The Tidings of Misfits (The Whispered Tales Book 1) by Jordan Dugdale

Author:Jordan Dugdale [Dugdale, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Cassius

Cassius stayed up to watch over the party, and the entire night was a restless one as the weight of the gun burned ever brighter in its shadowy home in his arm. It guided him towards Volendam, but he wasn’t certain why or what he’d find there. He’d only been to Volendam a handful of times and not for a very long time. He’d been human still, a young adult living with his uncle in Rovania. His uncle had sent him up to Volendam to trade, and he had stayed but a week before traveling back along the river to his home. He could barely remember it.

Rooster stirred sometime in the early morning, and Cassius spared him a glance as the human settled down beside him, staring up at the sky. The fog had cleared sometime in the night, and the stars twinkled brilliantly even as they faded with sunrise.

They said nothing to each other. Cassius had never been a man of many words. Isolated as a child due to his knightly training as a human, he’d only had his older brother to talk to. Over the years, even he and Markus had grown apart, and much of Cassius’ adult life had been spent completely and utterly alone.

“What’s it like?” Rooster asked, his fingers threading together behind his head.

“What?” Cassius turned to meet his gaze. He could feel Rooster’s heart thundering under his shirt and taste the dried blood of a scab at his temple. Hunger clawed at his throat, but like time and time before, he ignored its demands.

Rooster shrugged. “Being a vampire. I’ve heard night-walkers have no souls to speak of and only care about blood and power.” Rooster’s gaze challenged Cassius as if to prove the words true, but Cassius gave him no such satisfaction.

Instead, Cassius stood, offering Rooster a hand. “It is more complicated than that.” As Cassius helped Rooster to his feet, he brushed his hands together. “I do not know about souls, but I have been alive long enough to see the cruelty of mankind. If they are capable of having souls, then why not the best of vampires?”

Rooster thumbed his chin in thought as the others began to stir. “You bring a fair point.”

“I tend to have them from time to time.”

Rooster’s smile was faint as the conversation concluded, leaving Cassius to dwell on his thoughts. It was not the first time someone had asked him what it was like being a vampire. Cassius couldn’t speak for low vampires, whose resurrection included a ritual to reanimate their corpses through necromancy. High vampires had been cursed for hundreds of years by the dragon Nelfta. When high vampires turned mortals, the curse changed them and immortalized their bodies. Whether their soul stayed in their death remained to be seen.

Cassius turned as Helai rolled up her bedroll and Rooster spoke with Intoh, who was rousing Linda from sleep.

After gathering their things, they walked for the better part of the day. The transition from marshland to forest was drastic and sudden.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.