Chapter 10
SERA
The sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in a blaze of orange and pink as Nate and I emerge from the inn. I take a deep breath, savouring the freshness, the scent of damp earth and moss as Nate brings the carriage and horses around.
After all that has happened between us, I struggle to look at him.
His vulnerability made me push away all thoughts of his monstrous nature and his brutality. It forced me see what is left of his humanity. And it was all that pain and heartbreak that made me feel closer to him. It pulled us together once more, with every bit of want and lust we felt in the carriage.
I watch him with the horses, taking in the strong lines of his profile, the way his dark hair falls across his brow. He looks tired, the events of the past day weighing heavily on him, but there’s a softness to his expression that makes my chest ache. And there’s a tension between us, too, an awareness that wasn’t there before. I can still feel the ghost of his touch on my skin, the heat of his breath against my neck. And I long for it. Crave it.
As if sensing my gaze, he turns to me, his eyes meeting mine. For a moment, we simply look at each other. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a precipice, ready to jump.
Perhaps I already have.
Nate looks away. “We should reach Bath in a few hours.” He climbs up once more into the driver’s seat. This time, he doesn’t suggest I sit in the carriage.
He offers me his hand.
By the time we reach Bath, it is late, and the world is dark.
It was a tense journey, one we spent scouring the shadows for the shapes of hunters and trying to fight the yearning that has settled comfortably between us.
I straighten up, every muscle in my body sore from all it has endured these past days. As I blink wearily, the city comes into view. It is like something out of a fairy tale, a city of honey-coloured stone that glitters in the starlight.
Bath’s architecture is not so different to Mayfair, yet it feels a world away from it and the gothic grandeur of Nighthaven, too. How can this — a place of light and life and beauty — be the home of the vampire elite?
For a moment, I can almost forget the darkness that nips at our heels, the shadow of the hunters and the Court, and the blood bond that ties me to Nate.
Almost.
I know Nate will go to any lengths to protect me, but the thought that this beautiful, ancient city with its Roman baths and smart crescents and squares is the home to centuries’ old vampires and the Court that rules over them, makes my blood run cold.
It is the normality of it. The quiet. There is nothing about this place that gives the slightest clue as to the atrocities that no doubt unfold in its darkest corners. They have made Bath a glittering epicentre for Society’s clueless elite. And that feeling of walking into a trap fills my veins again, just as it did in Mayfair.
“You best hope Grandmother hasn’t seen you driving that carriage, brother, or this will be a very short Season indeed.”
Nate slows the carriage to a creaking halt in the middle of a semi-circle of smart townhouses, and Rafe’s voice blooms from somewhere in the shadows.
Nate’s fury had simmered after our stay in the inn, but seeing his brother ignites it once more. He pauses only to help me from the carriage onto the ground, then flies at Rafe, snarling. “Did you know about this?”
In the light from the street-lamps, I see Rafe’s frustration. “We learned of the attack last night when you didn’t arrive. But we knew you were safe. You were spotted on the road near dawn. We assumed you had taken shelter.”
Nate is in Rafe’s face, reading his expression. He doesn’t back down until he seems satisfied that Rafe’s response is genuine.
“Did Aulus betray you?”
“He fled into the night after he lead us directly to a pack of hunters and held a blade to Seraphina’s throat. So, yes, I would say as much.”
Rafe’s eyes grow wide, showing the whites of his eyes. “How many of them were there?”
“A dozen.”
“Christ, Nate.” Rafe looks him up and down, no doubt seeing the blood that still lines his sleeves, then over at me. “You are both unharmed?”
“We are alive.”
“Of course you are. Even one hundred hunters would be no match for you, brother.”
“They should not have been any concern at all,” Nate grumbles and begins walking towards the house, abandoning the carriage. “But they ingested poison.”
“You drank from a poisoned well and lived to tell the tale?” Rafe steps in line with Nate. “It is miraculous you are so recovered.” He glances back at me. “You look a little pale, Miss Sterling. There will be some fine whiskey somewhere in the house?—”
“Leave us, brother,” Nate growls as we step inside. “I will take Miss Sterling to join the pledges and then seek out Valeria. She needs to know what happened, so we might get answers.”
Rafe turns towards the front door. “Charlotte is lodging at Grandmother’s quarters on the Royal Crescent, but Miss Ellington has returned. I am not sure she will be much enjoying our cousin’s company.”
“Who would?” Nate says.
Rafe nods in agreement, then leaves us standing alone in the hallway in the silence and dim light, with nothing but the tick of a distant grandfather clock.
“I, er… I’m sure Lizzie and Agnes are in the drawing room.” I glance up the stairs, struggling to look at Nate as a sudden nervousness floods my belly.
He moves closer to me so our feet are almost touching. I will not be far. You need only say my name and I will come to you.
I nod and we stand staring at each other. I feel Nate’s fingers brush lightly against my wrist. The touch is so fleeting I almost think I’ve imagined it.
“Sera,” Agnes’s voice floats down the hallway. “You’re here!” She practically runs towards me, causing Nate to step back. “Lizzie and Charles will be so relieved. Let me take you to them.”
I don’t trust her, Nate says. Anything you say will get back to Charlotte. Remember that.
I will bite my tongue.
Nate stares at us for a moment, watching Agnes take my arm in hers, then turns and flies back out of the door.
“Thank heavens you’re safe.” Agnes’s fingers are stiff as they press into my flesh. The change in her grip reminds me of Julian. “What a blessing that Lord Nathaniel could steer the carriage so efficiently without a driver.”
“Yes, indeed.” I study her profile as we walk. There is something different about her. She is not quite the same girl as the one I helped during the hunt, but I cannot put my finger on what it is exactly that has changed. “I hope your journey was less eventful?”
“Oh, yes. Smooth sailing.” There is a hint of a laugh in her voice, but there’s no warmth in it.
“And Charlotte is treating you well?”
“Yes. Quite well.” I feel her body straighten and tense up next to me. “Lady Charlotte has chosen to lodge with the Duchess on the Royal Crescent. I am hoping she will allow me to reside here and just summon me when I am needed, but she is still making her decision. I have been permitted back here today, at least, in the hope I would see you.”
She speaks to me as if I am a distant acquaintance at one of the ton’s balls. I prickle at the formality. Just a few nights back, we were clinging to each other as we tried to survive the hunt. And we may have had no time to speak since, but I did not expect the day and night we have been apart to feel like months.
But perhaps this is what happens when you give yourself to a vampire. The order of things shifts.
“Sera, thank goodness. Are you well?” The moment we are in the drawing room, Lizzie flies to me, her eyes wide with relief.
She leaves Charles standing by the window, hands behind his back.
“When your carriage didn’t arrive after ours, we wondered what on earth had happened.” She pulls me into an embrace and squeezes. “Then we got word you had been attacked and goodness…” she trails off, glancing back at Charles. “We’ve spent the whole day fretting about when you would arrive.”
“Will you tell us what happened?” Agnes asks as Lizzie releases me and goes to sit on one of the low settees.
“Our carriage was attacked by hunters.”
“Hunters? Plural?” Lizzie’s eyes grow wider still. “I thought there was only one known hunter after what happened at the ball?”
I shake my head. “The vampires have always known there are more, but I don’t believe they expected this. There was a dozen of them.”
“A dozen?” The worry-lines in Charles’s forehead deepen. He shakes them away. “I’m sure it was an unpleasant experience, Sera. I am sorry for you. But hunters are no threat to the Blackwoods. Nothing is.” He sounds like Juliette.
“It was a prolonged attack.” I swallow down the truth of things — for if the others know about the poison, they will need to understand how we got out of there alive. And there are things they cannot know. That I can no longer trust them with. “And you saw what happened at Nighthaven. They have their weaknesses.”
“How did he defeat them?” Lizzie gestures for me to sit next to her. “With so many…”
“The weather made it hard for Nate to sense them. But we got away. Nate was quicker than all of them.”
“Did they pursue you?” Charles turns into the conversation, keeping his feet grounded to his spot by the window.
“None made it out alive. Nate couldn’t let them live.”
“What do we expect, I suppose? Mercy isn’t in their vocabulary,” Charles grunts.
“Lord Nathaniel did the right thing,” Agnes says. She takes the armchair opposite Lizzie and me, folding her hands in her lap. “The hunters would have just reported back their findings if he let any of them live. The knowledge that a vampire can survive drinking poisoned blood would give them a serious advantage.”
All eyes fall on Agnes, then Charles and Lizzie both turn back to me.
“Nate was poisoned?” Lizzie asks. “How on earth did he survive it?”
I feel my mouth dry up. How did Agnes know?
When I say nothing, Agnes presses on. “It was brilliant of the hunters, by all accounts. They ingested the poison and then, when Lord Nathaniel tasted their blood, they were able to attack. They knew they wouldn’t be able to overpower a vampire like him without him being at the disadvantage somehow. It is quite miraculous, really.”
“Shouldn’t the poison have killed him?” Charles looks between me and Agnes. “That vampire was spitting his own guts up on the ballroom floor when he was poisoned.”
“It won’t have been as strong as the poison Gregor ingested. The hunter would have died before it could affect Nate if it was,” Lizzie says.
I frown at her, blood rushing to my ears, making them hot. Lizzie might have learned such things in one of the dark books she read as a child, but Agnes? How can she know what happened tonight when she was not there?
I can feel the weight of Charles’s eyes on me. He knows there are things I am not saying. And where once he might have found a moment to speak to me alone, he seems determined to extract answers from me in front of the others. “What happened, Sera?”
A thickness builds in my throat. “The poison made Nate lose his strength. All that would revive him was blood, but he couldn’t drink from a hunter for fear he would ingest more of it. So he drank from me.”
“How would there be time amongst an onslaught for all of that?” Charles frowns.
“I was injured, already bleeding...”
“Just a drop, wasn’t it, Sera? That’s all it took to revive Lord Nathaniel and allow him to defeat the hunters,” Agnes says.
“How did you…?” My jaw drops in disbelief. There is no possible way she could know any of this. I glare at her, but Agnes merely smiles back at me. It is cold and menacing and mischievous all at once.
It is Charlotte’s smile.
“You saved his life?” Charles’s face falls, along with his voice. “You gave him your blood so he might survive it?”
“I had no choice?—”
“He could have been killed tonight. You could have been free. Yet you saved him?” Charles’s voice grows louder, his pupils bulging from his skull as he looks at me in disbelief. “Why would you protect him when you could have been free of this nightmare?”
“You think the hunters would have set me free?”
“Why wouldn’t they? You are just a human. They weren’t there to harm you. You should have let them destroy him and then got the hell out of there!”
I flinch at the tone of Charles’s voice. He is not an angry soul, but there is a difference in him now, just as there is with Agnes. Perhaps there is only so much one can take before the person you once were begins to unravel.
I feel the lump swelling in my throat, threatening angry tears, but I swallow them down.
“Come, Charles. Sera is loyal to Lord Nathaniel. Just as you are loyal to Lady Juliette. She was right to aid him tonight,” Agnes says, her voice cool. “We are all bound to our lords and ladies.”
Charles looks at her with incredulity, then turns his horror back to me. “Are you so under his spell that you would forget what happened to Camilla and Eddie? How can you protect a monster when he is the very reason our friends are dead?”
“It wasn’t Nate that killed them. He tried to stop Ambrose with Eddie and?—”
“Let us not re-write history, Sera,” Charles snaps. “He challenged Ambrose because he threatened you. He killed Ambrose to protect you. Not because he cares for you or any of us — he simply has no interest in losing his life-giving supply.” All the veins in Charles’s neck are pulsing wildly, his eyes shot to black. I don’t believe I have ever seen him truly angry, even after what happened to his sister. “How could you save such a creature? One who drains your blood each day?—”
“Charles, that’s enough.” Lizzie stands as if she would form a barrier between us. “We are all under their glamour. Sera had no choice.”
Charles stares at me, his jaw jutting out past his bottom lip. “So that is it, then? You saved him because you had no choice in the matter?” He narrows his eyes, and they bore into mine. “Or perhaps you had the opportunity to end him, or to run, but you couldn’t bring yourself to because there is something else between you?”
I feel the heat creep up over my chest, my neck, colouring my cheeks. It is involuntary and I am furious with myself for it. None of them, least of all Charles, would understand what has happened between here and Nighthaven.
Charles sees my embarrassment and his temper flares. “My sister was taken in by the charms of a supposed gentleman who claimed to love her and want to marry her. But all she was left with was a child in her belly and our family’s reputation in tatters. You saw what it did to my family, Sera. To my mother. I did not think you were so stupid.”
“What exactly are you accusing me of?” I snap, feeling the fire sizzling under my skin.
“Of letting a monster into your heart and, by all likelihood, into your bed. What future will there be for you outside of this?”
“What future is there for any of us?” I bite back, then take a deep breath. My distemper will be like a siren song to Nate. If I do not stamp it out, Charles could easily lose his head. “I did what I had to do in order to survive this evening. I don’t expect you to understand, but?—”
“No, Sera. I will never understand.” Charles turns his back on me. “You might tell yourself you had no choice, but you have always been stronger than any of us. If anyone could have got out, it would have been you. But you stayed. You chose to save him.”
“Charles,” Lizzie’s voice is soft and pleading, “Sera is not in the same situation as your sister?—”
“No, you’re right.” He spins back to face us. “What Sera has done is far worse. She has made her bed with the devil. Let us just pray you do not spawn him a demon.” Charles does not wait for a further rebuke before he strides from the room, his face like thunder, leaving a storm of tension in his wake.
Lizzie sinks back down next to me as if she were a cushion with all the stuffing knocked out of it. “He’ll come around.”
I say nothing. For the first time in the years I have known him, I am not sure he will.
“I don’t judge you for what happened this evening, Sera. But I am still curious,” Lizzie says softly. “The hunters would have surely accounted for a human’s blood mitigating the effects of the poison?” She looks at Agnes as if our suddenly all-knowing oracle might have the answers. “And if they had planned the attack thoroughly, they would have known you were there. So Nate having access to your blood was a risk.”
Agnes nods. “It does seem curious.”
“It is more curious to me that they knew the exact moment we would leave Nighthaven — the exact position in the forest to wait to attack.” I shake my head and stare down at my lap.
The coincidence is too great — for a hunter to get into Nighthaven and poison Gregor, then follow us through the night — someone has to be leaking information. And for the first time, I do not trust myself to say anything further in front of Agnes.
“Who could have done such a thing?” Lizzie asks. “There are no staff other than Mrs Hawley. You don’t think she?—”
“Lord Raphael believes Lady Charlotte is responsible,” Agnes cuts her off. “As revenge for what he did to Lord Ambrose. It doesn’t explain the death of Mr Vossler, though, so I am not sure it is a theory that has legs.”
I scowl at Agnes. “Charlotte is filled with loathing for what happened to Ambrose. You truly don’t think she would do such a thing?”
Agnes shrugs. “She misses her brother, but she would not have wanted either of you harmed. And Lord Ambrose was to blame for Edward’s death, after all.”
“The balance is redressed,” Lizzie murmurs. When Agnes and I look at her, she says, “Sorry, something Rafe said to me. They seem obsessed with it — honour and laws and propriety. But they are terrible at it. Everything seems to descend into chaos and revenge when blood is involved.”
“Exactly,” I say.
Quiet hangs over the room for a moment. There are things I want to say to Lizzie, but which I now refuse to do with Agnes present. Not that her being physically with us seems to be a barrier to her discovering things that should be impossible for her to know.
Lizzie seems to feel the same. She fidgets with her skirts and then finally says, “Sera, come, I will show you to your quarters. You must be exhausted after all you have endured this evening.”
Agnes watches us but thankfully, does not move to follow.
“Goodnight, Agnes,” I call back to her, trailing after Lizzie up another flight of stairs to the bedchambers on the second floor.
“This is my chamber,” Lizzie mutters, holding the door open and ushering me inside, “but yours is next to Agnes and I quite expect to find her with her ear pressed to the wall, given half the chance.” She shuts the door and presses her back against it. “What ever has gotten into her, Sera? It is as if her personality has been replaced by someone who has never felt any depth of emotion in their lives. And I know Agnes was difficult in the beginning, but she always had opinions — whether or not we were inclined to hear them.”
I sink onto the foot of Lizzie’s bed. “She has opinions — they’re just Charlotte’s now. I assume she is being kept her as some sort of spy.”
Lizzie nods and pushes away from the door, coming to sit cross-legged on the bed, facing me. “She knew about the poison.”
“Yes. She shouldn’t have done.”
“But you were not going to mention it until Agnes did?”
“I knew it would go down poorly with Charles,” I lie. “He would not understand why I would help Nate.”
“He is being an arrogant fool. He knows we are all under their glamour. And yours with Nate has been particularly strong. We all saw that during Juliette’s little game to smoke out a rogue hunter.”
“And Charles hates that. He seems to think that because Nate is more possessive of me, that there’s something else between us.”
“And you’re quite sure there isn’t?” Lizzie studies me, reading every inch of my face. “You do not have to feel ashamed around me, Sera. They are all quite appealing. How else do they capture humans so willingly? There has to be an allure around them. Charles just seems determined to fight whatever connection might exist between him and Juliette.”
“Do you find Rafe appealing?” I ask.
Lizzie blushes almost instantly, her gaze dropping from mine. “He is handsome, of course.”
“Undeniably,” I agree. “And he has been kind to you so far? After the hunt and during the journey?”
She nods. “He has been quite the unexpected gentleman. For all his winks and grins, he has more manners than I expected. He is nothing like Ambrose.”
I run my mother’s locket through my fingers. “We have not spoken of the horrors you suffered. And I know Nate tried to do you a kindness by taking away your memories of the hunt, but I am sure some from before will linger.”
“They are not used to keeping humans around long enough to see the effects of their glamour, are they? It was quite clear with Camilla. Rafe was bemused why she became so distant — as if she was living on another plain entirely after Eddie’s death. But he meddled with her mind. He tried to take the pain away, and it just caused a rot to set in. She had all the pain, but nowhere to put it. I understand that now.”
“You feel the same?”
“There are flashbacks, but mostly just sensations — horror, fear, pain. They come to me at night, but the reason for the feelings is as elusive as smoke. Ambrose made me suffer, I know that. But now there is no clear memory of it.” She recrosses her legs, eyes falling to her lap. “It has been only a matter of days and already I feel the madness creeping in. I do not wish to go the same way as Camilla.”
“No.” I reach out and hold her hand. “That will not happen. I can ask Nate to give you your memory back. Surely that is something that can be done? It is just mind tricks, after all. He compelled you to forget, so I am sure he could help you remember once more.”
“Perhaps,” she nods sadly. “If I am to die here, I would much rather it was because Rafe took too much. I have always so relied on my brain. It has kept me company when I have had no one else. I do not wish to lose it.” She pauses and picks at a loose thread on the bed linen. “Nate really killed them all?”
I nod. “Yes. There was a girl I thought he might take mercy on?—”
“A girl?” Lizzie’s eyes shoot back up to mine and I find I cannot meet them.
“Yes. She was the only one. I think he would have spared her if circumstances were different. But she had seen what he was capable of. Agnes was right — he couldn’t let any of them live.”
Lizzie’s jaw clenches. “I am sorry that you had to witness such a thing. I am not sure how you are quite so composed.”
“We have seen so much that I fear I am becoming desensitised to it all.” I rub my hand along the base of my neck, closing my eyes. “But there will be more now that we are here, of course.”
“Of course. In Bath, of all places.” Lizzie reaches forward and takes my hands in hers. “They have made no mention of what will happen to us here, but if I do not have a plan for surviving it, then I believe I will lose my marbles entirely.”
I nod in agreement. I need a plan, too. Just one that Lizzie can never know of. “Do you have an idea?”
“Society will come to Bath in the cooler months. We simply need to survive the Tournament — whatever that involves — and then introduce ourselves to some actual gentlemen. Of the non monstrous kind. If we find ourselves proper matches, we can get out of this.”
My chest sinks, but I straighten up, trying not to let Lizzie see it. “I think that is the best idea we’ve had.”
Lizzie’s face lights up. “I thought so too. We will be free to wander the city during the day. There is nothing they can do about that. If we find the right gentlemen, convince them to elope and get us away from here, Nate and Rafe will surely let us go. They want to be integral to Society — they can’t just kill members of the aristocracy.”
I smile at her. “Aiming high, then?”
“Oh, yes. We need a pair of dukes to get us out of this, but lord have mercy — let them be human ones.”