The six of them had blades pressed to their throats while Serena was on her back, a disgusting vampire standing over her producing a shadow that smelled like a thousand-year-old corpse had gargled sulfur and lost.
"I am King of the Night Throne and you shall yield."
"Creative," Serena said. "Did you come up with that yourself?"
The King blinked. The blinking was the blinking of a creature who had been delivering that line for ten thousand years and had never once received editorial feedback.
"You will yield to me, Moon Princess."
"You already said that. The repetition isn't strengthening the pitch."
His jaw twitched. The twitching was unprecedented. Ancient vampire kings did not receive notes on their monologues from women lying in dirt.
"I have waited ten millennia—"
