Ali Gamal's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

A week after the market woke to daylight, Dracula summoned Ali to Castle Dracul. Ali climbed the stone stairs past the winged gargoyles. His work had freed the kingdom, yet the chain to the White Domnitor still bound every stone. He needed his own source of the light. But first, his sire wanted to see him. Dracula stood beneath a glass dome. Sunlight poured through it and did not burn him. He wore a moonstone at his throat, coated in the hated blood-light Ali had made. The gold dragon gleamed on his chest. "You are the hero of Walachia," Dracula said. He turned into the light on purpose. "I walked in the sun this morning for the first time in five hundred years. A king owes his hero a prize." Ali bowed his head. "Your freedom is prize enough, my lord." "No," Dracula said. "A gift that costs nothing is no gift." He faced Ali fully. "I offer you my daughter Maria. Marry her. Bind your blood to mine." Ali went still. He knew the girl's heart already belonged to another, to Dawit. To take her would break two people and win him nothing but a wife who hated him. He would not build his future on a chain, as he had built the daylight on one. "My lord," Ali said. "Your daughter loves Dawit. I will not stand between them." He drew a breath. "There is another I would ask for. Carmilla de Styria." The name changed the room. From the shadow of a pillar, Carmilla stepped forward into the sunlight. She had been listening the whole time. She wore black lace and did not blink at the glare. She had promised to help him find his own source of light. Now she had found something better. "Countess," Dracula said. "You knew of this." "I did." She did not soften it. Her red eyes moved to Ali, then to the king. "He speaks my name first. That was our bargain." Ali understood then. She had steered him here. A marriage to the hero of Walachia gave her a seat beside the throne, a foothold to raise her own clan in Styria. He had thought he was choosing. She had chosen for him. Dracula studied them both. He weighed the countess against his daughter, the ambition against the peace it bought him. Then he nodded once. "Granted," he said. "You will wed the countess. My daughter keeps her Dawit. Walachia gains its hero and a new house both." He raised a glass toward the dome. "Let the kingdom feast in daylight." Carmilla took Ali's arm. Her nails rested light against his robe. "Now," she said, low, "we build a clan. And your daylight belongs to us, not to a half-witch who bleeds for it." Ali had won free of Maria's fate. But he saw his true chain now. He had bound himself to Carmilla, and she meant to own the sun.