Blood Legacy: Heir to the Throne Read Free

expertly lit the flame with a flint. In less than a minute, the wisps of smoke had turned into a blazing fire.
    Ryan settled into the chair near his bedside where she had spent hours that had turned into weeks that had turned into months, all the while willing his consciousness to return. She stared at her father’s handsome visage, aching at his absence, tortured by the thought that she had contributed to his condition.
    Ryan sat back, rubbing her eyes. The last few years seemed a dream. She had only been recently reunited with Victor, having thought him dead by her own hand centuries before. She had been tried for his murder, but he had reappeared at her trial, revealing for the first time that he was her biological father as well as her mentor. Ryan had known, but the Others had not. The revelation of her birth explained much about her that had puzzled the Old Ones, her unique gifts, her unusual power, and the fact that Victor had been able to Change her long after his blood should have been poison.
    Ryan remembered her first introduction to her Kind, to the hierarchical web of power and position that held them all. Three things determined the strength of each One. First and foremost was the power of the One who initiated the Change. Under normal circumstances, there were limitations that regulated this advantage. Young Ones, by definition, were those whose blood was not powerful enough to initiate Change. Old Ones were those whose blood had grown too powerful and would kill any human. Only those occupying the middle ground could initiate Change, so there was a narrow window of reproductive potential.
    Under normal circumstances.
    Victor had proved the extraordinary exception, able to Change Ryan when he was already an Old One and the most powerful of their Kind.
    This brought Ryan’s thoughts to the second determination of power. One gained strength by Sharing the blood of someone more powerful. Sharing was always pleasant, and the seduction even more so. As a result, the more powerful were occasionally willing to Share with those younger than themselves. These unions were extremely dangerous to the younger of the pair, however, because Sharing to the point of death was a great pleasure, and their Kind was an inherently predatory species. Most Young Ones did not survive because their mentors lacked the desire or self-control to keep from killing them, or merely failed to protect them.
    Again, Victor had proved the exception. Although his desire for his child was great, he had protected Ryan and kept her from the Others when she was a Young One. There were those who said Ryan had never truly been a Young One, so powerful had she been even as a child. Although their Kind eventually moved beyond the point of death, there were those who said Ryan had never been vulnerable to that fate.
    And so Ryan had Shared with the greatest of their Kind for centuries, every union making her stronger. And those centuries only added to her power, because the final contribution to strength was age. The older one lived to be, the more powerful one became. Although Ryan was seven centuries old, her power rivaled that of those twice her age.
    Ryan was thoughtful. She had once wondered why there were not more of their Kind if all eventually became immortal. She now understood the deadliness of the Change, the irresistible, predatory urge to kill one another, and the limitations on reproduction that served to check their population.
    And then there was the purge.
    Ryan frowned. That had been barbaric, even for their Kind. Until very recently, Ryan had been unaware of the purge. It was a tradition amongst their Kind, a kind of “thinning of the herd” in which the weak and unacceptable were destroyed. Ryan had been tasked with the last millennial purge. She had not wanted to obey the Grand Council, but at the direction of her father, she accepted the undertaking and proceeded to wipe out their Kind in staggering numbers. Most of the smaller