Page 3 of Ravenous

A trio of intoxicated nobles stumbled past—flushed, drunk on spells,laughing as they headed for another endless revel. Their bows were lazy, mocking.

She inclined her head with equal disdain. Would they be down in the crypt with her? She grew even queasier.

When they veered down a side hall, Lia asked softly, “Did you hear anything from inside the court just now?”

Nadje’s auburn brows furrowed. “Only bits. Nothing that made sense.” Her accent, rough and musical, still carried the cadence of the Badlands, a postapocalyptic wasteland on the outskirts of Bloodreach.

Lia knew little of her past beyond rumor: a survivor, risen from filth and famine to serve a princess. Her hazel eyes showed no signs of bloodlust, though she’d admitted to obeying her prey drive on occasion, feeding lightly and never to the death.

Lia exhaled. “Whenever my family is given a choice between good and evil, they always choose evil.”

Nadje hesitated, then whispered, “Yes.” Even that small admission felt dangerous in these halls. The torches hissed, as though they’d heard.

“We’re the wrong ones,” Lia murmured. Then, searching Nadje’s clear gaze: “Can I trust you?”

“With your life,” she answered, tone low and earnest.

“I’m going to trust you with far more than that. But you mustn’t tell another soul.”

“I will never repeat anything you tell me.”

Lia eyed her rough-around-the-edges servant. Had her father or another faction installed Nadje as one of their agents? Why else would someone lacking in decorum be assigned to a royal?

What a gamble trusting her would be!

Nadje laid her hand on Lia’s arm, an impertinence. “Never, my princess.”

Chapter 2Inkletter Scribe Xii

Crypt Castle, servants’ level

“I’ll tell you anything. Anything! JUST—DON’T—STOP.”

Ink stared down in detachment at the mindless vampire he was fucking. Nadje. His latest mark.

He moved with mechanical precision, his mind far from her flushed, vacant face and heaving breasts. This dolt was a mouth breather. And nothing was so unattractive as a befanged, mouth-breathing vampire.

Wet gasps through fangs. He stifled a shudder.

But his job as a spy often forced him to do things—and beings—he’d rather not do. Ink had danced rings around her before he’d even unsheathed his most persuasive instrument: his gorgeous cock, which was nearly a foot of madness-making flesh.

“More, incubus!” she cried, pale limbs twisting against his ebony skin. When he’d first begun his seduction, she’d twirled her dark red hair and asked, “Do they call you Ink because your skin’s so black?”

Vapid dullard. She had no idea the name Inkletter carried twelve generations of scholars—historians who’d chronicled the Ubus Peoples and all the Lore before the Exile from Gaia.

She moaned, mind fogged, body moving on instinct alone as she struggled to steal the relief he cruelly withheld. To wrap her nether lips around the base and root him fully within.

Her copious arousal drenched his shaft, glistening along the veins. He frowned inwardly.Harder than usual. And we have hours yet to go.

The servants’ level around them was a bruise of damp stone and stale heat, the air clogged with bloodroot incense. He would have liked her own scent to season his incubus meal, but that smoke smothered everything, even down here. Thick enough to blind the gods.

One level below them, the weavers’ looms made a ceaseless hum—warp and weft, warp and weft. Every vibration traveled through the floorboards and into Nadje’s bed frame, making the whole wretched room shiver as if the castle itself had a pulse.

Despise this place.

“Please,” Nadje whimpered. “Incubus,please!”

“Not quite, little flame,” he murmured, and she shuddered at the endearment, as predictable as gravity. “Not quite.”