A flicker of hope ignited in my chest.
"On one condition," he added, his smile widening.
"We wait one hour."
My hope died, strangled in its crib.
"We wait," he purred, his red eyes gleaming with a cruel, vampiric light, "for the sun to set."
The hour was the longest of my two lives.
We waited in the silence of the ruined wasteland, my broken army on one side, his victorious legions on the other.
The sun, a hateful, mocking eye, crawled towards the horizon with an agonizing slowness.
Every tick of the clock was a turn of the screw, a tightening of the noose around my neck.
I watched him.
The Vampire Lord, Ragnar Vhagar.
He sat on a throne of rubble, calm and composed, a king holding court on the eve of his own coronation.
The setting sun painted him in hues of blood and fire, and I could feel the change in the air around him.
The oppressive weakness he felt under the sun was fading, replaced by a low, thrumming hum of gathering power.
