my very first summoning revisit me. I have no idea what I’m about to encounter.
I push the lingering fear to the back of my mind and pass through into familiar and enveloping darkness. Nothingness greets me with a wave of cool air smelling of citrus-washed linens and scented oil. Like always, once the doors to Zein’s room close, the lanterns above flicker on by their magic—showering the room with their uniquely blue haze.
Zein is seated at his desk in the far corner of the space. A towel is draped across his neck, and his hair—damp with water—clings to his tunic. He must have just bathed, but I don’t dwell on that too long.
“Good evening, my lord,” I mutter about an octave higher than usual. “Shall I prepare the kortrastet?”
My ears await his toneless, “Yes.” At first, he would always reply with that single affirmation—though apparently not today. He doesn’t say anything, leaving the room to automatically fill with the tension I most dreaded, and I find myself pretty crippled by that fact. After a few moments of standing around, I head for the credenza anyway. It’s not a big deal if I take it upon myself to do the only thing I know to do, is it? My eyes sweep over Zein. No change in body language, no swivel of the head. Maybe the tension is all self-contrived, maybe he’s not angry with me.
I take the kortrastet package to the bed and connect the tubing and the silver-carved needle, waiting for something in the atmosphere to give. The drone of Zein’s pen skritching across parchment seems to last as long as my usual time in a summoning, until it finally clanks down into its wooden holster.
Zein stands and turns to look me in the eye, reminding me from the night before that this is something he only allows in secret. I avert my gaze anyway when the anxiety becomes too much to bear. Prior to this evening, eye contact wasn’t an issue. In fact, his company was just starting to become bearable. Did I ruin that? Am I… unhappy about it?
He saunters over, his eyes never leaving me.
“I should have expected such indignance from you,” he says, an unorthodox tone lacing it. Immediately, I know what he’s talking about. “I would have thought you smarter. To read the room well enough to at least pretend to be a hopelessly devoted mortal.”
My chest tightens with an ever-nagging frustration.
What was I going to apologize for, again?
“I am hopelessly devoted...” I seethe, watching his clenched fists loosening. “...to my mortal friends, and to no one else.”
Before I can comprehend his movements, his hand has me by the girth of my neck. He pulls me closer to him, his lips finding my ear in half a breath. “Always such daring words. How can you remain so embittered when I have been nothing but merciful to you?”
A slave house with shelter from the rain, and a slave house without shelter from the rain are still slave houses. And it seems the former’s master wants a pat on the back.
If he wants the truth. I’ll give him the truth.
“Mercy to you is not mercy to me,” I say, thinking about the previous night while trying to push away from him. “You think you’re being kind when all you’re doing is standing by and letting atrocities happen.”
He may not have taken Giomar’s offer on his supply unit’s blood, but he could have stepped in and said something. Zein has that privilege. I don’t, yet I still tried.
“You overestimate my patience,” Zein ominously replies, dropping his head to my neck. In an instant, pain explodes across my skin, the white-hot sting giving way to something blood-red, hot, and slick.
He bit me.
I scream and writhe but his fingers dig into my arms—I can’t move. I scream louder. He takes my blood carelessly, cutting so deep and awful with his canines that the aftershocks blur my vision. In moments, he pulls away—his silver irises swimming with unknown intentions.
“The fear you feel now is the fear that most mortals shoulder every waking moment within the vampire world,” he whispers. “In this world, you are powerless. The best a human can ever hope for is to belong to a merciful vampire.”
“You could never understand,” I snarl.
Zein’s hand wraps around my back while the other pushes me down to the bed by my neck—his grip like that of death, softened by the wetness my blood. My thoughts and vision, drown with this new