There were moments of her mother that Iola remembered. The warmth of an embrace. The smell of crushed sage and ceremonial incense, mixed in with something metallic and raw. Learning how to swim in the ocean. Laying outside, her head resting against her mother’s chest, looking up at the stars. Fingers brushing through her hair. A scolding because she’d run outside to play on her own.

She remembered her father too. A man who could make her laugh, often joining in a lower, booming timbre. A man who would pick her up and swing her in circles until he got tired. A man who would sneak her dates, all don’t tell your mother. A man who would carry her whenever she was tired. A man who loved her unconditionally.

And then, a fire. Screaming agony from burning bodies, the smell of smoky flesh, the pounding boots against the ground, getting carried onto a boat. When she was out on the water, begging the people who claimed they were taking her to safety to bring her back to her mother, she heard a piercing scream, haunted and broken.

There were other bits and pieces, things that didn’t always make sense. She remembered a large stone room with a throne, stained with something rust colored. She remembered a spacious courtyard, grand parties full of laughter. The Sons of Ares had rescued her after The Goddess of Blood murdered her mother and father, and the memories of who they were, where they fit into Mydiea began to fade.

Iola always knew there was something different about her. People were wary around her. But she wasn’t sure what made her different until the dreams started.

She was fifteen years old, ten years after her rescue. There were dreams of a striking, willowy woman with dark hair, tawny skin, and full lips, eyes glowing iridescent red. Sometimes, she swam in the ocean, traversing down to the bottom, just as Iola liked to do. She’d sit at the bottom of the sea and scream, the sound muffled by the water. Other times, it was snippets of conversation, between a tall, muscular man with long, dark umber hair and an infectious smile and an increasingly sullen, lanky man with dark curls and dark hair. A soldier and a prince. The woman’s soldier and prince.

They felt familiar somehow. She could swear she’d seen their faces before—the soldier carrying her on his back when she was three years old, the prince trying to mask his obvious discomfort with her.

It was impossible. She was trying to fill in the blanks of her past, trying to understand who she was before she was brought to a village on the Greek coast, adopted by a fisherman and his wife, taught to pray for the downfall of The Goddess of Blood.

But then the dreams began to change. There were visions of violence, of the woman tearing out soldiers’ hearts—Sons of Ares soldiers. Visions of an underground cavern full of women in white. She’d bite into their necks, draining their blood until they died.

The Goddess of Blood. Iola wanted to tell somebody about her visions, but she knew she couldn’t. She didn’t know what it meant. Did the Goddess of Blood have a psychic connection with her? Could she control her? Worst of all, what would happen if Iola told anyone about the things she saw? They’d see her as a liability, tie rocks to her feet and drown her in the ocean. Her lungs would give out eventually. She’d rot at the bottom of the ocean until the end of time, if the creatures that lurked beneath didn’t get to her first.

The most terrifying dream of all wasn’t of carnage and bloodshed. It came to her a year after they started; a dream that began pleasantly. She was playing in the ocean, a child again. Not even a child. A baby. Her father, dark haired and smiling, lifted her up, arms outstretched.

She understood this was a memory. Not hers. She’d seen things through the eyes of the prince or the soldier or the Goddess of Blood in her dreams, things she understood to be memories. This felt like that, like she was simultaneously looking down and viewing the scene, detached from above, and like she was seeing this through her father’s eyes.

And then, she was reaching for somebody, a figure out in the distance, swimming towards them. As the figure got closer, she recognized her: the Goddess of Blood. She was smiling, at ease and happy.

She reached for Iola, scooping her in her arms.

“Did she cry at all?” The Goddess of Blood asked.

“No. She was perfectly happy here.” Her father said. “She’s just like you. She loves the ocean.”

And as The Goddess of Blood took her in her arms, cradling her close to her neck, Iola smelled that familiar scent: crushed sage and incense, something slightly metallic. Blood, she realized.

Her mother was The Goddess of Blood.

They must have taken her because she was in danger, Iola eventually concluded. The Goddess of Blood must have killed her father. She must have killed the other villagers too, feasted on their blood. The Sons of Ares had been lying in wait, and they intervened. The story added up. She’d tried poking holes in it, wondering if she’d been kidnapped or rescued.

The Goddess of Blood may have birthed her, but she wasn’t her mother. Something had to have happened to her, something that twisted her and made her into the monster the Sons of Ares and everybody within a two hundred mile radius of Mydiea fear her, not even dare to utter her given name. Iola was pretty sure was one of the only civilians who knew her true name, who had heard it hundreds of times: Rheya.

There were dreams and memories that altered this perspective; moments of peace, of the sort of domesticity Iola hoped she would have whenever she had children, but they were always starkly juxtaposed against visions of abject horror: a human sacrifice where The Goddess of Blood would rip out a heart, she would bathe in blood, she would terrorize innocent civilians and children. She would urge her soldier to do her bidding, telling him that he would have nothing and nobody if anything happened to her.

Eventually, Iola learned to live with these dreams, viewing them as nightmares. She tried to live a normal life, silently vowing to herself that she would never tell anybody about her connection to The Goddess of Blood, not even Ajax, the soldier she’d found herself falling in love with.

He was the son of a merchant, descended from East Africans who’d ended up in Greece several generations back. She didn’t hesitate to say yes when he asked her to marry him. They were lucky; Iola would be well looked-after with Ajax, and she loved him. She could see herself spending the rest of her life with him. Her parents didn’t have to worry about arranging a marriage.

They had Miranda nine months after their wedding. Iola thought she knew what love was when she met Ajax; she was wrong. She loved Miranda beyond reason.

She feared for her too. She hoped Miranda wouldn’t inherent the same propensity for nightmares that Iola had. She was going to have to tell Miranda the truth at some point, explain what she was to her, where she came from. But until then, she’d enjoy the fact that during the day, when she wasn’t asleep, all was well.

Until it wasn’t.

The Sons of Ares had anticipated this attack, had known that eventually, The Goddess of Blood was going to find them. It was why they’d opted to set up their base of operations in a remote fishing village, far away from Mydiea. The key to their success was the way they were able to keep a low profile.

They’d had a plan in place in case they had ever happened: every few months, they’d bring the civilians out of their homes, line them up in the village square, and remind them what they needed to do: run. First and foremost, run. Head to the docks. Get on the boats. Get as far away as possible.

And then, they’d run through it, make everybody go through the motions of what they needed to do if she ever came.

But there were things they failed to take into account: first, her soldier and her prince were quick on their feet and bloodthirsty. Second, there was a difference between running because you were told to and running because you would get your spinal chord ripped out of your body and your heart devoured if you didn’t.

It was chaos. The village streets were strewn with corpses and red with blood when Iola and Ajax came out of their home. Iola told Miranda to close her eyes and keep her head down. She had her face buried in Ajax’s neck. She was only five years old, only a little bit older than Iola when the Sons of Ares had taken her. She didn’t need to see these things.

“No matter what happens, you keep running.” Iola said to Ajax.

“But—”

“Promise me. Miranda is your priority. Not me.”

“I…I promise.”

They began to run, heading towards the fishing docks. They wouldn’t try to get onto the larger boat that had been built for this very situation. They’d take Ajax’s fishing boat. Ajax could navigate the waters, take them to safety. They weren’t going to leave Miranda’s fate in somebody else’s hands.

They made it to the docks. Ajax jumped into the boat, Miranda still in his arms.

Just as Iola was about to get into the boat, she felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back.

“Go!” Iola yelled.

“But—”

“Now!”

She smelled crushed sage and incense, masked under layer upon layer of blood. She knew who grabbed her before they spun her around.

There she was, face to face with The Goddess of Blood. Her face was twisted into a mask of cruelty, her white, flowing dress stained with blood, clumps of flesh and gore clinging to her hair.

Iola froze. She wanted to ask her why she was doing this. She wanted to ask her what happened to her, why she’d killed her uncle and all of those villagers. She wanted to beg her to stop. But her voice was stuck in her throat. She didn’t want to be afraid. She shouldn’t have been afraid of her own mother.

The Goddess of Blood seemed frozen too. She reached out, stroking her thumb along Iola’s jawline, her eyes boring deep into her.

“Pathetic human.” She murmured.

Iola found her voice. “Wait—”

Things would have played out differently if her mother had found Iola earlier in the night. She would have fed on her, and she would have recognized her own blood, realized how it tasted just like her brother’s. She would have stopped then. She would have ordered her soldier and her prince to retreat. She would have held Iola in her arms. She would have spent eternity atoning for what she’d spent the last twenty years doing.

But it was late in the evening. Her mother had gorged herself on innocent blood, and she’d had enough. She was just killing now, trying to make the humans that occupied this small village feel the pain that she’d had to live with.

It was over before it even began. Her mother swiftly broke her neck, nearly tearing Iola’s head clean off. Iola barely knew what was happening before it was over. She didn’t hear Miranda scream, the sound traveling across the water because at that point, Ajax was a hundred feet from the dock.

Kamilah feared Gaius when she first met him, hated the arrogant glimmer in his eyes, wanted nothing more than to plunge a dagger deep into his chest. She had plunged a dagger deep into his chest, relishing in the way the crimson liquid spilled at his feet, into the sand, onto her dress, staining it. 

Pity it hadn’t been enough. It didn’t stop him from grabbing her by the wrists, sharp, elongated teeth tearing into her neck. She hadn’t remembered screaming—though she was certain she had. But it didn’t matter. His hand clasped over her mouth, and he drank. It was pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, hot knives sinking into tender flesh. It didn’t subside. It was as though he wanted it to hurt, wanted her to earn whatever it was he claimed he was going to give her. 

I don’t want it, she wanted to yell. There is nothing you could give me that will help me reach what I truly want.

What she truly wanted was for her brother to come back. Deep in her bones, with every Roman army she took down, every fleet she attacked, that was what she was working towards. She cognitively understood that was impossible, illogical, so she was willing to try to settle for thousands of dead Romans at her feet. She meant it when she said she would not stop until she no longer drew breath; most likely, Marc Antony would whisper into her cousin’s ear to have her executed as a traitor in order to stop her. If he hadn’t come along, that was how it was going to end. 

She’d been told the story of Helen of Troy a few times when she was a child. She didn’t care for it, but as she began to lose consciousness, either from the pain or the blood loss, as she heard the sound of soldier’s feet thundering against the sand,  she thought of it again. How many ships would they launch to avenge her? How many ships would he launch if she tried to escape from his grasp?

//

Gaius brought Kamilah a gift when she woke up. He presented it to her after the worst of the shock had worn off, when she was no longer focused on the tangy, sweet, metallic taste lingering in the back of her throat, the newfound length of her canines, the hunger boiling inside of her. 

She was too weak to fight him when he helped her out of the hole he’d dug for her in the desert sand, too weak to struggle against his grasp as he carried her back to her tent and set her on her feet. And worst of all, she was too hungry to react when she saw the Roman soldier chained to the chair, his mouth gagged, hatred and fury in his eyes, struggling against his bonds.

“As I promised,” Gaius said. “A gift for you.”

“One of your own men?”

“Octavian won’t miss him.” Gaius said. “And who am I to deny you such a simple pleasure?” 

He didn’t have to tell her what she needed to do, what the soldier was for. She already understood, from the way the hunger turned into an ache, a demand, the way she felt her canines elongate again. She was upon the soldier before she even understood what she was doing, her fangs ripping into his throat. He must have screamed, but she didn't hear it. The taste of his blood in her mouth was better than the sweetest fruits, the finest wines. Nothing could compare to it. 

But then, when the soldier slumped forward in the chair, dead and depleted, reality hit her. She’d killed plenty of roman soldiers, but never in such a grotesque way. She’d never enjoyed it the way she enjoyed this. She was scared, not because of what she had done, but because what she knew she was going to do: she would kill like this again. She would enjoy it immensely. And may the gods help whoever tried to stop her.

Kamilah tackled Gaius, hands wrapped around his throat, squeezing as hard as she could. “What did you do to me?” She demanded. She was startled by how desperate and ragged and scared her voice sounded. “What did you do to me?!” 

She wished she could kill him. She tried to, squeezing down on his windpipe, hoping brute force would finally get the job done. Despite the sound of bones breaking, despite the fact that she was choking him harder than she’d ever choked anybody in her life, it didn’t matter. Because all he did was laugh. 

“I made you better. Stronger.”

“You made me into a demon. Like you!” 

His eyes glowed a deep, bloody red. “I made you into a god.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, easily pushing her off of him. He got back onto his feet, cracking his neck back into place. 

“A god of blood.” 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t enjoy draining the life out of that soldier.” Gaius said. He looked down at her, knowing full well she couldn’t. When she didn’t answer, he smiled.  “You’re scared. Angry. Confused. I understand.”

He knelt down in front of her. “But I chose you for a reason. I need someone like you.” He ran his thumb along her jaw. She jerked away from him. 

“Don’t touch me.” 

“Apologies, my queen.”

“And don’t call me that.” 

Gaius laughed. “I like you already.” 

//

Centuries later, when people asked her about it, Kamilah framed it as a sort of amusing story. The story of two perfectly matched people who had no idea what they’d come across yet. Centuries after that, long after Gaius was gone, she’d be at a business dinner or something of the sort attended by humans where there was always at least one happily married couple. Inevitably, the story of how the two of them got together would come up. It always made her heart thaw and ache, not because she was particularly prone to get emotional over that sort of thing, but because of how much it reminded her of the way she used to talk about him, which deeply alarmed her. 

The story of their love began with a deal. Kamilah didn’t want to be anywhere near Gaius. She wanted to run as far away as she could. She’d take her chances out in the desert. No, she’d feast upon the Romans, making her way all the way to their capitol, making the streets run red with blood. Gaius had other plans for her, of course.

She tried to point out the obvious to get him to let her go: she was a nomarch. Her men were all dead. People would go looking for her. Not to mention, she had no desire to go anywhere with Gaius. So, what do you intend to do? She demanded. Force me by your side until you break me?

“You reject what I have to offer before you you’ve experienced it.” Gaius replied. 

“I don’t want what you have to offer.” 

“You don’t want power? You don’t want to be respected?”

“I am respected.” 

“You’d be a vizier if not for your sex.” Gaius said. “Egypt still wouldn’t have been able to defeat the Romans under your counsel, but you wouldn’t be part of such a humiliating loss.”

“How dare you.”

“You don’t hold a deep love for your nation. You seek vengeance.” Gaius continued. “And I can give that to you.” 

“Not when you fight for the Romans, you can’t.” 

Gaius shook his head. “I don’t fight in human conflicts because I believe in their causes. I fight for my security. And as it stands, the Roman empire has offered me comforts that the Egyptians refused. But I’ve no true loyalty to their soldiers.”

Gaius let out a breath, moving away from Kamilah. “I know how it feels to lose somebody who means the world to you. Somebody who you can’t live without. And I take it that is what’s happened to you.” 

“You don’t know the first thing about me.” 

“Sorrow sings in your blood.” Gaius replied. “You seek to destroy those who destroyed whoever you lost.” He turned back to Kamilah. “I will give you what you want if you will give me what I want.”

“And what is it that you want?” 

“As I’ve said. A queen. Somebody by my side. Somebody who can fight alongside me. Somebody who can help me enact my vision of the world.”

“I’ve no interest in sharing a bed with you.”

“I never said that.” Gaius said. “But I’m not finished. I can give you what you want if you stand beside me. We can look for whoever took the person you love. You can do whatever it is you wish with him.”

“You’re trying to trick me.” 

“And what makes you so sure of that?”

“It’s an empty promise.” Kamilah said. “It’s a promise of searching, not of finding.”

“I don’t intend to trick you.” 

“And why should I believe that?” Kamilah said.

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I always do.” 

“Then what will satisfy you?”

“A month.” Kamilah said, surprised by her certainty. “I will be by your side for a month. You will find me the man who killed my brother. If you can’t, I will leave, and you won’t stop me.”

“And if I do?” 

Kamilah let out a breath. “Then I will be your queen.” 

“Then you have a deal.”

//

It only took two weeks to find the man who killed Lysimachus. Perhaps Gaius was motivated to prove a point. Perhaps he only made the initial proposal because he knew it was a promise he could easily deliver. 

Lysimachus had been a general, which meant that his death was news amongst the Romans. It was a victory that a cunning and strategic man had been disposed of. The man that killed him boasted about it, which meant that he had a name, a face, a location. They expected he’d be in Alexandria, which would have complicated things, but no, he was stationed in an outpost several miles outside of the city, among a fleet of men holding off on as many Egyptian soldiers as they could. 

They dragged him out of his bed, deeper into the desert. He fought the entire way there, screaming and begging, tears running down his face, all whyareyoudoingthisimaninnocentmanimjustoneofoctavianssoldiersletmego.

Kamilah didn’t dignify it with a response. She always thought if she ever had the chance to kill the man who killed Lysimachus, she would tell him about the person whose life he snuffed out, how she grieved, how everything she’d done since then was building up to this moment. 

But this man no longer seemed like a being who changed her life. He was pathetic, ordinary. His entire life had been building up to this moment, the moment that she would kill him, and he was too stupid to realize it. 

She tore into his neck, blood splattering, making no attempt to preserve his life for any longer than necessary. She drank eagerly, hungrily as he thrashed against her. She bit harder into his flesh, tearing out his throat with her teeth, not caring that he would bleed out in less than a minute because of what she’d done. She didn’t want to give him a quick death, but she’d given him a painful death. And that was enough. 

When she was finished, she looked over at Gaius, who sat atop a dune, a smile on his face. Kamilah noticed that he smiled a lot in the last two weeks, but there were seemingly infinite reasons as to why he smiled. Sometimes, it was out of arrogance, of knowing he’d bested someone. Other times, it was out of thinly veiled annoyance. Other times, it was out of amusement. 

But this was out of pride. Proud of the creature he’d created. Proud of  being right about Kamilah. Proud of what they’d pulled off in two weeks.

Proud that he’d won. 

//

For the first three decades they shared together, they were partners, not lovers. He was her king, she was his queen, but what that really meant was that she was his second in command. His other progenies turned to her authority in Gaius’s absence. His other progenies bowed to both of them. 

They grew close. Of course they did. As time passed, she began to develop a fondness for Gaius she hadn’t expected. He was quick witted and sharp-tongued, charming when he needed to be. 

It was odd, the things he did that she found endearing. The way he’d always let her make the first kill, the way he began to select people to feed on based on what he discerned to be her taste, the way he was almost loving towards his victims, the way he told stories of battle, the way it changed depending on who he was talking to. He was braggadocios with most of his progeny. With her, he was detailed, once he figured out that she was more interested in strategy than glory. 

In the beginning, he was vague about his past, about who he was before he became what he was. But slowly, he began to reveal more and more about himself. Gaius told her the story of the one before him, the Goddess and Mother of All Vampires, Rheya. She’d been taken from him just as Lysimachus had been taken from Kamilah. He never wanted to discuss how it happened. He preferred to focus on her life, on who she was. 

“She was a force of nature.” Gaius told her once. “Not unlike you.” 

“Is that why you chose me? Because I remind you of her?”

“In a way.” Gaius said. “But it’s different. I stand beside you. I bowed before her.”

She knew it was something she couldn’t possibly understand, and she didn’t try to. From the way he described Rheya, she wasn’t his goddess the way Kamilah was his queen. Rheya was quite literally a goddess. Kamilah was never going to compete with that, and there was no reason to try. Though, part of her wondered why that had been her instinct, why the more he spoke of Rheya, the more she felt twinges of jealousy rearing their head. 

She wasn’t expecting the fondness she had for him to grow into something else entirely. It crept up on her in the right at the very end of their first thirty years together. 

They were back in the Roman empire. What began as a brief stint in Pompeii that ended in a hundred people dead and countless others whispering stories about demons cloaked in beauty who only came out at night festered into owing Tiberius several favors, which included assisting him in his conquest of Bohemia. 

Thirty years ago, Kamilah would have refused. She would have run, deal with Gaius be damned. But things had changed. She viewed human conflicts similarly to Gaius now; it wasn't about what was right. It was about what would guarantee their survival. An allegiance with the Roman Empire meant they could do whatever they pleased on most of the continent. 

Besides, Kamilah missed it. She was a skilled tactician as a human. With Gaius’s charisma and strength and her strategy, Bohemia would be Tiberius’s in no time. 

In the beginning, it was victory after victory. This was where she truly learned how to fight. Gaius gifted her with a set of daggers and taught her how to use them. They fought back to back on the battlefield, covered in the blood of their enemies. She often found herself taken with his visage in the moonlight, the glimmer in his eyes as he played with his prey. There was a strange part of her that almost wished he’d look at her like that—

It was a distraction, and she began to consciously pay as little attention to Gaius as possible when they fought alongside each other, save for the occasional glance in his direction to make sure he didn’t need backup. He never did. It was an excuse, really.  Kamilah knew that. 

Their only drawback was a group of Bohemians that kept slipping out of Gaius and Kamilah’s grasp. Their strategy was similar to that of Kamilah’s when she fought the Romans thirty years before. When they struck Roman fleets, they took no prisoners. They attacked supply drops, taking whatever they could for themselves. They moved constantly. They had an advantage that Kamilah didn’t all of those years ago: they were used to being outside, used to the elements. Unlike the Roman soldiers, they could endure the worst of nature’s ills, which was just as well, because it was the middle of winter. 

But she would destroy them, if only to prove that even they couldn’t best the roman empire. 

The idea came to Kamilah after she’d attempted to Turn a Roman soldier who was a particularly skilled fighter, an asset to their conquest. He’d been run through with a spear and was already dead by the time Kamilah found him. The Turning didn’t take. She had to stake him as soon as he emerged from the ground, his skin grey and cracked, his teeth long and jagged, his eyes glowing a sickly red. 

Gaius told her it happened sometimes. It wasn’t her fault. 

“But what happened to him?” 

“Turning a dead person is risky.” Gaius said. “Wait too long, they’ll emerge broken and hungry, shells of what they once were. All they’ll want to do is drink blood—any blood. Vampire or human.”

“But you could…” Kamilah trailed off. “You could do it intentionally. Couldn’t you?”

“What are you getting at?” 

“That one fleet…they’re tricky, slippery. We’ve spent weeks trying to get rid of them. But maybe we’ve been going about it all wrong.”

“Have we?”

“They’re trying to tire us out. Don’t you think? But if we…” 

“A surprise attack is a redundant suggestion, my queen.”

Kamilah rolled her eyes. “Not quite. We have to keep them in one place. Contained. Which means we need to create the illusion that we’ve given up. They’re going to overpower the other soldiers if we strike. But if we…if we made more of those things, set them lose on wherever they’ve settled…” 

“We’ll get rid of them.” Gaius finished. 

“And sunlight will take care of the rest.” 

He took her hand. 

“I love the way you think. Have I ever told you that, my queen?”

Kamilah smirked. “Plenty of times, my king.”

“Then I apologize for the redundancy. But I love the way you think.” 

The Romans didn’t ask questions when Gaius gave the order to gather as many of their dead as possible after a battle in which they’d nearly been overpowered. They hauled the bodies around in a caravan for a week, all the while trying to lull their target into a false sense of security. Kamilah and Gaius tracked them down to a village deep into Bohemia, far from where the Bohemians and the Romans waged most of their battles.

“It’s perfect.” Gaius said. “We’ll strike tomorrow night.”

And so, they returned to the bodies they gathered, doing the disgusting work of Turning fifty dead men. They buried them in the woods by the village in the cover of darkness. They waited, exhuming them and getting out of their way, watching as these feral vampires headed straight in the direction of fresh, human blood. 

It was a beautiful sight to behold, the chaos of it all. They sat atop a hill, Kamilah’s head resting against Gaius’s shoulder, watching as the ferals tore the village apart, watching as a fire broke out in the chaos, watching as not a single human was left away, watching as Rome’s victory over Bohemia was secured right before their very eyes. 

Gaius took Kamilah’s hand. “I never had any doubts about you.” He said. “But now, I’m certain. We were always meant to cross paths. I was always supposed to find you.” 

Kamilah rolled her eyes, mostly out of habit. “Are you going to tell me we were written in the stars?” 

“You mock me, but you know I’m right.” He gestured at the burning village below him. “You’re cunning in a way that I am not. We need each other. Or rather, I need you.” He laughed. “At this point, I’d be concerned if you switched allegiances. You might actually be able to beat me at my own game.” 

“You needn’t concern yourself with that.” Kamilah said. 

“I shouldn’t?”

“I find myself growing more and more devoted to you with each breath I draw.” 

“Do you, now?”

Before she could stop herself, she closed off the space between them, pressing her lips against his. He responded in kind, pulling her closer. He smiled against her mouth.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to do that?” He murmured.

“I think I can guess.”