Married to the Vampire Prince

Chapter Seven

Grace

The week flew by as I settled into my new rhythm of being tutored at night and sleeping during the day. The lessons were hard, broaching many subjects I had no idea about. The teachers weren’t all patient with me either.

Lord Arthur had many unkind words for me whenever I didn’t provide the correct responses to the imagined social situations he presented to me. He let me know he thought I was useless and dim, and I was starting to believe him. I really rarely got the etiquette of the vampire court right.

Slowly but surely I was learning from him though, so maybe one day I really would be good enough to go out in public and not embarrass the royal family.

Playing the piano wasn’t easy either. Lord Noah never belittled me, but the disappointment in his eyes when I couldn’t even read the notes was real. I had never learned anything about music. I wondered if I would ever be able to play the instrument like I wasn’t completely tone deaf.

Embroidery hurt my fingers, as I pricked myself over and over again with the needle. Lady Ophelia had to hold a handkerchief against her nose so as not to smell my blood. My embroidery was wonky and not at all ladylike. If not for her snide comments, I would have enjoyed this task.

The fact that I was a princess and technically their superior didn’t matter; my tutors didn’t respect my position at all. I didn’t mind though. So far I had done nothing to earn my position. Considering that I hadn’t even seen Silas since our wedding night either, I was starting to wonder what my role in the court really was. Had my husband already grown tired of me? Had all the warm, fuzzy feelings I had felt towards him after he held me in his arms just been wasted on him?

I was a princess in name only, put in her place by her teachers and ignored by her husband. A joke.

Yet that humiliation only made me want to try to prove myself harder.

My favorite teacher was my history teacher, Lady Ruth. She always had a smile and encouraging words for me. She reminded me of my mother, even though, being a vampire, she was probably much older than Mom. She didn’t look a day beyond thirty though, yet she had an aura around her of maturity and worldliness. In that way, she reminded me of my husband too.

Why did I miss Silas? I barely knew him.

“It’s been twenty years since Rosworth attacked Estone. The war was won by Estone, but not before we suffered several losses. Rosworth’s and Estone’s forces were evenly matched in strength. Only when our commander, Prince Silas, joined the battlefield were the scales of war tipped in our country’s favor,” Lady Ruth said in her sweet, melodic voice – the kind a person could listen to all day.

The Rosworth-Estone war was a topic that interested me greatly. I had been barely two years old when the war had ended. My parents never spoke of the events much, but I got the impression that it was a period during which they had feared for their safety. Although the war had never reached the capital, located in the middle of our country, the bloodiness of the battles between vampires on the borders had still caused many everywhere to fear for their lives.

Rosworth didn’t treat their humans like Estone did. All Rosworth humans were obligated to donate blood to the vampires of that country. There weren’t any marriages with humans and little respect for the blood donors. Humans weren’t part of the vampire noble court as wives and husbands – they were nothing more than cattle for their rulers.

I didn’t want to live under Rosworth’s rule. That was why I was so grateful for peace; a peace that – as Lady Ruth said – had only been achieved by my husband’s brave actions.

I felt like I needed to know more about those events. If I had a better understandingof Silas’ experience during the war, would I grow closer to him or would I fear him more?

I needed to find out.

I gathered my bravery and asked Lady Ruth my question. “Can you tell me more about how Silas contributed to the war effort?”

“Certainly.” She gave me a warm smile. “As you know, the conflict made Lord Silas known as a war hero. For most of the war he led the forces as a commander, looking over maps and the battlefield to determine how to place our fighters to secure important victories. He lost some, won others, but during the battle of Reginold he realized that the forces of both sides were too evenly matched for a swift end of the war to ever come. Continued battles would only cause both sides to bleed themselves out.”

I nodded, listening intently to the story.

“The longer the war continued, the more vampires on both sides would die, and no one would come out victorious. Both sides would end up weakened considerably, which meant any other country could waltz into Rosworth or Estone and conquer us with ease.”

I nodded again. “And so many more people would have died. What a sad thought.”

“Yes, it is.” Lady Ruth’s smile disappeared. “Prince Silas thought for a while about what could be done to change the status quo. That was when he realized a strong vampire could become a one-man war machine. He was that vampire. So he turned over command of the forces to his friend and second-in-command Luke Carter, and then Silas went out onto the battlefield on his own.”

“Wasn’t that… scary?” My eyes widened.

“I’m sure it was,” she nodded. “But Lord Silas is like that – he always puts the welfare of his country first. Many of the enemy soldiers wanted him dead, as they knew who he was. More and more of them attacked him again and again, but he killed them all with a stake to the heart. He stayed on the battlefield, engaging in a killing spree for eight hours straight.”

I swallowed hard. The story was making me think of Silas the way the media had always painted him – as a cold, ruthless vampire, a war hero, a… murderer. Even if the murders he had committed had been during a time of war… he had still… killed countless numbers in cold blood.

That image of him and what I had seen of him during our night together just didn’t match up.

Any man could be passionate in bed though, could he not? What we shared…that act hadn’t been love-making, as I had thought earlier. He had just had sex with me; that was all. I had romanticized the act in my head because I wanted a warm relationship with Silas.

He was my husband after all, and husbands and wives were supposed to be in love.

No, I couldn’t fall in love with Silas because he would never love me back. A person so heartless, a cold ‘war machine’ – as Lady Ruth had called him, a vampire; that kind of man could never fall in love with a human such as myself. So if I loved my husband, I would only be setting myself up for heartbreak.

Lady Ruth continued telling me in more detail how Silas had ruthlessly murdered his enemies, and with each word my blood ran colder and colder.

This warrior was the true Silas, wasn’t he? Not the guy I had made up in my head.

Why, oh why, had I grown so attached to my husband in such a short time? Why had I so eagerly mistaken the passion he had shown me for true caring?

Was I really that lonely?

I wanted a harmonious relationship with my husband. I wanted to serve him as a blood donor, I wanted to stand by his side as the princess. Yet… I also longed for him to hold me again, to look at me with warmth, to treat me like I was precious. That fairytale wasn’t the true nature of our relationship though, was it?

A vampire-human marriage was about blood donation and societal standing, not about… love.

I was so stupid; stupid to have imagined Silas was someone other than his true, cruel-hearted self, stupid to have hoped I could have a human-like bond with a vampire.

This was an arranged marriage; we were of different species, and he was much older than me. We were too different. There had been so many warning signs, yet I had ignored them all.

I couldn’t turn back now though. I had married Silas, and now I had to become the princess everyone expected me to be. I would learn diligently and make sure not to embarrass the royal family. I would give my husband my ruby blood.

I would not long for more, though. Not anymore.

If Silas truly cared for me, he would have come to see me each day after my lessons were over, but for over a week he hadn’t visited me even once. Yet, here I was, missing him.

Ridiculous.

The thought that I had fallen for an imagined version of my husband stung, but no more.

I would focus on my lessons and close off my heart so that I wouldn’t get hurt. I would become the best princess I could be. At least then maybe Silas wouldn’t toss me aside or decide he didn’t need me after all if he ever grew bored of the taste of my blood.