Chapter 33 Rictus of Death
Arabesque
The box arrived without preamble. Square, plain, and red at the corners.
I sensed the reek of death long before my fingers brushed the wood, its iron scent curling through my office. The rogue standing in the corner shifted uneasily, his hackles rising, but he didn’t speak. Didn’t dare with my mood already an unlit fuse.
A gesture, no more than a flick of my fingers, and the wood yawned open.
The stench rolled out thick and coppery, staining the air. Inside, nestled like a grotesque jewel, was what remained of Claudio. His face was frozen in a rictus of death, his throat cut cleanly on the line of his scar. But it was his forehead that stilled me.
A single phrase, carved deep, the blood dried to rust.
For Seri.
A breath. Slow. Unshaken. I felt the smile before I wore it, cold and fine as the edge of a blade.
“Daughters,” I called, my voice sweet as summer wine and soft as velvet dusk.
As I waited, my nails grazed the box’s edge, and the wood hissed beneath my touch.
Another quiver of movement from the corner and Foster Collins, my newest werewolf pet, stepped forward, his voice uncertain.
“You want me to—”
I turned my head just enough for him to see my eyes. He swallowed the rest of his sentence and stepped back.
As he should.
If he was to succeed Claudio, he needed to know his place.
So. The Cimmerians think they’ve scored a victory.
The heat behind my smile grew, a slow bloom of fire in my chest.
My girls came slinking in, sly gazes sliding over Foster with a hunger that not even our new young staff seemed able to quench.
Amabel first with a pantherine glide, her dark eyes lidded with that quiet, cultured cruelty that made men forget their prayers. And Eluned, giddy and graceless, hopping beside her sister, her eyes too bright, her smile too wide.
In perfect, eerie harmony, they asked, “Yes, Mother?”
I did not speak; words were for lesser creatures. I only lifted a hand, languid and graceful, toward the box and its macabre treasure.
Amabel’s lips curved, soft, amused, predatory.
“How thoughtful,” she murmured, her voice dipped in honey and arsenic.
Eluned, my bright little terror, clapped her hands, a child’s delight in a grown woman.
“Isn’t that fun!” she trilled, as if admiring a new bauble. “They carved it and everything!”
For a moment, I let them play, let them savor.
“Darlings,” I crooned, and both went still as statues beneath my gaze. “Why don’t you take a peek at dear Serafina’s new little haven?” My smile sharpened. “Have a look around the place, so we can remind her where she truly belongs.”
Amabel’s lashes lowered as she all but purred, “As you wish, Mother.”
Eluned wriggled, shivering with glee. She spun once, her laughter trailing behind her like the scream of breaking glass.
The door whispered shut behind them, and the room fell to silence. I paused a moment longer, and the air hummed. Foster waiting, knowing.
A flick of my wrist, and the box and its gruesome offering dissolved into ash. Claudio had served his purpose. His body was meaningless.
But the message? The carving?
That meant everything.
They loved her. Enough to kill for her. Enough to mark their kill for her. And that would be their undoing.
I would not break them quickly.
Oh, no. I would make them watch as everything they loved, including her, burned.
#
Eluned
We were two clever little ghosts slipping through the night, unseen, untouched.
I stifled a giggle, twirling once as the cool air wrapped around me. The maze was perfect, tall and dense, swallowing us whole. The stink of damp earth and crushed leaves clung to my clothes, but it didn’t matter. We were here. Right under their noses!
I grinned at Amabel, expecting the same spark of satisfaction in her dark eyes. But no, just that familiar, cool indifference. The way she watched the house, its golden glow spilling onto the garden, made my skin itch. Like she thought she was better than me.
“We should do something, Am,” I whispered, bouncing on my toes. “A little message. A little—” I spiraled my finger through the air. “Tornado, maybe?”
“No.” Amabel didn’t even look at me.
“Why not?” I huffed, crossing my arms. “We’re already here. What’s the point if we don’t leave our mark?”
She sighed, long-suffering, like I was a child begging for ice cream before dinner.
“We’re here to observe, El. To watch.” Her gaze flicked to me, sharp and disapproving. “Not to throw a tantrum.”
A tantrum. A tantrum?
I curled my nails into my palms. She always did this, always acted like she was the smart one, the rational one.
As if she hadn’t clawed and bitten just as hard when we were little, fighting for Mother’s attention.
As if she wasn’t just as eager for Serafina to return to her belly in the dirt at our feet.
“She’s happy!” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust. “Look at her. Laughing. Dancing. Like she likes them.” I wrinkled my nose. “Like she’s forgotten her true place.”
“She hasn’t forgotten. She’s pretending. She’ll see soon enough that this isn’t where she belongs.”
“And what if she has forgotten? What if she’s not pretending?”
Amabel said nothing.
That was the difference between us. She could wait. Could sit back, all patient and poised, as if time was on our side. As if Serafina slipping further and further from our grasp wasn’t something to worry about.
But I knew better. She was slipping: She was laughing and happy. And that? That was unacceptable.
#
Amabel
Eluned was going to ruin everything.
I pressed my fingers to my temple, exhaling slowly as she fidgeted beside me, shifting from foot to foot like a restless child. The hedge maze was perfect cover, but it wouldn’t matter if she kept making noise. If she kept moving.
She didn’t understand patience. Never had. She wanted fire, chaos, a grand declaration of our presence, and for what? To feel powerful for a fleeting moment? To watch them scramble and panic? It was short-sighted. We were here for information, not dramatics.
But trying to keep Eluned in check was like trying to hold back the tide with bare hands.
“We are watching,” I reminded her for the third time, my voice even, firm. “Nothing else.”
“We always watch. I’m sick of it!”
“And if you act now, without thinking, you’ll ruin the opportunity for something better later. Are you really so impatient that you can’t see that?” I clenched my jaw.
She glared at me, but I could see the way she bit her lip, restless, dissatisfied. She wanted to argue. I could feel it building in her like a storm, the way it always did when I told her no.
Then she tensed.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” I frowned.
“That clicking sound.” A shiver ran through her. “Like nails on glass.”
I hadn’t heard anything. The wind rustling the hedges, the distant hum of music from the house, yes, but nothing strange. Another excuse, then. Another way to derail our focus.
“El,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “Enough.”
“No, really, I heard something—”
“It’s nothing.” My patience thinned. “If you’d focus instead of chasing shadows, maybe we’d actually get something useful out of this.”
“I am focused.” She scowled, crossing her arms.
I resisted the urge to laugh. Focused. Right. On every irrelevant thing except what mattered.
I had spent my entire life reining her in, smoothing over her recklessness with careful planning, and what did I have to show for it? A half-feral sister who still acted like she was ten years old, who never thought further than the next thrill.
Maybe I’d be better off doing this alone. The thought was unsettling in its honesty.
I had never considered it before. Not really. But standing here, watching her scowl at me like I was the enemy instead of the only thing keeping her from self-destruction? Well, I wondered.
I really wondered.
#
Koa
The new moon swallowed the sky, and the night lay thick and black over Evermere.
Perfect for creeping shadows and catching them.
I lingered, cloaked in the breathless hush of the hedge maze, the cold scent of leaves and earth thick around me.
An owl hooted in the woods to the east, but my ears weren’t tuned into its song.
No, I listened for them.
Soft steps, careful but not careful enough, crushed grass underfoot. Fabric brushed bramble. And there, a whisper.
“—stupid wolf couldn’t even keep his head,” came a voice, cool and clipped with disdain. Amabel. Smooth as polished onyx and twice as cold.
Another voice, higher and grating: “But, Am! Look at that place! It’s not fair!” Eluned, whining like a dull blade dragging across porcelain. “Mother said he’d be cruel to her! She said he’d—”
“Hush, El,” Amabel snapped, venom under velvet. “Unless you want them to hear you.”
I smirked.
Too late for that, dumbass.
Through the foliage, the manor house glowed like a lantern against the dark.
The windows framed a scene that could’ve belonged to some old painting: Seri with her hands on Zane’s shoulders as he spun her across the living room floor.
He dipped her low, their smiles bright enough to burn the stars.
Then Brumous, all fur and foolish joy, bounded into their waltz, sending Zane sprawling with a delighted yip, as if he were cutting in.
Seri burst into laughter, and the wolf, grinning his toothy grin, stood victorious.
“That infernal mutt.” Amabel’s voice sharpened with disgust, and Eluned huffed, petulant.
“Ugh! Mother lied! He’s—” A rustle, a gasp. “Ahh! Something’s crawling on me!”
“We’re in a hedge maze, Eluned!” Amabel’s hiss was pure acid. “What did you expect, lavender and lace?”
“Lavender and lace!” she mocked her twin. “Lavender and— Ew! It has little wings!” She swatted at her sleeve, stomping like a sulking child.
My smile curled wider.
That’s right, bitch, I thought. Play with the pretty little pests.
The sisters bickered, their whispers growing fainter as they slipped deeper into the maze. Maybe they thought the darkness hid them, but a dhampir’s eyes were nearly as sharp as a vampire’s at night.
I followed, folding the shadows around me. Once the Harrow twins were off the property, I reactivated the perimeter wards, then touched the comm device in my ear. A faint chime, then connection.
“Deployed.” I retrieved the small glass vial from my pocket. Inside, a handful of delicate ladybugs, all copper bodies and crystalline wings, glittered faintly, their tiny gears ticking in soft, secretive turns.
Spy eyes. My own invention. Feather-light, fast as the wind, and more obedient and durable than any living creature.
“Copy,” Cas replied. “Did they take the bait?”
“Hook, line, and whining sister.” A grin tugged at my lips, and he chuckled.
“They never saw you?”
“Didn’t even feel me.” I slipped the vial back into my pocket with a smirk. “But my little beauties? They’ll see everything.”
The comm clicked off. I let the silence reclaim me, my eyes lingering once more on the window where our beloved still smiled, her joy a halo against the night. My fingers brushed the dagger at my hip. The hilt was smooth, and at its base, etched in my own hand, one word that meant everything.
Serafina.
I turned from the house and melted into the darkness.
The sisters could watch all they liked, but when they came for her?
When they came for her, they’d find three monsters waiting for them.
End of Book One