Epilogue
TRANSLATED FROM DARYUN
Serun, Lord of the Undercity, leans forward in his leather-stitched chair, his knuckles propping up his cheek. His other hand rests on the table, and his finger taps the base of the chalice before him. Words take shape, pricking up his pointed ears.
Across the table, Maeve sits with her back straight, and her dusted leather coat rests on her shoulders. Spiders crawl across her dark hair, and the light from nearby candles catches against her golden-brown skin.
Serun wonders what is on her mind. She seems to share his own agitation. Her red eyes linger on Serun, and they share a subtle moment before they both turn their gazes to their brother.
Beyond the chilled flask of blood and untouched food that is more display than anything else, Lucifer looks unflinchingly at his siblings.
A sinister smile twists his lips, and he bares his fangs.
Fair-haired and strikingly beautiful, he resembles porcelain, as though crafted by an artisan.
Lucifer rests both arms on the table, his fingers entwined and tense.
If he were mortal, Serun suspects his brother’s veins would thicken under the sheer pressure of his blood-curdling malice.
Lucifer’s wine-red eyes, darker than any others in the room, snap to Serun, and a force crushes down on him as if he were frozen in time. As if he were trapped, chained, and bound.
As if he were shackled in the Sunken City.
His jaw locks, but Serun conceals his discomfort by lowering his hand further along his jaw, maintaining his complacent expression. Instead of shrinking away in fear, he mirrors Lucifer’s energy.
“She is alive!” Lucifer spits, his nostrils flaring. Rage swells in the room. Next to Serun, Reyes grunts and squirms in his chair while his wife, Avianna, retreats into the darkness, not wanting to be exposed to the candlelight. “Didn’t you go to Darkovish to kill the daywalker?”
Serun’s finger ceases tapping against the chalice of untouched blood, and he relaxes his hand.
Without averting his gaze from Lucifer, Serun says, “She is also a kamai. Were you not the ones who went behind my back twenty-eight years ago when you first heard of her, without telling me who she might be?”
Lucifer twitches, his shoulder jerking slightly at his words. Serun could feel his brother’s raw frustration, but remained indifferent to it. Serun leans back in his chair, and his fingers slide from his jaw to the edge of the table.
A simple show of how little he cares.
“It was my fault,” Maeve says. Serun’s pointed ear twitches before he smooths over his emotions. “I was sent to kill the baby, but I couldn’t do it. So, I let her carer take her to their village.”
Through gritted teeth, Lucifer hisses, “Were you not also the one who took her to the Darkovish Feeding Ground when Saya’s carer asked for aid?”
Maeve lifts her chin high and drawls, “She was an old friend. I owed her.”
“It was good that your soul got in the way and you didn’t kill her,” Reyes says, seeming to recover from the anger filling the room.
Lucifer bristles. “Even so, the bidding on newborns will begin soon, and I assume she will have to participate, considering she is part nightwalker?”
Serun straightens, glaring cold death at Lucifer.
“She is a daywalker, a kamai, and also my consort. I offered her my blood, which you know I have not done before. I will be the one to watch over her until she is no longer considered a newborn.” Serun’s eyes narrow as he lifts his chin to look down at Lucifer.
“When she is, I will let her do as she pleases, even if that means staying topside.”
Lucifer surges from his seat, palms pressing to the wood, and the blood-filled chalices and bowls of untouched food tremble.
The candle flames flicker, wavering with the emotions he struggles to suppress.
“If the slayers know of Saya, they will do all they can to take her to Sylvar and weaponise her against us! All that we have built will be for naught if we are ash in the wind, brother!”
Serun stands, matching Lucifer’s intensity. The flames whimper, shrivelling into tiny buds. Shadows crawl across the table, and a hungry growl tears through the darkness, desperate to feed.
“I will not control her,” Serun says in a low voice. “Now, if you continue to bother me, I will kill every nightwalker joining the offering, and their newborn spawns. I’m in no mood to be tested.”
The shadows carve away what little light was still fighting to survive, plunging the room into darkness.
Serun and Saya’s story continues in book two: VERVAIN.