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The vampire smelled something strange in the house.
Someone strange. And appetizing.
Not as appetizing as red blood — this smelled blue, like Hyeong’s. But that was better anyway; Hyeong was always angry when he tried to drink red blood, enough that the vampire might have hesitated even with him out of the house. He complained less about blue, although even blue-bloods were sometimes “friends” and off-limits.
But this one was a blue-blood and it had come into the house when Hyeong was away — into their little, isolated house, tucked away in the hills, far enough away from the nearest town that no innocents would wander by with their tempting blood.
That meant the vampire could bite.
He moved forward, silent and stealthy, feeling the fierce hunger rise in him.
The blue-blood was in the kitchen, moving around without stealth, opening cupboards and drawers and then closing them again. The vampire drifted noiselessly toward the doorway, peering through and finding the stranger’s back turned.
He was a blue-blood, certainly. He was not nearly as white as Hyeong, but not Korean, either, and dressed like a westerner in soft greys and browns. He was also not as large, and he did not carry himself as Hyeong did. This man was not aware of his strength in every move, nor did he seem to be listening or watching for threats. Instead, he was moving the battered kettle onto the stove, humming to himself.
The vampire bared his teeth. This would be easy. Too easy to be fun, almost — but the blue-bloods were always strong, so he could settle for a soft one. And there would be blood after, and that was best of all.
At the thought, his hunger roared up through him, and he flung himself at the bent, vulnerable neck.
His teeth met something hard and jarring, and a sharp pain bloomed in his chest. The vampire staggered back, bewildered, and found the intruder facing him with sharp, cold eyes and a knife in each hand; one was raised in a guard that had caught his charge, and the other dripped with strange, dark blood.
Ah, the vampire remembered. That was what his blood looked like now.
At the thought, the pain in his chest seemed to redouble, and he looked down to find himself dripping with more of that same blood. It wasn’t a lethal wound — not for him, not now — but it hurt.
And it had ruined his shirt. He liked that shirt. Hyeong had made him pick it out.
“If I might suggest—” the blue-blood began, but the vampire had no attention for whatever he wanted to say. He lifted his head with a snarl and lunged forward once again. This time he would be prepared for a fighter, not for prey.
Somehow, as he lunged, he found himself meeting empty air. Then something hit his arm, and something else twisted his ankle, and he found himself flat on the kitchen floor with the blue-blood’s knee on his chest and a shining knife to his throat.
“Dear me,” the intruder said coolly, looking down at the vampire. Up close, his face seemed a little older than Hyeong’s, and it might still have looked soft — if it were not for those eyes, grey and cold and utterly ruthless. “I’d heard my lord had acquired a new-turned fledgling, but I can’t say I expected it to be quite so mindless.”
The vampire writhed. If he could throw this intruder off… “I will kill you,” he snarled.
There was a light scoffing noise. “I think not.”
And then, smoothly and precisely, the figure above him raised its free knife and plunged it into the vampire’s chest, next to the wound already there.
He tried to cry out, but there was no air in his lungs anymore.
“These wounds will not kill you,” the blue-blood said. He removed the knife as smoothly as it had entered and made it vanish, resting his empty hand over the holes it had made. “Only, however, because I choose that they should not. Now, while you heal from that, there are some things I think ought to be established between us.”
The vampire could not breathe. He could not think. He could only stare up into the cold grey eyes, pinning him like an insect.
“Firstly,” that smooth, unstoppable voice murmured, “I am entirely capable of killing you, at any moment, under any circumstances. The only reason you live is because you continue under Lord Sero’s protection.”
The vampire’s brows knitted in confusion, sudden and strong enough to overpower the sting of defeat. Who was that supposed to be?
The blue-blood looked down at him, and sighed. “Zero?” he said, in an experimental sort of way.
Oh. “Hyeong,” JinYeong managed to push through his throat. His breath was starting to come back to him, his lungs slightly less tight as vampire healing began to do its work.
Something flickered through the grey eyes. “Precisely. You live not by your own strength, vampire, but by his. That is the second point I wished to establish.”
The vampire knew that. It was Hyeong who made him turn instead of dying. It was Hyeong who helped him hunt the vampires who had killed his friends. It was Hyeong who kept him out of fights he couldn’t win (usually ), and called him by name, and made him think and talk and care about things instead of only biting all the time.
What did any of that matter to this blue-blood, though?
“The third,” his enemy continued, “is that, if you wish to retain his protection, there must be certain limits upon your behavior. Indeed, I presume he has already informed you of this.” JinYeong nodded a little without thinking, and the blue-blood smiled warmly down at him. “Excellent. Then you know the lines you must not cross.”
He did. He was never to bite humans unless Hyeong was there and agreed he could, and even then never to kill. He was never to bite others unless they were attacking him first. He was never to fight strangers at all, if they were not a threat to him, and if they were a threat, he was to find Hyeong first.
Hyeong had many rules.
...And JinYeong might, it began to occur to him, have broken a few of them by attacking this stranger.
As if following his thoughts, the blue-blood said, “My fourth point is that — judging by your behavior upon catching my scent — you may not be taking those lines as seriously as is wise. Perhaps you think my lord will be reluctant to kill you, if you go against his will?” His voice was very soft now, confiding, murmuring. The vampire swallowed, feeling the knife brush against his throat at the movement. “Or perhaps you are foolish enough to consider your indulgence worth more than his wrath.”
No, he wanted to say. But at the moment, the thing he was most certain of was that this blue-blood would kill him if he said the wrong thing. And he was not sure what the right thing would be.
“In any case,” the intruder continued, “the final point I wish to clarify between us is simply this: it is my role to carry out those tasks my lord finds distasteful. If you cross his lines, or if you become a hindrance to him, you need not fear his sword.” The length of shining metal at the vampire’s throat, just like that which had punctured his lung, flickered and vanished as the blue-blood straightened and rose to his feet. “Mine will settle things quite nicely.”
The vampire swallowed, inhaling heavily — and found that he could. His lungs were whole again, his wounds closed.
The blue-blood looked down with a raised eyebrow, as if waiting for him to do a trick. His blood seethed within him at that expression, but deeper and stronger than his rage there ran the coldness of fear.
Only Hyeong had been strong enough to make him afraid, since he changed. But this man was strong like Hyeong, and clever, and much colder, and somehow the weight of all his words had sunk deep into JinYeong’s bones and made homes there.
So he lay there, chest heaving. And he did not bite.
The blue-blood smiled. “Well done!” he said, sounding agreeably surprised. “Perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope for you after all.”
He turned back to the stove. “I don’t suppose,” he said without turning around, as if JinYeong were no longer worth keeping an eye on, “that you can make tea.”
The vampire’s breath hissed through his teeth. But the blue-blood had not been looking at him the first time he attacked, either — it had not been necessary.
“I cannot,” he said sullenly. Even if he could, he wouldn’t, but it was also true that Mother and JiAh had always made the tea at home.
“Hm.” There was a moment’s pause, as if the intruder were weighing his answer. “Needs must, then, I suppose.” He put the kettle on, then turned to gaze at JinYeong. The coldness was gone now, leaving what looked like absent-minded kindness in his face. “You know, you may get off the floor if you like.”
He scowled. “I am fine here.”
“As you please, I’m sure.” The intruder looked amused, increasing the anger bubbling up in him. “Out of curiosity, have you considered yet why you should not have attacked me?”
He cast his eyes away, staring at the bottom of a cabinet. “Because you are stronger than me,” he muttered. Why did he have to say it? It was obvious.
But then the intruder murmured, “Dear me,” and he had the sinking feeling he had failed another test. He did not like that feeling. It, too, made him want to bite something — but if this blue-blood’s standards were anything like Hyeong’s, biting would just be failing again. “I see my lord has not yet reached the difference between known and unknown dangers in tactical training, then.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said mildly, “that you could not make a decision based on my strength, because you had no way of knowing I was stronger than you. You could, however, have decided not to attack me because my strength was unknown. Or does Zero approve of you throwing yourself into unknown risks?”
JinYeong looked away.
“I thought not. My lord’s invested a good deal of effort into you at this point, after all.” There was a cool reproof in the stranger’s voice. “That is one reason it would have been more intelligent to wait before attacking me. There are also, of course, certain questions you might have asked yourself.”
Instead of saying what the questions were , though, he turned back to the stove, pouring the now-boiling water into a cup and — with a moment’s hesitation — adding a spoonful of omija.
“Why do you keep calling him a lord?” JinYeong asked. “Hyeong isn’t a lord.”
There was a sigh.
“He really does share nothing,” the stranger murmured. “For your information, vampire, your so-called ‘elder brother’ is heir to one of the high fae lords. He is a very important person by the reckonings of Behind.”
The vampire considered this. “He doesn’t act important.” That wasn’t exactly true, when he thought about it — Hyeong acted like he was used to having things, like money, and responsibility. But he didn’t act like he was used to people listening to him, or doing what he said. He didn’t make the vampire act like he was important, either.
“There are many different kinds of importance,” the stranger said, sipping from his cup. He grimaced. “And I suppose, after all, that one can’t expect a new-turned vampire to understand much in the way of politics.”
That was insulting. It made the warring impulses rise up in him again — to bite, and to prove he could do things other than bite. “You are rude,” JinYeong said, raising himself up on his elbows. “Who are you to know who Hyeong is, anyway?”
“Ah!” the blue-blood said. “Now that is a question you should have asked before attacking me.”
He frowned. “You were an intruder in our house,” he said. “And not human. I did not need to know more than that.”
“Indeed?” The intruder eyed him mildly. “Even though I entered the house without setting off Zero’s alarms, or falling afoul of his wards? Even though I entered openly and made myself at home, as if sure of my welcome here? None of that was, perhaps, reason to hesitate or to gain more information before leaping for my neck? I see.”
“That could be a trick,” the vampire argued. He could feel the blood rising to his face and ears, as he spoke, and that was annoying. He should be able to keep it from doing that. “You could be pretending not to be an intruder, so I would not attack you.”
The stranger actually laughed at that. “An admirable attempt,” he said. “However, justifications thought of after the fact are rarely as convincing as those prepared beforehand. What would Zero think of that one, I wonder?”
Hyeong would think it was a bad argument. He would know, the vampire thought, that he had merely wished to feed.
Before he had to say as much, however, the stranger’s head rose like he heard something. “Ah,” he said. “Perhaps we shall see.”
A second later, the vampire heard the door bang open, and Hyeong’s scent rushed in on the breeze.
Hyeong followed it a second later, his big sword raised in both hands — only to stop and stare at the scene before him. His eyes flicked between the stranger and JinYeong, who scowled at him to cover his humiliation.
Hesitantly, Hyeong let the point of his sword fall, looking back to the stranger. “Steward,” he said, his voice less certain than the vampire had ever heard it.
“My lord.” The blue-blood, smiling, bowed to him in an odd, flourishing style. “I apologize for the mess. The vampire and I were… introducing ourselves.” He looked down at JinYeong with amusement in his eyes. “I did tell him he need not stay on the floor, however.”
Hyeong shut his eyes for a second. “Get up, JinYeong,” he said, sounding tired.
“He stabbed me, Hyeong,” JinYeong said reproachfully, sitting up. The stranger was much less scary now that Hyeong was here. It was also easier to remember the other things that mattered, outside of blood and biting. “He ruined my shirt. Tell him to go away.”
“I’m not…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Why did you stab him?” he asked the stranger.
JinYeong glared at the stranger. If he told Hyeong what he had just said, about attacking a peaceful visitor who had the key to the house…
But the stranger only shrugged and said, “I observed the vampire’s self-control to be… rudimentary… my lord. Unsurprising in one of his age, of course. Perhaps I erred on the side of caution, but a firm response seemed most advisable.”
It was rude. But it did not say that JinYeong had broken any of Hyeong’s rules.
“And that was all?” Hyeong asked sharply. As if being stabbed for an introduction weren’t very much, after all.
The vampire forgot, sometimes, that the world of monsters Hyeong had introduced him to was really the one he came from.
“Injuries are one thing,” he continued, “But JinYeong’s not to be killed.” As if he already knew how easily the stranger could have killed him. JinYeong felt an uncomfortable crawling in his stomach. “If my father—”
“Your father,” the stranger cut in gently, “is not yet, as far as I know, aware of the vampire’s existence. I have only recently come to know of it myself.”
Hyeong’s expression lightened. “Then… you’re not here on orders?”
“No more than the usual,” he said with another careless shrug. “I am, of course, always tasked with your well-being, my lord! And I’m certain your father will express curiosity as to your pursuits again, at some point — but if you wish me to remain here for a time first…”
“Hyeong,” the vampire interrupted loudly. He did not want the stranger to stay. “What are you talking about?”
Hyeong looked down at him, face almost cold for a second, before he blinked and seemed to see JinYeong again. “Nothing that concerns you,” he said. “Parts of my life I’ve left behind.”
“If you’ll pardon me, my lord…” the stranger said. “They have not entirely forgotten you.”
Hyeong frowned, and the vampire scowled. “Is this what you were saying about him being a lord? Hyeong, who is your father?” He had never asked that before — he had been happy to assume blue-bloods didn’t have fathers. But apparently they did, and this one mattered. Maybe Hyeong really was important.
“He…” Hyeong rubbed his forehead for a second. “I haven’t mentioned him,” he said slowly, “because I have no wish to associate with him. He is a fae lord, unfortunately. He also disapproves of most of my activities. He would probably disapprove of your existence.” He looked at JinYeong, his light eyes very cold again. “I haven’t mentioned him because I don’t intend to bring you anywhere near his circles of influence. Ever.”
The vampire swallowed, and decided now was probably a good time to climb to his feet. Standing made it a little easier to face the thought that there were other people out there, stronger than Hyeong, who Hyeong thought would try to kill him.
People Hyeong was scared of.
As he stood, Hyeong asked the stranger, “Are you the one who’s been shadowing us for the last few days?”
The vampire looked up sharply from the ruins of his shirt.
“Dear me! I was noticed? It seems my skills are slipping,” the stranger said pleasantly.
“I did not know,” JinYeong said.
Hyeong turned his unconvinced frown from the stranger to him. “It wasn’t something you have the tools to notice yet,” he said. “And I thought it was likely to be someone after my attention, not yours. That’s partly why I went out alone today — I wanted to resolve it, and I thought it would be more easily done if I were alone.”
He made a face.
“All right, I know,” Hyeong said, but he looked almost amused. “In my defense, though, I don’t think anyone else could have gotten through my wards on this house so quickly, or so quietly.”
“I noticed you’d made some additions,” the stranger said agreeably. “They're quite ingenious.”
Still without annoyance — even with a new lightness in his eyes — Hyeong said, “Clearly not enough.”
“Well.” The stranger shrugged. “I do have certain advantages in this case, as you mentioned.”
The vampire watched them both with narrowed eyes, under the cover of pulling off his torn shirt. Hyeong was more relaxed than he had ever seen him, in a way that could almost — if the vampire were even stupider than he had been this morning — be read as prey instead of predator. His shoulders were loosened, the furrow between his eyes almost gone.
JinYeong still didn’t want the stranger to stay.
“Who is this person?” he asked Hyeong, turning up his nose. “We do not need him here, do we?”
Hyeong smiled. That, too, was unusual. “This is… my steward,” he said, with a glance at the stranger. “Something like a bodyguard, when I was younger. It’s been several years since we last met.”
“Indeed so,” the stranger — the steward? — said. “And while I’m certain I’m not needed here, strictly speaking, I’d venture to suggest I might be of use.” He looked away from the vampire, back to Hyeong. “Your current… undertaking, while not posing the same problems as certain earlier endeavors, does nonetheless seem safer with another pair of hands.”
Hyeong asked dryly, as if this made sense to him, “And knives?”
“Oh, knives are always of use, my lord!” the steward agreed. He glanced at the vampire’s shirt, now dropped on the floor, and the vampire realized what he was talking about.
“I am not an undertaking,” he said stiffly.
“No,” Hyeong agreed at once, though he looked a little embarrassed. “You’re a person. Taming your instincts so that you can see your family again is an undertaking. My steward is offering to help.”
Remembering cold, bright steel in his chest and at his throat, and the murmur of it is my role to carry out those tasks my lord finds distasteful, the vampire thought that he was not the one the steward wanted to help.
The steward smiled, again as if he knew what the vampire was thinking. “I did tell you my role, did I not?”
There were probably several things the vampire could have said — but the steward had not pointed out what he did wrong to Hyeong. He chose to glare instead.
Hyeong sighed. “If you’re staying,” he said to the steward, “there are one or two things that need to be clarified.”
“I would expect no less,” the steward murmured, eyes cast down.
“First. You’re certain this won’t cause new… conflicts with my father?”
The steward smiled, with an odd, mocking twist to it. “If anything, my lord, I would expect it to decrease such conflicts. To retain me by your side while… how did you put it? Taming the vampire’s instincts?… would undoubtedly strike him as more prudent than taking on this task unaided. When the situation becomes known to him, my involvement may thus be enough to stave off more drastic measures.”
Hyeong nodded slowly.
“Second,” he said, “don’t call him the vampire; he’s not used to Behind ways of speaking, and it’s not helpful. His name is JinYeong. As I said, the goal here is to keep him alive.”
“A task with which I do have some experience, my lord,” the steward said, with an entirely different smile. “Selective though it may be.”
Hyeong said wryly, “This should be a little easier than that, I think.”
“Even if difficult,” the steward said, a look of absent amusement in his eyes, “I fancy it will be an enlivening change. Partaking in one of your projects will be that in itself, in fact. Though one might wish for greater knowledge as to your motives, and the exact specifications of this task…”
“I helped him turn,” Hyeong said briefly. “It was that or death. But I have an obligation to help him function with his new nature, since I chose it for him — once he’s fully adjusted and able to live in one world or another without danger, the obligation will end.”
He kept saying things like that, mostly to other blue-bloods. The vampire didn’t quite see why all these things mattered, but as long as Hyeong was here, the whys didn’t really bother him.
“Without danger?” the steward repeated, eyebrows rising.
Hyeong frowned. “All right,” he said impatiently, as if he also felt tested by that questioning tone, “without extraordinary danger — more than what will come from external factors regardless.”
“An important clarification, my lord,” the steward said gently. “However, on that note. Is there anything further you wish to make clear, before I settle in?”
“One more thing,” Hyeong said, his eyes lightening. “If you’re staying, I presume you’ll help with the cooking.”
The steward laughed. Somehow, it sounded like the least deliberate thing he’d done since coming here. “Alas, my lord, I fear my abilities in that area have not changed with the years!”
JinYeong scowled.
The strange, threatening blue-blood was clearly staying — Hyeong liked him too much for him to leave now he had a foothold. This meant JinYeong would have to be careful to think all the time, even when Hyeong wasn’t looking. There might be even less biting than there had been.
That was annoying. The steward was annoying. Even if he did make Hyeong relax and sometimes even smile, the vampire did not like him.
He glared at him behind Hyeong’s back, just to make that clearer, and the steward smiled brightly in response. “JinYeong, wasn’t it?” he inquired politely. “I do trust we’ll get along smoothly.”
“We will,” JinYeong said darkly. Well, no. Smoothly, yes. JinYeong would be as smooth as the steward’s knife slipping into his lung, for as long as he had to put up with him. He would show the steward and Hyeong, both.
“Take heart,” the steward said, his eyes dancing as if JinYeong’s annoyance amused him. “If you stay with my lord long enough, I’m sure you’ll have means and opportunity to bite me one day.”
The vampire huffed. The steward did not have to say it like a joke. He would get stronger. Strong enough to know he could face the steward without worrying, if he ever did have a chance that wouldn’t make Hyeong angry.
“Don’t encourage him,” Hyeong said sharply. “And JinYeong?”
JinYeong looked at him unhappily, feeling the same expression come over his face as when Mother used to give him extra chores. Hyeong paused a moment, then sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. The steward laughed quietly.
“Put on a shirt."