Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Samara
The hallway of the barracks was empty when I slipped out of Vail’s room, for which I was thankful. I really didn’t want to explain to anyone what I’d been doing there. Adrienne knew the truth, and I knew she wouldn’t breathe a word of it. Personally, I didn’t really care about who people speculated I was sleeping with, but I knew it would piss off Vail. Despite his opinion of me, I didn’t actually strive to find new ways to make him despise me more. Thank fuck Ary and Aniela had left, because the Heirs would have had a field day with this.
It’d taken some persuasion on my part, but I’d convinced Kieran to go check on Alaric and preferably get him to feed. I knew Alaric wouldn’t listen to me, but maybe he’d listen to his best friend. I also knew Draven would likely be lurking somewhere in the main tower, and I wasn’t ready to face him just yet. My mind was still racing from what we’d discovered last night, and my body was tired from healing. I couldn’t afford to be off in any capacity around Draven.
Although, I could afford to spend an hour throwing some daggers in the rangers’ training area while I thought through some options. Plus, I could check on Nyx, which I hadn’t done since we’d returned. They’d still been healing from the wraith attack on our trek back from the badlands, but Adrienne had assured me they were doing okay.
Warm and floral spring air greeted me as I exited the barracks. Summer would officially be here in a few weeks, and the days were already getting hot. I pulled my hair up into a bun as I walked and turned to duck through one of the small alleyways that led to the training grounds before pulling up short.
“Vail?” I took a few unsure steps towards him. He was standing in the middle of the alleyway with his back to me, but I knew he must have heard me approach. Stealthy, I was not.
“The prince knows you were in my room,” he said quietly when I reached his side.
“Fuck,” I cursed.
“My thoughts exactly.” He turned his head to gaze down at me, and I saw frustration in them. “He believes we’re sleeping with each other. I didn’t correct him. Figured it was better to have him think that than start asking questions about why else you may have been there.”
“Okay, not ideal, but I can work with this.” I chewed on the inside of my lip as I absently stared off to the side. Vail clearly wasn’t happy, considering the tension radiating off him, but this could be to our advantage. I’d reaffirm that Vail and I were sleeping together next time I spoke with Draven. On the plus side, if Vail and I had to look into anything, we could use this fake relationship as a cover.
Vail remained silent as I thought through all of this. His eyes were mostly silver, so something had triggered his bloodlust, but I didn’t think it was solely because of this turn of events. “Did something else happen?” I scanned his face, looking for clues but discovering nothing besides the frustration and general anger I seemed to always find in his eyes. “You seem a little intense. Even more so than usual. ”
The silver receded until only thin tendrils of it wound amidst the dark grey. “There is something off about the prince. I don’t know what . . . but he is more than he seems.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “Even though I’ve known Draven for most of my life, this past week has made me realize that I actually know and understand very little about him. The prince is full of secrets.”
“You sure we shouldn’t kill him?”
I honestly couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Knowing Vail . . . not joking.
“Not right now.” If I was looking at this from a purely logical standpoint, Draven being dead could solve some problems. Even thinking that caused something inside my chest to tighten, but if the Moroi Prince truly was the villain in all of this . . . could I really put the future of our people at risk because Kieran and I had feelings for him?
No, I couldn’t. It would break something inside me, but if Draven truly was choosing to harm other Moroi of his own accord . . . then I’d bury a dagger in his heart myself.
Draven’s words from our dinner earlier in the week floated through my mind. “The only thing I’ve ever known are nightmares . ” There was more to this than I was seeing. “Until we understand his role in all this . . . we don’t harm the prince.”
Vail studied me for a long moment. “You like him.”
“It’s complicated.” Sensing an argument, I started to walk away. It may have been late in the morning, but I hadn’t had any tea yet, so Vail would just have to wait to tear into me.
My escape was short-lived though because Vail gripped my arm and moved me back roughly. I hissed as he shoved me up against the wall, boxing me in with his large body.
“Do I need to remind you that he brought guards with him that night at the temple? That he offered them up to that Fae bastard like they were nothing?” Vail kept his voice low, but it vibrated with rage. “Or of the Moroi, including children , who have been slaughtered in the outposts by wraiths?”
“My memory is just fine,” I said icily.
Vail leaned in closer until his face was only inches from mine. “Then think with something besides your greedy fucking cunt for once.”
“Fuck. You.” I shoved my hands against his chest, letting my nails lengthen and harden until they were claws that sliced through his leather and into his flesh. “I am beyond sick of your shit, Vail. You hate me. Then you don’t hate me. Then you’re back to hating me again. Make up your damn mind! Also you don’t have a problem with any of your rangers sleeping around, and you have a fuck buddy in almost every outpost. So why exactly are you so concerned about my fucking cunt ?” I let my last few words turn into more of a throaty purr at the end, solely because I knew it would slip under his skin and enrage him even more.
In a blink, Vail ripped my hands away from his chest and pinned them above my head. The position forced his body to press against mine, and I could barely shift my head back enough to glare up at him. The scent of his blood filled the air, and if my fingers were within reach, I would have licked the blood off them. I’d been delirious at the temple, but I still remembered how delicious his blood had been.
I could be pissed off at him and want his blood at the same time. Nothing messed up about that at all.
“Keep it up, Samara”—Vail’s eyes dropped to the throbbing pulse on my neck—“and I’ll dump your body and the prince’s in that fucking cave for the monsters to dine on.”
Despite the harsh words, it wasn’t hostility I saw in Vail’s eyes. It wasn’t just hunger for blood either—although that was definitely there. It was desire. Hot burning desire.
Holy fuck.
“Vail.” I smirked at him when his gaze snapped to my mouth and the way my lips had curved. “If you want a taste, all you have to do is ask. Although, if someone walks by and catches us, the rumor about you fucking the Harker Heir will spread like wildfire, which I suppose will help our cover story.”
A sharp exhale flew out of my lungs as Vail shoved himself off me and backtracked until he was several feet away. I casually raised my fingers to my lips and licked the blood off, then I let out a deep chuckle when silver flared in his eyes before they hardened. “Honestly, Vail, you make it too easy.”
He took a step towards me, fingers curling into fists before spinning and stalking down the alleyway. Even when he was pissed, he moved quietly. I waited until he was gone before sagging against the wall. “Well, that was a little terrifying,” I muttered.
I knew it was a bad idea to antagonize Vail. Although, I was mostly sure he wouldn’t actually kill me. He’d had his chance to get rid of me several times at this point and hadn’t seized it, or had seized it and then changed his mind in the case of the kùsu attack. He could be such a fucking prick sometimes, and like Alaric, his barbed insults always hit home.
It hurt. I should have been used to it after all these years of being at the receiving end of his vitriol, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hate Vail the way he hated me most of the time.
The scent of his blood was still in the air, and I couldn’t stop myself from inhaling deeply. He seemed to want another taste of me as badly as I wanted his delicious blood splashing across my tongue again.
I started to walk out of the alleyway, thinking more about the desire I’d seen burning in his eyes. When had that started? There was no way he’d ever act on it, but still—I halted abruptly. Did I… want him to act on it? I thought about how it had felt when he’d had me pinned against the wall and a heat unfurled from my center .
No. I shook my head and kept walking. Why was I doing this to myself? I already had Kieran and Roth… and sort of Alaric, if he ever figured his bullshit out.
I was still contemplating this turn of events when I entered the main training courtyard minutes later. There was a narrow passage on the other side with a dead end that was often used for target practice. It was perfect for what I had in mind, I just needed to grab some daggers first.
Emil waved at me from where he was speaking with a group of rangers, and I returned the gesture. Vail might be an asshole, but I liked his rangers. The heavy, wooden door of the weapons storage building creaked open, and I took two steps inside before being engulfed in a crushing grip.
“SAMARA!” a voice boomed. I would have clapped my hands over my ears, but my arms were pinned to my sides.
“Hey, Rokai,” I squeaked as the impossibly large ranger crushed me against his chest in a jubilant hug. “Too. Tight.”
“Oh!” My feet thumped to the ground, and large hands gripped my shoulders until I was steady. “I was just really excited to see you.” Rokai’s light brown eyes practically sparkled with joy against his pale skin. “I was just telling Vail about what you did for us!”
Well, shit. I tore my gaze away from Rokai’s cheerful round face and found Vail’s glittering hard stare on me. Definitely still pissed. I was hoping to give him at least a few hours to cool off before tracking him down again. Unfortunately for me, one of the many plans I was working on would require Vail’s help, which meant I would need to catch him in a good mood at some point.
This was definitely not that point.
“I’m glad to see you made it back okay, Rokai.” I reached up to pat his shoulder. Rokai was the only Moroi I’d ever met who was larger than Vail. Everyone regularly joked that he must be half-Velesian, but that couldn’t be true because he was far too happy. “Maybe we can catch up later? I was actually just hoping to grab some dag— oh!”
Rokai tugged me over to where several other rangers were standing with Vail, and I nodded at each of them in greeting. They all smiled at me, and a few murmured their thanks, although not as aggressively as Rokai, who had me clamped to his side in a one-armed hug.
Vail was currently eying that arm like he wanted to rip it off. A couple of rangers noticed where Vail’s attention was, but Rokai continued to chatter on, completely oblivious. “We were investigating reports of some burrowing creatures in the badlands just south of Drudonia, and we fell into a collapsed tunnel. Luckily, the beasties were somewhat shy. They looked like giant grubs.” Rokai shuddered. “We killed one of them and the rest backed off, but we couldn’t get out.”
I snuck another look at Vail. He’d stopped glowering at Rokai’s arm like it was offending him and was instead looking at the ranger with a blank expression. I didn’t know if that was better or worse.
“It was pure dumb luck that I spotted Samara’s striker flying above us, and it came when I called.”
“He came because you spoiled the shit out of him every time you stopped by House Laurent,” I said pointedly, trying to give Rokai a stern look and failing completely.
“I won’t apologize for giving that cute little bastard extra scraps.”
Vail’s patience finally snapped. “Explain,” he barked.
Rokai stood a little straighter, finally sensing Vail’s dark mood, and swallowed. “I was on escort duty for most of the last few years and regularly stopped at House Laurent.” He glanced at me, unsure, and I nodded encouragingly. “They’re . . . uhhh . . . a little unfriendly there, so I never stayed long, but Samara and I would always catch up. We usually went up to where the strikers were housed because nobody ever hung out there.”
The poor big softie of a ranger seemed to be wilting under Vail’s hostile gaze, so I jumped in. “My striker had been returning from delivering a message to Cali. There are large, flying predators in that section of the badlands, so the strikers usually fly close to the ground so they can duck and cover if they need to. Rokai got the attention of the striker, used his blood to draw their location on the back of the scroll Cali sent me, and I sent some rangers to investigate.”
“And saved our asses.” Rokai beamed. “We might have had to eat one of those worms if we were in there much longer, and I don’t think I would have recovered from that.”
“Personally, I would have chosen to starve,” another ranger chimed in.
“Well, I’m glad no one had to make the decision between starving or eating an overgrown worm for dinner.” I wiggled out from under Rokai’s arm and patted him on the cheek. “Good to see you as always. Tell your mother I said hello and that we should have tea soon.”
“Of course.” He grinned playfully. “And I’ll be sure to pay the strikers a visit and give them all treats.”
“Obviously.” I gave him a wry smile before skirting past the rangers towards the small room in the back, where I knew there were always throwing daggers. The rangers continued the conversation about the new monsters they’d discovered, but I felt Vail’s gaze burning a hole in my back the entire way. He was probably pissed off at me for interfering with House Harker business when I’d been at House Laurent, but what was I supposed to have done? Ignored Rokai’s plea for help? Sent a message to House Harker and hoped they sent a rescue party in time ?
I was fairly confident that no matter what action I had taken, Vail would have found fault with it. Whatever. He could stew in his pissy attitude as much as he wanted. I grabbed half a dozen daggers and headed outside towards the alleyway, which was thankfully empty.
The training courtyard was situated towards the back of the walled fortress of House Harker. The end of the alleyway was the outer wall, and two of the smaller towers made up the side walls. For targets, the rangers had cut down a large tree and sliced the trunk, hanging the circular chunks of wood on the wall. A few of the more creative rangers had used their artistic abilities to paint monsters on them. Once the wood was too chewed up for the blades to stick in, they were swapped out.
I flipped a dagger a few times in my right hand, getting a feel for it before throwing it at the center target. A loud thunk sounded as it landed dead center. I sunk into a pattern, aiming for different sections of the targets, trying to be as precise as possible. Daggers weren’t entirely practical weapons. The damage they inflicted was too small and rarely fatal for the monsters roaming Lunaria, but sometimes there were specific areas of a body that could be exploited. Even if it didn’t result in a fatal wound, it might injure the beast enough for someone else to take it down. Eyes were always a good target. The other problem with daggers was once I threw them, I no longer had a weapon, which I had been reminded of in the cave incident.
I retrieved all the daggers for a third time and set them on a workbench near the front of the alleyway. Then I had a thought: Roth could control their ribbons with blood magic—maybe I could do something similar with a dagger? I thought through a few of the glyphs that might work and then sliced open a shallow cut on my forearm and used my finger to paint one on the hilt of the blade. If I figured out something that worked, I could carve the glyph into the handle to make it more permanent.
After surveying my work one last time, I stepped to the center of the alley and hurled the dagger at the target. The blade dug into the wood, and I took a deep breath, trying to center my focus. No one had been around to teach us how to use our magic, so we’d had to figure it out on our own. Magic worked differently between the Moroi, Velesians, and Furies, but the one thing it all had in common was that intentions mattered.
Moroi couldn’t just carve a glyph into something and expect it to work. We had to imbue that glyph with our intent; otherwise, it was just a scratching on a wall. The purpose of the glyphs was to help us channel our intention and keep it there. It was a tricky thing to learn, which was why simple spells were the easiest. I used to tinker around with different glyphs when I’d been at Drudonia, but it’d been a long time since I’d tried to create something new.
Holding my hand out to the side, I tugged on the link I’d formed with the dagger, and an invisible force ripped the blade from the wood before it spun in the air. I had a brief, exhilarated moment of triumph before a sharp pain sliced into my hand.
“AHH! FUCK!” I gripped my wrist with my other hand and clenched my jaw at the pain. The spell had definitely worked, because the dagger had returned to me. Unfortunately, it had returned point-first, and the dagger was now buried hilt-deep into my palm, the bloody blade sticking out the back of my hand.
“Brilliant move,” Vail said from where he was leaning against the wall at the alleyway opening. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there, and embarrassment flooded me. He’d once made fun of me when I’d bragged about being good with knives, and here I was, injuring myself with my own moonsdamned dagger.
“Shut up,” I growled.
He sighed, walked over, and gripped the handle. Dark grey eyes met mine before I jerked my head in a nod, and I hissed when he quickly but smoothly pulled the blade free. Clearly, I needed to adjust the spell a little bit. Warm blood leaked from my hand as I held my palm out and used my fingers to draw the healing glyph on it.
“Thanks,” I mumbled to Vail.
He grunted and studied the glyph I’d drawn on the dagger. “I’m impressed you were able to get it to return to you on the first try.”
“I used a similar spell at Drudonia.” Trying to ignore the pain radiating from my hand as the wound stitched itself back together, I moved towards the remaining knives on the workbench. “I used that spell to close the window in my room because I always forgot to shut it at night and then didn’t want to get out of bed because it was cold. The tricky part of that one was it had to pull the window panels shut without breaking the glass.” I winced at both the memory and a particularly painful spot of my hand being healed. Tendons always sucked for some reason. “Might have taken a couple of tries. Rynn and Cali helped me fix the window before anyone noticed.”
“Nothing about that surprises me.” The amusement I heard in his voice made me look over my shoulder at him. He was still focused on the knife, but I could just make out the ghost of a smile dancing across his lips. “You hate the cold.”
I pressed my lips back together before returning my attention to the daggers. Vail was officially more confusing than Alaric.
After some consideration, I tried a few different modifications of the glyph on three of the daggers. This time when I recalled them to me, I was a little more careful. One of the glyphs didn’t work at all, another made the dagger only wobble enough to fall out of the target, and the third did come flying back at me, but it was still coming blade-first.
The aim was off, and instead of going towards my palm, it headed straight for my face. I yelped and barely managed to duck out of its way as Vail snatched the blade out of the air without comment.
“Damn it. I really thought that last one would work.” I stomped back over to the workbench and scowled at the remaining daggers. Maybe I needed to use a completely different type of glyph. I was using a modification of one that meant summon.
Warmth brushed against my arm as Vail moved to stand next to me. He set the first dagger down, my blood still coating the blade. “What if you use the same spell, but add something to the blade for ‘away?’”
“I’ve never tried to use two glyphs in unison like that.” I chewed on my lip as I looked at the original dagger. “In theory, I think it would work.”
“Worst case”—Vail swiped the dagger up once more and passed it to me—“you get a repeat performance of getting a blade through the palm.”
“Hilarious.” I grabbed the edge of Vail’s tunic and used it to clean the blade. Then I grabbed another dagger and etched a glyph onto the tip of the original one so it wouldn’t get rubbed off when it sank into the wood. I pinched my fingers together where I’d wiped my blood on Vail’s tunic and then smeared it over the glyph, letting it absorb the magic.
Flipping the dagger in my hand and focusing my intent, I flung it towards the targets. As soon as it hit the center of one, I called it back to me. The worn handle smacked into my hand seconds later, and my fingers closed around it, a wide grin on my face.
I’d forgotten how good it felt to figure out a new spell, and this would be even more useful than closing a window on a cold night.
“It worked!” I threw the dagger at the targets again but called it back midair, the handle slapping against my palm. I could already feel the magic in the glyph getting depleted. Roth periodically soaked their ribbons in blood to charge up the spell. I’d need to embed a gemstone in the daggers to keep it charged up, but I’d at least figured out the hard part.
I looked to Vail to find him staring at me, that same faint smile on his lips. It slid away as soon as he saw my attention on him though. “Thank you for helping my rangers. You didn’t need to, but you did anyway.”
Ah, so that was why he was here—and being nice to me.
“My loyalty has always been to House Harker. That didn’t change when I married into House Laurent. It will never change.” I flipped the dagger a few times in my hand. “Don’t ever forget that.”
Vail stared at me for a few seconds before giving me a nod. “I won’t.”