Velvet Shadows (The Crimson Court #2)

Chapter 2

NATE

Sera’s pain barrels through me, as viscerally as if it were my own. I crack my neck, clench my fists, try to shake it away, but it grows and grows.

From the moment Valeria summoned Sera and left me pacing in the drawing room, I have been on edge. I can barely contain the urge to tear after my grandmother and do whatever it takes to stop her exposing the secrets that hang between Seraphina and I.

Valeria made it clear I was not welcome in the audience she is holding with Sera. She wished to speak to her alone, to extract the truth from her and understand how deeply my lies are woven.

I have only obeyed her order because I know Sera’s secret — I know she cannot be glamoured. Valeria is ancient and powerful, but she is still a vampire who relies on mind-tricks to have humans do her bidding. Sera will fight them, just as she has resisted the manipulations of my siblings and me at every turn.

Sera has magic of her own that will protect her. She does not need me.

But now, when my entire skull feels like it will explode, I know she is suffering. There is a chance Valeria felt the resistance and is making Sera pay for it. Or perhaps torture was her plan all along.

I have noway of fighting the urges that pound through my body, telling me to protect what is mine. They are all-consuming.

I shut out our channel of communication only so that Valeria did not find me in Sera’s mind when she attempted to control it. But the connection that flows between my blood and Sera’s is strong. And it is forcing me to feel her pain.

We know we are bonded. There is nothing we can do to escape it, but if Valeria knows, too…

My fangs flare, my eyes grow dilated and wild. I know my siblings and Charlotte will have seen the change in me. They will know that, somehow, I am so connected to my pledge that I feel every ounce of her agony. And it will not take them long to understand why when I cannot hide the sensations stirring beneath my skin.

“Brother?” I feel Rafe’s eyes on me as I fly about the room, pacing like a wild, caged beast. “Are you well?”

“Yes, you do look pale, cousin. Is something the matter?” Charlotte’s tone is poison, a grim smile blooming on her lips.

I throw a snarl at her, but continue pacing.

“Nate, you know Grandmother is displeased with you. You cannot intervene.” Juliette, ever the voice of reason, studies me coolly. “She will call for you when she is ready.”

“Of course, if you had told Grandmother the truth, this all could have been avoided,” Charlotte smirks.

“She asked nothing of me. I did not lie to her,” I snap.

“Yet she sensed you were not telling the truth, cousin. So what is it? You may as well tell us.” Charlotte looks up at me from her position on the chaise; lolling backwards, completely relaxed. “We will find out once she extracts it from Miss Sterling, anyway.”

“She will learn nothing,” I snarl.

“Even about your affections for your pledge? That is what Ambrose said, wasn’t it? That there was something between you that ought not to be. Something Grandmother should know about.”

“Your brother was wrong.”

“And being wrong was enough to see him killed?”

Another stab of pain slices through my skull, blurring my vision. I stumble, shaking it away. “I did not seek to harm your brother tonight, but he was forewarned. He knew that if he threatened Sera, I would end him.”

“And to hell with the consequences,” Charlotte says, turning to look at Juliette. “I think there may be merit in what Ambrose said, cousin. Your brother would not be so reckless if there was not something else at play.”

Juliette eyes Charlotte warily, but she does not disagree. They will all soon know.

And if they can see it so plainly, then there will be no hope of hiding it from Valeria.

“Seraphina is mine to protect. If our brother and cousins had remembered that, we might not be in this dire situation,” I bark. My voice is low and rough and so hate-filled that it sounds like the devil himself, even to my own ears.

It is startling enough that Juliette inclines her head towards me. “Be calm, brother. If something has formed between you, Grandmother will find it and help us navigate such a development.”

Charlotte laughs loudly. “And by navigate, your sister means destroy you and that pretty pledge, too. Whether it is a blood bond or love, it cannot stand and you know it.”

Nate…

I closed the connection between us, yet I can still hear Sera’s pain, her cries for help as if she were calling from the next room. The others will know in time. I can do nothing to deny it. And there is no sense in wasting another minute fighting the inevitable when Sera is suffering.

I throw a final snarl in Charlotte’s direction before flying from the drawing room. I know Sera will be in Valeria’s chambers — a part of the house I have never been permitted to enter. There will be a door somewhere, a hidden passage and network of corridors that lead to it, but I cannot waste time.

There is a more direct path.

I am a blur as I tear into the night. Valeria’s chambers are visible only from outside — located in the tallest turret that slices through the centre of Nighthaven like a spear.

It is a myth that our kind transform into winged creatures and take off into the darkness, borne from the fact we are a black blur of speed when we travel. But tonight, with Sera’s blood coursing through my veins and the desperation I feel to reach her, I know I can do it.

It is not flight exactly, just velocity and fury. But it is enough to propel me.

I crash into the window with such speed that I do not feel the glass as it splinters around me. I land on my feet, shards exploding over the floorboards.

My hands are around Valeria’s neck before I can stop myself. “Enough!” I roar in her face, throwing her from her throne against the stone mantel of the fireplace. She does not flinch, but the stone cracks beneath her with the impact of her ancient body.

I hold her there, unyielding, every muscle in my body taught and rippling. Valeria does not fight me off, nor turn her fury onto me.

She raises an eyebrow and smiles. “I knew you would come, Nathaniel.” One hand moves to my fingers, gently unfurling them so she is set free.

With her words, the fight flies out of me. Sera’s pain subsides, too, as though a shrill ringing has finally ceased to resound in my ears.

I bow my head, my whole body trembling from the adrenaline that now has nowhere to go. “Forgive me, Grandmother.”

As I turn, I see Sera crumpled on the floor. I do not go to her, despite every fibre of my being screaming at me to fly to her side. If Valeria thinks this is a blood bond, there is a chance we might live.

If she suspects it is love, we will both lose our heads.

Valeria places her cool hand against my cheek. “There is nothing to forgive, dear boy.”

I look up into her icy, fathomless eyes. She smiles again. And then I realise that this was her plan. She forced me to show the hand I have been desperately trying to hide since Sera and I first met in Mayfair.

“I understand why you have been keeping secrets from me, Nathaniel. It is not your fault, of course. But it is a problem.” She sinks back onto the throne, her eyes now fixed on Sera. “I had to put Miss Sterling in danger to establish where your loyalties lay. And you have made it quite clear that they are no longer to this family. You would kill your kin and challenge your own grandmother in order to protect her. ”

I sink one of my fangs down into my lower lip, holding the flesh there. I have no comeback, no explanation. Nothing I say will help our cause. Valeria sensed there was something between Sera and me, and I have walked directly into her trap. I have given her the certainty she needed.

I do not look at Sera again, despite the need coursing through me to go to her side, to wipe the blood from her face where it has flowed in channels from her nostrils and lick my fingers clean. The only small mercy is that Valeria has not drunk from her.

Yet.

“My actions this evening were to protect the pledge I took for the Season. The rest of this family has failed to protect what is theirs, but Miss Sterling gives me life. I will not see her come to harm when she has served me well.”

Valeria’s eyebrow raises again. “A noble sentiment, my dear, but one you must know I cannot agree with. The pledges are important, of course. But our loyalties are firstly to our own. To this family. You know I could never condone you slaughtering your own cousin to defend a human.” She stands and walks back over to the window, the broken glass crunching beneath her feet. “Ambrose may have violated our laws, but now you have too. And that only leaves me with more questions, I am afraid.” Valeria snaps her head towards me. “You knew the punishment you would face for such a crime, yet you did it anyway. Which leads me to believe that you had no choice in the matter; that you were forced to do whatever it took to defend Miss Sterling.”

My stomach drops to my feet. I do not need to look at Sera in order to know the anguish I will see painted on her face. Her fear and dread and galloping heart swell like a tidal wave in my throat.

Valeria could make me pay for my crimes. She could send me to court to face the other matriarchs and have them sign off on my execution. Her slaughter of her own husband almost saw her unseated from the thirteen, yet for reasons known only to her and the Court, they let it pass. She could ensure they are not so lenient with me.

But if she knows the truth — that it was Sera who killed her beloved grandson and I not only did nothing to prevent it, but covered it up and took the blame, then she will see to it that we both meet a face worse than death.

“Do you deny a bond has formed between you and Miss Sterling?”

My response dries up in my throat.

She does not know it was Sera that killed Ambrose, but she knows about the blood bond.

And now, she will find a way to make use of it.

“I have no experience of such things. I have never been sure.” My shoulder blades draw together as I straighten up. “It has been decades since we fed in this way, and even longer since our kind drunk from a singular supply. I believed the strength of my pledge’s blood to be a result of the drought we have faced these past years.”

“And when did you suspect something else was at play?”

“I had no such suspicions. I believed Miss Sterling’s blood to be potent. I had no desire to share it, but I did not know anything else had taken root between us.” The lie comes easily. I may have confessed to Sera that we are bonded, but before the hunt, I had fought it in every moment. Admitting such a thing would have been tantamount to a death sentence for us both.

Valeria laughs. “You always have been a very diligent soldier for me, Nathaniel, but intelligence, cunning, self-awareness… that has never been your strong suit.”

I bite back the rebuke that rises in my throat. “There is a reason our kind is governed by women.”

I do not say what we both know to be true — that the deep knowledge of such things as blood bonds is held by the matriarchs of the Court. It is the females that are given the education and histories of our kind, in order that they may lead their own houses with precision and ambition. And most do not choose to share that knowledge. They have seen all too well what happens in the human world when men rise above their station.

“You are duty bound to this family and your matriarch. The moment you suspected something was awry, it should have been reported and your ignorance would have been remedied. Many unfortunate events may have been prevented if you had acted out of duty and not out of selfishness.”

“We are selfish creatures. You preach duty and family and loyalty, yet the entire court is built on lies and deception.”

“You dare lecture me on matters you know nothing about?” Valeria chuckles, then turns away.

As I look back at Sera, she is pulled to kneeling by an invisible force. Her hands fly to her throat and her breaths come ragged and fast. My own burns in my lungs. I feel the icy grip of fingers at my neck, the compression against my windpipe, and I fly once more at Valeria, desperate for the sensation to stop.

With a slight incline of her head, I am stopped in my tracks. Sera is growing paler, her mouth hanging open, and although I can breathe, I feel every inch of her pain.

“Now, Nathaniel. Perhaps you will tell me what you should have brought to my attention from the moment you first tasted Miss Sterling’s blood.” She stares at me with fury, holding both Sera and I with nothing but her mind. “What powers has the bond afforded you?”

I cannot think logically, cannot find a way out of this when my brain is flooded with Sera’s pain.

“I am faster than I have ever been. Stronger. More furious. Hungrier.” I bark out the words, hoping they are enough. Valeria has seen my strength and speed — on any other night before the Season I would not have been able to overpower her as I did when I flew into the room.

“What else?” She growls, tightening her invisible grip on Sera’s throat.

“There is nothing, Grandmother.”

With a nod, Valeria jerks Sera to the floor. She is not just dropped, but slammed against it, her head crashing into the wood. Immediately, a pool of blood forms beneath her.

“Try again.”

“We heal quicker. Both of us.”

I can tell her nothing else. If she knows the power Sera has granted me, she will be used. Sampled. She will know Sera is other, for the gift of walking in the light cannot be down to a blood bond alone. She will no longer be mine and I will be forced to endure every moment of Valeria’s torture as she extracts Sera’s nectar from her veins.

I channel the monstrous fury that is mine alone, and push through the pain. “There is nothing else.”

“Show me. Heal her.”

I fly to Sera’s side and ease her into my arms, ripping the flesh at my wrist before pushing it to her lips. Within seconds, the wound on her head has healed and Valeria’s eyes widen.

“And you? Your healing is as quick as this?”

“Yes.”

“Remarkable.” I can see the cogs whirring in her mind. “The Court will have to hear of this, of course. Your fate will rest with them.”

I do not know exactly what the Court’s stance will be, but nothing good has ever come of a vampire forming any deep attachment to a human. It invariably ends in death.

“Will the Court not see the advantages the bond gives our kind?”

“They will see the advantages it gives our family,” Valeria scoffs. “And with the Tournament ahead of us, they will not allow you to enter it with such strength and speed at your disposal. You will be ruled out of the marriage mart.”

“I am not eligible for the Tournament or the marriage mart if I am to marry Caroline Vossler.” I feel Sera’s body tense in my arms, a wave of dread rolling through her that hits my own stomach.

“Your sister was misguided. Such an arrangement shall not stand.”

“But we have no way to extract ourselves from it without furthering the complaints of the gutterfangs. They are being slaughtered in the city and the Vosslers remain closely tied to them.”

“The Court will preside on all matters. It is their collective wisdom we must turn to in light of these unusual events.”

“I will face Court for my actions, Grandmother. But I will not see Sera harmed. She has done nothing to warrant persecution.”

Valeria narrows her eyes at me. “You truly know nothing of what connects you, do you?” When my brow furrows, she continues with a wry smile. “The bond ties you together. Your fates are entwined. If one of you should die, so does the other. It is why you are compelled to protect each other. Do not be fooled that there is genuine sentiment stirring between you — it is all self-preservation.”

“And you would have me sentenced to death for something beyond my control?”

“The Court may take pity on you.” Valeria says, her voice dripping with false sympathy. “But I wouldn’t count on it. Blood bonds are a serious matter, Nathaniel. They threaten the very fabric of our society, the order we have worked so hard to maintain. To be tied to a human in this way is a significant weakness.”

I feel Sera stir in my arms, her breath coming in shallow gasps. I want to comfort her, to promise her that everything will be alright. But it would be a lie.

“However,” she muses, “perhaps there is a way to salvage this situation. A way for you to prove your loyalty to the family and ensure the Court does not learn of your connection.”

I narrow my eyes at her, suspicion sinking like a weight in my gut. “What do you propose?”

Valeria stops, turning to face me with another of her chilling smiles. “The Tournament,” she says simply. “You will compete, and you will win. Prove yourself worthy of the Blackwood name, and I may be persuaded to keep your little indiscretion with Miss Sterling between us.”

I feel Sera tense, her fingers digging into my arm. She may not know what is involved, but she is smart enough to reason the Tournament will be a death trap — a brutal competition where only the strongest and most ruthless survive.

But she does not know what I am capable of.

“And when I win?”

Valeria’s smile widens. “Then you will be free of your obligation to marry Caroline Vossler. You will have your pick of the most prestigious matches, and the Court will hail you as a hero.”

I have no choice but to accept. If I do not, Sera and I will face certain death at the hands of the Court.

Valeria knows it. She would not offer salvation without a heavy price.

“What do you ask of me in return?”

Valeria laughs, a sound like shattering glass. “Clever boy,” she purrs. “You know me so well.” She steps closer. “In return for my silence and your freedom, you will be my loyal servant — my eyes and ears at Court, as you once were in London. There will be times when your newfound strength will be a significant advantage. I intend to use them.”

I feel Sera’s horror, her revulsion at the thought of me being bound to Valeria’s will. But it is nothing new. I served her before, enforcing orders from her and the Court on the streets of London. And Valeria does not know it yet, but my loyalty to her has always been a part of a bigger plan. I could not have accounted for the connection with Sera, but this situation… it could serve me.

I take a deep breath, my decision made. “I accept your terms. I will do your bidding at Court, but only until such a time as the bond between Seraphina and I is severed.”

Valeria laughs. “Oh dear boy, the bond cannot be broken — surely you must have realised that? You are bound to the life of a mortal, Nathaniel. Your service to me will be short compared to the immortal life you have lived. How long do humans live these days, Miss Sterling? If they are not drained in their beds first, of course?”

Sera says nothing, but I feel the defiance and anger rising in her. She knows the injustice of it too. And she will not wish to be bound to a monster for the rest of her mortal days.

“You could live to see your sixth decade if you are kept well-nourished. And I know my grandson will ensure you are taken good care of. He has a vested interest in you, after all.”

“You put a lot of trust in me, Your Grace,” Sera says quietly. “I could throw myself from the window this very moment and you would lose yet another grandson.”

Valeria straightens up. It is clear she was not expecting Sera to find her tongue so soon, nor to be so bold as to speak out.

I was not expecting it either.

“You are built for survival, Miss Sterling. And the bond will not allow you to sink to the depths of despair that would have you welcome death. The bond will do everything it can to keep you alive. Would you care to put it to the test?” Her eyes flash as she extends her arm to the window.

If Valeria pushes her much further, Sera’s magic will surely present itself. And then all this talk of a future tied to me will be for nothing.

Valeria would kill her instantly.

“No.” I stand, holding my hand out to Sera. “Miss Sterling will do what is required of her. But we will be vulnerable at Court.”

Valeria nods. “Agreed. You would be wise to keep her close.”

“And what about the investigation into the hunter attacks? It is not just the other noble families who we will need to be cautious of.”

“We have a presence in London monitoring the hunters’ movements.”

“Not well enough. They came to Nighthaven. If action is not taken, we could face the risk of hunters and gutterfangs when we are all gathered for the Tournament.”

“Do you really think even a thousand gutterfangs could be any match for the matriarchs that sit on The Crimson Court?” Valeria’s tone is impatient; all false niceties and sinister smiles fallen away. “If they are foolish enough to challenge us, they will face the consequences.”

“The gutterfangs are being slaughtered already. They have little to lose.”

Valeria silences me with a sharp look, her eyes flashing with warning. “Do not presume to lecture me, Nathaniel. I have lived longer than you can fathom, seen things you cannot imagine. I know well the dangers and the opportunities that lie ahead of us. Do not overstep your mark. You will do as I command and do it willingly, or face the consequences of your actions here this evening.” She holds my gaze, staring me down. “We leave for court tomorrow night. I will not tell your siblings and cousin of the bond, but they have eyes. You will need to try harder to hide your connection from them and the rest of the noble families.”

I nod, letting my eyes fall to my feet. Valeria dismisses us with the flick of her wrist and I take Sera’s arm in mine.

As we reach the threshold, I turn back to look at her, but the door slams behind us. With it, her voice resounds not in the air, but through our heads, dripping with menace.

“Welcome to the family, Seraphina.”