Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 1 of 10

The Crimson Prințesă knelt over a dead wolf and reached for its blood. She was Maria Tepes II, daughter of Dracula, the first blood bender in the world. She wanted one thing: to raise a legion of dead warriors and command them. But she could lift only one beast at a time. The moonlight in her ruby headdress ran out too fast. The headdress warmed against her skin. Golden chains swayed at her cheeks. She pulled the stored light into the wolf. Its ribs jerked. Its dead eyes glowed. Then the light in her rubies dimmed, and the second wolf beside it stayed still. Around her, the floor of the Hall of Monsters held eight more corpses. Beasts her father's hunters had killed. All of them useless to her now. "One," she said. "Always one. The reserve empties before I finish." A voice answered from the arched doorway. "You are still borrowing." Maria turned. Her mother crossed the stone floor, a three-mile veil dragging behind her. The Mother, Ioana Tepes, Queen of the Strigoi Vii witches. She had taught Maria to feed her magic from the headdress instead of her own life. Maria loved her and feared her in equal measure. The witches who feared nothing feared this woman. "You gave me this method," Maria said. "It has a wall." "The wall is you." The Mother stopped above the wolves. She did not raise her voice. "You pull light out of the stone and push it into one body. Stop pushing. Pull instead." Maria frowned. "Pull what?" "The blood is already there. In every dead thing in this room. You have been begging the moon for power. Take theirs." Maria looked at the eight corpses. She had never reached for their blood directly. She had only ever fed it. Her mother's words turned something over inside her. She pressed both hands to the cold stone. She did not open the headdress. Instead she opened herself to the room. She felt every drop of dead blood in every beast at once. Then she pulled. The corpses shuddered. Blood tore loose from them in ribbons and rose into the air. It did not fall. It hung, red and shining, circling her like a storm she had made. The rubies at her cheeks flared brighter than before, feeding on the flood. This was not borrowing. This was true blood bending. Maria opened her hands. The blood struck the beasts and poured back in. All eight rose together. Ten dead throats snarled at once. They stood in a ring, waiting for her word. She swayed. Her nose bled. Ten beasts drank more than she had planned to spend, and the room spun. The Mother watched the pack with cold eyes. "Now you can raise them. Now they will kill you if you cannot hold them." The wolves turned their glowing eyes on Maria and stepped closer.