And that old corpse had promised him something if he stayed here obediently.
He had only intended to visit—and at most ask the humans to assign Sylene as his personal guard while he stayed in human territory. But when he looked at the boy again, that plan softened. If he could take this hybrid under his wing properly, it would be better.
Corvin, his loyal deputy commander, was handling everything back in vampire territory—managing the fleet, the assets, the mess the nobles left behind. Corvin had already kept things afloat for eighty years while Melchior went missing. A few more years of peace-envoy duty wouldn't break him, right.
His deputy commander would only complain for three months nonstop at most. And he could simply ignore it anyway.
This assignment to human territory was the polite version of exile anyway.
The vampires hated him.
No—feared him. That was the more accurate word.
