Ah. Throwing my own words back at me. Excellent.
This cold cunt thinks she’s so superior. All the bloodies do. It’s what they are. Truehearts flog me, they’ve built an entire city around their superiority. They keep us humans stuffed beneath them in the city of Nuhav—on the Floorboards—like shadows they spit on.
Anger filters in as my thoughts grow darker. Funny how the warm wine in my belly dims my logic and brings emotion to the fore. Wild, heady emotion, and the thoughts of decapitating this vile bloodsucker.
I suppose I should have tested to see if my glass was poisoned before I took the first sip. Then again, I figure there’s no danger here since I wouldn’t be able to keep talking if I was dead or incapacitated.
There’s no danger in the glass, at least. No, the danger is sitting across from me, studying my every move like a predator, gauging my worth.
All I can do is bide my time and brace for the inevitable. I lift my gaze from my cracked nails, feeling oddly ashamed at their ugliness, and look into her dark orbs. “Six hours, you said?”
Kleora’s thin nose flares. “Overseer Verant presents himself to humans onhisschedule. Especially when they’re prisoners and there’s no rush. Yes, I’d say you have near six hours left.”
I blink. That’s six hours to kill. Perhaps I can see if this Overseer Verant fellow is more amenable than his implacable thrall, Madame Kleora.
If not, it’s game over.
Kleora’s smile widens in a sickly way. “I do get a perverse sense of satisfaction myself, mistress, when I consider the ways he might drain you. Oh, I pray he’ll allow me the privilege of watching.”
“Vampires don’t pray, as I understand it.” I tilt my head and smirk. “You naughty voyeur, Kleora. Think he might go a different route than my neck?” A dangerous thought comes to me—one I know will enrage the alabaster bitch, making it impossible to bite back. “Are you saying Overseer Verant might try to drain me between my thighs, madame?”
The waxy sheen of her face crinkles as a rush of anger flits behind her eyes.
Worrying I’ve pressed too far, I sit back defensively, wiping the smile from my lips. There’s a grave visage on Madame Kleora’s face now. The last thing I need to do is get myself killed before the clock runs out.
“I’ll be sure to request he hangs you upside down from the rafters, you impudent cur,” she snaps, “so I can watch your dimming, terrified eyes blink at me as the life bleeds out of your neck into my chalice.”
Color drains from my cheeks as the flush of wine-warmth flees, and I suppress a shudder. Vampires are nothing if not creative in their ways of killing. I suppose Kleora could say the same about me, given the tale I’ve spun.
“It’s a mockery Overseer Verant saw it prudent to house you in such an auspicious chamber,” she crows, glancing around the room, “when you should be stuffed away in the dungeons like the other gutter-filth.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that. Do his decisions often insult your esteemed tastes?”
“You will not so much asspeakwhen my lord arrives. You will submit yourself on your knees, like a good puppet.”
“A good puppet?Youare his thrall, madame, not me.”
“Quite right.” She smiles proudly. “I will make sure you are never given the honor of such a bloodoath. Not with my noble overseer. You are not worth the pot he pisses in.”
“That’s something we can agree on,” I mutter, looking over to the window. The moon is getting higher, signaling a clear evening. It’s going to be a long night.
The longest, I imagine.
Madame Kleora settles forward, keeping her back rigid, and picks up her quill. After dipping the tip in the inkwell on the table, she presses it against the parchment.
“Now then,” she says, “if you’re finished aggravating me and telling lurid tales of your past exploits without context, perhaps we should start anew?”
I have six hours until my death and she wants to hear my sob story. I can’t fathom why, since she’s already painted for me the imaginative manner of my impending death.Maybe Overseer Verant likes to keep a journal of every human he kills, and the diabolical, horrid ways he finishes them off. Like a diary he can fondly look back upon and thumb through as material to use when he’s pleasuring himself.
Regardless of Kleora’s reasons for wanting the chronicle of my life, I reckon it won’t hurt to give her what she wants. After all, my secret has been out for a long time now, to those who look hard enough.
My hands fold on the table, shackles rattling as my fingers thread together. “Where would you like me to start, Madame Kleora?”
“Further back than the throat-slitting incident, preferably.”
“If that’s what you want, chronicler.”
“It’s what the Overseer wants.Iwant you dead, burned, and done with.”
