Caged Queen (Blood and Magic 1)

Chapter Four

Emrys

It was a strange thing. That so much power, so much death could be wrapped up in such a small package. And the girl in the window opposite looked tiny. Not just in height, but in her mannerisms. She was shrinking in on herself even as I watched.

If I’d had a heart and human emotions, I might even have felt sorry for her.

She thought she was broken, locked away and waiting for death, but I knew differently. I knew that she didn’t even know the meaning of broken yet. She would do though and soon. She would pay for what she had done, and for the magic flowing though her veins.

Part of me relished the misery on her face. It was almost like I could taste it on the wind. And it was almost as intoxicating as blood. Almost but not quite.

“Is that the girl?” Behind me Thane, brooded. He stepped up to the edge of the building where I was crouched but I could feel him looking over my shoulder. I didn’t glance behind me, after two hundred years ruling this city together, I could picture clearly his dark face in my mind’s eyes.

Thane brooded better than any vampire I had ever met. I had once asked him if he had been as grumpy as a human, and the scowl on his face had given me all the answer I needed. Darkness and blood had always been part of his life. He had been born to be a vampire. Where I had been…

I frowned, shaking the thought away. It had been centuries since I had thought about my ill-fated human life and yet images of walking in the sunlight were filling my mind.

“Necromancer,” I hissed. It was her doing, the woman sitting in the window opposite with her dark hair falling across her face. She might not know she was doing it, but she was.

It was like featherlight fingertips brushing against my brain. Urging me forwards. The sweetest voice begging me to come to her and walk by her side in the sun. she was powerful. More powerful than I could ever imagine. As ancient as I was, I wanted to obey her.

I wanted to go to her and bask in her magic.

“f**k Emrys.” Thane’s hand came down hard on my arm, pulling me back into the shadows of the rooftop and out of the late afternoon sun. I wouldn’t burst into flames straight away like one of the young ones. Not like the man who had burst into flames this morning, but I would burn.

“You were about to go to her, weren’t you? You had your damn foot on the edge and was about to jump down.” He swore long and low.

Had I been? I glanced down at my feet and then back at her dark window. “Can’t you feel her power?” I let it roll across my cold skin. It heated me. But the urge to go to her was gone. “I’m surprised she hasn’t lured every vampire in a five mile radius into the sun.” I licked at my lips. I could taste her. sweet and sticky.

That’s what her magic felt like, sweet and sticky like honey.

“Do you not feel it?”

“I feel it?” Thane ground out between gritted teeth. And it was only then that I really looked at him. His face was strained. The hollow of his cheeks was more pronounced. “We should kill her.”

Turning from him, I went back to watching her. Her tortured face was pressed up against the glass of what I assumed was her bedroom. Tears ran down her face. “Yes, we should.” I mumbled half to myself.

“Then why aren’t we?”

Something must have shown on my face, some hesitation. I didn’t answer him at first. By law, and by the treaty that allowed witches to live, just being a necromancer meant a death sentence. And now I had felt her power, I knew it had to be done. She was too powerful to let live. And yet...

“You are planning something, Emrys. What is it?” as always, Thane wanted to get straight to the blood and death. He was a kill first, kind of vampire. Which was why we worked so well together. I was the brains, and he was the fist. Or Fangs, as it were.

“I don’t know yet.” Yet that wasn’t entirely true. The first inkling of a plan was starting to form in my head. Plans that would make us the most powerful vampires in the country. Maybe even the world.

“Emrys.” Thane groaned.

I ignored him, my eyes not moving from the girl across the road. She thought she was broken. She was expecting her death to come quickly. By now she might even have come to terms with that. Witches were strange little creatures, powerless but brave.

“We aren’t killing her, are we?” Thane sighed heavily.

“No, I don’t think we are. The plans I have for that little witch …” I shook my head. sweeping past him, I headed towards the other side of the building. We had preparations to make.

For now, the little witch would be left to stew in her own misery. And it would make her blood all the sweeter when I finally got to taste it.