Dust motes drifted lazily across the stone flags of the royal courtyard as Hunter planted his heavy boots against the paving stones. He did not look at me when he dropped a heavy canvas sack onto the low stone bench between us. The fabric clinked with the unmistakable chime of thick glass vials knocking together. I wiped my hands on my apron, staring down at the bulge of the bag with a cold knot tightening behind my ribs.
“What is that,” I said, my voice dropping into that flat, absolute tone I usually reserved for rule-breakers. “I told you to bring him straight up the stairs, not take him on a grand tour of the catacombs.”
“We didn't take a tour,” Hunter grunted, crossing his arms over his tailored black coat while Levin stood quietly behind him, looking entirely unbothered. “On our way through the lower tunnels, we passed the storage shelves and planed a new conduit fern. The lad wanted to see if the formula scaled properly under pressure. So we stopped and filled every spare crate we had.”
Levin offered a small, polite nod, the scent of spring meadows cutting sharply through the stale, underground dampness of the domain. His long light green hair was tied back with a simple strip of woven silver thread, and he looked far too relaxed for someone standing before an absolute monarch who hated being disobeyed. “The conduit is more stable than you think, Your Majesty,” Levin said, his tone infuriatingly calm. “It takes less than three minutes to draw a full batch once the roots catch the light.”
Before I could demand an explanation for his casual use of my royal title in front of my personal guard, a heavy hand clapped down on Hunter's shoulder. It belonged to Barnaby, the captain of the western gate guard, whose broad shoulders and scarred jaw usually signalled some impending disciplinary crisis. Barnaby ignored me entirely, staring instead at the elf with a wide, blinding grin that showed far too many sharp teeth. “If this little green-haired wizard can keep the kegs full without draining a single dairy cow or wandering tourist, then the laws need rewriting,” Barnaby bellowed, his voice echoing off the high stone arches. “In fact, I say we make it official. This elf kept us fed when the council was starving us out. I move we make him king.”
A low murmur of enthusiastic agreement rippled through the half-dozen guards lounging near the courtyard entrance. Several of them banged the pommets of their daggers against their breastplates in a crude salute that made my face burn hot. A public proposal delivered by a sweating vampire lieutenant was not something my rulebook had ever prepared me to handle. I opened my mouth to silence them, but the words stuck in my throat as Barnaby stepped closer to Levin and clapped him on the back with enough force to rattle a normal man's teeth.
“Think about it,” Barnaby laughed, gesturing toward the delicate elf with a meaty hand. “A queen needs a consort who knows his way around a greenhouse. Saves us all a lot of paperwork.”
“That is quite enough,” I snapped, my cheeks burning with a heat that had nothing to do with royal dignity and everything to do with the way Levin was currently looking at me. I turned sharply on my heel, my velvet hem sweeping the dusty flags as I marched toward the main distribution arches. “If you two have been playing chemist with my kingdom's supply, I am going to see the damage with my own eyes.”
The vaulted gallery smelled of sweet yeast, damp earth, and the metallic tang of pure, untainted magic. Dozens of commoner vampires were crowded around the long wooden trestle tables where the crates of endless blood bottles had been deposited. There was no shoving or snarling today, just the low, sociable hum of a marketplace on a sunny afternoon. A young vampire woman with ink-stained fingers held up a glowing amber vial to the torchlight, watching the suspended flecks of golden fern seed swirl lazily inside. She uncorked it with her thumb, took a cautious sip, and let out a long, shuddering sigh of pure relief.
“It actually holds,” she whispered to her companion, a gaunt fellow who looked like he hadn't slept in a century. “No headache. No burning in the chest.”
“I told you the elf knew what he was doing,” a familiar voice muttered from behind a stack of empty crates. Eunice stepped out, wiping her hands on a rag, looking far too pleased with herself. “He didn't just copy the formula. He tuned it so it responds to our heartbeats instead of rotting in the dark. We've processed over three hundred bottles since midnight.”
I ignored the clerk and stepped right up to the front of the table where an energetic cluster of guards had cornered a younger vampire from the northern delegation. The atmosphere was light, almost festive, which felt entirely wrong for a court built on fear and strict midnight curfews. One of the younger guards, a freckled boy who had barely earned his fangs, was leaning across the cedar boards to interrogate a visiting merchant from the human districts.