taken from any of my people,” I said.
“That is contradictory to my benefit. We don’t have enough human donors here to sustain our numbers indefinitely. Eventually our soldiers will go home, but we must eat until then,” the king said.
“I propose setting a weekly or monthly quota for blood donation. If the quota is not fulfilled by volunteers, then we would implement a fair draft. It is not beneficial for either of us if witches are swiped off the streets and found half-drained in a back alley.”
“I can agree to a quota system. I, or whomever I delegate, will be in charge of setting the limits.”
“As long as it is realistic.”
“Done.”
“Done. Next?” I asked.
“The title of queen will be stripped of its authority and will be a title only. You will complete tasks that are delegated to you. I want you to sit on your throne, dressed up and pretty, and do what I tell you to.”
I bit the inside of my lip. His words did not surprise me. Surrendering meant submitting to his authority. I couldn’t do that and hold the majority of power over my people, but it hurt like skin torn from a fresh wound.
