I Sold My Blood to Pay My Sister's Debt, and the Vampire King Who Bought Me Swore I'd Be His Queen or His Ruin novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Mortal Hours

"Sit down," I said.

He didn't move.

He was holding his hand up in front of his face, watching the blood run.

"Kaelen. Sit down before you drip on the rug."

That got him.

He sat in the chair by the cold fireplace.

I knelt in front of him and pulled up the hem of my good dress.

Every seamstress keeps a needle in her hem.

Mine was threaded with black silk, because it was the only colour I'd had in my basket the morning I climbed the hill.

"Thane," I called. "Brandy, if this place has any. And a clean cloth."

Corin put his head in.

He looked at the king's hand, then at the blood on the floor.

His face went blank in a way I was starting to know.

"I'll fetch it myself," he said, and shut the door behind him.

I held Kaelen's hand open on my knee.

The cut ran from the base of his first finger to the heel of his palm.

It was clean, at least. Glass cuts are.

"This will hurt," I said.

"I'll survive it."

"You don't know that. Ten minutes ago you didn't know you could bleed."

The corner of his mouth moved.

Corin came back with a bottle and a stack of linen and set them down without a word.

Then he went and stood outside the door again.

I could hear him not leaving.

I poured brandy over the cut.

Kaelen sucked in a breath through his teeth.

I looked up.

"You breathed," I said.

"I noticed."

I put the first stitch in.

His fingers twitched in mine, and then went still.

I put in the second.

"Is it always like this?" I asked. "After you drink me?"

"I don't know. There isn't any always. There's been three times."

"This morning you drank, and stood in the sun, and tonight you bleed like a man."

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Ask me tomorrow."

I tied off the fourth stitch and bit the thread.

His palm was warm.

It hadn't been warm on Tithe Night.

"So for some hours after," I said slowly, "you're not a king. You're a man with a cut."

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

"If anyone found out," I said, "they could put a knife in you."

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