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 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Moon Supper

At the court's supper a Montcalm lord tries to taste Aveline and Kaelen breaks his hand, and then a crossbow bolt splits her chair.

I backed away from him until the desk hit my hips.

"You burned her."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I was thirty-two and newly dead, and the lords who made me told me to." He let the velvet fall back over the painting. "Her blood gave a vampire his heartbeat back. It let him stand in the sun. Every lord in the world wanted her. They went to war over her for six years."

"So you killed her."

"So I ended the war." His voice didn't change at all. "And I wrote the law so it wouldn't start again."

"And now it's my turn."

He didn't answer that.

He opened the door instead.

A broad man in a black-and-silver coat was leaning on the wall outside, arms crossed. Sandy hair. A white scar cutting through one eyebrow.

"Corin Thane," Kaelen said. "Captain of my guard. From tonight, yours."

"Mine?"

"He'll sleep across your door. He'll taste your food. If anyone puts a hand on you, he'll take the hand."

Corin looked me over and nodded.

"Evening," he said. "Don't run. I hate running."

They gave me a room on the floor below with a bed bigger than our whole house on Needle Row.

I didn't sleep in it.

I sat on the window seat in my grey dress and watched the lower town for one light in particular.

Our window above the tailor's shop stayed dark all night.

The next evening a maid brought a gown.

It was dark red, nearly black, cut low across the shoulders.

"From His Majesty," she said, not looking at me. "For the Moon Supper."

"What's the Moon Supper?"

"The court eats, my lady." She swallowed. "Well. The court drinks. You eat."

The banquet hall was long and narrow and lit only by candles.

Thirty lords and ladies sat along a black table with crystal goblets in front of them.

The goblets were full of something thick and dark.

My plate had bread and cold chicken on it.

Every pair of eyes at that table followed the bread to my mouth.

I'd never eaten in front of people who were hungry for me before.

I ate anyway.

I made myself chew slowly.

Kaelen sat at the head of the table with his goblet untouched.

I sat at his right hand, where Corin had put me.

Isadora sat three places down in gold silk, smiling at nothing.

"Is it true it tastes like sunlight?" a lord across from me asked.

He was soft and pink-cheeked with rings on every finger.

He wore the Montcalm crest on his collar.

"Ask the king," I said.

"I'm asking you, girl."

"Then no. It tastes like blood."

A few of them laughed.

He didn't.

"I'd like to judge for myself," he said.

He reached across the table and caught my wrist.

His grip was like a clamp.

He dragged my arm across the cloth, through the bread, and bent his head toward the healed mark where Kaelen had bitten.

I yanked back.

He didn't even notice.

His lips touched my skin.

Then there was a crack.

The lord screamed.

Kaelen was on his feet beside me.

I hadn't seen him stand.

He was holding the lord's hand by the fingers, and the fingers were pointing in directions fingers don't point.

"I said nobody touches her," Kaelen said. "Did you think I was being poetic?"

"Majesty, I only meant to taste."

Kaelen bent the hand one more inch.

The lord's scream went high and thin.

Nobody at the table moved to help him.

Isadora sipped from her goblet and watched me over the rim.

"Get out," Kaelen said, and let go.

The lord stumbled from the hall cradling his hand against his chest.

His chair lay on its back on the floor.

Kaelen sat down again.

My heart was going so hard I could see it in my wrist.

He looked down at it.

He looked at it for a long time.

"Eat," he said quietly. "They're watching to see if you can."

I picked up my bread.

My fingers were shaking so hard I tore it in half.

Across the table, Isadora set down her goblet and lifted it again in a toast.

"To the king's new appetite," she said.

The table raised their glasses.

Kaelen's hand closed on my arm.

He pulled me off my chair and into his lap so fast the room smeared.

Something whistled past my ear.

A crossbow bolt split the back of my empty chair with a crack, right where my head had been.

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