"Did they say what they're going to do with me?"
A shadow filled the doorway, blocking out the dim light from the hallway. I recognized Dare's petite silhouette. "Rabbit," she snapped, "Saga needs help in the library."
The kid flashed me an apologetic look. I smiled back and shoved the rest of the dried meat strips into his hand. That earned me a real smile before he ducked out of the room. Dare stood aside to let him pass. The tenderness with which she'd watched him fled the minute he exited. Then those eyes hardened and watched my reaction as she slowly closed us in together.
The meager light from the lantern didn't do much to expel the shadows standing between the vampire and me. Her yellow eyes glowed in the dark. She didn't approach immediately. Just stood with her back to the door, letting the tension rise between us like a poisonous gas. I might be damned but I wasn't going to be the first one to speak.
Finally, she pulled away from the wall. "Have you ever tasted blood?"
The question was so unexpected, I jerked in shock. With a wary frown, I hesitated. "Yes."
"Whose?"
I licked my dry lips. "My own."
She nodded and took her time absorbing this information. "By your own choice?"
I looked up and met her eyes. "No." I'd expected this information to please her. Instead she grimaced and looked away.
"We're not all monsters, you know." She looked back at me, to make sure I'd heard. I didn't react. Her posture was tense and her mood too unpredictable for me to want to give her any reaction that might set off a chain reaction. "I haven't had blood fresh from the source in years." She paused. When she spoke again her tone was quiet, like a confession. "And I've never had any high blood."
I stilled like an animal sensing impending attack. "Dare--"
She shook her head. "Don't worry. I'm not here to feed from you." She reached into her jacket and removed Icarus's old Colt. "I'm here for this."
Perhaps I should have felt shocked. Or scared. Or ... something. Instead, a weary numbness settled deep into my bones. Holding her gaze, I rose from the cot. She raised the gun a little higher in warning. I raised my hands out to the side and raised my chin. "Just be done with it."
Her eyes widened. "You're not going to ask me to spare you?"
I shook my head. "What's the point?"
"You're pathetic," she spat.
I lowered my arms. "What do you want from me? To beg for a life that never belonged to me in the first place? To fight for the chance to let another set of masters use me? I'm done being anyone's whore, Dare." I jerked my head toward the gun. "Do it."
The gun lowered a fraction. She stared at me intently for a full thirty seconds before she spoke. "What did they do to you?"
I squeezed my eyes together, but a traitorous tear escaped to roll down my cheek. "Just do it," I gritted out through clenched teeth.
"Six? Look at me."
I heaved out a harsh breath and opened my eyes, prepared to let her have it for dragging this out to the point of torture. But when I saw the look on her face, the numbness was burned off as hot anger roared to life. But before I could scream at her or rush her and punch the pity from her face, she spoke again. "You stink of them, you know. Their scent clings to you."
Now it was shame's turn to make an appearance. "Then you know what they did."
She tilted her head. “I thought the concubine thing was just an insult because you spoke on behalf of the Troika."
I laughed bitterly. "In exchange for my services to the Troika’s propaganda machine, I was passed around like a trophy among the highest level vampires. It was something of a badge of honor to vein f**k Alexis Sargosa's daughter." Now that I was talking, the words spilled out like bile. "Some only kept me a few days. Others claimed me for months, a couple for years. Those ones delighted in turning me into their personal slave. I did everything from clean their silver to playing a starring role in their sadistic games. A few were kind compared to the others and educated me to amuse themselves. One or two preferred me to fight back so they taught me how to use weapons and my fists. Then they’d delight in disarming me and delivering punishment for being too good a student. But mostly I just served as a blood dispenser."
She'd lowered the gun and crossed her arms. "That's why you finally left. You couldn't stand it anymore?"
"No." Now that I'd admitted so much, I decided it wouldn't hurt to offer one last confession before I met the maker. "I left because after enduring their tortures, they found the one invasion I could not endure."
She frowned.
I laughed, but the sound felt flat to my own ears. "You haven't put it together yet?" I didn't wait for her to confirm what I already knew to be true. "Several months ago, the Prime came to me with good news. I was going to be given a great honor. The Troika officials loved my sweet blood so much that they were going to make me the first brood mare in their blood stables."
Dare gasped softly but I was beyond offering consolation.
"According to him, I was going to be put in a special dormitory and given my choice of men of high blood with whom to mate. If any of the children I created turned out to be AB-, they would be raised in the most favorable conditions and be given the honor of becoming concubines to the top Troika officials."
"And if they weren't high blooded?"
I looked her in the eye and ignored the phantom pain in my stomach. "Aborted."
The silence in the room was complete. Unlike the last time, it wasn't a silent gulf that kept two foes separated. Instead, those quiet moments were filled with shared knowledge of duty and loss and the longing for a tiny heartbeat against the skin.
“The night I left?” My hand went to my belly. “They just had informed me that I was to be impregnated again. I couldn’t go through that again—the loss.” I looked up again and saw empathy in her yellow gaze. “But more than that, I was terrified it would work this time and they wouldn’t abort it. How could I doom a child to my life?”
She watched me silently for a few moments. Tension zinged through the space between us like lightning. Finally, she sucked in a long, slow breath. "How can you say you want to run? They took your mother. They took your life." She stepped forward and pointed at my stomach. "They took your child. They took your choices away. How can you just run when you have every cause to turn around and fight back?"