CHAPTER 107: A SIMPLE REQUEST

In that instant, my brain, naturally, decided now was the time to collapse in on itself like a house of cards in a stiff wind.

Just as I feared, she was a vampire.

Not in the metaphorical sense. Not in the "oh, what a fancy moniker for a cruel noblewoman" sense. No. She was a literal vampire.

One of the three "extinct" races right up there with leviathans and the draconic folk like Vincent, filed away in the big dusty cabinet of Things That Shouldn’t Exist Anymore But Definitely Gave People Nightmares Once.

This wasn’t just rare, this wasn’t just unlikely—this was a full-blown violation of the way the world was supposed to work. Reality was a sweater, and someone had just yanked a thread so hard it was unraveling across my lap.

And the truly maddening part? My first thought wasn’t, oh no, impossible monster. It was, dear gods, she’s going to ruin her dress with all that blood.

My lips moved before my brain could wrestle them back into submission. "You’re...a vampire?"

It was plain. It was stupid. It was the kind of question a drunk asks a knife-wielding thug right before they’re robbed. But it slipped out all the same, thin and trembling, my voice cutting across the silence of the room like an embarrassed cough at a funeral.

She froze mid-drink. Just a moment. Then her eyes flicked up at me, wide and playful, as though I had just asked if she enjoyed the weather. Blood painted her lips, smeared across her mouth like some grotesque lipstick, and she smiled.

"Of course."

Of course. As if I had asked her whether she was wearing shoes, or if fire was hot. The confidence in it, the casual way she said it, made something brittle in my chest snap. I tried to lean back, as if the chair itself might let me escape the reality unfolding in front of me, but it only groaned in place.

I swallowed. The sound was loud in my ears, painfully so. "And... how is that possible, exactly? You’re supposed to be extinct..." My words stumbled out, clumsy little soldiers tripping over each other as they marched toward doom.

She tilted her head, then laughed. The sound rattled through me like coins in a tin. Blood flecked her chin when she spoke, her voice syrupy sweet, thick with humor.

"Extinct? Oh, darling, no. We’ve never gone extinct. The world is too interesting to leave behind. A few of us remain, tucked away in shadows, in corners no one dares to search. Merlin saw to that." She licked her lips slowly, deliberately, before flashing me a smile again. "That old fool gave us a way to pass unnoticed—back into humanity, when the bloodlust wanes. Most took it. I did not."

My ears rang at the name. Merlin. The Great Magus. The man every child in Graywatch grew up hearing about, whether in stories of triumph or cautionary fables. The same figure who sealed the draconic bloodline away during the civil war, trapping them in exile beyond the walls of the city. And now, apparently, he’d played nursemaid to vampires as well?

Of course he had. Why not? Why stop at one grand act of world-bending meddling when you could double the chaos?

I felt my lips twitch into something that wasn’t quite a smile, wasn’t quite horror. "Merlin. Ah, of course. He always did have a flair for rewriting the laws of existence, didn’t he?"

Her laughter deepened, rolling and pompous, shaking with the kind of joy that made me want to claw at my ears. "Oh yes. Always tinkering, always prodding. He thought himself the architect of a better world. How quaint."

My throat tightened as she dug deeper. I wanted to look away, to pretend none of this was happening, but my eyes betrayed me, dragging themselves back to the body sprawled across her lap.

My voice croaked out again, too small for the room. "...how long have you been alive?"

She stilled. For a moment I feared she might strike me for daring to ask, but then her smile returned, slow and sharp. "Three thousand years, give or take a century."

Three. Thousand. Years.

My head spun. My stomach flipped. My heart did something approximating a backflip while spraining its own ankle. Outwardly, I nodded as if she had just told me she’d once owned a cat. Inwardly, I was screaming.

Three thousand years? That was older than Graywatch’s walls, older than every storybook hero I’d ever envied, older than half the gods most people prayed to. She had walked through history the way the rest of us walked through markets. And here she was, sitting in a bakery, dripping blood on the tile.

"Fascinating," I said aloud, because what else was I supposed to say? Cool story, grandma?

She giggled, the sound bubbling up like a spring of mockery. "You’re amusing. I like that. Most men tremble. You smirk."

I smirked harder. It felt brittle, like it might crack and fall off my face at any moment. "Oh, trembling is beneath me. I save that for tax collectors and unexpected visits from my relatives."

Her laughter rang out again. The kind of laugh that could wake the dead—or at least make them regret ever dying in the first place.

Meanwhile, my eyes kept sliding back to the half-eaten corpse across her lap, as though gravity itself tugged them toward the horror. His skin was pale now, almost translucent, his veins emptied and slack. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to bolt from the room, screaming and clawing at the walls, but my body was a traitor, rooted firmly to the chair.

Rodrick, at least, had the decency to flee.

I caught sight of him slipping out through a side door, pale and sweaty, no doubt running to void his stomach into the nearest chamber pot. Dunny, on the other hand, had collapsed into a ball in the corner, knees hugged tight to his chest, eyes scrunched shut like a child hoping the monster under the bed couldn’t see him if he didn’t look back.

The knight, of course, stood there serenely, unfazed, as though this were a routine dinner party and he was merely waiting for the dessert course.

My lips pressed into a line. Someone had to speak. So of course it had to be me.

"Tell me," I said, my tone feigning nonchalance while my insides screamed, "why spend such an obscene amount of money on the auction items? Three hundred thousand crowns is no small sum. Even nobles blanch at that."

She dabbed at her chin delicately with a handkerchief, as though tidying after soup. Her lips still gleamed crimson when she spoke. "For someone who has lived as long as I, money has no meaning. Gold is dust. Jewels are pebbles. I collect what amuses me. What interests me. What has value beyond the weight of coin."

I forced a chuckle, thin and nervous. "Well, I must say, you have expensive taste. A pen. Quite the treasure."

Her smirk widened, sharp as a blade yet indulgent, like she was humoring me. "It is, isn’t it?" she said, her voice lilting, dripping with that same infuriating confidence.

Then she turned the pen slowly in her gloved fingers, letting the light catch against its black sheen. "It reeks of something greater, though. That ink, that weight... mmm. The Maker’s influence clings to it like perfume. You do feel it, don’t you?"

The Maker.

The word hit me like a stone to the chest. My lungs seized, my mouth went dry, and for one brief, terrible instant I forgot how to breathe. I could taste the syllables in the back of my throat, acrid and metallic, like blood left too long in the air.

Her eyes danced across my face as she said it, studying the little betrayals—the twitch in my jaw, the stiffening of my shoulders, the way my gaze darted anywhere but her mouth still wet with crimson.

I wanted to ask. Gods, I wanted to lunge across the table and demand what she meant, what she knew, how she could so casually name the source that haunted every corner of my waking thoughts. But my instincts screamed louder than my curiosity, telling me to shut up.

So I leaned back instead, crossing my arms in what I hoped looked like a gesture of bored disdain and not the defensive posture of a man one second away from fainting. My smirk was paper-thin, but it was all I had.

"Mm," I managed, the sound coming out like a man agreeing that the soup was indeed warm.

She only smiled wider, satisfied, and let the subject drop.

Then I spoke. "Then why bother with the tournament at all? If wealth means nothing, if survival is a game to you—what drew you here?"

Her eyes gleamed. For once, she didn’t laugh. Instead she tilted her head, studying me as though weighing how much of herself she wanted to reveal. "Partly amusement. The chaos, the spectacle—I do enjoy a good theater. But also... I have another goal."

"And what is that goal?" I pressed, my heart thrumming with anticipation, though my voice tried for casual arrogance.

Her smile returned, slow and wicked, blood still drying on her teeth. She leaned closer, her voice dropping into a whisper meant to tease. "That, is something you’ll just have to wait to discover."

And then she laughed again, pompous and resounding, filling the bakery until it seemed the walls themselves vibrated with the sound.

I cleared my throat, the sound small and thin against the grotesque backdrop of her meal, and forced my voice to steady itself.

"Okay then, let’s return to the matter at hand," I said, lacing my fingers together on the table, though they wanted very badly to drum a frantic rhythm instead. "You’ve dangled the pen before me, and I’m not so much of a fool as to think I can just snatch it back without consequence. You say you want something. Fine. I’ll listen. I’m willing to do anything within my means, anything that doesn’t involve me suddenly sprouting wings and solving your laundry for eternity. But—" my tone sharpened, almost surprising myself with its edge, "—I’d be an even greater fool if I pretended I trusted you. I don’t. Not yet."

Her head tilted, amused rather than offended, like a cat watching a mouse boldly declare it wasn’t afraid of paws or claws.

She let the corpse in her lap slip unceremoniously aside, motioned with a flick of her wrist for two of her beastfolk attendants to carry him out, and then rose with languid grace, her gown whispering against the bakery floorboards.

The room followed her movement like iron filings to a magnet, competitors and servants alike keeping wary eyes lowered as she glided toward the man who had slit the poor bastard’s throat. Without a word, she extended her hand, palm open. The man placed his knife into it, bowing his head.

Then she turned.

And my own heart tore neatly in two.

She was walking toward Salem.

I shot up from my chair, only barely managing not to knock it over. My legs screamed at me to move, to throw myself between her and him, but some primal weight kept me frozen, locked in place like an insect hypnotized by a serpent’s sway.

The knight, damn him, didn’t move either. He only adjusted his grip on Salem, his face still and unreadable as the lady reached them.

Before I could spit a word, she raised the blade—

—and slit her own palm wide open.

Blood poured, rich, thick, and far too dark, dripping like molten metal onto the floor. She pressed that bleeding hand against Salem’s wound.

And the world changed.

Her blood sizzled as it touched him, steam rising in ghostly curls that twisted in the warm bakery air. Salem’s body arched once, involuntary, like some last spasm of a dying man. But then... the wound closed. Seamlessly. Effortlessly. No stitches, no salves, no prayers muttered to gods who never listened. Just her blood, his skin, and an impossible knitting together, faster than the eye could follow.

I stood there like a man who’d just watched someone pull the sun out of their pocket and juggle it. Staring, dumbstruck, throat dry.

She whipped around on her heel, the cut on her palm already knitting together with obscene ease, and smiled at me as though she’d just shared a slice of cake.

"Consider that," she said, voice rich and honeyed, "a sign of my trust."

Trust. From a vampire. I nearly laughed until I remembered laughter required air, and I hadn’t taken a proper breath in at least half a minute.

"Your pen," she continued smoothly, "will come when you’ve completed my request. A down payment, if you like."

I could only nod as I settled myself back into my seat. It was either that or collapse on the floor babbling incoherently, and I wasn’t ready to humiliate myself quite that thoroughly. Not yet. She stepped closer, her eyes flashing as she glanced up at the knight, who held Salem with calm detachment.

"He was fortunate," she murmured. "A wound such as his would kill most men outright. But you had a very talented flesh weaver among you, didn’t you?" Her lips curled into a knowing smirk.

The knight inclined his head ever so slightly. He said nothing. Of course he didn’t. He never said anything when I actually wanted him to.

Then her gaze snapped back to me, eyes pinning me in place like a specimen. I gulped. Outwardly I tried to look composed, but inwardly I was practically rolling on the floor in relief. Salem was safe now. Safe. Unconscious, yes, but still alive.

That single truth expanded in my chest like a balloon, pushing out every other thought, every fear, every smart remark. For the first time in what felt like hours—maybe days—I felt almost ready. Ready to face whatever nonsense she was about to fling at me.

Almost.

"So," I managed, finding my voice again. "What is it you want me to do?"

Her smile widened, cruel and delighted all at once. She leaned in close—too close. I could feel the heat of her, the perfume of roses and iron, the faint wet tang of blood on her breath. My pulse stuttered and sprinted at once as her lips hovered just shy of my ear.

When she finally spoke, her voice was silk.

"I want you to get me pregnant."