Chapter 3

I didn't need the system to spell it out for me.

"You will sleep on the floor tonight." Nyx rose from the sofa and strode toward the bathroom without sparing me a glance. "I have no tolerance for the scent of another on my bed."

He spoke of Evelyn, yet the words landed like a blow meant for me.

The bathroom door clicked shut, and the rush of running water soon filled the silence.

Alone in that vast, empty chamber, I stared down at the cold obsidian floor. Despair crashed over me in waves, relentless and suffocating.

*****

Evelyn's retaliation came swifter than I had braced myself for.

The following day, the servants summoned me to the castle's council hall. The cavernous room brimmed with the Elder Council and the foremost dukes of the realm.

Evelyn stood at its heart, cradling a shattered black box in her trembling hands. Tears streamed down her porcelain cheeks, her composure artfully ruined.

"Esteemed Elders, His Royal Highness's Progenitor's Heart has been stolen! Nothing remains but this empty shell." Her voice quavered with practiced grief.

A ripple of alarm swept through the assembled vampires. Their faces drained of color.

The Progenitor's Heart was a sacred relic bequeathed by the first vampire, whispered to contain the very essence of their primordial power.

For Nyx, freshly awakened from a thousand-year slumber and still clawing his way back to full strength, it was indispensable.

"Who is responsible for this?" The silver-haired elder's voice cut through the murmuring like a blade.

Evelyn's gaze found me, venomous and unerring as a loosed arrow.

"It was her!" She thrust a trembling finger in my direction. "I witnessed this human skulking about His Royal Highness's private chambers yesterday. She must have made off with the relic."

Every pair of eyes in the hall turned on me, burning with undisguised hostility.

I struggled to find my voice. "I took nothing! I do not know of this relic. I do not know what it is."

"You dare deny it?" Evelyn closed the distance between us in a heartbeat, her eyes blazing with hatred. "You are nothing. A worthless human clinging to scraps of mercy.

"His Royal Highness granted you the grace of remaining at his side, and this is how you repay him? Guards, search her quarters!"

I had no quarters. I had spent every night since my arrival within Nyx's own bedroom.

The captain of the guard returned moments later, his gauntleted hand raised for all to see. Resting in his palm was a black, heart-shaped crystal pulsing with a frigid, otherworldly light.

Evelyn's eyes flashed with triumph before she smothered the gleam beneath a mask of righteous fury.

"It was discovered beneath her pillow," the captain announced, his voice ringing through the hall.

I stood frozen, my mind reeling. How did it get there?

The silver-haired elder loomed over me, his bony finger leveled at my face as though I were a heretic before the pyre. "The evidence is irrefutable.

"Witness and proof both stand against you. What defense can you possibly offer?"

My mouth opened, but no sound emerged. This was a trap, and I walked straight into it.

Evelyn had orchestrated every detail with surgical precision. To these ancient vampires, I was nothing but a powerless human, an insect to be crushed beneath their heel on a whim.

My eyes swept across the crowd of hostile faces and landed on Nyx, seated alone upon the throne at the far end of the hall.

He had uttered not a single word since I entered. He observed the farce unfold, those fathomless red eyes betraying nothing, as though the spectacle held no interest for him whatsoever.

He alone knew the truth. He knew I had passed the night curled on the cold floor and had never so much as touched the bed.

One word from his lips, and I would walk free.

I shot him a desperate, silent plea, clinging to the fragile hope that whatever shallow bond we had shared might move him to speak on my behalf.

His response was a slow, curling smile.

"And what, by vampire law, is the punishment for the theft of a sacred relic?" His voice carried the same idle curiosity one might use to remark upon the weather.

The silver-haired elder bowed low. "Your Royal Highness, the sentence is the Trial of Blood.

"The offender is cast into the Well of Withered Bones and left to survive a night among the starving blood thralls. Should they emerge alive at dawn, the crime is absolved."

The Well of Withered Bones? Blood thralls? My mind scrambled to grasp the meaning.

The system's voice trembled in my skull. 'Blood thralls are the failed ones. They are vampires whose transformation went wrong. Reason has deserted them. Only the hunger remains.

'The Well of Withered Bones is where they discard those failures and their prisoners. Host, if you fall into that pit, they will tear you limb from limb.]

Ice flooded my veins.

"Very well." Nyx inclined his head, as though savoring the pronouncement.

At last, his gaze settled on me, and I caught the glimmer of cruelty lurking in those crimson depths. "Let it be so."

He had handed me a death sentence with the same ease as pouring a glass of wine.

I stared at him, my heart plunging into an abyss from which there was no return. I believed him cold. I never imagined he would be the one to cast me into hell with his own hands.

Was he merely appeasing Evelyn? Or had his pet outlived her usefulness?