A Violet Fire (Vampires in Avignon #1) - Kelsey Quick Page 0,93

and watch as the warm, dark liquid flows from my vein, through the hollow tube, and into a glass decanter on a nearby shelf. For several agonizing moments, all is silent except for the steady flow of blood. I make conversation to avoid the nausea.

“Is it hard for you?” I quietly ask Narref. “Being near human blood and yet unable to drink it?”

Still focused on the decanter, Narref hesitates a response. “After a while, it becomes fine. Synthetic blood curbs the temptation enough. Now hush.”

I roll my eyes. After a few more moments, Narref removes the needle and quickly wraps my arm with an arument bandage.

“Off with you,” he says, facing me back toward the opposite side of the room. And without another glance at him or Zein, I go. I happen to notice the fresh blood being poured over the food on their plates from the corner of my eye. Sickened, I speed up my pace.

Even more sinister and hungry stares scour me as I make my way across the room again. Heavy orchestral tones resonate from the music pit at the front of the hall, taking the attention away from me a little. Humans, not just in and around Cain, but across the entire world, are nearly extinct. Because of our endangerment, usually only the top elites are allowed human nourishment slaves. The rest must settle for synthetic blood, and while synthetics work in theory for a vampire’s hunger, there will always be a gap between its minute satisfaction and the true satiation of the real thing—like eating the leaves off a tree in lieu of the fruit at the highest branch.

I keep my head down as I reclaim my seat, very aware that every non-human in this room would jump on me and the other units if it weren’t for the ownership tags embedded into our arms. To the other vampires, it’s a fatal warning to not come near. To me, it’s an indication that I belong to Zein, and to Zein alone. And where months ago I gagged at that thought, now I am comforted by the safety it ensures.

After a long while of keeping our heads bowed and hands knitted upon our laps, light-hearted music begins to play, to which Anaya gives us the go ahead to lift our heads and view through the horizontal slat in the glass panel. I do, and soon wish I didn’t. Zein is now on the mosaic floor with the rest of the strong elites, dashing and regal, with all eyes in the room shifting to him. He is beautiful, like the horizon on the walls of Nightingale. Incandescent. But it’s who he’s now dancing with that causes my falling brow. Marina. They are extremely close together, without even enough space for a pearl to fit. Her small jaw is fitted to the crook of his neck and her expression doesn’t even try to hide her bliss.

Raw jealousy forms for the first time in my heart, hardening it and molding it into a reserve of anger and doubtfulness. I throw my gaze away from the spectacle, logically walking myself around my emotions.

It’s only natural. They are both vampires. They can understand one another. They can grow old into the centuries together. Strong, and fighting side by side, drinking human blood like monsters.

Which is why I’m jealous.

As a human I can’t be anything more than what I am already—a weak and worn blood slave.

I wish I were born a vampire.

For the first time ever, that blasphemous thought flies through my mind, to which I defensively and effectively pluck it out, all the while wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

chapter 18

“You first.” Savvy turns to me while in the baths. “What were you wanting to tell me? Is it about Lord Zein?”

Her eyes are bright and fluttery. She wants more than anything to tell me her own secret while trying to be polite enough to let me go first. However, after the banquet—well, after seeing Zein with Marina—I can’t seem to find the desire to talk about it. I almost want to forget about him.

“No, you go ahead, mine’s nothing,” I insist, settling further into the tub of lukewarm water. I put my hair up with a spiral, wooden hair-stick that I had whittled with the scrap metal shard from my anklet back at the seraglio. Whatever happened to that anklet, anyway?

Savvy purses her lips. “You sure?”

“Positive,” I say. “Come on, I know you really want to spit it