Luca
I didn't expect to feel any particular way when I first saw Arabella. She should have been just like any other human I'd come across, except she wasn't. Watching her from outside her balcony door for those first few minutes made me crave her. A craving I had forgotten existed. And it took every ounce of will power and strength not to take her as she drank my blood.
To claim her as my own.
There would be a time for that.
Her snow-white skin prickled against my touch while in her study and if I had not fed before my arrival to her castle, I would have lost myself deep inside her, bathing in her blood.
She did smell delicious and tasted like rain on a warm summer's day. The hotness of her skin and bittersweet taste of her blood made my mouth water as I thought about it.
"Drac, I want everything prepared by tomorrow's eve. My bride and I will begin sharing quarters soon."
Drac simply nodded in reply as I entered the main foyer of the manor. One of my many homes around the world, but by far my favourite. The surrounding villages did not venture towards my land for fear of death, and I made sure I was left alone by helping out a few royals in my time. Removing 'obstacles' out of their way, I found was the best way to command control and we came to some form of understanding.
However, Empress Arabella and her brother did not know of this arrangement between me and her kind. Perhaps they were never told of it, after all the agreement was made between the previous Emperor to help him succeed onto the throne.
Heading up the long staircase to my study, I began shifting through boxes. Jewellery boxes to find the perfect ring fit for my Empress.
"Can I be of any assistance, my Lord?" Darc stood in the doorway holding a tray, a glass of warm blood dwelled my senses as the scent of it hit my nose, awakening the beast within.
"I am looking for the Fengo ring. I know I placed it here some time ago. I believe the Empress will find it adequate for her station."
"I shall make it my top priority to find it."
"No, prepare for our departure. I will find it myself."
Darc didn't question anything I said. My loyal servant and friend for almost two decades, each time I would heal him if he were to grow old and weary, or sick. He wished I'd turn him but to become something like me took a great deal of character to begin with and I'd watched Darc succumb to temptation of gambling, whores and violence. He would become a wreath if I were to turn him, and that would not do well at keeping the knowledge of vampires low.
"What will you do about blood, I am sure the Empress won't like it if you start picking off her servants or her people."
"The Empress knows what I am, and I have prepared a plan for this matter. The use of bottled blood will have to keep the cravings at bay, for now."
Sitting at my desk, I looked through a few more boxes in the draws on either side until finally I came across a small velvet pouch tied with a golden rope. Ah there you are.
Opening the pouch and lifting out the dainty silver diamond encrusted ring, I inspected it a little more in the light of the late afternoon sun as its beams peered through a sliver in the curtains. The setting of a halo with a split down either side of the band, the main diamond a pale pink and the small circle around it were smaller white diamonds.
"This belonged to a sultan back in the sixteenth century. He begged me to take his oldest daughter as my wife, curing her of an illness in the mind."
"Do you make it a habit of healing the sick?" Darc asked sarcastically, taking the seat opposite me.
"No." Squaring my eyes at him, I placed the ring back in the pouch. "I instead did away with him and his entire dynasty. He was a tyrant and a fool of a human."
Rolling my eyes, I took a sip of my drink and felt the warm liquid dance along my tongue, easing the ache in my veins as the blood fuelled me. I did not wish to kill the sultan, but his voice annoyed me deeply and his pledge of war threatened to destroy my food source. I couldn't have that.
"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, but why did you agree to heal Empress Arabella?"
"You may ask, but Darc you will never know as the truth is, even I don't know."
******************************
As evening fell, so did my patience. Arabella's scent still clung to my clothes and it was making me feral. A human, a meal, a means to an end and I'd never felt like this towards one before. Frustration and confusion clouded my mind as I took a stroll through the grounds of my home, awaiting for Darc to be finished with the preparations. We'd be leaving at dawn.
What I didn't expect was the introduction of the crowned Prince Tristian. A simple footman had found me deep in the hedge maze with Tristian following behind. If he was here to tell me that the deal was off, his head would be off seconds later.
"Little late for a house call isn't it, Prince."
"I come to discuss the terms of our recent deal."
Again, he stood tall and squared his shoulders. Looking at him a lot more closely now, he did have some similar features of Arabella but only slightly, as if they were cousins and not direct siblings. There was always talk about the Prince being the Emperor's true son and I wondered if there was some truth behind the rumours.
"I believe the terms have already been discussed with the Empress. Therefore, there is no need for you."
Waving him away, I turned to continue on my walk trying to overcome the hunger I was already feeling in the pit of my stomach. He smelt slightly of her and as his heartbeat loudly, but slow in his chest, it made my mouth water.
"I am here at the request of the Empress."
"Is that so? --- Hmmm, very well then come along."
At first, he stayed a few spaces behind him, assessing the situation it would seem until he slowly closed the gap and walked beside me.
"Have you always been a vampire?" He asked plainly.
"I was once human like you."
"Will my sister become a vampire like you?"
"Only if she wishes to be. But I am rather old and have seen what vampires with power can do to this world, she may wish for it, but I won't always grant it."
In truth, I'd only turned a handful of people. Never by choice of the person and after my last charge, I vowed to never turn someone unless they wished to become a vampire. No one ever really wished to be this way and therefore, no one had ever asked.
"You asked for my sister to bear you an heir, how will that work if you are already dead?"
I huffed a small laugh at the comment. Storytellers and folk tales had given the world a fake idea of what vampires were. Aside from the need to drink blood, most of it was lies. Apart from how to kill us, a stake to heart or decapitation were true.
"I am still, in a way, human. I breathe, sleep, eat and can still procreate should I want to. The only downside to my 'condition', is the fact I survive on drinking the blood of others."
"And after my sister gives you an heir, will you leave?"
"If again, that is what she wishes."
I did not take the Prince as a kind, caring brother but here he was, clearly concerned for his sister. I wondered how far that concern really went. If his sister had died, he would have become the Emperor, which seemed to be most males' dreams. Dreams of power, control and endless gold and yet, he didn't strike me as that type of person.
"Is that all or do you wish to discuss something else?"
He stopped as we rounded the corner of a hedge, heading back towards the house. Stopping a few paces away from him, I turned to look at him with the setting sun behind him. His hair was not as jet black as his sisters, there was a slight brown tinge to it and instead of her blue eyes, he appeared to have dark green, almost brown.
"How old are you?" He asked.
"You and both your sisters seemed very concerned about my age. It changes nothing if I were the same age as her or hundreds of years, the deal will not change."
He paused and I heard his heart slightly elevate, there was something on his mind that was beginning to make him panic. I watched him closely as I tried to not listen to the rush of his blood run through his veins, as my own veins felt as if they turned to sandpaper.
"I only ask that you treat her with respect and honour. If you are as old as I have heard, you are from a time where women were not regarded as anything but property and I may --- may have given my sister away to you, I knew if she did not want to be healed, she would have sent you away and the way I have watched her closely this past week, I owe you a debt for saving her life."
He took a knee in front of me, bowing his head and for a second I felt surprised. Surprise for the first time that a human thanked me, only time would tell if he was still grateful.
"Get up Prince. I didn't do it for you." I growled, my hunger getting the best of me. "I suggest you head home before it gets too dark. There are other things, worse things that lay in wait in the dark."
There was more to this world than humans and vampires. Demons hide within the shadows, waiting for prey to cross their path and what a prize it would be to snatch a prince.
Tristian looked at me with confusion in his eyes before nodding and leaving me to head back with Darc who was waiting at the garden doors.
Shortly after, another servant handed me a glass filled with warm blood, but it wasn't enough to cure the hunger. I needed something, someone alive and fresh especially if I was to head to be with the Empress.