Chapter 6
Avrum
Idon’t know where else to go, so I just let my feet walk for me. They bring me outside, through the courtyard, and to the forest line, where the duels are normally held. It’s quiet out here, the wind restless like my mind.
Sucking in as much crisp, autumn air as my lungs can hold, I still feel trapped.
Leaves dance on the breeze in a playful swirl.
Silver water droplets cling to the grass and shimmer like the many stars above, but the beauty around me doesn’t sit with me the way it used to. It’s only an illusion—a lie.
I look back at the manor where Haven remains, hopeless and weak, tied to Henri’s bed like some kind of animal. My fists clench, rage replacing my initial shock. I left her in there. Like a coward, I had walked out of the room, leaving Henri to finish off what he’d started.
Henri isn’t the man I thought he was. He’s barely a man at all. He’s a monster.
And me… What does that make me then? Am I a monster, too?
One thing’s for sure, I am pitiful for not doing more to help her in the moment.
I’m now second-in-command to the devil himself.
I think back to the necklace and bracelets I’d found on the streets of Birmingham.
It’s no wonder Haven had ripped her jewelry off and left it behind.
I want to do the same—tear off my satin vest, the ivory shirt, and throw my polished shoes into the lake.
Everything—all of it—reminds me of Henri, and my skin crawls. I want nothing more to do with him.
Examining my hands, I take in the scars from my human life as a farmer, remembering how hard life was before Greystone Manor and all Lord Henri’s gifts.
The markings of hard labor, of spending hours tending to horses and sowing fields of hard ground that hadn’t seen water for weeks, are fainter now but still there.
These scars are mine. I own nothing else. Everything else is Henri’s.
Disgust curls in my gut. Despicable.
Haven doesn’t deserve this. Her life couldn’t have been worse than the horrors she’s living through now. I shouldn’t have left her alone with Henri. I need to go back and—
And what? Henri’s older than me by hundreds of years. He’s stronger. He’s smarter. He has the power to create and to destroy. He has followers, and if the run-in with Keagan and Cornelius taught me anything, he has supporters in this, too.
A shadow passes through the trees in front of me, and my senses focus on the moving darkness. When I spot the blond hair and the familiar pointed profile of my friend, Lysander, I rush forward.
“Lysander!” I call out, hurrying to catch up to him. But to my surprise, he doesn’t slow or even glance my way. I pick up my pace. “Lysander!”
Still, Lysander doesn’t acknowledge me.
“My friend?”
Lysander spins around abruptly and faces me with fierce, cold eyes. “Friend?” He barks a laugh and wraps his fingers around the hilt of the sword at his hip. “You may want to rethink your words.”
I swallow back my reply, stunned.
“Do not act like you don’t know what you’ve done,” he hisses. When I don’t reply, he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Honestly, how ignorant can you be?”
“I don’t—”
“Someone told Henri about the bet I made with Cornelius,” he answers as he unsheathes his sword and holds up the sharp blade between us. My wide eyes stare back at me from its mirrored face.
“You did it.” Lysander’s lips barely move when he speaks. “You threw me to the lions. I know it.”
My voice becomes lodged in my throat, knowing the truth. I had been the one who told Henri, but not with the intentions of harming Lysander. I’d only answered a question. But still, I should’ve been more aware of what I was saying. I blame myself.
“What kind of friend are you?” he asks.
“Not a very good one,” I confess. “And for that, I’m truly sorry. I never meant to get you in any trouble. I’d found Keagan and Cornelius bothering Haven out by the lake, and I told Henri—”
“Haven?” Anger flashes across Lysander’s face. “Haven! That worthless la putain! How did I know she was the reason for this! You and your infatuation.”
“Lysander—”
Lysander points the tip of the sword at my throat, and I freeze, hands up in surrender.
“I’ve been removed from my position as head of the guard because of your little human wench!”
“Please, my friend,” I say, hoping he’s not one of Henri’s puppets, too. “It’s not what it seems. Henri—none of this—is what it seems. I’ve been fooled.”
Lysander lowers his weapon, his brows knitting together. “You have one minute to explain yourself,” he says.
Taking a deep breath, I begin carefully.
“What I have done is worth your rage, I know. But I swear to you that my intentions were pure. I never meant to harm you in any way. Henri had backed me into a corner. He demanded an answer, and I had to give him one. I could not lie to him. You must believe me.”
Lowering his sword, he replies. “I do.”
With those two words, relief washes over me.
“It isn’t hard to believe that you would give Henri anything he asked for without a second’s thought. Even at the expense of others,” he says, coldness still lingering in his voice. “It’s how he’s trained you, after all.”
What he says stings, but it’s true. All of it, and I know it. I’ve been blind for too long, worshipping a man who isn’t who claims to be.
“Never again,” I pledge, and pull back my shoulders. “Not after tonight.”
“What’s happened?” he asks.
My temples throb as the images of Haven, battered and barely alive, float back to the surface. I’m sure they’ll haunt my dreams for the rest of my existence. As will my guilt.
Where do I even start?
It hurts to retell everything I’d seen in Henri’s room, but I manage to get through it. From Keagan and Cornelius’s roles in it, to my new second position, and Haven’s barely breathing state. When I finish, my heart’s racing, and I run a trembling hand over my face.
“I didn’t want to leave her that way, but what other choice did I have?”
Lysander, who has remained silent the entire time, sheaths his weapon again. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
I pause. “Wait, you aren’t?”
He shakes his head. “Avrum, you must understand. You and I—and Henri—we aren’t human anymore,” he explains, glancing up at the dark sky.
“The night we are changed, we die. Our human lives end, and we are turned into something else, something greater than what we were before. You are still young and new to all this, but you will eventually see. The older you get, the more godlike you become. You no longer age. Food and drink cannot sustain you. Things like death, pain, and love mean nothing.” He stops for a moment, and his eyes close.
“Some of us lose our human selves entirely.”
“That can’t happen to all of us…” I refuse to believe it.
“I wish I could tell you it didn’t.”
“But it did not happen to you.”
Lysander glances to the woods. Sadness engraves itself into his porcelain features, but he doesn’t say anything more about it.
After a long moment, I ask, “What are we exactly?” I’ve never had a name to explain what we are before.
“I have pondered this question for many years. You could say I became obsessed with it,” Lysander replies. Placing his hands behind his back, he begins to walk with me along the forest’s edge. “It has never been explained to you? What you are now.”
I shake my head. “Henri told me nothing of names.”
“Have you ever taken blood from a human?” he asks.
My stomach cramps at the thought. “No.”
“It seems Henri has kept you in the dark lot more than you realize. Our kind has been around for centuries, before Christ. We have been called many things. Devils, demons, gods. More recently, literature and lore have given us yet another name—vampire.”
“Vampire.” I roll the word around on my tongue.
“Resurrecting after death. The need to drink living blood to keep our own hearts beating. The unnatural beauty and nocturnal nature. The predator-like instincts.”
The more truths Lysander lists, the more I realize he’s right. We aren’t human anymore. We’re something else entirely.
Still, for me, that doesn’t seem like a proper reason to hold someone against their will and torture them. That is inexcusable.
I stop walking, halting Lysander.
“I would tell you to take your sword and kill me now if I was destined to become like Henri,” I tell him, and I mean it. “We should use this new power to protect those who can’t help themselves. Not to harm them.”
A sad smile flickers across his face. “You’re still so young and na?ve.
It’s common to start with similar grandiose ideas, but they fade after time.
” He sighs. “I never said it’s moral or just, but unfortunately, my friend, this world is full of men yearning for greatness who are willing kill for just a taste of it. ”
“I need to help Haven,” I say. “I can’t help but feel like this is partly my fault.”
“Henri would have stolen the girl regardless of you being here or not.”
“Maybe, but there had been signs. Ones I refused to see. If I’d known sooner—”
“You’d be in the same predicament you’re in now,” he assures me, and touches my shoulder.
Regret sits like a boulder in my gut. He may be right, but it’s not what I want to hear right now.
“The question now is, what are you going to do now that you do know?”
What am I going to do?
My mind races with my options, all of them insane and practically suicide. But not doing anything isn’t possible either.
“Whatever it takes,” I say, set on my decision.
Lysander nods, understanding. “If you feel like this is something you must do, I will help you any way I can.”
“I don’t want to drag you into anything else.”
“Oh, enough of that. I’m volunteering.”
Even though I know this will be extremely dangerous, and I’d rather not have Lysander involved, I also don’t have an idea of where to start. I don’t have the knowledge that comes with our kind. Having his help could make all the difference.
“Okay, then tell me what to do.”
“You do what you believe is right.”