The Vampire Prince's Toxic Consort (BL)

Lucius had never witnessed a murder before, even though Anthor and Eternia had been at war for years and had heard various versions of horror stories of how vampires butchered humans in horrendous ways, he never really saw it with his own eyes.

And last night though the vampires acted in various licentious and depraved ways, none of them killed any human slaves. Even when they drink, they will stop before their victims lose too much blood.

Therefore he was not prepared to handle the slaughter that happened over breakfast.

It all went well at first. The King was not present. Lady Devina and her two daughters were nice and courteous toward him. Silvan had been exceptionally charming and smiled at him in a way that would have made any experience social butterfly blush, which annoyed Dorian to no end.

The cook prepared all the food in human-food form. Biscuits and pancakes, smoothies and coffee...all made with the blood but less bloody, severing the association of the ingredient from its procuring method so the new human consort wouldn’t be startled. On top of that, they also prepared blood-free human food specifically for him.

Everything fell apart, though, when Lady Devina’s third child, Prince Archie, barged into the dining room like a hurricane and sat next to one of the princesses.

“Where have you been!” Lady Devina exclaimed, “your father asked where you were last night, and I didn’t know what to tell him!”

“I was busy,” said the youngest prince curtly. He was relatively unkempt compared to other princes and princesses and had a ruggedly handsome face and an impressively strong body, probably even taller than Dorian.

“Too busy for a royal wedding?” Dorian said calmly and coldly as he seeped blood from a wine glass.Content from NôvelDr(a)ma.Org.

Archie glanced at him and then moved his attention to Lucius. And his gaze had such raw, primal maliciousness and avarice that was completely different from the other princes and princesses. It was the gaze a wolf had while staring at a rabbit. Lucius genuinely thought he would lunge across the table and devour him alive, making his heart pound in alarm.

“The royal wedding of our Crown Prince and a piece of food. How romantic,”Archie jibed.

“Archie! Manage your tongue!” Lady Devina warned.

Lucius frowned and leered at Dorian. The latter didn’t show much emotion, but the temperature around him suddenly dropped several degrees.

So it seemed not everyone was on board with such an unusual marriage, and there was definitely some tension between Dorian and Lady Devina’s house.

Archie didn’t continue the squabble. He looked at the food on the table and scrunched his nose in disgust, “what is this garbage? I want some real food!”

The older princess Loretta berated, “For the love’s sake, Archie, stop making a fuss!”

“Just because we have a human sitting at the table, we all have to go vegetarian?“Archie retorted, turning to the footman, “Tell them to bring fresh meat.”

Lucius tensed up. He heard about the term “fresh meat,” which meant a human bred for “harvesting” purposes, just like how humans breed pigs to eat. And when vampires drink fresh meat, they rarely stop until the meat is dead.

Devina glanced at Dorian but didn’t stop her son, and Dorian maintained his straight face and also didn’t say anything.

Lucius goggled at the crown prince. Archie’s adamant about having fresh meat was an obvious act of taunting. An insult to the new Crown Prince Consort and, therefore, an insult to Dorian himself. How could someone as proud as Dorian just take it?

Soon a guard dragged a young man into the dining room. He barely passed twenty, trembling in terror like a trapped dear. And as he saw Archie, he began to whimper and cry piteously and muttered something under his shaky breath.

Archie yanked the chain connecting to the meat’s collar and let the young man fall helplessly into his lap. He then pulled the young man’s hair and slammed him onto the table. The meat yelped in pain and fear and cried even louder.

Archie grinned satisfactorily, and as he leaned closer to the young man, his gaze fixated on Lucius.

“Hmm, this one is an educated meat, probably a capture rather than a house breed. He is praying to your God,” The prince said sarcastically as he forced the young man to look in Lucius’s direction, “look, your High Priest is right there. Don’t you want him to give you the Last Rite?”

The young man widened his eyes as he recognized Lucius, probably mistaking him for Julian. And his eyes were brimmed with pleading and hope as if thinking Lucius could spare him from this fate.

“That’s enough!” Dorian finally opened his mouth, and every light and candle in the dining room dimmed simultaneously, “you can have your meat in silence!”

“And why is that? Don’t you want to give him some peace before he meets your lord, High Priest?”

As Dorian slowly stood up, the tension in the air was tautened as a sting about to break. The situation was going to escalate before Lucius suddenly said calmly, “It’s ok. Everyone has the right to their Last Rite.”

Dorian leered at him with mild surprise.

Before Lucius’s departure, several Arch Priests were sent to Rosenfield manor to teach him how to be a high priest, which included cramping four years of seminary curriculum into one week and intensely watching all footage of how Julian presided over various rituals and performing public services, imitating how he pronounced each word and practicing day and night until not even his parents could tell the differences. Lucius had never studied so hard in his life, and ironically the Arch Priests were impressed by how fast Lucius was able to pick up things, which was some kind of praise he was never able to obtain from their previous private tutors.

It turned out he was very good at pretending to be his brother. Sadly no one knew that Dorian had met Julian before and could identify his scent from miles away.

Lucius stood up, and his countenance was settled in an ineffable peaceful tenderness that would calm the most troubled souls. In an instant, he changed into another unearthly radiant being as he came around the table and walked up to Archie and the lamb about to be slaughtered, calm and determined as if nothing evil or dark in this world could touch him.

He stood in front of the poor man and gently touched his cheek with his left hand, “what is your name, my child?”

“Harvey Caldwell. I’m an Anthorian.”

Lucius nodded and used his right thumb to draw the Eye of God on the young man’s forehead, “may the Omniscient Lord of Love and Mercy guide you with the Light of Northern Star, wash off all your sins, pain and suffering, and receive your soul in his Land of Eternity.”

And then, following the standard prayer, he kneeled in front of the man, gently wiped away his tears, and said quietly, “I am sorry that I cannot save you, but fear not, for the Lord will take care of you, and soon you will be welcomed by all the loved ones you’ve lost in his paradise. There will be no more fear, and in no time, you will be drinking ambrosia and laughing with your kin and angels and reminiscent of all the good old times. Eventually, we will meet again in his lordship’s garden, and everything will be alright. Do you believe me?”

“Yes! Your Holiness! Please pray for me!”

Lucius cupped the young man’s head between his palms and said firmly, “look at me and believe in what I said.”

The young man clutched his hands desperately. Just as Lucius began to pray for him in Latin, a gush of warm blood abruptly splashed all over him. He was caught in surprise and tasted the metallic sweetness in his mouth, and some blood even got into his eyes.

Archie’s face transformed in a blink of an eye, and his fangs-filled mouth opened abnormally wide as he took a huge chunk of flesh off the poor man’s neck, exposing the gaping tubes, torn muscles and tendons. The man’s head almost fell off with only a bit of skin and flesh connected, and blood spewed like a fountain.

The young man’s body went into a violent spasm, albeit life had already left him, yet it was still confined in the vampire’s powerful grasp. And Archie just drank like a ravenous beast, sucking and gulping and tearing the main blood vessel open wider with his teeth.

Lucius’s mind was blank, petrified witnessing such aghast brutality. Archie paused for a moment and let out a satisfying sigh, and grinned at Lucius, “sorry, it was a bit too...prolix.”

Lucius didn’t know what to do or what to say. It was too much. He was still holding the man’s hand, but now it was only meat and bones.

It could have been him. He was no different from this young man in these monsters’ eyes.

But then someone took his hand, and he heard a deep voice reverberating in his head.

“Don’t look.”

Dorian was by his side, and then he was somewhere else. He didn’t remember what happened in between. Presently he was in a warm and cozy room, sitting on a sofa, and Dorian was handing him a clean towel.

Lucius blinked, “where are we?”

Dorian sighed and sat next to him, using the warm and damp towel to wipe the blood off his face, and his touch was surprisingly gentle, “we are in a drawing room. You were in a shock, so I took you here to clean up.”

Lucius then began to notice that he was shaking. He tried to stop it but couldn’t, as the body was reacting to a much more primal sensibility.

“Were you also a priest at some point?” Dorian asked as he tried to pick some blood clogs out of Lucius’s hair.

Lucius scoffed, “of course not.”

“You were just like him when you gave the Last Rite,” Dorian remarked. Lucius wasn’t sure if it was in his mind, but Dorian’s countenance was much softer than before as if he was looking at someone else through him.

Bitterness expanded in Lucius’s heart. Dorian was only nice to him because he was a good imitator of his brother. But then, again, what else was he expecting? Being his brother was his full-time job now, wasn’t it?

“Do you really think they will send someone who couldn’t even recite the Scripture?” He answered wryly.

“Do you believe in your God?”

“Nope,” Lucius answered without hesitation.

Dorian raised his brows, “And yet you gave that man a Last Rite?”

“It only matters what he believes. I couldn’t save him, and you were not going to. The best I could do for him is give him hope and die in peace.” Lucius paused for a moment, trying to contain a sudden rush of emotion, “but it was not so peaceful after all.”

“This is how many of the vampires eat. I can’t just forbid it because of you.” Dorian put down the towel and went to pour a glass of whisky, passing it to Lucius.

Lucius gulped down the whisky and let that warmth sink into his stomach. Feeling slightly calmed, he replied, “He was taunting you by humiliating me since I’m your consort, and you allowed it. Do you have a scruple about displeasing Lady Devina or what? Is she having power over you?”

“Been here for one day, and you have already tried to interpose in court intrigues. Tell me, did they instruct you to do anything else other than impersonate your brother?”

“I’m not a spy if that’s what you are asking. They didn’t have time to train me up for that.” Lucius rolled his eyes, “which would have at least given my life a bit more purpose.”

Dorian peered at him dubiously for a moment and decided to drop the conversation, “You can go back to our room and rest. I’m sure others will understand. But I suggest you do not go anywhere else without me. As you can tell, not everything will respect your status.” He then turned to the door and prepared to leave.

“Dorian,” Lucius called abruptly before he could dissuade himself, “I know you didn’t want me, but if you don’t want this war between humans and vampires as I surmised, we have to work together.”

Dorian’s step halted. However, he didn’t reply before he opened the door and left.