The Gilded King (Sovereign, #1)

by Josie Jaffrey

‘Name’s Richard,’ Felix said as Cam helped him to his feet, one arm slung over Cam’s shoulder. ‘We call him Lestat though,’ Felix grinned, revealing a snapped premolar, ‘which he hates.’ Now Cam remembered him. ‘Wait… Lestat, who’s friends with Charles? That Lestat?’ ‘That’s him.’ It was Emmy’s nickname for him, because of some old book about vampires. Apparently he’d dressed and acted like a pretentious jerk. It gave Cam a perverse joy to know that the name had stuck.

Cam could hear his heartbeat in the brightening of the day, strong and regular. He could hear his breath, light and shallow with sleep, but otherwise just as it should be. Most of all, he could smell the nutmeg freshness of Felix’s skin as Cam cradled his head in his lap beside the fire, stroking his hair away from his forehead. And then, finally, when it was already late into the morning, Felix’s ice-blue eyes blinked open like a second dawn.

‘How many bottles do we have left in that bag?’ Cam asked. They’d had to take only the most essential supplies: two days’ worth of food, and all the blood. ‘Twenty,’ Felix said. ‘One water.’ ‘That’s all yours. Do you know this area at all?’ ‘Nope.’ Cam narrowed his eyes at him. ‘Fat lot of use you are. I’m literally carrying you on this mission. Remind me again why you’re here?’ Felix smiled. ‘You like having me

around.’ That had Cam blushing again, his eyes drifting to the ground as he cleared his throat. ‘Right, then we’ll follow the mountains south and try to pick up a scent. Anything else you know that might help?’ ‘They’d stay away from the caravan route if they didn’t want to be found.’ The bastard was still smiling. ‘Right. Uh. Right.’ ‘So,’ Felix said. The problem was that carrying Felix when he was awake was an entirely different proposition from carrying him when he was unconscious. The latter was one-sided, the former decidedly not. They’d be touching, and every point of contact Cam felt, Felix would feel too. The thought made Cam’s palms sweat, despite the cold. ‘Piggyback?’ he suggested, his voice too high. Felix just carried on smiling, so Cam

loaded him up with the bag of supplies in the hope that its weight might distract him from the tension. Unfortunately, Felix was stronger than he looked. Even with the bag, and even with his bruised ribs, he was still able to jump onto Cam’s back with the grace of a consummate climber. His limbs snaked ...

Rich and sweet, like dark chocolate, buried beneath the rest, but so desperately precious that he could have found it under a thousand other smells. He prowled until he located its source under the snow: a scrap of material the size of a coin, faded and pale, but loaded with scent. Emmy. She was here. He had found her.

‘I hate to ask,’ he said to Julia over his shoulder, ‘but I could probably use a little extra strength right now.’ ‘Where are the guards?’ Claudia said. ‘Isn’t it their job to protect us?’ Julia stretched her arm over Lucas’s shoulder to offer him her wrist, saying, ‘Take it.’ He groaned. ‘I really wish I had you alone right now, because in other circumstances–’ ‘Just hurry up and bite her!’ Claudia interrupted. His lips touched Julia’s skin like the softest kiss, but his teeth had her knees buckling, and not with pain. If she hadn’t been watching Marcus rolling to his feet at the edge of the roof with four more people following close behind, it might have been something she savoured. As it was, her arm was soon returned to her, the line of Lucas’s teeth imprinted in her flesh. The sight gave Julia an irrational kick of pride. She was his, and she didn’t mind.

‘No,’ she said to herself. She rooted around in the junk at the back of the shelter. ‘No what?’ Claudia said. ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘No, I’m not giving up. I’m not giving in without a fight, and I’m not letting him go.’ Her fingers closed around some bamboo stakes and a length of twine. With the addition of her pocket knife and a few judicious knots, it only took her a couple of minutes to build a makeshift pike. ‘You’re not going out there,’ Claudia said. ‘I am.’ ‘Well, then you’re not going out there without me.’ ‘Claud–’ ‘No.’ She grabbed her own fistful of bamboo and tied the tubes into a tight bundle, then looked over at Julia and nodded. ‘Alright then,’ she said. ‘Together.’ Julia took her hand. ‘I love you, Claud.’ ‘Don’t go getting soppy on me now, Jules. I’m a bit busy.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Laila replied, reaching into the folds of her tunic to pull out a handful of blood-stained vials. ‘Someone beat you to it. Whoever set the Weepers loose took the time to administer contaminated blood to some of our humans first. We think they might have been trying to vaccinate their own, to protect them from the Weeper virus.’ ‘Either that or they were hoping you wouldn’t notice that your Attendants were contaminated. You could’ve

ended up curing yourself when you drank from them. That would have been ironic.’ Laila looked down at the vials, rolling them in her fist. ‘Indeed.’ It was the pause before she answered that gave her away. If it hadn’t been for that, Cam wouldn’t have listened for the beat of her heart, or scented the air to find the humanity beneath the lingering shine of Silver. ‘Oh,’ he said. She put the vials back into her pocket, her eyes unfocused as she looked beyond Cam. ‘Do you remember what he used to say?’ she asked. ‘We are not moral creatures. He knew it, your Primus.’ ‘You can be loyal to someone without believing everything they say.’ ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘but I think he was right about that, if nothing else. I am not a moral creature, Cameron. I’m not sure I even remember how to be human.’ Cam almost gave in to the urge to comfort her, but after all she had done, she didn’t deserve his sympathy. ‘I expect you’ll work it out,’ he said, then he turned and left her there, sitting alone in the shell of her broken palace.

at his feet. He swung it over his shoulder. ‘So you don’t want to be Silver again?’ Her voice was soft, a whisper on the breeze, but the words were so heavy that even Felix’s human hearing had no trouble picking them up. ‘We’re close,’ she said. ‘We can do it, as long as we have her.’ He paused for a moment, then dropped the bag back to the ground. ‘What do you need me to do?’

A finger twitched. When he opened his ice-blue eyes, they were threaded with gold.