Death Song (Tales from the Tarot)

Prologue

Rome, 70CE

Rex

B lood.

I was born into it, remade into what I am today because of it, and now, I suffer for it.

Stepping forward, I toss the head of the vampire sent to kill me to the cold ground, the thunk of skull crashing over stone the only sound save for the pained cries that now meet my ears. I leave the wretched body clad in the armor of the newly crowned Lord Nikandros behind as I race towards the garden, praying to the ancient ones that I am wrong.

I have to be wrong.

But I am not.

Marius, my beautiful, innocent singer of songs lays on the cold ground, nestled among the red roses and blue chicory he loves so very much. He clutches his side, and as I rush to his aid, I can see his precious blood spilling over his clenched fingers. I kneel beside him as his eyes meet mine, blood trickling down his chin to water his garden as his life seeps out of him.

“My love,” I whisper, pulling up the sleeve of my tunic to reveal my own skin.

“I am dying,” Marius whispers back, already sounding like he’s slipping away. “I am dying, Rex.”

“You cannot.” He will not. I have blood that can heal him, as it has done for me over the course of many battles. I sink my fangs into my own skin, tearing my forearm open so that what runs through my veins can trickle into his wounds and repair what is broken inside.

Then he moves his hands away from the wound and my despair grows. This hole that’s been punched in his chest is deep and raw, ragged at the edges. I can hear his lungs sucking at the air as Marius wheezes, blood bubbling in the wound that goes through his rib cage. Claws, I know, tore him wide open, and I curse myself for not being more alert knowing he was out here tending to his flowers.

“I can heal it,” I say, holding my torn open arm over the hole in the side of his chest.

“My love,” Marius mumbles, coughing on the blood pooling in his throat. His red spittle flies from his lips, spattering my clothing, and my heart aches. I squeeze my arm, dropping my blood into his wound, watching as the edges start stitching themselves together again, but it’s too slow.

Far too slow.

What I have is not enough to give to heal all that is torn apart inside of him, but I will keep trying. I tear a bit more of my skin away from my muscle to let even more of my blood seep from my body and raise it above his wound again, begging it to work.

“Stop, it is too much,” Marius says, coughing up more bloody spittle. He moves his hands to press on the hole in his side, blocking my work.

“Marius, let me save you. Please. Please let me save you.” He can have all of it. Every droplet that is inside me is for him.

“And kill you in return?” he whispers, voice hoarse and lungs wheezing. “No, I won’t have you do this. I am dying, Rex.”

“Let me turn you then. Become one of my kin and you will heal yourself.” It may be too late for that as well, but I will try. I must try.

Since the moment I first sighted the copper-haired human tucked into the corner of the throne room, I have loved him. He’d been among a traveling troupe of performers and artists seeking refuge in a storm. Taking pity on their misfortune, I had demanded a sole boon in exchange for bed and food, as was my right. Their payment for a night’s lodging was a song, sung by the most beautiful voice they had among them.

My Marius, the songbird, stepped forward, and I found myself utterly lost in his voice.

I’m still lost in him a year later, the rest of the troupe having moved on, leaving him behind in my bed and my heart. Marius learned the secrets of the hidden vampire world they’d stumbled upon and had kept fealty to me even when the rest of the court—who once called me their beloved king—turned on me in favor of my brother Nikandros and his cult of madmen.

And I have repaid him by bringing danger to the one place he was supposed to be safe. This place that is just ours, with the cottage I built with my own hands and the garden he tends with his.

For so long, we had wanted to escape from the malice that was slowly overtaking the Bloodrend Court at the hands of my brother, and when the chance to run came, we bolted like rabbits into the silent night.

We were supposed to be forgotten, and I foolishly believed we had been until the feral vampire with the blackened soul came to the borders of our home, seeking me as a prize.

It was not meant to be this. It was not meant to be the end.

“This was supposed to be our time,” I whisper, as Marius reaches a hand towards me. I grab his fingers in mine, cradling his hand against my lips. “Please, let me turn you.”

“It is too late, little king. You know it is too late.”

“Why didn’t you let me turn you sooner, Marius?” I had offered many times to gift him with eternal life. To have him become a vampire like myself and like the rest of the souls in Springhollow where the Bloodrend Court holds the throne. That he did not allow this was a point of contention between us, but his mortality was something he had long become accustomed to, and he was loathe to live eternally.

“All men must live and in living they must die,” he whispers, his eyes starting to close. A phrase he often repeated that now seems vile and cruel coming from between his bloodstained lips. Foolish and wrong. I can feel my anger soaring forward inside me, mixing with the mourning for him that has already begun in the depths of my marrow.

I am meant for him.

He is meant for me.

“You can’t leave me. I cannot go on without you. You are my everything, Marius.”

Marius coughs, his eyes sliding closed as his lungs heave and pitch beneath his hand. “Sing for me, Rex. Sing me into the next life.”

“Marius, I—”

“Sing me a song,” he asks, cutting me off. “Please, let me have peace. It hurts to die, my love. Ease this pain with a song.”

“I don’t have the words for it,” I respond, throat thick with grief as I watch the one I have sworn to love until the end of my days die.

“Try. Sing me the moon and the stars and everything in between, my love.”

I hesitate a moment, watching as his skin turns pale, his copper locks mixing with the blood pooling on the dirt beneath him. His hand, once pressing against the wound is simply laying there now atop his shallow breaths. I cannot make sense of this, this death, this dying he is currently doing, and I can’t seem to make this request of his come from my own voice.

But then his breath falters, and I open my mouth, letting the sounds of mourning flow through me like a river, unwilling to let him die in nothing but pain. Tears stream from my eyes as I sing a song of mourning, my heart dying inside my chest as Marius moves towards his own death. I grasp his hand in mine, his fingers growing colder by the minute, his life moving through my lips as I sing of his love of music and his favorite blue flowers. I sing of how he loves honey cakes and figs, and how he once befriended a raven that sang with him in the gardens in the waning hours of the day.

I sing.

And sing.

Until there is nothing left but my own sorrow sitting in the garden with me.