“I’m not going to run,” I said out the corner of my mouth as we crossed another threshold into a different section of town. “I’ve had ample opportunity to do it during the day, when your people are sleeping and vulnerable.”
“It’s not for my benefit I touch you so,” he answered. I watched his eyes as another strolling couple ventured down the road opposite us. “It’s for yours.”
I understood his meaning when the male in the party glanced over, snorted the air, and quickly looked away after realizing who was marching beside me.
If Garroway was my protector and Vallan my antagonizer, then it was clear Skartovius was my owner. My handler.
“You’re a possessive man, aren’t you, Lord Ashfen?”
He glanced over, the half-smirk dancing in his eyes. “Incomparably, love.”
With that in mind, and his spindly fingers ghosting over my back, I inhaled sharply to keep my pulse down.
It didn’t work, and Skartovius let me know. “Your heartbeat is rising, Sephania. Are you nervous? Frightened? Enticed?”
“Yes.” I swallowed hard. “Do you think it wise to march me through town like a trophy for everyone to see, given . . .” I leaned closer to him, “. . . what’s in my veins?”
I worried saying the word “Loreblood” out loud would prompt the shadowy vampire assassins from Nuhav to jump at me out of nowhere.
“You are safe with me,” he replied, his voice deepening. “I promise you that. The commonbloods would not dare strike a nobleblood or his charge. Not in broad nightlight.”
“You speak of your kinsmen as if they’re humans from Nuhav.”
He scoffed, ignoring my quip. “Besides, if you are going to acclimate to Olhav and join our high society, you must not be kept inside a box, hidden away like some buried treasure. You must beseen, eventually.”
I worried my bottom lip. “I’m feeling plenty seen, Skar.Tooseen, you ask me.”
This new district had shorter buildings and more bloodsuckers roaming the roads. Inadvertently, it meant less attention was paid to me as the vampires went about their evening, stalking from door to door and conversing in loudtaverns. They were dressed in meaner garb, with some wearing jerkins and cuirasses of armor, making them look fierce.
In one of the windows of a loud establishment, I caught sight of pale, bare breasts bouncing, and I blushed and turned away, realizing I had accidentally looked into a brothel in action.
The lights here were a commanding yellow, the topaz brightness nearly matching the sun’s power at certain avenues where light-poles converged at four corners.
“I’m feeling a thematic shift in this area. Less regal, more seedy. Reminds me of Nuhav a bit.”
“That is because we have passed from the Commerce Ward to the Military Ward. Unlike your ramshackle home where everything and everyone is boiled together, Olhav is split into five distinct regions.”
I looked over at him—and up, since he was so tall. I felt like I was finally getting somewhere with this newfound information.
He noticed my eagerness and, infuriatingly, cut himself off.
I frowned with an annoyed pout. “If you expect me toacclimateto Olhav, you’d best tell me how it operates, Lord Ashfen.”
He smiled humorlessly.
I bobbed my eyebrows. “Scared I might bring this intel down to Nuhav?”
The fake smile remained as he rolled his eyes. “Commerce, Military, Intelligence, Faith, Judgment. Those are the five districts, or Five Ministries, of Greater Olhav. Each of the Five Ministries has its own overlord or overlady, and together their council dictates our government. The aptly and uncreatively named Five Ministries is a pentagonal-headed hydra with each head hailing from a royal, ancient vampiric bloodline.”
“And each region is color-coded to identify the ministry based on, what, the overlord’s or overlady’s preferred hue?”
He snorted. “You are rudimentary, little temptress, but not entirely wrong. Are you attempting to point out how ludicrous this all is? How pompous?”
I shrugged. We had walked for nearly an hour now, and I was no less entranced by everything around us. “Your words, not mine.”
“There was once a sixth district,” he said. “It was eventually decided to be dissolved and absorbed. Care to guess what it might have been?”
I thought for a moment.Commerce for moving the economy in and around the Olhavian Peaks. Military for protection, of course, and conquest. Intelligence for spying and building networks, I assume. Faith, being . . . religion. Do the vampires pray to something like Truehearts, as we do in Nuhav? And Judgment, either an extension of Faith or the arm of the law.
