Filed to story: The Vampire Prince’s Bride
But if I decided not to do this, I knew what I would regret as I lay old and dying in my bed-I would regret not seizing this opportunity. Of being too scared to take a chance.
I refused to let myself live with regret. Therefore, I would pay the first, small price of the fae. And then, when I learned of their larger price, I would make my decision then and there.
“I wish to learn how to summon the fae,” I told Laila, holding my chin high as I spoke and trying to keep myself from shaking. After all, I wasn’t yet committing to paying their price. I was simply learning what to do if it came to it. “Tell me what I must do.”
She smiled, sat me down, and told me everything.
Scarlett
I paced around the cave, holding the flashlight, and checked my watch. Geneva had been gone for hours. What on Earth could she be getting up to?
She’d already teleported to Camelia’s room and stolen the Omniscient Crystal-it now sat with the rest of the original pieces on a table nearby. This time around, she’d left to find the human whose identity I would be “stealing.” All she needed were strands of the human’s hair. Then she could do her witchy magic voodoo thing, create the potion that would turn me into a vampire princess, and we would be ready to go.
What could be taking her so long? I bit my lower lip, worried. Geneva was supposedly the most powerful witch in the world. I didn’t want to think she could have run into trouble on the first task I sent her on, but I couldn’t deny the possibility. While she was powerful, she wasn’t immortal.
And if she didn’t return, it wouldn’t be long until I died in this cave.
Just when I was beginning to worry that this had all been a giant trick and Geneva had abandoned me to die, she appeared in front of me. Her hair was disheveled, but other than that, she looked unharmed.
I stopped pacing and let out a breath of relief. “You made it,” I said, lowering my arms back down to my sides.
“Of course I made it.” She straightened and showed me something she’d been hiding behind her back-a vial of blood. “And I bring the first dose of the potion you requested.”
“The transformation spell has been put in it too?” I asked.
“Yes.” She huffed, as if annoyed that I’d doubted her, and ran a hand through her hair to attempt to straighten it out.
“What does the girl look like?” I brushed a hand against my cheek, still weirded out with the knowledge that once I took the potion, I would no longer look like myself.
As long as I continued taking the potion, I would be considered dead to everyone who knew I’d existed.
“You’ll find out after you take the potion,” she said. “I trust you’ll be happy with my selection. If not, we’ll work it out. But first… we must discuss your story.”
“My story?” I backed away, disappointed. After being trapped in this cave for so long, I was ready to get going. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t walk into the palace of the Vale as a rogue vampire princess and not be ready with a story,” she said. “There are six known vampire kingdoms-five if you don’t count the Vale. You’ll be expected to come from one of them.”
“Right,” I said, although to be honest, I hadn’t given it any thought. I’d been too worried that Geneva would never return to think about what sort of story I would tell the vampires of the Vale. But now that Geneva had brought it up, I saw the problem. Because all vampire princesses were turned by an original vampire-and surely the original vampires would all be aware that they hadn’t turned me. “Will I claim that one of the original vampires turned me without realizing it?” I asked. “And that I’ve been on my own since then?”
“That’ll never work,” Geneva said. “A vampire can’t turn someone into a vampire without realizing it.”
“So then you’ll use your magic to make one of the original vampires think they turned me,” I said quickly. “You can do that, correct?”
“Perhaps, although that has the possibility to get quite messy.” She nodded slowly, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “So I had a better idea…”
“Go ahead.” I motioned for her to continue, since I obviously wasn’t going anywhere.
“You’re going to say you’re from the SeventhKingdom.”
“What?” I did a double take. Geneva had told me details about the other five kingdoms, but she’d never mentioned a Seventh Kingdom. “Where’s the SeventhKingdom?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “No one knows. No one’s even sure if it exists.”
“So you want me to say I’m from a non-existent kingdom.” I rolled my eyes. “I think I liked my plan better.”
“It’s not non-existent,” she said. “It’s mythical. There’s a difference.”
“Sounds the same to me.”
“Supernaturals around the world have whispered about the existence of the Seventh Kingdom since before I was born,” she said. “No one knows where it’s located, or how to find it, but there’s enough talk about it that it’s believed to truly exist.”
“And does it?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “
Exist?”
“I cannot say,” she admitted with a shrug. “I’ve never been there or met anyone who has.”
“Sounds like an urban legend to me,” I said, although I couldn’t help but wonder. Because before being kidnapped to the Vale, I’d believed that vampires, shifters, and witches were urban legends as well. Now I knew they were real.
Why couldn’t it be the same with this SeventhKingdom?
“You look like you’re second guessing that statement,” Geneva observed.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But even if I do say I’m from the Seventh Kingdom, how will I know what to say the Seventh Kingdom is like? Am I supposed to make it up?”
“That’s the beauty of this plan,” Geneva told me. “Because if the Seventh Kingdom exists-which for our sake, let’s say it does-the details about it are extremely secret. Clearly, as a princess from the Seventh Kingdom, you’ll want to keep its secrets.”
“So I’ll say… nothing?” I asked.
“Precisely,” she said. “You also can’t call yourself Scarlett. The name is too unique. Instead, I was thinking you would go by Princess Ana. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Princess Ana,” I said, testing saying it out loud. It did sound nice. And claiming that I had to keep everything about the Seventh Kingdom secret would certainly stop me from being caught in the lie.
Except…