Fated to the Vampire Prince

8 • Craindre

Craindre (verb) to fear

We rode at an unforgiving pace for three days, never stopping except to change horses, then went right back to riding hard.

I saw Bastien only briefly during that time. There was never an opportunity to exchange more than a glance with the vampire prince I was supposed to be spying on.

Sometimes, I'd pull back the heavy black curtains to watch him riding alongside the coach with his eyes fixed on the horizon. His blond hair loose in the wind. The set of his jaw hard. I wondered if his necklace was still pulsing like a heartbeat, and what that meant, but I knew he'd never humor my curiosity. 

His nephew, Tyson, and his sanguine partner, a young woman by the name of Okeri, were my only companions.

At times, we'd talk. At other times, they seemed content to ignore me. More often than not, Tyson was grumbling about being locked inside a carriage instead of being allowed to ride. Okeri listened while massaging a sweet-smelling cream on her mahogany skin until it glistened.

Neither seemed interested in me except in fleeting bursts, like when they produced a deck of cards and wanted me to play to pass the time—some game from the capital they called Depouiller that took me the better part of a day to learn. They'd said it was more fun with strong drink and more people and quickly lost interest. 

I didn't mind when they went back to chatting quietly. I was used to being invisible.

In the hours I spent in silence, I stared out the window and thought of Sera. Hoping that she'd made it back home without doing something reckless. At night, when I could sleep, I dreamed of seeing her again in the graveyard outside our house. Casting spells under the light of the full moon.

Sometimes, the dreams would turn into nightmares that left me drenched in sweat.

On the morning of the fourth day, when I had a terrible crick in my neck from sleeping on the tufted bench inside the coach and barely exercising my legs, we stopped at a small inn on the bank of a massive lake that looked as big as the ocean, just as the sun was setting.

I'd studied enough maps to know this must be Emerald Lake. And by the sun's position, I knew we were near the northern tip, just south of Swift River.

The sky was a riot of colors that reminded me of wildflowers in spring. Pinks and blues and pale purples, all reflected on the smooth surface of the water. When the door to the coach was opened, goosebumps lifted on my skin, pebbling my flesh in the bitter chill of the evening.

I hugged myself, teeth chattering as I descended the wooden stairs. My aching legs did not want to move as I stepped onto the dirt road in front of the inn. It was colder here than in Corbin, a clear sign that we were nearing Chateau Rose.

The wooden sign out front read Hare and Tooth and was adorned with a picture of a bloody rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.

How...pleasant.