Blood Bound Read online

  “And Aeidan? What happened with him?”

  Zephyr gave her a sly smile. “I told him what I’d do to him if he ever touched you again. I’ve never seen a man run so fast.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him I’d crush his cock beneath my boot so he’d have no more use for brothels. I think he actually believed me, so I guess it must have been convincing. You should’ve seen his face.”

  “I wish I had.” Miria laughed as she settled back against her pillow, imagining Aeidan’s reaction. Zephyr’s size made him seem intimidating, but in reality, he was anything but. He was gentle and kind, and his threat sounded more like something Miria would say than words of his own. “How long was I out?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Did you carry me all the way home?”

  He nodded.

  “We were right in front of your place. Why didn’t you just take me there?”

  “You don’t live far.” Zephyr let out a nervous laugh. “And besides, I didn’t think you’d want to wake up in my bed. I wouldn’t want you thinking I took advantage of you.”

  Miria rolled her eyes. Zephyr was her friend—nothing more. He’d never be interested in her sharp cheekbones, angular face, and pale skin that looked sickly from the lack of sunlight. Her only good feature was her long, silver hair, which she usually kept tied back in a ponytail. She had none of Azalea’s beauty and none of her charm.

  It was a good thing she’d never wanted anything more than friendship from him. She was certain she’d find nothing but disappointment if she tried.

  “I’ll have to leave for work soon, but I didn’t want to leave until you woke up. I was worried about you.”

  “I’m sorry for making you worry. I shouldn’t have gone after him like that.” She rubbed her forehead in an attempt to soothe the dull ache that had only worsened since she’d fainted.

  “Yeah, well. You’re kind of an idiot,” he said, smiling as he continued running his fingers through her hair.

  “Maybe sometimes.” Miria laughed as she leaned into his chest and let him hold her close. She hated feeling so weak and vulnerable, but at least while she was in her friend’s arms, she was safe. “I can’t believe I passed out.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You had to give a blood offering today. You could take that scrawny asshole any other day,” Zephyr said.

  “You think?”

  “Definitely. You don’t have to be better than your opponent in a fair fight if you can make sure the fight isn’t fair in the first place. And that fight wasn’t fair.”

  “I’m so tired of them taking my blood,” Miria said. “We’re nothing but cattle to them.”

  “I’m tired, too,” Zephyr said. “But there’s not much we can do about it right now.”

  “We’ve talked about trying to escape before. If we can just make it to the surface, we can get the Viridian army to come free our people, and—”

  “Escape?” He shook his head. “We have no weapons, no plan. Trying to escape the city would be suicide. We’d never make it out.”

  “At least we’d die trying to do something that mattered.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m serious,” Miria said. “How have you been able to stand two hundred years down here? And Girard—he’s been here triple that.”

  Zephyr shrugged. “You just get used to it, I guess.”

  “Don’t you want to get back home? To the surface?”

  “Of course I do. I hate the vampires as much as you do. But you have to stay smart to stay alive. Someday, we’ll find a way out of here. Until then, I’m going to do what I can to stay safe. Just promise me you won’t do something stupid?”

  “Like getting drunk and trying to fight one of them?”

  Zephyr groaned. “Miria.”

  “What if I’m sober?” she asked.

  Zephyr shot her a glare out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t want to see you up on that cliffside.”

  “Then I’ll do my best not to be stupid.”

  She wished she were stronger, strong enough to eliminate all of the vampires who held her people captive. She wished she could escape with the people she loved. But the vampires were stronger. Faster. What could she ever hope to do against them?

  Maybe it was a stupid dream. But if she didn’t have hope that things would be better someday, she had nothing.

  Something caught Zephyr’s eye, and he reached over to pick up a piece of parchment from the bedside table. He turned it around to show Miria. “Azalea drew this?”

  Her own face, illustrated with painstaking attention to detail, stared back at her. “Yeah, that one’s from a week ago.”

  “I knew she was good, but this looks exactly like you.” He held it up next to her face for comparison. “Do you think she’d mind if I…”

  “Take it?” Miria finished his question and shrugged. “She has plenty of other drawings of me scattered around the apartment. I doubt she’d miss just one.”

  “She’s so skilled.”

  Miria smiled. “Yeah, she is. I’ve tried to convince her to rent a stall in the market to sell her illustrations, but she doesn’t think she’d be able to make as much money as she gets working at the brothel.”

  “Where did she learn to draw like this? This type of skill can take centuries to master.”

  “Her parents were musicians in the castle at Viridi. She grew up there and had access to all of the same teachers who worked with the children of the courtiers. We used to go to the Night Market together during the fall festival each year. I could hardly get her to take part in any of the fun. She was always too busy sketching.” A sad smile tugged at Miria’s lips as she recalled their childhood. Miria had always complained about Azalea’s constant sketching, but if she was being honest, she loved watching her friend draw.

  “She could’ve been a famous illustrator in the Viridian Court.” He carefully folded the parchment and pocketed it.

  “She could have been a lot of things before I allowed her future to be stolen from her.”

  “Don’t,” Zephyr said softly. “You were children when you were taken.”

  Miria pulled away from him and wrapped her arms around her knees. He was right, of course. It wasn’t her fault they were taken—not really. But if she hadn’t suggested they play alone in the woods outside the safety of the city, neither of them would have ever been brought to Terra Nocturne. Even if she could accept that it wasn’t her fault, she could never forget that it happened because of her choice.

  Which meant she was the one who had to find a way to fix it.

  Cries of pleasure escaped from an open window on the second floor at Madam Leone’s brothel. From the sounds of it, the rooms were full, meaning she wouldn’t be needed inside right away. Judging by the increasing frequency and pitch of the moans coming from above, she had about five minutes.

  At most.

  That would allow her five minutes of peace before getting her day started, at least. She slid down the brick wall in front of the building and leaned back against it, closing her eyes. The clock tower chimed out the hour. Still early, but that didn’t matter. No matter the time of day or night, there was always someone willing to pay for an escape. Even if it was only a fleeting one.

  Most days, she didn’t mind the work. Often, it was even enjoyable. But on days like this, when she had to deal with Aeidan and his like, Azalea wondered if what she earned was worth it. Her pay was a good deal more than what she’d earn if she worked as a bartender, like Miria, but the largest portion of her earnings went to Leone. It was her cut for running the house and keeping her girls safe, she’d told them.

  Azalea knew better. If she and the other girls were paid all of what they deserved, the Madam had to know they’d take their earnings and run off to the Second District, le
aving the brothel empty.

  With the profit Leone must have made running the house over the years, she could have probably paid the 5,000 gold fee to move to the Second District hundreds of times over. But Madam Leone, it seemed, had found her calling. She had no intentions of moving to the Second District. She was exactly where she wanted to be, and she kept her girls exactly where she wanted them to be, too. Between the Madam’s cut and the monthly costs of rent and food, it would take Azalea hundreds of years to save up the gold to buy her way into the Second District.

  And hundreds more after that to save up enough to bring Miria along with her.

  That meant hundreds more years of harassment from Aeidan and others like him.

  You chose this lifestyle, a scathing voice in her mind reminded her. You knew the type of attention it would bring.

  The patron exited the building soon after the cries from upstairs stopped. She smoothed back her disheveled hair and strode past Azalea without a second glance.

  Azalea rubbed her arm, still tender from where Aeidan grabbed her. Could she really keep this up for hundreds of years?

  “Azalea!” Leone’s sharp voice cracked through her thoughts like a whip. “What are you doing out here? I need you inside.”

  Azalea jumped to her feet and followed Leone in, then shut the door behind them.

  “We’ve got a gentleman waiting in the sitting room. Go keep him entertained while a room upstairs is cleaned up for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Azalea adjusted the bodice of her dress to push her breasts together more tightly and opened the door to the sitting room.

  Azalea didn’t recognize the man in the sitting room. She’d never seen him at the brothel before at all, let alone as one of her regular patrons.

  He startled to his feet as soon as she entered, wringing his hands. “Oh! Ah, you must be…”

  “Azalea,” she said with a sultry smile she’d practiced hundreds of times. “Why don’t you sit back down and relax?”

  “Right,” the man said. “Azalea…like the flower? That’s an interesting name to choose for your—”

  She climbed atop him, lifting her skirts to straddle his lap.

  “I just—ah—” His eyes flitted from her face, to her chest, finally settling on something across the room. Gods, he was nervous.

  She pressed a finger to his lips. “Just relax.”

  “Don’t you think we should maybe, I don’t know, get to know each other first?”

  Azalea unlaced the front of her bodice, letting her breasts spill out, her nipples on display through a thin, white undershirt.

  “Can—Can I touch?” the man stammered.

  Instead of answering, Azalea took his hand and guided it under the shirt and up to her chest. She was good at this job. Not because she was particularly great at sex, though she’d certainly picked up some tricks over the years. She was great at this job because she knew how to read the patrons and give them exactly what they came for, whatever that was. She’d learned how to push her own thoughts and desires aside to become whatever the patrons needed her to be.

  As long as she was with this man, she wasn’t the scared woman who’d been confronted in the streets earlier that morning. She was the living manifestation of this man’s desires.

  And clearly, he needed her to take control.

  She rocked her hips against his, grinding against the fabric of his pants, wondering if he was so inexperienced that even that would be enough to finish the job. Then she wouldn’t have to take his cock and pretend it was the best thing she’d ever had.

  Surely enough, it only took a few moments of her grinding on him before the man threw his head back and let out a moan.

  Before Azalea could gather her skirts and collect herself, the man’s relieved, satisfied expression morphed into fury. He shoved her off of him.

  “I shouldn’t have come here,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “My wife, she’s in the infirmary. She’s having health problems from working in the mines. They don’t think she has much longer. I just—I just wanted—”

  She’d misread him. Badly. He wasn’t nervous due to inexperience. He was nervous due to guilt. He sought out the brothel because he was looking for comfort, a connection. She could understand that.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly, reaching out to touch his arm for comfort. “We didn’t do anything—not really.”

  “Don’t touch me, whore.” He slapped her hand away and stumbled backward, tripping over the chair and falling to the ground. He scrambled back to his feet, eying her with revulsion, like she was nothing but trash he’d accidentally stepped in. “I should have never come to this filthy place.”

  Whore.

  It was a word she was used to hearing—it’s what she did for a living, after all. Usually, she was immune to the insult, could laugh it off. Logically, she knew he was just redirecting his disgust for himself back at her—she’d seen that plenty of times.

  But today, on a day she was already doubting herself, it stung. Hearing it from this man just reminded her of Aeidan saying the same thing earlier.

  Nothing but a worthless, dirty whore.

  That’s all she’d ever be if she stayed here.

  “I’m going to be sick.” The man clutched his stomach as he stormed out of the sitting room, leaving Azalea alone.

  Madam Leone appeared in the doorway moments later, looking furious. “What happened? He hadn’t even paid yet!”

  “I-I can’t do this today,” she stammered.

  Leone appraised her with narrowed eyes. “And why not?”

  Azalea reached down to pick up her discarded bodice from the floor. Leone’s compassion only stretched so far. She wouldn’t have any patience for Azalea’s feelings being hurt by being called a whore.

  But it wasn’t just that, was it? It was the weight of the truth behind it. It was the man’s revulsion, the way she sickened him for being who—or what—she was. It was knowing that she would have to suffer through this for so long before it would matter.

  “I’ve had pains,” she said finally. “My time of fertility has begun.” The lie would buy her a fortnight to recollect herself.

  Leone crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway. “Has it?” she asked, though it was more an accusation than a question. “Your last fertility cycle was five years ago. You shouldn’t see another for at least twice that.”

  “My last cycle was also my first. Maybe my body is still getting used to them.”

  Leone took Azalea by the hand and led her into the kitchen. The older woman gestured for her to take a seat at the table, then put a pot on the stove. While Leone flitted about the kitchen with a gentle, motherly grace, Azalea laced her bodice back up and collected herself.

  The pleasant aroma of Leone’s spiced tea filled the kitchen. It was her own recipe, one she’d never shared with the girls. Azalea suspected the real secret was that the spices she added weren’t available in the Third District at all, but she didn’t dare suggest as much in front of the Madam.

  “It’s kind of you to offer me something to drink, Madam, but I’d really rather go home to rest, if that would be all right.”

  Madam Leone leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. “I’ve been at this a long time. You’re not the first girl in my house who’s claimed fertility to get out of working. This is the only time I’ll allow you to get away with it. You can take a week to get your head right from whatever it is that’s ailing you, then I expect you back—and you’ll never try to pull this again. Is that clear?”

  “It’s clear. Thank you, Madam.” Heat rose in Azalea’s cheeks, and she looked down at the table.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  Leone poured a cup of tea and slid it in front of Azalea. “Drink that, then head on home.”
/>   After the Madam left her alone in the kitchen, Azalea sipped at the tea. A tingling sensation from the rich spices lingered in her mouth after each sip. The warm, pleasant drink calmed her nerves. Of course Madam Leone had seen right through her. The lie was flimsy enough on its own, and Azalea had never been a great liar.

  The kitchen door swung open again, and Azalea looked up, expecting to see Leone. Instead, Lilah stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  She poured herself a cup of the spiced tea. “Everything okay, Azalea?”

  “Did Leone send you to talk to me?” Azalea set her empty cup down and pushed it away.

  “Of course she did.” Lilah sat down across from Azalea. “She didn’t tell me why, though.”

  Azalea shrugged. “I’m just not feeling like myself lately, so I’m taking some time off.”

  “You didn’t try telling her you were on your fertility cycle, did you?”

  Azalea shot her a glare, and Lilah grinned back.

  “We’ve all tried that one. Never works.” Lilah leaned back in her chair and sipped at her tea. “Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind, or are we going to sit here in silence and pretend we chatted? I don’t mind either way.”

  Azalea ran her thumb along the smooth handle of her mug. Even if she preferred sitting in silence, she doubted Lilah would stand by her statement and accept it. “I’m just not sure I can handle hundreds of years of this before I can move on.”

  “I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years. Hasn’t bothered me any.” Lilah took a long sip of her drink, then set the mug down. “But it’s not for everyone. Is this still about how much you want to go to the Second District?”

  Azalea nodded.

  “The Madam would smack me if she heard me say this,” Lilah said, lowering her voice. “But you know there’s another way in, right?”

  “How?” Azalea whispered, matching her tone to Lilah’s.

  “Have you heard of the Blood Den in the Second District?”

  Azalea shook her head.

  “It’s a brothel. Similar enough to this one, except the patrons are all vamps, and they don’t go there just for the sex.” Lilah tapped a finger on her neck.