The closer she got to the fortress, the harder it became for Laurel to hope she'd find a warm welcome there. The structure was impressively built, especially by the standards of this land, where every other structure seemed to be a ruin, an earthwork or formed from dreams. Its walls, however, were lined with skeletons and rotting corpses, some of which seemed to writhe as though not quite dead.

  'Not what you were expecting?' Aila teased, already knowing the answer. Everything Laurel had read implied that the dreamling tribes were the last vestiges of humanity beyond the wall, but so far they seemed savage and monstrous. 'Only monsters can survive here, Laurel. Only beings as powerful as you have the luxury of showing restraint or mercy.'

  Laurel understood her point but chose to hold onto the barest thread of hope. The dhampir lord hovering above the settlement must've seen them approach but he did not stir. They were, by now, in his shadow and Laurel had become more and more certain that he would not embrace her as his kin.

  'Most likely, he will see as a threat and eat you,' Aila said, her tone still darkly playful. 'Anyway, be sure to tell the guards that I'm your prisoner. Otherwise, they'll shoot me on sight.'

  The dreamling guards were not as well-armoured as the elf soldiers she'd fought but they wore thick layers of wool. They aimed their crossbows at the two of them before they got anywhere near the gatehouse and Laurel raised her hands in surrender. 'Greetings,' she called, amplifying her voice, 'I am Laurel Blackheart, King Julian's daughter and a dhampir. This elf woman is my prisoner, and I have come in peace. I wish to visit this settlement and meet its people.'

  'If you are a dhampir, our lord will want to speak with you,' one of them, older and gruffer than the others, likely their captain, called back to her, 'be warned, though. If you are lying, he will tear your head from your shoulders.'

  Laurel was not expected to reply and they raised the gate for her and her prisoner. 'I wonder if they'll let me leave once this lord of theirs has drained you dry,' Aila said, as they passed through.

  'Go to the temple,' the guard captain said, gesturing to a ziggurat structure in the centre of the town, 'at sunset, our lord will descend for a short time to hear from the grand priestess. She will pass along the news that you are here, though he'll be able to sense you if you truly are a dhampir.' Laurel nodded at that and they made their way to the temple. She took in as much of the town as she could along the way, carefully observing its people. Apart from the climate and the glowing red eyes of its inhabitants, it was not too different from some of the towns she'd visited back home. There were market stalls, though the meats they sold were blacker and furrier than normal. There were children playing in the streets, old women walking slowly here and there, distinct sounds from smithies and stables. The horses here were nightmares, wreathed in flame, all with the temperament of a particularly wilful stallion, but the dreamlings here had still managed to maintain a small cavalry force.

  Aila noticed how impressed she was. 'I'll admit, there's some charm to the less savage of the dreamlings but this is quite incomparable to the elvish kingdom. We have millions of soldiers and we do not have to subsist on gremlin jerky.' She laughed, 'I think you want to believe that dreamlings are the future because it's a version of the world you feel you belong to, the union of the dreaming and the waking worlds.'

  'What do elves subsist on?' She'd read that they were vegetarian and Aila herself had eaten only plant matter whilst they'd travelled together.

  'Fruits and vegetables, for the common folk. Us nobles get to feed on fear. We have dreamlings to torture and terrify and luckiest of us even receive a rare human treat.' Once she noticed Laurel's thoughts wander there, she clarified. 'We don't often kill them. In fact, it's a great crime to kill a slave, no matter how enjoyable the meal. They belong to the state, and are a privilege that can be withdrawn at any time. Persistent offenders are banned from keeping slaves.' She smiled as a pleasant memory washed over her. 'My brother, Aimon, he can't help himself. He murders them whenever he's given them. Always says he won't, of course, but father's patience has grown thin over the years. Now, he's lucky to go less than ten years between slaves.'

  Unable and unwilling to respond to that, Laurel spent the rest of the journey in silence, which seemed to suit the elf just fine. The grand priestess, when they finally made their way up to her, was much younger and more glamorous than Laurel had been expecting. Had she not had such good composure, she might even have blushed upon meeting the tall woman, with bronze skin and dyed blonde hair. Her dress was gold and bared her skin around the shoulders, with slits on the sides of her legs, made all the more remarkable in the bitter cold. 'A foreigner and an elf,' the woman said, as soon as they approached.

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  'The guards sent me to you. I'm a dhampir. The elf is my prisoner.'

  'She doesn't seem like a prisoner,' the woman remarked, before leading them inside. The inner temple was quite small but it had a roaring fire, which Aila seemed very grateful for. 'Our lord, the great Sarzoras, will descend at sunset to commune with me. I shall take you to him. I hope you are telling the truth, for our lord has been very lonely since Dralgelos was killed all those years ago.' Aila smiled at the mention of that and received a hard smack across the face from the priestess. Laurel struggled to intuit the meaning of the exchange and neither of them commented on it. 'We had heard rumours that King William had been studying dhampirs, and even sent agents to the dreamling tribes, but we assumed that nothing came of it.'

  They didn't have to wait long and Laurel felt a rare pang of trepidation when he began his descent, his wings occasionally flapping to give the illusion that they were what allowed him to fly. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he transformed into a smaller and more humanlike shape. Like hers, his excess blood pooled into the open air. When it mingled with hers, he dragged her to himself telekinetically. In deference, she bowed her bald head. He didn't need his priestess to introduce them. 'Look at me,' he said, his voice deep and angry. When her eyes found his, he stared hard, apparently reading her mind. 'A whelp,' he said, 'a pitiful whelp, such a shame.' An eternity seemed to pass in a matter of seconds, as he decided what to do with her.

  When he bared his fangs and went to bite her, it took all her psychic might just to tear herself away from his telekinetic grip. She transformed as soon as she was free, tearing her clothes away, and reconstructing her winged and monstrous form. He transformed too and they clashed immediately after, biting and clawing at another and smashing into the temple walls. The blood loss on both sides was considerable but also meaningless, since it did not matter whether their blood was in or out of their own bodies. She knew that she would have to consume him in order to defeat him, as he had tried to do to her, but she didn't know how.

  He was so much stronger than her but she didn't know if even that really mattered. He could pulverise her and she would remain alive. There must be a property of the blood that she didn't understand, she reasoned. Trying the only thing she could think of, as they tore through the town, she fired needles into the guards, every last one that she could find, and drew their blood into herself. She did the same to the soldiers and their nightmarish horses, then all the other dream creatures in the stables and market stalls. Sarzoras roared with anger and hit her harder and she felt his blood, even in particulate form, attempting to bond with and subsume her own. Next, she turned on the elderly and the beggars, draining those dreamlings dry. It wasn't enough and her will to live pressed her to drink more and more. Within an hour, as they continued to thrash around and he found himself forced to replicate her strategy and turn on his own people, the fortress was a depopulated ruin. When she began to match him in strength, she let him tear her to shreds.

  In an explosion of blood, she sent herself miles in every direction, killing and draining everything in her wake, nightmare or dreamling, before rushing back to continue the fight. She concentrated all of her psychic energy on subsuming him. Every last drop of her blood was driven to that task. She barely even understand how it worked but it worked. She felt him weaken into nothingness. She drank in every last drop of blood, including his, until the ruins were spotless. Once she'd formed herself a new body, this one another exacting version of her old self, she flew up to the temple ruins in search of Aila. She'd tried to spare her, out of some strange sense of obligation, but couldn't be sure she'd succeeded or that Sarzoras himself hadn't managed to take her. She eventually found her prisoner, alive but unconscious and took her off, miles and miles away from the place, back deep into the jungle.

  The elf woman woke up a few hours later to find her crying by the camp fire. 'Impressive,' she said.

  'I'm not a person,' Laurel choked out.

  'Hey now,' Aila said, her voice somewhere between feigned and real concern, 'being a monster's not so bad. You saved my life, at least.'

  'I killed thousands of innocent people and saved the life of an elf, a vile heartless torturer.'

  'Hey!' Aila cried, pretending to be offended, 'don't sell me short. I'm also a murderer. Not as bad as most of my siblings, mind you, but I do get peckish from time to time.' She laughed to herself as Laurel felt her face twist in disgust. 'I did tell you not to go,' she said, before breaking into a fit of dark laughter.

  Her tears continued to fall, as though she weren't in control of them. 'I want to die,' she said, not meaning it but wanting to punish herself with harsh words. 'I will never belong, I will never be loved. I've already her hurt too many people.'

  Aila rolled her eyes at that, 'don't be such a whiny little bitch. Sarzoras had that freak Dralgelos before my father captured her. They were lovers for like a hundred years and they'd both killed way more people than you, and not just enemy soldiers or people you don't think count, like vampires and elves. My own father's married to seven women and they're all devoted to him. He couldn't even tell you how many people he'd killed.'

  Laurel just wanted her to stop. 'You're free to go,' she said, 'it was wrong of me to insist on keeping you prisoner in the first place.'

  'Finally,' the elf said, with an exaggerated sigh, departing without another word.

  Laurel needed to find somewhere to be alone. For once in her life, she found herself in agreement with the nightmare in her blood. For all its evil instincts, it didn't aspire to monstrous proportions or grand acts of atrocity. No, the nightmare in her blood would prefer the simple life of a common stalker and murderer. Perhaps, she eventually decided, it was time to go home.