Four boys and two girls made up the other six younglings in the dark, circular room. I recognized none of them. Once I stood to my full height, I massaged my red-raw wrists and stretched my arms, cracking my knuckles.
The half-blood put his hands behind his back and stood tall in front of our row, towering over us. In the murky flicker of the two torches keeping the room lit, Lukain looked around thirty, though I knew age with half-vampires was a deceptive thing. He was tall and broad like a man accustomed to physical exertion, young in the face and clean-shaven.
“You are my property,” he repeated, “yet thanks to me, you can earn your freedom here. There are two ways.” He lifted ahand from behind his back, two fingers extended in the air as he counted off. Slowly, he marched across to my left, furthest from me, to where the four boys stood in line.
“For the men, you can test your mettle in the Firehold, win your glory, and win your freedom with enough victories.”
Lukain paced across the line of captive boys, eyeing each in turn solemnly. One of them pissed himself he was shaking so badly—the smallest of the bunch. Another boy locked his jaw and met Lukain’s gaze, eyes narrowing. He was a beefy lad who looked a year or two older than me.
When he came to the three girls, including me at the end of the line, his chin dipped. “For the women, if you can make yourselves useful, you may get snatched up by a needy pureblood and become his broodstock.”
The girl closest to me, a slight rail of a waif, gasped and made a mewling sound in her throat. My eyes widened for a flash. I stayed quiet when Lukain’s dark stare pierced into my soul. His lips curled in a small smirk before he turned to the front of the room.
Broodstock? Needy purebloods? By the True, is he talking about becoming breeding mares for vampires?Thatis his idea of “freedom” for us girls?
I shot a scowling glance at the four boys out the corner of my eye.At least the boys can try to fight their way to freedom, however impossible that might be.
I had found myself in a new jail with new rules. Since I had lived my entire young life constrained to untenable laws and dire situations, I was panicking the least out of anyone here.
Given my recent captivity with Dimmon Plank,anythingwas better than that. I did not care if I lived or died, and I felt Lukain Pierken could sense that when he smirked at me. His eyes had lingered on my face the longest of any prisoner, though it may have been because I was the last in line.
He wheeled around to face us, his expression grim. “There is no third option.”
When his gaze met mine again—as if he expected me to be the most rebellious of the lot—the threat was clear: Trying to escape the Firehold would only lead to pain and death.
“You are young, malleable, and have the fortune of crafting your own fate,” Lukain continued, sweeping his gaze across the group. “Can you say you had such choice aboveground on the Floorboards?”
He waited. When no one spoke, he yelled, “Well?”
“N-No, sir,” squeaked the girl two people over from me. The boys joined her in their gloomy acceptance, while the thin gasping girl started bawling.
Lukain didn’t seem to catch my non-response. He had his hands behind his back again, like a field general. Perhaps he had been a Bronze, a Nuhavian guard, before he was turned.
“Your first few years of existence in the Firehold will be to learn your places. To train. Once you are of age, you will embark on your journeys toward freedom.”
First fewyears?My stomach sank at the notion of being stuffed in this water-dripping, maddening basement for any longer than I had to.
He looked at the boys. “In order to defeat the bloodies you will face, men”—his head turned to us girls—“or bond with them, women, you must learn to live like them. In darkness.”
The girl to my left whined louder. I wanted to reach out and throttle her to shut her up. Had she never faced struggles before? Was this her first hint of despair—being snatched off the street before being sold at auction to this half-blood dhampir?
One of the boys, who I couldn’t see from my angle, spoke up. “Defeat the bloodies? You’re a bloodsucker yourself.”
Lukain’s jaw firmed. He marched toward the boy and studied him, standing three feet away, until the boy began to shrink before Lukain’s imposing stature.
One hand came out from behind the grayskin’s back, and a glint of silver from the nearby torchlight showed me he was now holding a sword—
Which he plunged into the boy’s chest before the poor lad could say anything more.
Lukain’s stab was so forceful it lifted the boy clear off the ground and pinned him to the wall three feet behind him. Blood sprayed haphazardly in a great hissing gout from his caved chest. His legs spasmed, and then he was dead, hanging limp on Lukain’s sword, impaled against the wall.
Everyone screamed except me. My mouth dropped open in shock at the sudden violence, yet I remained silent.
With a grotesque cracking of bone and ribs, Lukain pulled his blade out of the boy’s chest. The corpse slid to the ground in a heap, leaving a crimson rash smeared on the wall.
The cloaked human, who had retreated into the shadows after cutting our wrist-ropes, shuffled in and began to drag the boy away.
Lukain sighed as he cleaned off his blade with a rag, before sheathing it behind him and standing at the front of the room under the archway. “A poor investment on my part,” he muttered. His fangs appeared as he snarled, nostrils flaring. “Let it be known, little grimmers, I am nothing like the purebredfilththat sits in their fineries in Olhav. Understood?”
