King Elderon turned his gaze to his wife, Queen Aurelia, whose face was seething with barely contained fury. "If you are not part of my immediate family, leave." His voice, though low, carried the undeniable weight of a royal decree, and the message was instantly and universally received. The other Princes scrambled from the throne room, followed quickly by the retreating figures of maids, guards, and butlers. In moments, the vast, echoing space held only the King, his Queen, and their son, Prince Eric.
Elderon took a deep, measured breath, the silence in the room heavy and absolute. Then, with a flicker of his predatory nature, a sharp fang descended, biting precisely into his own tongue. He allowed the resulting mouthful of viscous, metallic-smelling blood to spill onto the polished marble floor. With an almost imperceptible flexing of his will, the blood on the floor defied gravity. It rose, splitting into two thin, crimson ribbons that shot forth with breathtaking speed.
The threads of fluid magic wrapped tightly around the throats of both his wife and son. In the very next instant, Elderon clenched his fist, and the two figures were yanked upward, suspended several feet in the air, dangling before his eyes. He fixed his cold, lethal stare on the two "scheming idiots" who had just dared to embarrass him before the kingdom's next generation.
Elderon remained silent, merely watching as his family struggled, their boots kicking uselessly in the air. Their fingers clawed desperately at the sticky, shimmering cords of blood, leaving thin, dark trails that stained their skin but did nothing to lessen the agony of suffocation.
"As a father, a King, a husband... you have disappointed me." He sighed, the sound impossibly large in the quiet hall. He raised a hand, rubbing his fingers across his forehead in a gesture of profound weariness, and sank back onto his ornate throne. He watched as Aurelia and Eric gasped, their faces rapidly turning a mottled red. Their eyes began to bulge, the tiny blood vessels in the whites turning to spiderwebs of crimson, and the veins in their necks swelled taut against the crushing restraints.
With a casual, perfectly practiced wave of his fingers, Elderon dissolved the crimson bonds. They fell away, and the Queen and Prince plummeted hard onto the stone floor.
They immediately began to heave and cough, sucking great gulps of air into their burning lungs. Yet, before they could draw more than a few ragged breaths, the very same blood threads rose again. This time, they looped tightly around the Queen's and the Prince's wrists, pinning them to the floor in a position of forced prostration.
"I do not ask for much of those in my family. You should know this by now. I am a simple vampire." Elderon spoke with an eerie calm, crossing one leg over the other and resting his polished shoe on his knee. "Very easy to please. I require so little of those beneath me. I have done the hard work." The muscle in his jaw visibly tightened as he looked down upon his family, his eyes burning with accusation. "Look at this family. Look at me! I am the supreme king of this realm. I have done all of the heavy lifting."
The blood cuffs around their wrists abruptly contracted, biting deep into their flesh.
"You don't even have to think; I have already done it! And now we are in a mess?" Elderon stood, his movements fluid and deadly, and began to descend the steps dividing them. "You will stay away from Daniela! Do not indulge your son in his childish idiocies. You are a Queen first, and a mother when it is necessary."
"Yes, your majesty," Queen Aurelia whispered, a profound shiver running through her entire body. The cold, steel-edged tone in her husband's voice was one she knew well, and it was a sound that told her she had committed a grave, potentially irreversible error.
With a delicate motion of his hand, King Elderon released his Queen's blood shackles. The hardened, rope-like blood instantly turned back to liquid, pooling briefly just beneath her wrists before being drawn back toward the King. He extended his hand to her, assisting her to her feet, a jarringly kind smile gracing his features. He pressed a warm kiss to her cheek, his expression shifting from wrath to paternal affection in a horrifying instant.
He then looked down at his son, who still lay pinned and silent on the floor. "Father, I can't just—"
The blood that had just released the Queen did not return to the floor. Instead, it reformed, coalescing into several razor-sharp, dripping spikes that hovered menacingly, centimeters from Eric's throat. Elderon's message was clear: if his son had ceased to be reasonable, he had no issue with creating a replacement.
Eric knew his life hung in the balance, but he couldn't give up on Daniela, not with what he knew she possessed. His lips remained sealed, but as the King's blood-spikes began to press into the soft flesh of his throat, the terror overwhelmed his pride.
"I love her! Sh-she's! She has! I love!" he screamed, each frantic, garbled syllable a desperate lie to buy time. With each falsehood, the spikes pressed deeper, closer to decapitation. Finally, with a shuddering scream, he spoke the truth: "Daniela has a God's gift!"
The instant the words left his mouth, the spikes stopped. They paused for a moment, then completely dissipated, falling into a mere bloody puddle beneath him—the King's blood mixing with his own.
King Elderon swooped down, his powerful hand clamping onto his son's hair, yanking the Prince's head back to force their eyes to meet. "Speak," he commanded, his voice a low, lethal snarl, "and do not dare to lie to me!"