Chapter 7 Vesper
Vesper
Ifought against the guard. It was almost too easy to push them back now.
But then there were two, then three guards. When I started trying to snap at them, Cedar intervened.
“Vesper! Pull back! Vesper!”
She wrapped her red vine-like magic around me, forcing me away from the guards, who stood there stunned.
“Vesper? Isn’t that the one assigned to the princess before she—”
“That’s her alright. She looks—”
I growled in the guards’ direction, my mind vaguely recognizing them from my days at the princess’s side. I didn’t care for them or the fear they were showing as they took in my changed form. They were just that bastard’s lackeys with no brain of their own.
All I wanted was her. Aurelia. How dare she say those things? How dare she make us look like the bad guys? How dare she let us leave without her?
And willingly. She stood back and watched as the guards took us. She was the one that called them on us. It was a betrayal as hot as the sword I shoved through her chest all those months ago.
Was this payback? Did she do it to get back at me for that night? I thought I had shown her why I did it. I thought I had apologized enough.
I thought I was enough.
Why did she do this? Who was that man? Was she with him now? Was she with him while they kept me in the dungeons? While I was in forced servitude?
She didn’t even try to save me.
The entire time, all I thought about was her and Cedar. I cuddled up to the vampires. I did as I was told. Played the perfect pet. All for a chance to meet her again.
But the entire time she wasn’t thinking about us. She was there, orchestrating her own marriage like she hadn’t begged for me to save her from her last one.
It didn’t even register that the magic was burning me until the scent of my flesh hit my overly sensitive nose and Atlas appeared in front of me. Her angered expression only added to my annoyance.
She brought her hand up and delivered a stinging slap to my face, the vine wrapped too tightly around my body for me to stop it.
“Hey! Watch yourself with her,” Cedar spat.
“Snap out of it!” Atlas growled. “Act like a blood-crazed newborn, and we’re never going to get invited back in.”
The magic was starting to really hurt now, but I was far too angry to care about it. If anything, I wanted more of it so that the physical pain would match the emotional one inside me.
“Don’t you get it?” I bared my teeth at her. “We won’t be getting invited back because she’s getting married! We were supposed to stop this! This was supposed to be an engagement dinner, not her wedding, and I am missing it—”
The vines let me go, and I lurched at her. We fell to the ground in a heap.
“It was supposed to be me! I don’t know how you did it, but you messed it all up! If you hadn’t come and ruined it all, I would be getting married to her!”
My hands shot to her throat. My gaze was covered in a red haze, my fangs aching to tear out her throat as Atlas’s hands clawed at my wrists. But her attempts to force me off her were futile.
“She’s mine,” I spat. “You thought you were going to take her from me?”
Atlas’s eyes were red, her growls mixing with mine.
Suddenly, Cedar’s hands were on me, caressing my arms, my neck, my back. So gentle. So soft. More than the monster I’d become deserved.
My mind stuttered. The rage lifted just for a moment so I could turn, and Cedar’s face entered my mind.
There she was.
She had always been there. Even when I knew nothing about her, on the sidelines, watching and guiding me. Whether that was to fulfill the prophecy or now, when I was losing my mind, she had been a constant force trying to push me in the right direction.
Guilt shot through me. She was here, yet I had been ignoring her, too blinded by rage.
“Ours,” she corrected with a soft smile. “And no one will take her from us, marriage be damned. Now… We need to get out of here.”
Her eyes shifted, and as I followed her gaze, I saw that the guards were slowly backing away, seemingly not wanting to get caught in my grasp.
Good. At least someone could see the true monster I had been made into.
“My poor hunter, eyes on me.”
Even if Cedar couldn’t.
When I didn’t move, her hand gently cupped my face, forcing me to look at her.
“So lost, so angry. Let me help you.”
Maybe it wasn’t that she couldn’t see it. Her eyes told me she did. She saw my bloodthirst. She saw my craving for violence and destruction.
She simply wasn’t scared. She accepted it with a grace I refused to give myself.
Atlas squirmed under me.
“Make her let me go.”
Cedar didn’t even look her way.
“I think we should probably let her go,” she murmured. “No matter how badly I love seeing you overtake her with your new strength.”
But I couldn’t. No matter how good her honey-coated words and soft caresses felt. The anger was too much, and I needed to let it out. I needed to sink my fangs into something.
I needed to storm back into the castle and take Aurelia away from her soon-to-be husband. And I wouldn’t stop until everyone’s heads were rolling at my feet. Especially his for daring to touch what was mine.
Cedar’s gaze softened.
“Sorry about this, love.”
Magic burst and sank deep into my skin. I tried to fight it, but when I removed my hands from Atlas to pull at my skin, my body felt lethargic. Panic rose in me so sharply, it made my head spin.
My now slow, almost nonexistent, heartbeat flipped in my chest.
“What are you doing?” My mouth struggled to force the words out, making them sound garbled, but she only shushed me and ran her hand down my hair.
“Just let go. I got you.”
I had no choice but to fall into her awaiting arms.
“I know where she’ll be…”
Cedar shushed me again.
“Just close your eyes. We will talk when you wake.”
The world started to fall away. I panicked, desperately trying to grasp at the edges of my consciousness and force it back to me.
The last time I felt this way, I was dying. But this time I wasn’t alone, so I tried to hold on to her gaze. It was warm, unmoving. It relaxed me.
“Since when can your magic knock us out?” Atlas asked with a hoarse voice.
Cedar gave me a smile, her hand running down my face as my eyes closed.
“What? You think I spend all my time in that hideous castle of yours twiddling my thumbs?”
The shocked gasp threatened to pull a smile from me, but I was already too far gone.
For the first time since my change, I fell into a deep sleep.
“Hm, this is unexpected. But you look good, I guess.”
My head twisted to the side to meet Max. He looked older, but not much. Like a preteen more than a child.
We were back in his cage, and he was still chained to the wall.
How did I get back here?
My head swiveled around to find the door, but there was none.
“I’m dreaming,” I exhaled. “You’ve done this before.”
There was something nagging me at the back of my mind, telling me I was forgetting something important. What is it?
“You never cease to amaze me, Vesper.”
His sarcasm had me frowning. I was angry. I could feel it deep in my chest, burning away everything in its path. But my confusion stopped me from attacking him right away.
“Are you here to warn me?” I asked, my voice rising in a panic. “Do I need to get Cedar and Aurelia out of—”
Of where? When I tried to bring up the memories of where we were, I couldn’t.
“Warn you? I guess, but not in the way you think. You’re messing it up. Or at least close to.”
“Messing what up?” I tried to rise, but only then did I realize I was shackled by the same chains he was, biting into my arms and legs. I pulled at them again, and a searing shot of pain ran up my arm.
I glared at him.
“This isn’t fucking fun—”
“Time’s ticking. Do you want to hear me or what?”
Snapping my mouth shut, I gritted my teeth. My instinct was to snap back at him, but I toned it down and gave him a jerky nod.
“Vampires have always been a bit old-fashioned,” he explained, lying down on the ground and waving his hand to the wall behind him.
Light splashed on it, and the shadows started moving, making shapes.
Like hand puppets he never raised his hand to make.
“The women were married off, men ruled. The clans had a way to shift the balance away from the royal bloodlines, but, well… You know what happened.”
The shadows showed various clan heads and their followers fighting each other until nothing was left but dust.
“The royal families prey on the fear of war. They force vampires to their side and make alliances through blood sharing, feeders, and, of course, marriage.”
The shadows changed to a girl looking suspiciously like Aurelia, waiting near a throne, a man wearing a crown kneeling at her feet.
“Aurelia figured it out. Can you?”
The shadows showed the man slitting his wrist and the woman kneeling to take gulpfuls of his blood. More than I’d ever seen a vampire take from another.
The memories hit me like a truck. Aurelia standing there. Kicking us out. Announcing she was getting married right then and there.
I tried to stand up but was stopped by the chains.
“Let me out! I need to stop her!”
Max sighed. He waved his hand in the air, and everything on the wall disappeared. “That newborn rage. Better get that under control, or you really will mess it up.”
“She can’t marry him!” I growled, but desperation and hurt were showing through. My heart felt like it was breaking into a million pieces. Mine. She’s mine!
“She has to.”
Max was now in front of me, his glowing eyes stopping my struggles. Stifling power washed over me as everything except his face was wiped from my sight.
“There are two ways to end a bloodline. She would have to die or…”
The pieces were starting to come together, but I still said nothing.
“If she gets married…” His hands were on my face, forcing our contact. “She’s no longer a Castle. None of her children will be, if she has them. Then, it’s only her brother, so…”
“She was always going to get married…” I breathed. “Her father, he would have forced her.”
Max smiled. “If not for you, Aurelia would be stuck in a family that abused her and impregnated her without her consent, all for some made-up power play that would have meant nothing in a few decades.” The venom in his voice didn’t match his innocent look.
“You played the perfect pawn to the prophecy. Killing him opened a way for the Castle family to fade into history like they should have long ago. Because now, Aurelia has something to fight for.”
Darkness took over my vision, and I was sent plummeting back into my consciousness, but not before I was hit with images.
Images that didn’t make sense. Not at first.
I saw her in the garden.
Roaming the halls.
In the middle of the throne room, her body covered in blood.
The images changed. I saw her in the middle of an auditorium-like room. Chains bound her arms and legs. She looked awful, hanging there with no energy, her body weaker than I’d ever seen it.
“Remember what’s at stake before you go messing with everything again.”
Jerking awake, I was met with a shocked Cedar, her eyes wide. Atlas was behind her, her arms crossed and a frown on her face.
The last image I saw just before my eyes opened lingered. A place I knew all too well.
“No time,” I gasped and got up from my position on the hard ground.
“You weren’t supposed to wake up yet—”
I grabbed her and walked us both in the direction my bonded was calling me.
“I know where she is.”