Page 70 of Vanquished Gods
I continued searching for his magic, but I found no trace. Nothing but the cold void of his absence.Was he hiding from me?The thought coiled through my chest, a sharp tendril of doubt that anyone wanted to save me. I sent out my magic again, this time searching for the wild, chaotic power of Maelor—raw and untamed, dancing like a flame. My magic found him and latched on to his cool shadows, drawing closer, calling to him, pulling him toward me.
I tried to once again sit up, but my body sagged against the cage as my strength ebbed, my throat dry and parched.
As my magic snapped back into my body, it settled in my chest. Down there, I had only the Serpent for company.
I stared at the walls of the pit, hoping—begging—for an answer.
At last,the sound of footsteps echoed through the cavern above, and I felt Maelor’s magic moving closer.
I managed to force myself to sit up just as Maelor’s figure appeared above the edge of the pit.
“Maelor,” I croaked, my voice barely a whisper.
“I’m getting you out.” He didn’t even bother with the stairs. Instead, he leapt straight down into the pit.
He rattled the cage door once, twice, then slammed his fist into the lock on the front. The metal twisted and bent, and the door creaked open. I crawled closer to him, and he reached intothe cage, scooping me up. He pulled me into his chest, carrying me like a broken bride—not for the first time.
I leaned my head against him. “Am I going to be executed?” I whispered.
“Of course not, Elowen. I’m going to get you some blood. Can you tell me what happened? I just felt your magic calling to me and followed it here.” Still gripping me in his arms, he carried me up the timeworn stairs I’d been staring at for two days.
“Rowena said I would be executed. She found Bran’s pendant in my room, and she figured out that I killed him…” The words tumbled out before I had a chance to consider if it was a bad idea to confess.
“Rowena? Who’s Rowena?” His voice echoed off the temple walls as he carried me through, jagged rocks swooping overhead.
The world around me blurred, my thoughts disjointed and sluggish. I waved a tired goodbye to my gaping-eyed skull friends. Desperate for blood, I barely registered the cavern walls as we swept past them, as Maelor carried me back up to the castle.
“She’s Sion’s lover,” I mumbled, hating the words even as I spoke them, and confused that he appeared not to know her. “Rowena? She’s a servant, turned by Sion. She said she knew you and Epona in the old days. She brought me dresses…”
“He hasn’t taken a lover in ages, and I’ve never known anyone named Rowena. Certainly not since I was mortal. What does she look like?”
“Pale blonde curls. Doll-like face. Porcelain skin. Obsessed with Sion.”
“Ah…that’s not Rowena,” said Maelor softly. “That’s Epona. My wife. She’s been in your room?”
I blinked as a jolt of shock ran through me. “Your wife? That’s yourwife?”
His grip tightened on me as he moved up the next set of stairs. “She never took well to becoming a vampire. It broke her mind, I’m afraid.”
“Why is she aservant?”
“She isn’t. It seems like she just found a pretext to get into your room. Aveline was supposed to be your lady-in-waiting, a human who could survive the glass windows. She’s Epona’s favorite thrall.”
My mind reeled. “There was that day, the day the tincture was missing…Maelor, your wife has been alive this whole time? You’ve been married the whole time?”
Maelor sighed heavily. “In a sense, yes. But she’s not the same. She doesn’t think of herself as my wife. Once Sion turned her, she became fanatically obsessed with him. She’s unable to tell reality from fantasy half the time, and she’s driven mad with jealousy. When you asked me if I’d end it all if you were no longer the same and no longer in control of yourself, I said yes, and I meant it. I believe there are worse things than death. But Sion wouldn’t let me kill her. He never let me end it all for myself, either. He believes there’s always hope for us, no matter how terrible things get. No matter how terribleweget.”
“So…Epona and Sion aren’t lovers?”
“Not since we were human, but he feels responsible for what happened to her. After we turned, Sion found me with my teeth in her throat, draining her, and he saved her by turning her into a vampire. But she wasn’t really saved because she turned into a completely different person. Wild. Feral. It took her an age to even remember how to speak again. We kept her locked away in a tower for years—centuries, actually—but after a while, she convinced Sion she was fine, even though I knew how obsessed she was with him. It happens sometimes when a vampire sires another. She thought of him all the time, desperate to get him to fall in love with her again. She’s hidden it well in recent decades,but I suppose when you arrived, it triggered something. I think for all these centuries, he’s been all she’s thought about.”
As Maelor carried me through the castle, the pieces slid together, forming a picture more haunting than I could have imagined.
Inside a great hall, lit with flickering lights, he set me down on a velvet chaise.
Weak and starving, I slumped over, staring at a tapestry of a battle scene across the hall. Just then, I was only half aware of what Maelor was doing as he barked orders around the room. I thought he might be demanding to see the new seneschal.
I licked my lips, dry as bone, and blood hunger carved through my gut. If any humans had been lingering around me, I feared they’d have been dead within seconds.