Chapter 17
It was dark before Vander returned to our room.
The door creaked open and I sat up. Light from the oil lamp on my bedside table gave off a subtle glow, but I’d be able to see that it was him regardless.
Even if I couldn’t see in the dark, I knew his scent.
I could feel his presence. Even if I went blind, I’d know him. That fact made me shift uncomfortably.
His demeanor wasn’t one of agitation and the need for escape like before. The gentle expression on his sharp features was repentant. His long legs quickly covered the ground between us, and he sat at the end of my bed. Close enough to touch me, but he didn’t.
He kept his gaze on his hands curled together on his lap. “I’m sorry for my behavior earlier. You don’t deserve that.” Then he looked at me and swallowed. The moonlight glittered in his eyes, the blue made brighter by it.
He expected me to be angry with him. I wasn’t. “I talked to Falcon earlier. She told me why you need to be alone sometimes. I understand.”
His brows pinched. “What did she tell you?” He sounded guarded.
Nerves tightened my throat. This subject needed to be handled with delicacy. “About your sister. That she was your last apprentice, and she died. Also, that Wolf didn’t make it either.”
He didn’t pull away from me and hide on the other side of the curtain like I expected. He let out a long breath, seemingly relieved. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell me. “So you understand now my... aversion to training you?”
“Their deaths are not your failure. It isn’t because you didn’t train them well enough.
It’s the vampires. You have to know that.
” He harbored guilt he shouldn’t. But I knew what it was like to be truly responsible for someone’s death.
It was a pain that was always there in the back of the mind, like a dark cloud waiting for its moment to block out the sun.
“Wolf’s death wasn’t my fault, but Oriana’s was. She never would have been here if it weren’t for me. She chose the assassins’ guild because I’m an assassin. If I’d chosen to become a scholar, she’d still be alive. If I had listened to my father...” He stood up from the bed and put his back to me.
I tugged my blanket off and put my bare feet on the floor. “You could never have known that. You did what you thought was best at the time.”
“Locke put her with me thinking she’d be safe. He trusted me, she trusted me, and I failed them both.” He turned, eyes burning into me. “I was furious with my uncle for forcing me to be your trainer, but it had nothing to do with your potential.”
“But you still asked for someone else...”
“Because I didn’t want to watch you die because of me.”
I sat with that a moment. My heart reacted in strange ways. So he would have rather watched another apprentice die? I didn’t know what to do with that. Maybe it was what my father said to him?
“You’re going to make a great assassin. I still think you’d be better off with someone else.”
“No.” I shot off the bed, a burst of adrenaline buzzed through me. “No. I want you to train me. I don’t want anyone else.” The desperation coursing through me was alarming. I couldn’t be with anyone else.
“Even knowing what happened to my last two apprentices? Trust me, you should be down at Commander Ace’s door asking to be with someone else.”
“You didn’t cause their deaths, you just happened to be their trainer.
People are killed by vampires every day.
It’s not us, it’s them. You didn’t kill her, vampires did.
” I gulped at my own words. My family had told me the same thing for years, but the guilt still clung to me like a film I couldn’t wash away.
“I didn’t tell you how my grandmother died, but it was because I went outside at night.
I went outside knowing I shouldn’t. She came out to rush me back in and was killed.
You want to talk about fault? That is my fault. ”
“You didn’t kill her, a vampire did.” He echoed my own words back to me.
“Well, maybe we should both stop blaming ourselves and take our pain and anger where it belongs. A blade into the heart of all vampires.”
He half smiled and rubbed the back of his neck, glancing away for a moment. Then he held out his hand. “A pact then. All vampires.”
I grasped his wrist and he mine. “No more blaming ourselves. We blame them, and we kill as many as we can until our hearts have stopped.”
He grinned. “No more being afraid. Be fury, Bonecarver.”
I’d had more motivation to train harder since he’d told me I could one day bring my family inside the wall. But I still hadn’t wanted to kill vampires. I did now. Something had shifted with this pact. He had vengeance to take, and so did I.
Killing vampires wasn’t for the guilds or the people inside the wall that cared nothing for my people outside it. What I would do as an assassin was for our murdered loved ones, his and mine.
At home I would have run and hid for the rest of my life.
Here I would kill every vampire I encountered.
He released the hold on me first and untied a squared brown pouch on his belt. “I got this for you. As an apology.”
“You didn’t need to get me anything.”
“I wanted to.”
“Alright, thank you.” I took the leather pouch and lifted the flap.
Inside, a set of new carving tools waited.
Different-shaped blades with glazed wood handles.
I ran my fingertip over the burnt black runes on the handles.
They were used in my village, so I knew them well.
The five tools each had a unique rune with a different meaning: brave, heart, courage, soul, and the last was feminine, strong woman, sometimes used for a queen or a woman warrior.
Raw emotion rose in me, and my throat tightened.
I blinked back tears and threw my arms around his hard torso. “Thank you,” I said, softly.
His body shook with light laughter, and he hugged me back. “You’re welcome. So, you like the set? I admit I don’t know much about carving, but the man at the shop said it was a great set for any carver.”
“I love it, Viper. It is a great set.” I pulled back and excitedly placed it on my bed so I could pull out each one.
I hadn’t gotten a new set since my fifteenth birthday, and it was in the shop, probably being used by one of my siblings now.
When I was forced to come here, I didn’t know if I’d ever carve again.
I missed the way it took my mind off everything else.
“I’ll carve you something. I’m not sure what yet, but I will. ”
I wrapped them back up and set it on my nightstand. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, but I don’t want Smoke to get into trouble, so promise you won’t tell.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked tense. “Did she do something wrong?”
“No.”
“Alright, I promise.”
I thought back to the night of the games. “She said that she overheard you and Falcon talking about a vampire who’d broken into the mages’ building. How would they have gotten inside the wall?”
He visibly relaxed. “We don’t know yet, but he’s being interrogated. I’m sure he’ll crack sooner or later.”
“If the vampires get a mage able to create a spell for them, how long before they fully attack Nighthaven? Does a mage keep their magic if they are turned?”
He rubbed his chin and seemed to go somewhere dark in his mind.
“Well, that depends on the mage and how many times he or she can cast the spell. It would take a celestial event to turn any significant number, I think. From what I’ve read, vampirism eats away at magic.
They lose their power quickly. And even if the vampires find a mage that could turn them into daywalkers, it doesn’t mean the mage would. ”
“But if there are daywalkers at all, it means there were mages in the past that willingly turned them.”
He nodded. “Not everyone will die for the good of others. And many people are corruptible, even mages.”
Later, after I finished taking notes about some of the things Vander had told me that day, when everything was quiet and the moon was at its apex, I couldn’t sleep.
I stared at the curtain, wishing it wasn’t there.
I wanted to see him. Did he wish he could see me?
I doubted it. If he knew I was staring at the curtain, imagining what he was doing on the other side, he’d probably think I was odd.
I rolled over and quietly pulled the bedside table drawer open and took out the book from the library.
I might have browsed for something else if Celine and Falcon hadn’t ambushed me.
I sat up against my headboard and opened to the first page with a thrill of excitement to read about a young woman finding love for the first time. To read a new book at all, actually.
I turned up the lantern light beside me and delved into the story.
I lost track of time I was so immersed in the characters about to get to their secret wedding night.
I knew what happened between a man and woman on their special day.
I knew basic anatomy, and the mechanics of sex, but beyond that I’d only heard the jokes of men at the pub, and sometimes the quiet giggles of women talking about a night of passion.
“You’re still awake?”
Vander’s voice made me jump. I lowered the book to find him standing near the end of my bed. My cheeks flamed, and I quickly threw my arm over the cover. “Uh, yeah, I couldn’t sleep.”
“What’s that you’re reading?”
“Nothing, just a... book.”
He chuckled. “I can see that it’s a book.”
My pulse hammered, and I wanted to sink under the blankets. “It’s about vampires. You already know about that.”
His smile widened. “Why are you hiding the cover?”
“I’m not.”
One moment I was clutching it near my chest, the next the scandalous material was in his hands. I dove at him, clambering half across his body to reach for it. Laughing, he curled it against his stomach, and I tried to pry his arms open.
“Give it to me!” I squealed. “You’ll just make fun of me.”
“It must be bad if you’re this desperate.
” Using the moves he taught me, I was able to hook my legs around his backside and attempt a chokehold.
He fell back, pressing me into the mattress.
I wasn’t even sure how, but he flipped around, and his chest was heavy on mine.
I grabbed onto his arm, reaching for the book he held just above my head.
“Viper,” I pleaded, all but admitting defeat. His dead weight on top of me with my legs smashed made it nearly impossible for me to even move. “Give me the book right now!” He clamped a hand over my mouth, and to my horror, he started reading aloud.
“Now that you bear my last name, Mrs. Rendfare, I want to see all of you.”
“All of me?” It was almost a plea. Her heart raced as his fingers grazed the swell of her milky white breast.
His voice was sultry—he was cruel, barbaric! I stuck out my tongue and licked his palm, hoping that would make him remove his hand. He laughed and kept going.
She pushed the straps of her gown off her shoulders, and the material pooled around her feet. She stood before her new husband as bare as the day she came into this world.
“Like this, Mr. Rendfare?”
Vander read on in silence a moment longer.
I wanted to cover my head with my pillow, but watched his face in abject horror instead.
This was my trainer (who happened to be laying on top of me).
The trainer that I was beginning to feel more for than I should.
He finally glanced away from the page. His sparkling blue eyes found mine.
“This is erotic, Bonecarver.” He grinned through every word.
“And here I thought you were Miss Sweet and Naive.”
I scoffed. “How was I supposed to know what was in it?” I pushed against his chest, but it hardly budged him. “And get off of me. You’re heavy.”
He glanced at the book again. “Oh, Mr. Rendfare’s name is... Evander. Interesting. Very interesting.”
My face felt like it was on fire. I wanted to murder him... and kiss him. It was a strange emotional place to be. “Why is that interesting?”
He deadpanned, snapped the book closed and tossed it onto the bedside table. “I know that you know my name is Vander.”
“I didn’t pick the book based on the man’s name being Evander, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” In fact, I’d wanted to avoid that for this very reason, but of course Celine and Falcon had cornered me. His gaze fell to my lips. I thought my heart couldn’t beat any harder, I was mistaken.
“Well, that’s good.” His voice was low and husky.
“It is?”
“Mmhmm.”
I was scared to ask why, but I had to know what he was thinking.
Did he feel something for me? Did I want him to?
The slow building ache for him brought irrational thoughts to my mind.
The desire to feel his lips on mine, to have his tongue in my mouth pulled at my entire being.
I started to tremble and couldn’t stop. “Why?”
His throat bobbed, and the intensity between us was a bubble ready to burst. “Because if you were having those kinds of fantasies about me, it might get us into trouble.”
I swallowed hard. I became very aware of my hands resting on his shoulders, of his gripping the mattress on either side of my head.
I didn’t dare speak or move. I didn’t trust myself not to pull his mouth to mine.
I think he was afraid too. I’d barely escaped a lashing, what would happen if we broke this rule?
I had always wished for something more than friendship with Kace, but I’d never felt an unyielding desire for a man before. Like Vander had hooked my soul with his tether and started to pull. Like I was tinder and he’d sparked me into flame.
He finally eased off me. I almost reached for him, but I gripped my sheets instead. My bed creaked as his weight lifted from it. He let out a long breath, and everything shifted. Like he’d snuffed out a flaming candle. “You don’t want anything like that with me, Bonecarver.”
How did he know what I wanted? “Why?”
“It’s dangerous, and I won’t let it happen.”
When he disappeared behind the curtain, I curled onto my side, disappointed, my mind boggling about what had happened and what he’d said. How was it dangerous? My tight muscles slowly eased like melting ice.
“Get some sleep, Bonecarver.”