She whirled on Midir. “Find him! Find the prince in the glass.”
“I am searching.”
On the wall was a large oval of glass. It reflected the wizard in his dark robes, the room where he worked his dark magicks, and none of the three vampires who watched him.
Smoke slithered over the glass, swirled, and clawed its way to the edges. Through the haze of it, night began to bloom. And in the night came the shadow of a boy on a pony.
“Oh there, there he is.” Crying out, Lilith gripped Lora’s hand. “Look how well he rides, how straight in the saddle. Where is he? Where in this cursed land is the prince?”
“He’s behind the hunting party,” Lucian told her as he studied the vision in the glass. “And moving toward the battleground. I know that land, my lady.”
“Hurry then, hurry. Willful brat,” she muttered. “I’ll take your advice this time, Lora. When he’s back he’ll have a good hiding. Keep him in that glass, Midir. Can you send me to him, the
illusion of me?”
“You ask for many magicks at once, Majesty.” Robes swirling, he moved to his cauldron and, letting his hands flow through the air over it, brought up a pale green smoke.
“I’ll need more blood,” he told her.
“Human, I suppose.”
His eyes glittered. “It would be best, but I can make do with the blood of a lamb or young goat.”
“This is the prince,” she said coldly. “We don’t make do. Lora, have the one I was going to have brought in. Midir can have it.”
In the dark, Davey rode quickly. He felt strong and fierce and fine. He would show them, show them all that he was the greatest warrior ever made. The Prince of Blood, he thought with a glinting smile. He’d make everyone call him that. Even his mother.
She’d said he was small, but he wasn’t.
He’d thought to trail behind the hunting party, then move in among them and order them to let him take the lead. None would dare question the Prince of Blood. And he would have the first kill.
But something was pulling him away from them, from the scent of his own kind. Something strong and tempting. He didn’t need to stay with a hunting party, trail along after them like a baby. They were all less than he was.
He wanted to follow the music that was humming in his blood, and the smell of ancient death.
He rode slowly now, and with excitement bubbling inside him. There was something wonderful out in the dark. Something wonderful and his.
In the moonlight he saw the battlefield, and the beauty of it made him shake as he did when his mother let him put himself into her and ride as if she were a pony.
While it burned through him he saw figures on the high ground. Two humans, he thought, and a dragon.
He would have them all, slaughter them, drain them, and take their heads to drop at his mother’s feet.
No one would ever call him small again.
Chapter 18
There was a hard place in the middle of Moira’s chest, like a fist poised to strike. Breathing around it was an effort, but she stood as Cian did, at the edge of Silence.
“What do you feel?” she asked him.
“Pulled. You’re not to touch me.”
“Pulled how?”
“Chains on my feet, around my throat, pulled in opposite directions.”
“Pain.”