Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

The day after the arena, Hanako came to Maria alone. No veil trailed behind her. She wore black leather, not white lace. "You bent me to the ground," she said. "No one has done that. I want to understand you before the clans do." Maria studied her stepmother. In the arena they had been enemies. Now Hanako offered something else. "Then come with me," Maria said. "I want to see how the humans live. Away from all of this." They climbed to the tower's edge and leaped. Their bodies shrank in the cold air. Skin became fur, arms became wings. Two vampire bats beat upward into the night, small and swift. They flew for hours over black water. When lights rose on the far shore, Maria dropped low. A human city sprawled below, taller than any castle in Walachia. They landed in an alley and rose as women again. Maria wore red. Hanako wore black. They walked the loud streets and slipped into a club packed with dancing humans. Music shook the floor. No one knew what stood among them. For one night, Maria was not a legion commander. She was only a daughter beside her father's wife. "You said blood is loud and ice is quiet," Maria said over the noise. "You were wrong. They are the same art." She held up a glass of melting ice. "Water lives inside blood. You freeze the water. I move it. We reach for the same thing." Hanako watched the ice. "Show me." Maria reached toward a passing human's wrist. She felt the heartbeat pull toward her, off its rhythm. "Pulling a river by its throat," she said. She held the blood still, then released it. The human stumbled and laughed, never knowing. "Now you." Hanako touched Maria's own glass. Frost raced across the surface. The water inside hardened to solid ice. "The water in blood would freeze the same way," Hanako said. "I could stop a heart from the inside." Maria set the glass down. Her mind turned fast. "My undead legion rots. Flesh fails. But frozen blood does not curdle. It keeps." She gripped Hanako's arm. "If you freeze my blood reserves, they last. My army never spoils. I raise them whenever I choose." Hanako's clipped voice softened for once. "Then my ice serves your dead." She almost smiled. "Jiro trained us both. He never guessed we would join his arts." They flew home before dawn, two bats crossing the water side by side. Maria carried more than a night of dancing. She carried a partner and a plan. Ice would preserve her blood-army through the long war ahead. But when they landed, Maria felt it at once. Cold soldiers stood at her tower gate. Strange banners, strange eyes. A rival clan had come while she was away. The attack she had feared was already at her door.