Rey had learned quite a lot about this place in the long weeks since he’d reincarnated here.

There hadn’t been much else to do, truth be told, other than investigate. The servants ensured that he took his tonics, and ate his meals, and sat for a tailor the King had commissioned to create him a wardrobe of basics. But otherwise, he was free to roam the Palace in search of whatever he wished.

For Rey, that meant an ongoing and unhindered search for information and context.

He was still too nervous to linger near the more intimidating vampires on staff. That meant avoiding the soldiers, and the guards, and the rotating coterie of weapons instructors who grouped together near the armory and the throne room.

So he wandered the corridors in the early mornings, when they were quieter, and explored places where the others didn’t tend to congregate.

The library. The dining hall. The kitchens.

The name of this place had been easy enough to locate. He’d found it on a piece of aging parchment near the entrance of the archives, scrawled elegantly atop a founding document dating back more than a thousand years. The yellowing page was safely encased behind a thick layer of glass.

The Kingdom of Ioachim.

Only, Ioachim was not a kingdom on Earth. Nor was it a place he had ever read about, in fiction or otherwise. Like everything else here, it felt faintly familiar. Ioachim felt right to say. To think. But that was as far as the recognition extended.

By all accounts, it seemed that Rey had been sent to a remote nation in the north of an entirely different world. A place where a scant few humans and vampires coexisted, and things like a ‘blood concubine’ were as everyday as a convenience store or a traffic light.

Worse, still, was that things here were…tense.

Rey didn’t fully understand why, or what it meant, but everyone—from the local aristocracy, to the servants, to the rangers and swordsmen as they moved between their posts—acted as if they were waiting for everything to fall apart.

There was an uneasy feeling here that wormed its way under his skin, nibbling at the shallow peace he’d found in his new health and quiet repose. It was something that was as familiar as it was inexplicable.

It wasn’t long before Rey realized that the inscrutable stares of the staff weren’t the result of displeasure, they were the result of fear.

And the more he learned, the worse it got.

Apparently the King—his Royal Majesty King Leopold Francis Fisk III—hadn't taken a concubine in nearly thirty years.

The delay had made him weak, and had made his position on this continent uncertain. For a vampire, their power waned when they grew hungry. For too long the King had clung to the throne through the competency of his vassals and the dedication of his court.

But he had given in, now. After decades, he had once again taken a concubine.

For some, it seemed that was a scary prospect. Why now? Are things that dire?

But that was as far as Rey had gotten, uncovering the truth of things. For now, it seemed that Rey had the honor of being the very first to break the cycle, with no clue as to why he was unique enough to accomplish it in the first place.

And while, according to the whispers, Rey’s appointment had indeed made some of the citizens more anxious than before—it had also made many of the others riotously jealous, and Rey uncomfortably interesting to everyone in a hundred mile radius.

Blood concubine.

The word concubine didn’t seem to carry the inelegant assumptions here that it did back on Earth. According to the servants who dared to answer his questions, a startling few among the wider group, it was a position that commanded respect.

That was the sort of thing that made Rey even more cognizant of his every move. He hadn’t realized when he accepted the King’s offer that it would be a position of such note to everyone else.

It was as strange as it was overwhelming.

He could always leave.

The King, and every servant he encountered, made it abundantly clear that his presence here was not compulsory. He was not a prisoner. Not anymore.

But the world outside of here was still such a mystery. If his goal was to stay alive, then wandering aimlessly into the cold, distant snows without a plan seemed deeply counterproductive.

And he had grown less nervous about losing his life in the castle, too. They had gone through a lot of effort if they simply wanted him dead. And beyond that, it seemed like he was going to serve an important purpose to a King who had otherwise forsaken his own nature.

What sort of vampire restricted their own feedings for nearly thirty years? What sort of vampire told people to leave if they wished?

Certainly none that Rey had read about in his first life.

Despite his Majesty’s earlier declaration, it had been three weeks, and the King hadn’t once asked to feed. In fact, Rey hadn’t laid eyes on him from closer than a hundred yards. It almost made it worse, to live in this perpetual state of not knowing what he’d truly signed up for.

All Rey wanted to know was how badly it hurt.

Surely not more than he was already used to, but he wouldn’t be sure—not really—until he tried. So each night he waited, sequestered on a mattress full of metaphorical pins and needles, reading another of the books the servants had shaken loose of the palace’s dusty library.

The ends of his long hair tickled beneath the collar of his shirt now, too long to ignore, too short to tie up. He desperately needed a haircut, but didn’t quite feel comfortable asking for one yet.

Tonight was no different than the many nights before it as he read what he could about this strange place and its long history. It was silent, and still, and lonely. A forced chance to consider this world and his place in it.

Then Rey heard the quiet click of his lock, and he sat bolt upright, clutching the unbuttoned edges of his linen shirt tight against his chest.

“Are you awake?”

His Majesty’s voice sent a sharp chill down Rey’s spine. This body—his, now—knew what a predator sounded like. Rey fought hard to calm his racing heart, somehow sure that Leopold would be able to hear it thundering in the stillness of his massive room.

The King never grew any less wondrous to behold. His silhouette was enormous and swimming in darkness, seemingly untouched by the dim flicker of Rey’s candlelight. It was like the night and shadows clung to him, pooling in every corner of his face and collarbones.

They were distracting. Almost enough to hide the trembling in his Majesty’s hands, and the unusual length of his teeth.

Almost.

“Yes, your Majesty,” Rey said quietly, extracting himself from beneath his duvet with as much dignity as he could muster. Inside, he was a toxic mix of panic and relief, all at once. “I guess you’ve come to, um…eat?”

Why did you wait so long? He wanted to ask, but didn’t.

Why did he care? It wasn’t as though this was meant to be particularly fun for him. Empathy, maybe? A memory of the ache he’d felt, for a time, as he yearned to eat and wasted away instead.

Or perhaps he simply wanted to get it over with.

That’s all it was. That was the only thing that made sense.

The King’s eyes were pinned to his neck, but without that tell, Rey wouldn’t have known just how hungry he was. He was remarkably composed for a starving man. More composed than Rey had ever been in his moments of desperation, as his original body had withered and failed him.

The King averted his gaze. He seemed…ashamed. “Yes, it has become necessary to feed. I have worked hard to allow you time to recover.”

“I understand.” Rey squirmed a little, then drew back the collar from his neck with a confidence he absolutely did not feel. “I’ve…never done this. How do I…?”

The King gave a sharp little shake of his head, but the hunger in his eyes was getting harder and harder to mask. They were almost entirely silver now. Rey thought he could see him hollow his cheeks, like he was swallowing back a pool of eager saliva. “Not the neck. That means…something else, to us. I can use your wrist.”

It was a bizarre sense of deja vu that filled him, now. It displaced the panic that sat sour in his gut with an unusual sense of rightness.

“Alright.”

Rey rolled up the sleeve on his left side, presenting his arm, wrist up. He kept the open flaps of his shirt pinned to himself with the opposite hand, somehow shy, despite it all.

“Do you need me to stand?”

“No need.”

Leopold dropped to one knee, his long, elaborate cloak pooling around his feet. There was an eerie stillness about him, one that Rey hadn’t fully appreciated until now. Like every gesture, no matter how small, was entirely under his control. Those deep-set eyes fixed on his face, dilated and ravenous.

You belong like this, his body sang, as his higher instincts rebelled and thrashed at the concept of submitting voluntarily.

The King’s voice was gravelly and raw as he whispered: “Are you ready?”

Rey shivered, but gave a curt nod.

“I am.”