Chapter Seven
Samara
Once the door to Raphael’s chambers shut, I felt a little less certain. “Maybe Demos was right. It’s not safe for you to be alone with me.”
Thea rolled her eye and tugged me along. “Don’t you start too. I’m perfectly safe with you, and I won’t hear a word to the contrary.”
If only I felt so certain. I took a few steps then stopped again. “You said I’m hard to see. You can’t know that for sure.”
“Just because I can’t see the future doesn’t mean I don’t know you, Sam. You need to have more faith in yourself.” Thea hooked her arm through mine, as she had done dozens of other times since I’d arrived at Damerel.
The motion made my eyes prick. Something hadn’t changed.
Even though I’d messed up everything. I’d miss this when I left.
In a few days once whatever supposed fledgling bond had faded—because I couldn’t let it be longer than that.
The moment it was gone, I’d take the grimoire and find my way through the labyrinth of hallways and caves until I was outside.
I told myself I leaned into Thea a little more because I didn’t want her to suspect anything.
I could, after all, still lie to myself.
“None of that,” Thea said, catching sight of the tears through the corner of her eye. She always placed me on the side she could see.
“I’m sorry.” I swiped the back of my hand across my face. “It’s just . . . it’s been a lot. I would understand if you’re furious at me over this too.”
“Oh, but I am.”
I stumbled but caught myself quickly.
“It hurts that you felt you needed to go through all this alone,” she said, the tone casual even if the words weren’t.
“I thought we were closer than that. But I can tell you regret it. We all make mistakes, and no one really died, except the poisoner. And, er, you,” she amended.
“I know we’re taught to think of the vampires as undead abominations, but do you really feel that way?
Or do you just feel like you’re supposed to feel like that? ”
That wasn’t a conversation I was ready for. Especially since I could no longer tell untruths.
“What kind of tea are you in the mood for?”
My subject change wasn’t smooth, but Thea accepted it with grace all the same. She told me about the different herbs and which sweets the kitchens currently favored she was looking forward to.
I chimed in with opinions, a slight pang in my chest at the realization I would never get to enjoy those things again. But, well, I hadn’t had them for many years growing up. What was eternity?
The slight pang turned more painful as we continued walking. I rubbed a palm over my sternum.
A few steps later, my leg seized.
Thea lifted her brows in concern. “Sam? What’s wrong?”
I exhaled through my nose, trying to breathe through the pain. “I think my leg cramped.” It felt worse than that, like my feet didn’t want to go a step farther, my knees locking in defiance. I pounded my fist into the side of my leg, trying to break up the pain. “Let’s keep going.”
“Are you okay?” Thea asked cautiously as we took another step.
I still couldn’t lie, so I forced my foot forward.
And in an instant the pain went from miserable to unbearable. I cried out, falling to my knees.
“Oh, shit. Sam, stay here. I’ll get Raphael.”
Raphael.
The fledgling bond.
“No,” I ground out. “I know what this is. Just help me go back a few steps in the direction we came.”
I couldn’t quite stand, so Thea dragged me across the carpeted hall. As soon as she pulled me back, the pain lessened to a bearable degree. I forced myself upright. My legs worked now—in fact, they ached to run. In the direction we’d come from.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I forced my feet to stay planted and faced her.
“Raphael explained fledglings can’t be far from their, um, sires.
” I tripped over the word a little, panic stirring in my chest. “I guess this is as far as I can go.” For now.
When he’d said that, I had no idea he meant it to be such a short distance. Had no idea it would be so painful.
The corner of her lips turned down in understanding. “I’ve heard of that sometimes happening, but I suppose I failed to realize it was that tight a leash. Normally it’s a few blocks, at least.”
I winced at the word leash, born of shame and then anger. Titus had called me Raphael’s pet, and it seems I truly was one now.
“We’ll need to go back a bit farther. It looks like it still hurts you,” Thea said, brow furrowed. “Raphael wouldn’t have let us go without him if he’d anticipated this.”
We walked back. Thea tried and failed to recapture the easy mood of before, filling me in on some casual gossip from over the past weeks.
It was a spottier recollection than usual—and I pieced together that was because she was omitting the most salacious story: how the vampire king had been rejected on the tri-lunar eclipse, their most sacred holiday, and then poisoned.
The poisoning might or might not have been common knowledge—those loyal to a royal would likely try to stifle any rumors to that effect—but the fact that the king had been missing for . . .
“How long ago was the eclipse?” I asked, accidentally interrupting Thea’s chatter.
Thea stopped mid-sentence. “That was abrupt.”
I looked away. It was. Because I hadn’t really been listening. “Sorry.”
Thea shrugged it off, the way she seemed to shrug off most of my transgressions. “Nearly a month ago.”
A month. It had felt like forever . . . yet for it be an entire month was still shocking.
A month while the vampires were left unchecked.
By both their king . . . and me. Who had been watching over the donors in blood dens, the ones so easily exploited?
Who had been punishing the vampires for their cruel plots?
We continued down the hallway back to my chambers, opposite Raphael’s. The pain had abated, but a phantom remained.
“I’ll summon a servant for tea,” Thea offered, fingers grazing my door handle.
I smacked a palm on the entrance to my chambers before conscious thought formed. The resounding smack was loud even for human ears.
Thea cocked her head at me.
“Actually”—I swallowed—“do you mind if I join you tomorrow for tea? Or breakfast like we used to? I just . . .”
“Need some time to yourself?” Thea offered, concern still painted on her face with her pinched brows and pursed lips.
I nodded. Either I could lie through gesture as a vampire, or it was true enough.
“Very well.” She pulled me into another hug, though this one was brief, just a flash of warm contact that made me want to cry again. And cry even more with how I wanted to pull her in and listen to the pulse of her neck. “But I will be holding you to that. I’ll see you dark and early.”
She disappeared down the hallway. The soft patter of her footsteps didn’t fade for several minutes.
I stayed outside my door for another beat, listening for any noise in Raphael’s chambers.
But none came. Still, he must have been close if this damned fledgling bond didn’t hurt.
Frustration licked at me, at the unnatural connection between us, but I pushed it aside.
I had more important matters to attend to.
Slowly, I cracked the door to my own chambers.
I needed to get my grimoire.
I took a step into my room, shutting the door behind me, and froze.
The place appeared immaculate. No furniture broken. No blood staining the carpet. My dresser drawers were shut, the bed made.
But I could smell it. Beneath the cleaning products and fresh linens, there was an undercurrent of rot, a tinge of death no one would be able to wash away. It might not have been overpowering, but for a moment, standing there in the entrance, it was impossible to focus on anything else.
I would need new quarters. Ones as far away from Raphael’s chambers as this cursed bond would let me go.
I hope they let me keep the bed. The one Raphael had designed for me. The one I’d felt safe under after years of never being able to truly rest when I closed my eyes.
I shook the thought off.
The fledgling bond presented an obstacle, but it was temporary. If all went to plan, I’d be leaving this bed, this room, in a few days. If the bond lasted longer . . . living as the necromancer across the hall from Raphael would be foolish.
As the necromancer, I had a duty. A duty to make the world safer for witches and voids alike. A duty to make sure no more mothers were ripped apart in front of their daughters. Even if the order had come from the witch king himself, as Raphael pointed out.
I shook off the thought and went farther into the room, doing my best to block out the lingering smell of death.
I went straight for the grimoire’s hiding spot, where Thea had returned it in the chaos, reaching in to graze the leather cover with my fingers.
“Ouch!” I snapped my arm out of the drawer.
I looked at my fingers. The pads of my fingertips were bright red. The Black Grimoire had burned me.
Because I’m a vampire now?
But I was also the necromancer. This was my birthright.
I didn’t let myself dwell on the possibility that becoming a vampire might somehow block my newfound magic. They’d once mentioned turning witches with magic was forbidden, so it stood to reason my magic should remain. But the grimoire was keyed against vampires.
What was I going to do if I couldn’t even touch the spell book? How would I learn its secrets?
No. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—let this stop me.
I pulled the drawer wide. By mistake, I used too much force and heard the wood creak as some mechanism snapped.
What would have been a mildly hard jerk as a human had nearly destroyed it.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, trying to focus through the frustration.
The emotions still hit me sharply, but they were a little more manageable now that I knew from Raphael it was due to my transition.
I exhaled through my nose and pulled a tunic out, one I’d worn to training. I wrapped my hand in it. Carefully, I knelt down once more and reached into the dresser. Through the fabric, my fingers didn’t burn.
I pulled the book out and grinned. The black cover was exactly as I’d remembered it, though even now it felt warm through the fabric in a way it never had before.
Wordless whispers caressed my ears, a dark magical song I felt dance over the hairs on my arms. I shut the drawer as best I could with its now broken alignment and settled onto the settee with the book.
Just having it near made me feel better, more confident in my path forward. It had chosen me.
My translation slipped out. I lifted the parchment, looking over my familiar scratched notes, as the words took on new meaning now that I knew what my role was.
This is the book of the necromancer.
This was my book.
The witch who alone serves Anagenni, they who control all who have perished.
Anagenni, the goddess of death. Who was both dreaded and revered by the vampires—and unknown to witches altogether. Was that why the Witch Kingdom lived in fear of the vampires? Because they didn’t know there was a chance to fight back?
Through the goddess’s will, the necromancer has dominion over bone and blood, soul and spirit. The undead bow to the necromancer.
The very reason Raphael would kill me if he found out what I was.
As a goddess of death, Anagenni controlled vampires, and with her gifts, as a necromancer, so could I.
I’d forced Demos to back off when in the cells—and to forget, based on the fact I was still living.
And maybe more than that. There had been the ancient vampire in the library who’d attacked me.
Had I won that fight by surprising him, as I’d let myself believe?
Or because when I’d yelled at him to stop, some magic had been imbued in me even then?
Though I didn’t know how to use the skill, I could thrall them just as they thralled most humans. That must have been why the thrall had never worked on me. Did that mean Raphael suspected I might have this magic?
I dismissed the thought. If he suspected, no matter what affection he had for me, he’d have killed me.
One witch is gifted to the world every two hundred years with Anagenni’s blessing. They alone can right the balance.
And there it was. Once every two hundred years . . . if I didn’t act, it would be another couple centuries before someone could stand against the vampires.
Images of their brutality hounded me. Blood and blood and blood . . . The memory of my mother being ripped apart. Once, I’d have been lost to it. But now I knew I could help stop that same death from playing out ever again.
I lowered the fabric and tried to turn a page. The grimoire stung me again. I bit down on the pain and accidentally scraped myself with a fang. The blood beaded and fell on the open page with a sizzle.
I watched, pain forgotten, as the bright red splotch burned to cinders.
Finally, I had magic, the thing I’d craved all my life. I was the necromancer, created to stand against the vampires. I even had a grimoire filled with unimaginable power to aid me.
And I was an abomination.