I can sense it in the stuffy air, charged with tension and dust motes dancing in the near-darkness. These catacombs, a place I never knew existed directly under Manor Marquin, have not seen use in years. Decades, maybe.
Overhead, a rhythmic stomping of boots assaults the various levels of Lord Skartovius Ashfen’s regal mansion. The muffled echo I hear chills my blood, worrying me to the bone.How far away are they? Have they discovered the entrance to the catacombs behind the conference wall yet? Is it futile for us to run blindly through this darkness, and would we be better off standing and fighting?
My mates agreed on fleeing, and when Skartovius, Vallan, Garroway,andLukain all agree on something, I get the feeling it’s the best plan of action.This man coming after us, Overlord Aramastun Wyvox, the Night Judge, must be truly terrifying for him to strike such a reaction in the blackened hearts of my vampire mates.
I can call Skar aformerlord, it seems. It’s a title he’ll be dismayed to give up. The Night Judge unceremoniously stripped him of his titles, status, and manor in one fell swoop tonight. Just as I was starting to learn a devastating truth from Skar’s lips, no less.
My eyes narrow when I stare at the swishing red-and-gold cloak in front of me, the broad shoulders it’s attached to,illuminating Skar’s frame in dim, murky torchlight.He deserves more than his titles and material possessions stripped from him if what he told me is true.
And why wouldn’t it be the truth? Skartovius told me himself, hoping to settle something clearly gnawing at his conscience. The truth, in stark detail: Skartovius lied to Lukain Pierken about their past. Every that has transpired recently hinged on that lie.
The vampire lord and my former dhampir master are brothers. That much is indisputable, because they share a mother in the now-very-dead Spymistress, Alacine Mortis.
Alacine Mortis was killed by her secondborn son, Lukain, against all odds. Up until the murder of his wicked, grotesque mother, Lukain and Alacine had been very much aligned in purpose.
That’s where the truth ends. In Skar’s hand-scrawled history of their shared past, he claimed he killed Lukain’s father, the Silverknight Heskel Angul, not out of cold blood and anger but because Heskel had been plotting the deaths of Alacine and Lukain and all the other vampires in his old age. A final coup toward the end of Heskel’s life to rid the world of vampires, when he had allegedly called Alacine his immortal lover for nearly fifty years.
I should have known something was suspicious about Skar’s telling of the events. By the timeline presented in his tome, Heskel would have been between sixty and eighty years aged. How could a man, who claimed to have loved a vampiress nobleblood for decades, suddenly decide to throw it all away like that? In his final, withering years?
No, Heskel Angul was likely a senile old human by that point, little more than a corpse . . . which Skar turned into anactualcorpse out of anger at his mother’s betrayal and disowning of him, her firstborn son.
Something that happened before I was born should not matter as much as it does. What makes it so important—soimpossiblefor me to forgive—is this simple lie about Skar’s motives is what convinced Lukain to end his vile mother’s vampiric life once and for all. It was Skar’s words on those pages that incited the violence in Lukain’s half-human heart and inspired him to stab his father’s silver saber through Alacine’s chest.
I should bethankingSkar and Lukain. Lukain’s actions saved my abducted mother’s life. Skar’s lie brought him to that moment. Alacine was in the middle of torturing my mother when the murder happened. She had already dispatched of Jinneth’s left hand.
But I can’t do it. I can’t forgive so easily, for the sole fact I’vetrustedSkartovius all this time. Not to lie to me, not to steal my agency and independence, and not to fall deeper into his monstrous ways.
This little lie . . . this huge, tiny, inescapable lie . . . changes everything between us.
I inhale the musty air of the catacombs and close my wet eyes, turning away from Skar’s back.
Lie or not, forgiveness or not, I can’t think about that right now. Our survival is more pressing, with Overlord Aramastun Wyvox’s army after us. As the lord of the Judgment Ward in Olhav, Aramastun has claimed the Military and Intelligence Wards under his jurisdiction, due to the recent deaths of Overlord Barnabax Craxon and Overlady Alacine Mortis, the respective leaders of those wards.
Up until this chaotic evening, things had been going swimmingly. Lukain returned my mother to us, missing a limb but relatively whole after Alacine’s imprisonment and torture of her. My mother Jinneth was reunited with the Chained Sisters and her lover, Iron Sister Keffa. Alacine Mortis was dead. Myhulking mate Vallan Stellos managed to kill his master Barnabac after leading the Red Butcher through a months-long con game that none of us even knew about. I can only imagine the horrors he saw to make that happen and fulfill the goals of our cause.
The Five Ministries became Three, in rapid succession. Their power was thwarted and minimized, and the fruits of our labor were coming into clearer focus. Two down, three to go, before we could topple the tyrannical ministries that have a stranglehold over both Olhav and Nuhav. Things were lining up.
And then tonight. A lie. A usurpation. And now a mad sprint to . . . where?
Skar leads our group through the catacombs at a swift pace, uncaring if my human eyes can acclimate to the blackness or not. The walls of this cave are rough, damp, cold. The air stifles. The footsteps around me sound harried and unsure. Only Skar moves with any sort of confidence. The other members of my party hover around me like flies, protecting me at every side.
There is Vallan Stellos, always the watchful protector and giant bodyguard. The dhampir Garroway Kuffich, wily bloodthrall to Skar and the most lighthearted of my mates, showing a decidedly serious clench to his smooth jaw. There’s Lukain Pierken, my newest mate and oldest confidant, also a half-vampire, brother to Skar, former master of the Grimsons, and all-around pain in my ass for the turmoil he’s put me through. And then there’s Palacia, a pale interfolk friend of mine who was recently turned by Lukain to save her life, now a vampirex who calls me “Mistress” because she has consumed my Loreblood and inadvertently severed her bond with Lukain.
In fact, everyone around me has sipped my blood. Some have slurped it up with fervor, and if I think about those moments too hard right now, my fear might turn into arousal. So I don’t.
I wait for someone to ask where Skar is leading us. I won’t do it because I can’t talk to him right now. My anger is tooheightened, my fear too enveloping. No one asks, and I get the feeling everyone trusts him.Everyone but me. The one person whose trust he cares about.
Grinding my teeth, I hurry forward, turning a corner a moment after Skar does. Palacia to my right and Garroway to my left round the corner a split second after me. Vallan brings up the rear, with Lukain by his side.
I only wish one of them could hold me right now and tell me everything was going to be okay. That they could explain things to me like I was a child, and I didn’t have to live with this constant strain of stress and consternation clouding over me. Tell me that Skar is anadmirablevampire, as paradoxical as that sounds, and has our best interests at heart.
The tunnel drags on forever, splitting into off-shoots and smaller passages deeper into the Olhavian Peaks. Skartovius sticks to a straightforward path. He doesn’t deviate, stray, or look over our shoulders to see if we’re being followed. We can hear the boots overhead, muffled and ominous.
Once those boots recede into nothingness, an eerie quiet falls over the company. A giddy sensation crawls up my spine, making me twitch as we barrel into a room. Skar chooses a direction and continues on, waving the single torch we possess.
The torch throws hazy red shadows across the rough walls, giving me a better look at the shape of this tunnel. It’s a circular, man-made construction, clearly dug through the mountainside for just such an emergency. The archways are low and unfinished. I nearly trip and fall over jutting rocks and knolls multiple times, and it’s only the sturdy hands of Garroway and Vallan that catch me and stop me from faceplanting.
Every time their hands leave my body so I can keep running, a stab of loss and pain hits me.