Chapter 8 The First Summoning
The obsidian moon hung low outside Lyrathia’s spire, a thin crescent that cast its pale gleam through the narrow windows of the Queen’s private chambers. Everything within her castle was built to intimidate—shadowed halls, barbed arches, torchlight that flickered like dying souls—but this room was different. It was not made for showing power. It was made for containing it.
Her chambers felt carved directly from night itself, draped in silks the colors of dried blood and ashes. A single black-glass mirror reflected her silhouette as she stood beside it, perfectly still, fingers brushing the cold, carved stone of her vanity.
But she was not admiring her reflection.
She was steadying herself.
Because she had summoned him.
The mortal.
The defiant one.
The man whose pulse had jolted something alive inside her after a centuries-long void.
Kael.
She should not have summoned him. Not alone. Not here.
Her advisors had exchanged strange looks when she’d issued the order. Morgath even dared to open his mouth as if he might object, then wisely shut it again.
No one questioned her.
But they felt the shift.
She felt it too.
And she hated—loathed—this unfamiliar tightness in her chest. This… anticipation. Desire was one thing; she understood hunger. But this was something else. Sharper. More chaotic. More dangerous.
She stood facing the door as the heavy iron bolts groaned. The sound echoed like a slow heartbeat across the chamber.
Footsteps.
Chains.
Then he appeared.
Kael entered upright despite the manacles at his wrists, flanked by two guards who seemed uneasy having him near. His hair was damp from the dungeon’s cold, his jaw shadowed with stubble, his eyes sharp enough to cut through the gloom like twin blades.
He was refusing to look at her. That alone made her fangs itch.
“Leave us,” Lyrathia commanded.
Both guards hesitated—too long.
“I said leave.”
They vanished.
Silence fell between queen and prisoner, stretching tight as a bowstring.
Kael didn’t bow. Didn’t kneel. Didn’t even lower his gaze as she stepped closer. Instead, he lifted his chin the slightest degree — intentionally, she realized. A challenge.
Her hunger curled hotter.
“Do you know where you stand, mortal?” she asked, circling him with slow, predatory grace. “This is not the throne room. There are no witnesses. No guards to temper my mercy.”
His lips curved, faintly mocking. “I didn’t expect you to bring me anywhere that required mercy.”
Lyrathia stopped behind him.
Her voice dropped, silk over steel.
“Then what did you expect, Kael of the outer provinces?”
“That you’d eventually want something from me.”
He turned his head enough to meet her gaze.
“And here we are.”
Heat flickered in her chest—unwelcome, unbidden.
She stepped around him, gliding into his line of sight again. “Careful,” she said softly. “You speak as though you believe yourself important.”
“I believe myself necessary.” His chains clinked as he shifted. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have dragged me out of my cell in the middle of the night.”
Her jaw clenched.
Even bound, even surrounded by the weight of her power, he was not afraid. His pulse remained steady beneath his skin—she could hear it, maddeningly human yet unlike any mortal heartbeat she’d ever heard. Stronger. Wilder.
And his scent—gods, his scent—she could taste it in the air. Warm, defiant, edged with something ancient that whispered to the curse buried inside her.
She took a step closer.
“And what,” she murmured, “do you imagine I want from you?”
His eyes dropped—not to her crown, not to her throat, but lower, lingering where her bodice dipped, where pale skin caught the candlelight.
Then he dragged his gaze back up with deliberate insolence.
“You tell me.”
Something inside her snapped taut.
Her hand shot out, gripping his jaw, fingers pressing into stubbled skin. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away. He only stared back at her like he was the one studying her, dissecting her.
“You think yourself immune to fear?” she whispered.
“I think you’re testing how close you can get before you break.”
Break.
A vampire queen did not break. Not in eight hundred years of reign.
Yet the word hit her lower than it should have, stirring something molten.
Her grip tightened.
“Your arrogance will get you killed.”
“Then kill me.”
His voice was low, rough.
“Or stop pretending you might.”
A growl rose from her throat before she could stop it.
She released him abruptly, stepping back. She needed distance—actual space between their bodies, between their breath, between the strange pull that felt like gravity working backward.
Kael stayed perfectly still.
Good.
She needed him still.
Because she was not.
A queen losing control of her hunger was no small thing. But losing control of her curiosity? That was far worse.
She moved to her table, unrolling a parchment covered in crimson sigils.
“Your blood,” she said without looking back, “defies the magic of my kingdom. My advisors have never seen anything like it.”
“I gathered that,” Kael replied. “They seemed troubled.”
“Troubled,” she echoed. “That is one word for it.”
She turned back to him.
“Your blood resists compulsion. Warding. Divination. Even the ancestral vein-call. Do you understand what that means?”
He shook his head, but his eyes sharpened.
“It means,” she said slowly, “that you are not simply mortal.”
“Or it means,” he countered, “that your magic is failing.”
Her lips curled. “If my magic were failing, you would already be dust.”
He didn’t argue.
Smart man.
“So?” he asked. “Why am I here, truly?”
She approached him again—close enough to feel the heat off his skin, to breathe it in and feel that unsettling spark flicker behind her ribs.
“Because I want to know what you are,” she said. “And why you came for something ‘stolen.’ What exactly do you believe I have taken?”
“That,” he said, meeting her gaze unblinking, “is something you’ll need to earn.”
She stared at him.
Earn?
No one, in century upon century, had dared speak a word like that to her.
“You presume much,” she said, voice dropping to a warning growl.
“And you hide much.”
Kael leaned in as far as his chains would allow.
“You want answers from me, Queen of Silence? Then you’ll need to decide whether you want truth… or obedience. You can’t have both.”
A shiver—not fear, something more dangerous—slid through her spine.
He felt it.
She knew he did.
His nostrils flared, the faintest reaction, but enough.
She stepped back.
“Take him to the upper cells,” she commanded.
Her voice came out colder than intended.
“Where the torches burn warm. And bring him decent food.”
Kael’s brows lifted—surprise, brief and genuine.
She swallowed it.
“And chain him with silver, not iron. I want to test something.”
The guards returned, exchanging bewildered glances as they clasped the silver manacles around Kael’s wrists. He hissed, barely, the metal burning into his skin—but he did not look away from her.
Not even once.
As they pulled him from the chamber, his voice reached her, low and certain:
“You’ll have to come back if you want your answers.”
Her skin burned.
Her pulse—her cursed, dormant, unbeating heart—ached.
The doors slammed shut.
Lyrathia stood in silence, hands trembling, breath unsteady.
Something stirred again inside her.
Something she had not felt in centuries.
Desire, yes.
But also—
Curiosity.
Fear.
And the smallest spark of something she had forgotten entirely.
Possibility.
Kael of nowhere—of nothing, according to the records—was unraveling her.
And she was letting him.