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

If Aurora had told my aunt to protect me, then my aunt would have left the country. There were plenty of places a fire user could go around the world—Atlantis, Baltia, or Arcadia. They could even seek shelter in New Mesopotamia if they didn’t mind being ruled by vampires.

No. If she had cared a damn, she wouldn’t have continued insisting that I return to the Flame. Aurora knew what she was doing and fully intended me to be the main ingredient in a ritual to create this new and improved Kresnik. What I didn’t understand was why I kept trying to appeal to her nonexistent conscience.

Aurora opened the door to a room flooded with daylight. Valentine stepped back and then raised his fingers to the doorway. When they didn’t burn, he took a tentative step forward. I peered up into his blank features. At least he’d retained his self-preservation.

“Losing magic that wasn’t even yours to begin with is a small sacrifice to pay to save hundreds of innocents.” Her throat bobbed as she stepped inside. “If it were something I could do myself—”

“Oh, save me from your bullshit.” I let Valentine sweep me into the room and deposit me on the spongy mattress of a four-poster bed.

I rolled off its side and set my feet on the floor, looking for escape routes, hiding places, anything that might save my hide.

Tall windows ran along its right side, each with golden blinds hanging at half-mast. Each window had its own cushioned seat and between each of them stood a side table that held an ornate clock.

A four-poster bed took up most of the left wall with a golden pelmet, decorated with a sculpted frieze of Greek gods. The curtains hanging from it were a silk velvet that complemented the golden drapes. Even the coverlet, ivory-silk fabric embroidered in gold, looked like it belonged in a museum.

Above a roaring fireplace hung a gold-framed picture of a shirtless man with burnt orange hair. His skin was as bronze as Valentine’s used to be, and the sun shone from behind him, bringing out the golden highlight in his hair. With the fire burning in his amber eyes, and the flames dancing from his fingertips, it looked like the artist had wanted to depict him like a god of sun or fire. My throat dried. Was this Kresnik’s true appearance?

At a time like this, I shouldn’t have been impressed by the decor, but with Valentine standing at the window and staring out into the gardens, some of the pressure eased off my mind, and I needed to think of something.

The room was part stately home, part museum, and part hotel suite. I walked to a drinks cabinet that displayed an array of green bottles, hoping that at least one of them contained blood. They didn’t.

Beneath it was a refrigerator, which I opened to find it crammed with blood bags. Some of the tightness around my chest eased. If I could convince Valentine to drink from the bags instead of my veins, I might just survive for long enough to have a conversation with his soul.

Aurora opened a door that led to a wardrobe-sized space secured by floor-to-ceiling bars. Two bare mattresses lay on the floor and a metallic toilet pan that doubled as a sink hung from the window.

I clenched my teeth. “What the hell is this?”

“Our vampire general will require a place to store fresh blood,” she replied.

“People, you mean,” I blurted.

Her lips tightened. “Don’t be a hypocrite.”

The words hit like a backhand across the face, making me reel back. She was referring to how Valentine had stored Jonathan with a dozen other men within the mansion’s basement.

Staring the woman full in the face, I snarled, “I released those humans the moment I found them.”

Aurora stuck her nose in the air, reminding me a little of an academy mean girl when caught out in a lie. Disgust rippled through my insides. Not that I was a saint, but how could I have come from wretchedly evil parents?

Valentine encircled my waist from behind, lowered his lips to my neck, and growled.

Aurora’s haughty expression fell, and all the blood drained from her face. She turned on her heel and speed-walked to the door. “I’ll leave you to get settled.”

“Hey,” I snapped.

She turned but couldn’t meet my eyes.

“If I don’t survive the night, please tell Aunt Arianna that she saved me from the Council. You don’t have to tell her how I died.”

Aurora nodded and scampered out of the door, leaving me alone with Valentine.

His satisfied rumble reverberated across the entire length of my back.

How do you stop a preternatural vampire from draining you dry? I was about to find out.

Chapter Three

As soon as the door clicked shut, Valentine’s arms tightened around my waist. The chill from his larger body seeped into my back, sending tremors across my skin. As his lips grazed my neck, a spike of panic lanced through my heart.

“Let go of me,” I said.

Valentine just squeezed tighter, knocking all the air out of my lungs. Tight bands of alarm wrapped around my chest, reducing my ability to breathe. I had to stay calm. No matter what had become of him, Valentine could never be evil.

When I finally got to talk to him about the men he had kept in the basement, he explained that he only fed on those he had caught hurting others. I turned my head, tried to plead with him to stay calm, but my gaze caught on those crimson eyes. Crimson eyes whose pupils expanded… All the better to see you, my dear.

I slapped away all thoughts of big bad predators and focussed.

My throat bobbed. Did Valentine see me as a villain like he did the men he abducted and kept in that closet? When he came to London to help me with my assassin problem, I had brushed him off and rejected his attempts at rekindling our relationship. Or he could be too hungry to care. My