My heart lodged somewhere in my throat, next to the messy knot of emotion.
His gaze lifted and met mine. “Yes. Isbeth was the first to Ascend. Not your false King and Queen. She became the first vampry.”
Lies. Utter, unbelievable lies.
“Malec drank from her, only stopping once he felt her heart begin to fail, and then he shared his blood with her.” His head tilted, those golden eyes glittering. “Perhaps if your act of Ascension wasn’t so well guarded, the finer details would not come as a surprise to you.”
I started to sit up but remembered the wound and the fizzing liquid. “Ascension is a Blessing from the gods.”
He smirked. “It is far from that. More like an act that can either create near immortality or make nightmares come true. We Atlantians are born nearly mortal. And remain so until the Culling.”
“The Culling?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“It’s when we change.” His upper lip curled, and the tip of his tongue prodded a sharp canine. I knew this. It was in the history books. “The fangs appear, lengthening only when we feed, and we change in…other ways.”
“How?” Curiosity had seized me, and I figured that whatever I could learn would help if I managed to get out of this.
“That’s not important.” He reached for a cloth. “We may be harder to kill than the Ascended, but we can be killed,” he went on. I also knew that. Atlantians could be killed just like a Craven could. “We age slower than mortals, and if we take care, we can live for thousands of years.”
I wanted to point out everything was important, especially how Atlantians changed in other ways, but curiosity got the best of me. “How…how old are you?”
“Older than I look.”
“Hundreds of years older?” I asked.
“I was born after the war,” he answered. “I’ve seen two centuries come and go.”
Two centuries?
Gods…
“King Malec created the first vampry. They are…a part of all of us, but they are not like us. Daylight does not affect us. Not like it does the vampry. Tell me, which of the Ascended have you ever seen in the daylight?”
“They do not walk in the sun because the gods do not,” I answered. “That is how they honor them.”
“How convenient for them, then.” Hawke’s smirk turned smug. “Vamprys may be blessed with the closest possible thing to immortality, like us, but they cannot walk in daylight without their skin starting to decay. You want to kill an Ascended without getting your hands dirty? Lock them outside with no possible shelter. They’ll be dead before noon.”
That couldn’t be true. The Ascended chose not to go in the sun.
“They also need to feed, and by feed, I am talking about blood. They need to do so frequently to live, to prevent whatever mortal wounds or illnesses they suffered before they Ascended from returning. They cannot procreate, not after the Ascension, and many experience bloodlust when they feed, often killing mortals in the process.”
He dabbed the cloth along the wound, careful not to exert too much pressure as he soaked up the settled liquid. “Atlantians do not feed on mortals—”
“Whatever,” I snapped. “You expect me to truly believe that?”
His gaze lifted to mine. “Mortal blood offers us nothing of any real value because we were never mortal, Princess. Wolven don’t need to feed, but we do. We feed when we need to, on other Atlantians.”
I shook my head. How could he honestly expect me to believe that? Their treatment of mortals, how they virtually used them as cattle, is what drove the gods to abandon them, and for the mortal populace to revolt.
“We can use our blood to heal a mortal without turning them, something a vampry cannot do, but the most important difference is the creation of the Craven. An Atlantian has never created one. The vamprys have. And in case you haven’t been following along, the vamprys are what you know as the Ascended.”
“That’s a lie.” My hands balled uselessly at my sides.
“It is the truth.” Brows lowered in concentration as he peered down at the wound, he glanced up at me only when he laid the cloth aside. “A vampry cannot make another vampry. They cannot complete the Ascension. When they drain a mortal, they create a Craven.”
“What you’re saying makes no sense.”
“How does it not?”
“Because if any part of what you’re saying is true, then the Ascended are vamprys, and they cannot do the Ascension.” Anger burned through my chest, worse than the liquid he’d used to clean out my wound. “If that’s true, then how have they made other Ascended? Like my brother?”
His jaw hardened, eyes turning glacial. “Because it is not the Ascended who are giving the gift of life. They are using an Atlantian to do so.”
I coughed out a harsh laugh. “The Ascended would never work with an Atlantian.”
“Did I misspeak? I don’t believe I did. I said they are using an Atlantian. Not working with one.” He picked up a jar, screwing off the lid. “When King Malec’s peers discovered what he’d done, he lifted the laws that forbade the act of Ascending. As more vamprys were created, many were unable to control their bloodlust. They drained many of their victims, creating the pestilence known as the Craven, who swept across the kingdom like a plague. The Queen of Atlantia, Queen Eloana, tried to stop it. She made the act of Ascension forbidden once more and ordered all vamprys destroyed in an act to protect mankind.”
I watched as he dipped his hand into the jar and then set it aside. A thick, milky-white substance covered his long fingers. I recognized the smell. It was the same salve that had been used on me before. “Yarrow?”
He nodded. “Among other things that will help speed up your healing.”
“I can—” I jerked as the chilled ointment touched my skin. Hawke spread the mixture over my stomach, warming the balm and my flesh.
And then me.
My knuckles began to ache as an unwanted shiver of awareness skated over my skin. He betrayed you, I reminded myself. He played you. I hated him. I did. The knot in my throat expanded even as a heady flush swept through me.
Hawke seemed to be entirely focused on what he was doing, and that was a blessing. I didn’t want him to see how his touch affected me. “The vamprys revolted,” he said after scooping out more of the ointment. “That is what triggered the War of Two Kings. It was not mortals fighting back against cruel, inhuman Atlantians, but vamprys fighting back.”
My gaze flew from his hand to his face. Some of what he said felt familiar, but it was a twisted, darker version of what I knew to be true.
“The death toll from the war was not exaggerated. In fact, many people believe the numbers were far higher. We weren’t defeated, Princess. King Malec was overthrown, divorced, and exiled. Queen Eloana remarried, and the new King, Da’Neer, pulled their forces back, called their people home, and ended a war that was destroying this world.”
“And what happened to Malec and Isbeth?” I asked, even though I didn’t believe much of what he’d said.
“Your records say that Malec was defeated in battle, but the truth is, no one knows. He and his Mistress simply disappeared,” Hawke claimed, returning the lid to the jar. “The vamprys gained control of the remaining lands, anointing their own King and Queen, Jalara and Ileana, and renamed it the Kingdom of Solis. They called themselves the Ascended, used our gods, who’d long since gone to sleep, as a reason for why they became the way they did. In the hundreds of years that have passed since, they’ve managed to scrub the truth from history, that the vast majority of mortals actually fought alongside the Atlantians against the common threat of vamprys.”
I couldn’t even speak for what felt like an entire minute. “None of that sounds believable.”
“I imagine it is hard to believe that you belong to a society of murderous monsters, who take the third daughters and sons during the Rite to feed upon. And if they don’t drain them dry, they become—”
“What?” I gasped, my disbelief turning to anger. “You have spent this entire time telling me nothing but falsehoods, but now you’ve gone too far.”
Placing a clean bandage on the wound, he smoothed down the edges until it adhered to my skin. “I’ve told you nothing but the truth, as did the man who threw the Craven hand.”
I sat up, tugging down my shirt. “Are you claiming that those given in service to the gods are now Craven?”
“Why do you think the Temples are off-limits to anyone but the Ascended and those they control like the Priests and Priestesses?”
“Because they’re sacred places that even most Ascended don’t breach,” I argued.
“Have you seen one child that has been given over? Just one, Princess? Do you know anyone other than a Priest or Priestess or an Ascended who has claimed to have seen one? You’re smart. You know no one has,” he challenged. “That’s because most are dead before they even learn to speak.”
I opened my mouth.
“The vamprys need a food source, Princess, one that would not rouse suspicion. What better way than to convince an entire kingdom to hand over their children under the pretense of honoring the gods? They’ve created a religion around it, such that brothers will turn on brothers if any of them refuse to give away their child. They have fooled an entire kingdom, used the fear of what they have created against the people. And that’s not all. You ever think it’s strange how many young children die overnight from a mysterious blood disease? Like the Tulis family, who lost their first and second children to it? Not every Ascended can stick to a strict diet. Bloodlust for a vampry is a very real, common problem. They’re thieves in the night, stealing children, wives, and husbands.”