Chapter 17 Poisoned
The victory feast in the Great Hall was an exercise in staged perfection. Crystal chandeliers hummed with captured starlight, and the long tables groaned under the weight of silver platters. To any outsider, it looked like the dawn of a new era. To me, standing at Kael’s side in a dress the color of dried blood, it felt like a funeral.
My bandaged hands throbbed. Every time I looked at the "Young One" the vampire I’d saved sitting at the end of the table, my stomach twisted. He was too quiet. He wasn't eating. He was just staring at the obsidian shard on my finger with an expression that wasn't gratitude. It was hunger.
"You're not breathing, Aria," Kael’s voice vibrated near my ear. He reached under the table, his cool hand squeezing my knee. "The war is over. Look at them. They’re actually sharing wine."
"It’s too easy, Kael," I whispered, leaning into him. "The man in the basement... he didn't look like a mastermind. He looked like a victim who’d been told he was a god. Masterminds don't shrivel up that quickly."
Kael’s jaw tightened, a shadow of the King returning to his eyes. "He’s in the deepest cell we have, warded by your mother’s best warlocks. If he’s a puppet, we’ll find the strings. But tonight, for the sake of the city, we have to pretend we’ve won."
He stood up, raising a golden chalice. The room went silent. The vampires stilled like statues; the witches lowered their staves.
"To the Queen," Kael announced, his voice booming. "The Void who brought the light."
The toast was a roar of voices, but as I raised my own glass to my lips, the obsidian ring on my finger suddenly flared. Not with the warm, protective light I’d felt before, but with a cold, piercing sting.
Drop it, a voice hissed in the back of my mind. It wasn't the mirror. It was the void itself, screaming a warning.
I jerked my hand back. The chalice hit the marble floor, the dark red wine splashing across my skirts and the white floor.
"Aria?" Kael frowned, stepping toward me.
"Don't drink it!" I screamed, but it was too late.
Across the room, Thierry had already drained his glass. He didn't choke. He didn't fall. Instead, he simply stopped moving. His eyes, normally a sharp, calculating blue, turned a solid, milky white.
Then, the screaming started.
It wasn't just Thierry. Every vampire who had tasted the wine—the "Peace Offering" brought in by the Northern Coven—began to change. Their skin didn't turn to stone; it began to turn translucent, their veins glowing with an oily, purple light.
"It’s not petrification," I gasped, grabbing Kael’s arm. "It’s a virus. A magical contagion."
Kael looked at his own chalice, which he had been seconds away from drinking. He threw it across the room and turned to the guards. "Seal the doors! No one leaves this hall!"
But the guards were already changing. Pierce, standing by the door, let out a guttural roar, his fangs extending to a length that looked painful. He looked at Kael—his sire, his king—and for the first time in two centuries, I saw pure, mindless hatred in his eyes.
"The mirror..." I fumbled for the pouch at my waist, but my hands were shaking. "Kael, the mirror was a trap. It didn't just stop the petrification; it acted as a transmitter. By using it to save you, I opened the door for this."
"Aria, get behind me," Kael commanded. He flared his power, a wave of dark energy meant to suppress the room, but the infected vampires didn't flinch. The purple light in their veins pulsed in time with his magic, feeding on it.
From the center of the witch delegation, a figure stepped forward. It wasn't my mother. It was a High Priestess from the Northern Coven, a woman I’d never seen before. She was smiling, and in her hand, she held a twin to my obsidian mirror—except hers was whole, and it was pulsing with a rhythmic, heartbeat-like glow.
"The Void Queen is so very clever," she said, her voice echoing with a power that made the stone walls sweat. "You saved your King's life, but you gave us his soul. Every vampire who shares his bloodline is now connected to our source. They aren't your subjects anymore, Kael Draven. They are our hive."
"Who are you?" Kael hissed, his claws extending.
"We are the Iron Weavers," she replied. "And we’ve been waiting for a Void like you to open the gates for a long, long time."
As she spoke, the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall didn't just open—they were blown inward. A group of men in tactical gear, carrying weapons that hummed with blue electronic light, moved in behind the witches.
Humans. The Iron Order.
The Witches had made a deal with the humans to wipe the vampires out, and I was the one who had handed them the keys to the castle.
Kael looked at me, and for a terrifying second, I thought I saw a flash of purple in his own eyes.
"Aria," he rasped, his hand gripping the table so hard the wood splintered. "Run. If they get you, the city is gone."
"I'm not leaving you!"
"Go!" he roared, his voice cracking as he fought the contagion creeping up his throat. "Find Julian. Find the shards. We haven't even seen the real war yet."
The Great Hall turned into a slaughterhouse. Infected vampires turned on their own, and the humans began firing "Null-Rays" that turned magic into agony.
I turned and ran toward the hidden servant's passage, the weight of the broken mirror in my pouch feeling like a mountain.