The Vampire's Witch by Emma Glass

Author:Emma Glass [Glass, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fangs and Fire Press
Published: 2017-08-24T07:00:00+00:00

15

Elliott

The crowded assembly stood on either side, silent with fury, as I begrudgingly marched towards the throne while flanked by my royal guards.

I did not blame them for their animosity. After all, they judged me because they did not understand the truth; I did not tell them the truth, because I did not trust them; I did not trust them, because they never trusted me.

And so the cycle continued.

My eyes caught gazes in the crowd, all quickly averting with my grim acknowledgment. They were clearly unwilling to look me directly in the eye. I’d have been delighted with that realization a few mere days before, reveling in their aversion. But that would have been under less than ideal circumstances. After all, today I broke a long, proud streak: it had been over a millennium since a Stonehold ruler had executed one of his or her own caretakers.

Resultantly, this was a fairly unprecedented turnout; subjects and servants from across the castle were here, all ready to watch me sentence one of their own. Interestingly, none of the nobles appeared to be here. It was likely that they simply didn’t care, no matter their ongoing relationship to the beloved tailor. It was all very different with the working class…

I wondered which details had been leaked to warrant all of this speculation.

The royal guards fanned out on either side as I sat down upon the throne. It occurred to me that I could actually do with Clara’s presence. This was the perfect opportunity to indulge in the gift of that strange extrasensory awareness; I could have readily scanned the room at any point, learning how my subjects judged me, as I so judged one of their own.

But even my guards and I could not fend off a roomful of ravenous vampires, not with a human on a silver plate in front of them.

Lorelei was conspicuously absent. My mother seemed increasingly detached from the affairs of the castle, but I was still surprised. I recalled that she had a particular fondness for Jerald…

Speaking of the devil, the disgraced tailor was then led into the room by another pair of guards. It pained me to see him in shackles. His carefully manicured clothes were smudged and torn, and his face looked haggard. The dungeons saw such little use these days that I wondered what could possibly be down there to throw Jerald through such a sharp transformation in a day.

His escorts stopped Jerald two strides from the foot of the stairs, and they moved to force him to kneel before me.

“No,” I ordered, racked with guilt.

The guards paused and looked at me.

“Remove the shackles. Jerald Puckett is no animal, and I will not see him treated as such.”

Murmurs came from the crowd as Jerald kept his head bowed, reaching out his wrists. A guard unclipped a keyring and freed him from the cuffs, then did the same to his ankles. The accused kept his eyes low but rubbed his wrists gratefully.

The guards looked imploringly at me.

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