Thrall of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 4) by Bella Klaus (elon musk reading list .txt) 📕

into the background. I wasn’t sure if that was because he’d toned down the volume or because the pounding of my heart had drowned it out. My gaze swept across the row of injured people and stopped at the woman who continued to convulse. Foam poured from the corners of her mouth, soaking into her hair.

I had no idea what was happening. Tearing my gaze away from her, I glanced at each of the faces, memorizing their last moments of humanity. When I settled on the man Kresnik had tried to heal, my chest tightened. The flaming sword in his chest had now extinguished, leaving his entire torso a hollow of ash.

He had to be dead. His soul must have left his body and fled the moment Kresnik’s phoenix sword had puttered out.

Still clutching the syringe between my numb fingers, I dropped down to my knees behind the man. Kresnik jerked forward but didn’t speak. Everything about him let me know that he suspected me of taking back my magic, but he remained silent. Speaking out would mean admitting to everyone in the room that he’d lost some of his power. I slid the needle into the man’s neck and pushed down the plunger, letting the blood in its barrel enter his veins.

The lining of my stomach trembled with trepidation. Vampire blood couldn’t work on someone who was already dead, could it? The last time I’d checked his heart, it hadn’t been beating, and he only had a trace of magic in his chakras. Kresnik had to have killed him fully by burning his insides, right?

As soon as the liquid left the syringe, I withdrew the needle from his neck and rose to my feet.

Kresnik stared at me with a frozen smile. I guess he had wanted me to inject someone who was still alive. If that was the case, he should have specified. Now, if he contradicted himself, he would look like a dick who couldn’t give clear orders.

Healer Calla took the syringe from my fingers with a pat on the back and a murmured congratulations. I wanted to hurl the contents of my stomach over Kresnik’s pristine white outfit. What would be the point when he’d bend the light to make himself look clean?

“Very well.” He turned to Valentine. “If you wish to continue with my daughter, you will need to keep her on a tighter leash.”

Valentine inclined his head. “Indeed, My Lord. I will deal out an appropriate chastisement and secure her—”

“I have a better idea.” Kresnik’s lips spread into the broadest, coldest grin that said he knew exactly how Valentine intended to punish me and would probably want to witness it for himself.

My mouth dropped open.

“My Lord?” Valentine asked.

“We should celebrate this first milestone.” Kresnik’s eyes sparkled with malice. “We will dine tonight at Gourmande. Be there at eight.”

Valentine stiffened. “I will take my leave.”

The tension in the air released, making my muscles relax a fraction. Valentine stalked around Kresnik, scooped me into his arms, and carried me through the row of injured people. My gaze caught Coral’s, who stared back at me with wide eyes set within a face devoid of expression. Only the rapid rise and fall of her chest indicated that she was finding Kresnik unsettling.

My heart sank, both for the people I’d failed to help and whose souls would suffer the fate of being stuck in the body of a preternatural vampire, and for myself. The snarls reverberating across Valentine’s chest told me he was fuming—at me, most likely. Whatever Kresnik had planned for us tonight might mean my death at his hands.

Valentine hurried past the rest of the injured people standing outside the infirmary and through the hallways, turning them into a blur that made my head ache. I rested against his shoulder and sighed. If I survived tonight, I wouldn’t be too hesitant to form an alliance with Hades. The Demon King might have the information we needed to break free from Kresnik’s grasp.

Part of Valentine had defied Kresnik in an attempt to protect me. Somewhere beneath the magic control was the man I loved, trying to fight his way free. I clung to that hope as Valentine passed the wards of Kenwood House, sped through the blue-and-white hallway, and up the wrought iron staircase. There had to be something else I could do to bring forward the part of Valentine that was loyal to me.

When we entered the room, he deposited me on the bed and loomed over me, his red eyes flashing. “What was the meaning of that outburst?”

Pressing my palms on the soft mattress, I tried to push myself up to sit, but Valentine’s magic pinned me to the bed. His lips pulled back, revealing a mouthful of white teeth with the longest, sharpest incisors I’d seen on him in ages.

“I couldn’t stand by and say nothing while Kresnik turned them.”

The tendons around his neck corded as he snarled, “You could have gotten yourself killed by Our Lord.”

Flinching at the term of address, I tried pushing myself back off the mattress again, but his magic shoved me down. “You’re the King of the Vampires, a member of the Royal House of Sargon. You don’t have a master.”

“You are wrong.” His voice shook as though it took every ounce of his self-restraint not to burst into a flying rage. “Kresnik’s power is absolute.”

My breath quickened. What I’d seen earlier proved that Kresnik’s hold over the stolen power wasn’t absolute at all. Perhaps my sound-healing session had frayed the link he’d created to me with the ritual. His control over Valentine also wasn’t absolute. Valentine had growled at Kresnik when he thought I was in danger and stood up to him to protect me. I needed to help Valentine to see that so he would break free.

“Then why did you protect me today?” I asked.

He closed the distance between us, his gaze sharpening, and his knee mounting the bed. Valentine’s magic eased off my body, only to be