Dawit's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

For three nights Dawit carried the vial to Castle Dracul, and for three nights the guards turned him away. The court was choked with business. War councils. A truce with a human hunter. No steward would place a blood keeper before the throne. Dawit stood in the cold hall with the cure in his fist and felt it shrink to a rumor. Without the crown's word, his work was one keeper's boast. He needed an audience, and every door stayed shut. Crimson Prințesă found him there, red veil dragging over the stone. "You wait like a beggar," she said. "My father's court does not open for patience. It opens for pressure." She looked at the closed doors. "I can push a way in. But you will owe the one who does it." Before Dawit could answer, a woman in black lace crossed the hall. Countess Carmilla de Styria. Dawit knew her only by name, a newcomer clawing upward in Dracula's court, said to bend nobles with a word. She stopped close and studied the vial like she already owned it. "You have the substitute," Carmilla said. Not a question. "The blood that ends the hunt. And no one will hear you." She smiled without warmth. "I can seat you before Dracula's wife by dawn. I have her ear. She refuses me nothing." Dawit tightened his grip. "For what price?" "You speak my name at court," Carmilla said. "You name Styria as the house that carried your cure forward. That is all." Her red eyes did not blink. "Refuse, and you rot in this hall another week." Crimson Prințesă stepped between them. "He owes you nothing." The heartbeats in the hall lurched toward her, tugged off rhythm by her gift. Even Carmilla's pulse leaned. "I can open my father's door myself." "You can," Carmilla agreed, unmoved. "And you will spend your blood doing it. You have little left to spend." She had heard, then, how the princess drained herself. "I spend only words." Dawit weighed it. The princess was already hollowed out from refining the store. He would not bleed her further for a door. And a shut court killed the cure just as dead as poison. "Get me the audience," Dawit said. "I will speak your name." Carmilla nodded once and turned. "Come. She is awake now." By dawn Dawit knelt before Dracula's wife and poured the glowing vial into a reader. The needle climbed and held. The lady drank a single dose, and her face changed. "Richer than the hunt," she whispered. "We will feed Walachia on this." The crown had accepted the cure. Carmilla stood at the door as Dawit rose. She said nothing. She only watched him with the calm of someone who had gotten exactly what she planned. Dawit had won his audience. He did not yet know he had paid for it in a debt he could not see the shape of.