Blood Price Read online

  BLOOD PRICE

  A Blood Grace Prequel

  VELA ROTH

  CONTENTS

  Blood Price

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: A Sword in the Ground

  Chapter One: A Bird in the Storm

  Chapter Two: The Last Thing of Value

  Chapter Three: A Thousand Lilies

  Chapter Four: The Bride of Spring

  Chapter Five: The Wedding Feast

  Chapter Six: Bluebird

  Chapter Seven: The Fire Dance

  Chapter Eight: The West Field

  Chapter Nine: The Sacred Offer

  Chapter Ten: Essential Magic

  Chapter Eleven: The Greatest Reward

  Chapter Twelve: The Only Cure

  Chapter Thirteen: Into Hespera’s Realm

  Chapter Fourteen: The Hidden Goddess

  Chapter Fifteen: The Pillars of the Sanctuary

  Chapter Sixteen: A Better Hesperine

  Chapter Seventeen: Alkaios and Nephalea

  Chapter Eighteen: For Good or Evil

  Chapter Nineteen: Cherished Shadows

  Chapter Twenty: To Stay Anthros’s Hand

  Chapter Twenty-One: Light’s Benediction

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Shadow’s Reign

  Chapter Twenty-Three: No Walls of Stone

  Epilogue: An Arrow in the Grass

  Glossary

  Thank You

  Blood Mercy

  Free Book

  More Books by Vela Roth

  Acknowledgements

  © 2020 by Vela Roth.

  Book and Cover design by Vela Roth

  First eBook Edition: October 2020

  Five Thorns

  Independent Books

  fivethorns.com

  For the mourners

  PROLOGUE

  A Sword in the Ground

  WHEN THE LADY KNELT BESIDE him, all the pain stopped.

  He could no longer feel the agony in his belly. The cold mud and blood under his back faded from his awareness. He couldn’t hear the rain.

  Moonlight shone on the pale oval of her face, and night shadowed her deep-set eyes. Her hood gleamed as if woven of black gossamer.

  She was beautiful, but not like Maerea.

  He was already breaking his vows to Maerea. He was leaving her. Nothing could stop the pain of that knowledge. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his teeth.

  The lady brushed his hair back from his brow. Her skin was soft, her hand strong. He turned his face away from her.

  “Do not be afraid.” Her voice was a velvety contralto, luring him into ease. “What is your name?”

  He answered without thinking. Or tried to answer. The words gurgled in his throat as he choked on his own blood. She touched his brow again, and the discomfort faded.

  “Alcaeus,” she identified him, without him needing to say it. “Do you know why I am here?”

  Hers was not the face he longed to see above him, the voice he wanted to hear in his last moments. But she was here, and he was not dying alone.

  Finally, he looked at her again. Her full, feminine lips parted, revealing what she was.

  She had fangs.

  He recalled what he’d overhead after the battle had ended. He hadn’t understood through the pain at first. Now everything made sense.

  “My lord, shall we let his people collect him now?”

  “No. Make sure no one comes for his body.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least call a mage to give him his rites?”

  “Say nothing to the mages.”

  “But—my lord—! There will be no one to stop…them. The creatures of the darkness. They always come for the dead.”

  “Let them use his corpse however they please. Let him pay for all of our losses. Leave him for the Hesperines.”

  Hesperines. Fanged, immortal, inescapable. They haunted the night, flocking to abandoned battlefields to scavenge for fallen men. Humans were nothing to them but blood to feed on or corpses to use in profane rituals.

  Alcaeus stared up into the beautiful, horrifying face of his fate.

  “I am Iskhyra,” the Hesperine said. “I promise you will not feel any more pain.”

  Fear for himself gripped him for the first time that night. He had faced his enemy in combat without hesitation. He had done his duty and fought to the last. His only worry had been for his family.

  Now the Hesperine was here. There was no shame in fearing what she would do to him. She would corrupt him. He would not even have the consolation of dying by the sword in honorable combat. No warrior deserved this. To fade into darkness, borne on a Hesperine’s seduction.

  He wanted to fight her, but his strength was spent. And no amount of strength would protect him from her. A Hesperine could rob a man of his will with her dark arts. She had such sorcery, she could do anything she wished to him. He was at her mercy.

  At last it came, a grimmer messenger of his end than the Hesperine herself. Despair. “Leave me be. Please. My honor is all I have left. Leave me that.”

  She took his hand. “It is a great honor for battle to deliver you to the one you worship. You are devoted to Anthros, the god of war, are you not?”

  “What would you know about devotion, heretic? Your kind worship the goddess of night.” Hespera, outcast of the gods. He did not invoke her name aloud. He couldn’t stop her creature from destroying him, but he wouldn’t make it easy.

  “Hespera is my goddess, but if you wish to meet Anthros tonight, I will not stand between you and your god.”

  There came a clank, and something hit his palm. He closed his stiff fingers around the hilt with a gasp. The family sword. He held it to his chest.

  A sigh escaped Alcaeus, almost a sob of relief. Part of his hazed mind wondered if he could believe the Hesperine’s words. She had just handed him the answer to that question.

  “I found your sword driven into the mud,” she said, “just out of your reach. A cruel insult to you and your blade. Your foe was not worthy of you.”

  “He,” Alcaeus wheezed, “isn’t dying.”

  “That does not make him the victor.”

  He held fast to the sword and the image of Maerea in his mind.

  “Are you ready to depart?” the Hesperine asked. “To go to your afterlife in Anthros’s Hall and join his company of eternal warriors? Are you finished with your work in this world?”

  “This world is done with me.”

  “I am not.” She closed her hand around his where he held his sword. “I have the power to keep you here, if that is your choice.”

  He swallowed. “You want to turn me into one of you.”

  “Only if you wish it. The magic in my veins can restore you. I can offer you the Gift, Hespera’s blessing of immortality. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he choked.

  He could become a Hesperine, powerful and undying. He could escape death for a half-life in the darkness, surviving on blood.

  Her grip on his hand was bracing. “I know this is a difficult decision for you. Whatever choice you make tonight will be the right one. You have lived with honor. You have no cause for regrets.”

  “I do regret…”

  “What? Did you want revenge against your enemy?”

  “No. I just wanted Maerea.” Her name escaped him, a prayer, he knew not to whom. “She gave up everything for me. Now she will have nothing.”

  “I can make it possible for you to help her.”

  “How, if your goddess demands my service?”

  “Hespera makes no demands. She gives. She will not change who you are. She will grant you the power to finish what you started. Power as you have never had before.”

  “I don’t care about power. Only about Maerea.”
br />   “The Gift would give you a second chance with her.”

  Alcaeus realized his choice was very simple. He could die in battle and go to Anthros’s Hall, leaving Maerea. Or he could forfeit the god of war’s favor for all time, accept Hespera’s taint on his soul, and save Maerea.

  What honor mattered more? Honor in battle? Or honor to his lady?

  Alcaeus had made that decision already, the day he had chosen Maerea over a declaration of war.

  “Does it take long?” he asked.

  “You have strength and discipline, and Maerea is a powerful motivation. I expect you’ll need fewer nights than most to learn to use your power. The transformation itself takes mere hours. However, know that the Gifting—the change from human into Hesperine—may or may not be easy. It will test your conscience.”

  He grimaced. He had lived by Anthros’s laws. What would Hespera make of his conscience? “How so?”

  “I withhold nothing from you so you can make your choice wisely. During your Gifting, you will relive moments of your life with empathy you never had before. You will see your experiences through others’ eyes. You will feel their joy or pain, the consequences of your kindness or cruelty. If your deeds caused suffering, you will suffer. This empathy breaks the spirits of the depraved, and they perish before the transformation is complete. But those who have learned…those who have loved…their spirits endure, and they are reborn with new strength.”

  Alcaeus had never imagined he would have to submit his soul to Hespera’s judgment instead of Anthros’s.

  But from the moment he and Maerea had met, he had known he would risk everything for her.

  “I will survive this night,” he vowed. “I will not abandon Maerea. Do it. Give me your Gift.”

  “Hespera hears your sacred request. In her name, I cannot refuse you. It is my honor to convey her Gift to you.”

  As if he were light as a child, the Hesperine picked him up. She carried him through the rain, as smoothly as if she floated, and bore him away from the field where generations of his and Maerea’s forefathers had slaughtered each other.

  He faded in and out of awareness. The rain stopped. They were somewhere quiet and dry. Low light bathed his face. The Hesperine supported him with one arm, lifting his head. He watched her raise her arm toward her face. When she lowered her hand, his senses sharpened again.

  Blood gleamed on her wrist, vivid against her pale skin. Bile rose in his throat.

  Anthros would not forgive him. His family would fear him. He could have no future with Maerea, not as a Hesperine.

  And yet, he would meet his fate knowing he had done the right thing.

  He braced himself and let the Hesperine touch her wrist to his lips.

  He didn’t taste the metallic tang he knew from getting blood in his mouth on the battlefield. He felt as if he’d downed a cup of raw courage. It warmed him from within and braced him for action. His vision faded. But he sensed Iskhyra, a commander just out of sight in the heat of battle, turning the tide of his inner war.

  Now at last he beheld Maerea. In his mind flashed an image of her smile. She never smiled, except at him. He’d thought he could no longer smile, until he’d found her.

  He would never forget the day they’d met. But she had not been smiling then.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Bird in the Storm

  Thirteen Days Earlier

  MAEREA REFUSED TO BE AFRAID.

  Rain spat in her face. At any moment, the storm would drive in through the window, and she would have to close the shutters. But she needed just one more breath of fresh air.

  She could still smell the sickroom. Could still hear her father’s last words.

  My only regret…that bastard Aemilius will outlive me. I should have killed him…

  Her brother had said nothing. Not as he had leapt to his feet and taken Father’s sword in hand. Not as he had rushed out of the sickroom, leaving her with the remains.

  Gerrian hadn’t spoken to her until he returned hours later to tell her that Lord Aemilius the Elder, their father’s lifelong rival, was dead.

  Father had departed this life, the weak and wizened shadow of a warrior, on a sickbed. Lord Aemilius had departed as a weak and wizened shadow on the end of Gerrian’s sword.

  Perhaps that was why Gerrian had killed Lord Aemilius’s son, too.

  Aemilius the Younger had been a warrior in his prime, with years more experience than Gerrian. She might have had to plan her father and brother’s funerary rites that day. But Gerrian had come back alive.

  Only to depart again, this time to seek allies, he said. Leaving the castle without a lord to defend it. The perfect opportunity for their surviving enemy, Lord Alcaeus, to avenge his father and elder brother.

  From here in her chambers, high in the keep, Maerea could see far. But not far enough. On the other side of the rain lived the enemy, close enough to march an army here in a matter of hours.

  She caught sight of a bird in the storm. On sopping wings, it flew against the wind. It wavered, soared, wobbled, but did not succumb.

  A flicker of motion drew her gaze down to the steep road that approached the castle. Her heart jumped in her chest. A lone rider ascended the treacherous path, his horse sure-footed despite the rain.

  “Come away from the window,” said Bria.

  The rider couldn’t be Lord Alcaeus. He would not come alone, if he came.

  When he came. With his superior forces and provisions. If it was a siege he wanted, he could trap Maerea and her people inside these walls with their dwindling supplies and…

  Maerea took one more deep gasp of air before Bria secured the casements. The room plunged into gray gloom. Maerea wiped the rain from her face.

  Bria took a warm cloth to Maerea’s hair. “There, there.”

  Maerea sat back in the window seat, leaning against Bria. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “And where else would I be, after serving as your mother’s handmaiden since she and I were girls? I promised her I would take care of you.” She went over to the hearth to hang the damp cloth in front of the fire. Her soft, round face, now harrowed by age and lean years, creased in a smile. Her hair was now a silvery aura shining out from under the edges of her kerchief, but showed no signs of ever turning white. “I’ll always be here.”

  Maerea swallowed a laugh that threatened to turn into tears.

  The rider had not been Lord Alcaeus.

  “We have work to do,” she announced. “We’d best get on with the spinning. We need every scrap of yarn we can get from this year’s combing.”

  “Aye. And we’ll mend the old blankets to make them last awhile longer. It will be enough.”

  “At least until those allies my brother is courting bring us new prosperity.”

  Bria neither smiled nor frowned in response, her expression that calm one that filled Maerea with both comfort and dread.

  “Tomorrow,” Maerea went on, “or as soon as the rain lets up, I’ll make my rounds to our people. See who needs food from our kitchens. Don’t say I’m too generous. We won’t starve. They will, if nothing gets done.”

  Bria set out their distaffs and spindles by their chairs in front of the hearth. “You’re not too generous. You’re so like your mother was.”

  Shouts from beyond the window made Maerea jump.

  Bria’s gaze went to the closed casements. “We’d best stay here.”

  For a heartbeat, Maerea sat there in her dark room, with walls and armed men between her and the unknown threat outside. With nothing but a few walls and armed men holding together her home, her people, everything that was left of her family’s legacy.

  She refused to be afraid.

  She got to her feet. “No. I will see what the commotion is.”

  “We ought to stay here where it’s safe.”

  “Would you get started on the spinning for us? I’ll be back to help you in a moment.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight, dove.” Br
ia covered Maerea’s hair with her warm woolen headdress and bundled them both in shawls and capes.

  They left the hearth room and went down through the deserted corridors and stairwells. Just inside the old oak doors of the keep, the commander of the guard halted them. He had been here as long as Bria and was almost as stubborn. “We’ll see to the matter, my lady.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The enemy.”

  Bria clutched Maerea’s hand.

  Maerea put her other hand on the wall for support. A chill seeped into her from the stone. She forced a breath into her tight chest. “He came alone?”

  The commander shared a look with Bria. “My lady must stay in the keep.”

  Bria tugged on her hand. “Come back to the fireside, dove, and let the men see to the defenses while we start the spinning.”

  “Commander, did my brother give you orders about what to do if Lord Alcaeus arrived during his absence?” Gerrian never told Maerea anything these days.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  She waited.

  The commander sighed. “He gave orders to prepare for a siege, not…this.”

  “A siege is not what Lord Alcaeus has in mind. He wants to challenge Gerrian.” Another duel. Another chance she might lose her brother.

  “It would seem he knows my lord is not here, for he asked to speak with he who holds authority in Lord Gerrian’s absence.”

  “What? Then he has been watching us. He waited for Gerrian to leave and plans to take advantage of the situation.” She spoke with confidence, even as fear made her cold. “I must speak to him.”

  The commander moved to one side, blocking the door more completely. “My lord charged me with keeping you safe at all costs, my lady.”

  “Does Lord Alcaeus carry a bow?”

  The commander hesitated. “No, my lady.”

  She raised her brows. “Or any throwing weapon that can reach over the walls, do you suppose?”

  He sighed. “Nay.”

  “I will find out what he intends—from a secure position atop the gatehouse.”

  The commander bowed, but did not move aside. She waited, her hand still braced on the unyielding wall.