Epilogue
Dear Students,
We apologise profusely for any distress this news may have caused.
Attentively,
Faust Nocth, Dean of Night and Humanities
“Come in,” a voice calls from within the office, three full minutes after I knocked.
Nocth has been swamped this past week, especially after a dozen humans demanded a refund of their tuition and left campus.
I can’t blame them for wanting to leave.
The possibility of getting attacked by a professor was certainly not mentioned in the acceptance letter.
I walk in, the door creaking closed behind me. Faust Nocth glances up at me from his leather chair. He seems a little paler than usual, his black hair dishevelled. “I was waiting for you, Rebecca.”
I stare him down. My nails hurt. A bizarre side effect of heartbreak, perhaps.
“Why have you been waiting for me?” I ask.
“I’d been hoping you’d have come by sooner, considering what happened at that little Halloween party.”
I can picture Elia’s face hearing someone call her Halloween Ball little. She might strangle Nocth for the offense. I blink at him, tilting my head to the side ever so slightly. “The only thing I did at the Halloween party was get rid of the Familiar’s mark.”
“And how did you do that?”
There’s a stillness in his expression, as though a part of him doesn’t want to know the answer. “By eating a vampire’s heart. Wasn’t particularly tasty, though.”
“I see,” he says. If he’s disgusted by the mark’s remedy, he doesn’t show it. “You’re free to leave Tynahine now, if you wish, Miss Charity. I’m certain Callisto will have a new mission for you already.” I bite my lip. I haven’t told anyone, except Elia, that I’ve left the hunters.
At least in my heart. Because now that I know they were behind my parents’ murders, I can’t walk away. I will hunt down every last Stake of Callisto, anyone who had a say in my recruitment. Penny included.
“What happened to me being useful?” I ask.
“You uncovered a Vassal,” he says.
“Who you hired.”
“I did,” he concedes. “I first met Sven shortly before my cousin sired him. He was a different man back then.”
“By different, you mean human.”
“Yes, Rebecca.” He sighs, leaning back in his chair before changing the subject. “You’re free to study with us until the end of the semester. Penny did pay for four months of tuition, after all.”
I shouldn’t want to stay. Now that I finally have a target, a gateway to my revenge, I shouldn’t hesitate.
But I am hesitating. Elia, Julia, Ife, and Stephan are making me hesitate.
I’ve never felt like I could grow roots anywhere, at least not in the last four years, and they’ve changed that.
And if Aliz was still here, I wouldn’t think twice.
She vanished on All Saints’ Day, before I could apologise again or ask if that bloodstained kiss had been genuine.
I texted her as soon as I realised she was gone.
I’m sorry. I can explain. But she never replied, and whenever I look at our chat, she’s always offline.
I tried calling, too, and I let it ring for a whole minute, until I finally gave up.
“I’ll stay,” I whisper before I can fully think it through.
Who knows where I’ll get the money once the semester is up.
But that’s a problem for Future Rebecca.
Then I think back to the email. To the little link to campus security.
“Why don’t you hire me?” I ask. “Who better to keep an eye on your vampires than a hunter?”
“If I were to hire you, Rebecca, I would have to reveal your identity,” he says. “And then, how do you think my vampire students would feel about the fact that one of Callisto’s murderers has been walking amongst them?”
I rest a palm on his desk, leaning closer. “I’m just a Cross-ranked hunter. Couldn’t hurt a fly.” I think about what he just said. Revealing my identity means admitting I lied to my friends. And once they know, they’ll never look at me the same again. “But I suppose I’ll stick to studying for now.”
Tynarrich’s dining hall is busy, but they’ve saved a seat for me. The sofa is old, warm leather ripped by a cat that used to hunt mice in the halls two decades ago. I plant myself next to Julia, while Ife and Stephan sit across from us.
On Julia’s lap, as always, is her sketchbook. She’s working on another landscape, and this time it’s one I recognise. A forest with a footpath, bridges, old lampposts, and seagulls perched on branches. “Ness Islands?” I ask.
Her pencil stills, and she turns to stare at me.
“This is a real place?” she whispers. I look at the drawing a little closer.
“Aye,” I say. “It’s just twenty minutes from here.
” As I say this, I notice there’s one island that’s not entirely familiar.
It’s small, with a towering alder tree and a monolith just across from it.
Before I can take a closer look, Julia turns to the next page, her face pale.
I almost ask what’s wrong, but I think I already know.
Just after the email about Gustavsson went out, Julia rushed into Traquair Hall to scrape Gustavsson’s face, so perfectly captured by her paintbrush, off her mural.
Until now, if her drawings somehow managed to peer under the surface of someone close to her, like Ife with her rabbit, this sight, if it can be called that, was fascinating, even innocent.
Gustavsson’s appearance on her canvas, followed by his attack shortly after, has added a sinister layer to Julia’s unusual skill. One she now appears to be terrified of.
Worse, perhaps, is the fact that all three of my friends saw me react to that mural in a way that did not make sense. And I still haven’t told them why.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Ife whispers, after looking around the surrounding sofas, ensuring no one can hear her.
“What was me?” I ask.
“I saw you going into the Night Dean’s office,” Stephan says, scratching the back of his neck. “We’re all convinced you’re the one Gustavsson attacked.”
“My mother works in the Council,” Ife says, resting her hands on her lap. Her nails are decorated with daisies. “A few days ago, they had a hearing. Aliz Astra was there. She didn’t say your name, but she did admit to killing Gustavsson to protect a human.”
I swallow hard. The Council won’t put her in jail for killing a Vassal, will they?
“She’ll be fine,” Julia says, recognising the muted panic in my expression.
“But why hasn’t she come back?” I whisper, unable to keep the hurt out of my voice. And this is a question none of them have an answer for.
I keep waking in the middle of the night, certain I’ll see her sitting on her coffin, slurping blood from a paper cup. But instead, I’m met with silence. So to escape this solitude, I start spending time at Elia’s place.
“Your scent has changed,” she says as she sits next to me, holding a glass of steaming blood.
“Really?” I’m pretty sure it hasn’t changed; rather, it’s gone back to how it used to smell before I had the Familiar’s mark. But I watch her, waiting for her to reply.
She puts down her glass and lifts my wrist to her nose, inhaling slowly. “Petrichor,” she finally says, after furrowing her brows. I’ve never heard anyone describe me like that before. And as I stare at her, feeling her proximity, my nails start to ache again.
There’s pain in my stomach, too. A dark thing, lurking within me. Maybe I did some internal damage when I ate Gustavsson’s heart. But I’m not sure if this is the sort of ailment I can visit a human doctor with.
“Has there been any sign of Penny?” I ask, trying to ignore the feeling.
As soon as my old mentor heard The Book of Blood and Roses was kept inside the memories of a ghost, she vanished. And I still don’t know why she wanted it so frantically.
“No,” Elia says. There’s another question, one that I don’t vocalise, but she answers, anyway. “And I haven’t heard from Aliz, either.”
We stay in a comfortable silence, and my eyes burn. The thorns may have left my skin, but now they’ve tightened around my chest, squeezing hard, digging into me every time I think of her.
Elia brushes a long strand of hair away from my face. “Your roots are coming in,” she says.
The next morning, I take out my extensions in the on-campus hairdresser’s, but keep the red hair. I’m not fully ready to let go of the girl Aliz fell in love with. Even if that love was never real in the first place.
She may be gone, she may have ignored my texts, but I can still feel her in the room.
Her desk is a chaotic collection of unfinished essays and annotated books.
I run my fingers over her cursive and picture her biting her pen.
The false window glows with a crescent moon, partially hidden behind silver clouds.
I pull out my phone once I’m in bed. Aliz’s profile picture hasn’t changed.
Her black sunglasses still rest on the tip of her nose as she stares, coyly, at the camera.
She took that picture before meeting me.
Back when I was a cold-blooded killer, and she had a dozen girls fighting for her attention.
The person I was before Aliz no longer exists.
Online
I stare at the word beneath her name. This is the first time she’s been online in three weeks, but no reply comes my way.
For a moment I imagine it. I imagine she calls me.
Then I’d have her voice in my ear, and everything would be right again.
Before reason can stop me, I start typing another message.
I hope you’re all right
I press my face into my pillow and lock my phone. It doesn’t vibrate or light up. When I finally look at it again, she’s left me on read.
The roof of Tynarrich Hall is windy. The moon is a perfect half crescent, ready to dip behind the black silhouette of the hills.
I keep my hood up, jacket zipped above my neck.
My breath turns into a pale cloud as I exhale.
I’ve only been here for two months, yet I feel like a snake who’s shed its skin and discovered an entirely different pattern forming underneath.
I don’t know who this new version of myself will be yet. But I do know that I can’t return to my old life. I glance down at my hands. I’m no longer just a weapon. There’s more to me than my blood.
The wooden door to the roof creaks open, and I glance back from the railing. Every muscle in my body freezes when I see her standing there.
Aliz, who I haven’t seen in three weeks, now stares back at me with wide eyes. The wind blows her white hair, and I wait for her to vanish, to reveal she’s just a mirage. But she’s real.
“So, this is where you’ve been hiding,” she says, the wind muffling her words.
“Hiding?” is all I manage to say.
“You weren’t in our room,” she says. She takes a tentative step towards me. Then another. “I tried texting you back, but I couldn’t find the words. When I got to our room, you were gone.”
My eyes burn, and all I manage is to nod. She’s here.
“I just got back an hour ago,” she adds.
“Back?”
“From Hungary,” she says. “Did Faust not tell you where I’d gone?” She pauses, and I see her cheeks redden. “You didn’t notice I’d left?”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me,” I say. “You didn’t reply to any of my texts.”
“I just got my phone back today,” she says. She’s here.
“Right,” I whisper. “How did the Council hearing go?” I ask. I need her to come closer.
“Better than I thought it would.” She remains by the door, and I can’t help but think she’s just come here to say goodbye. She doesn’t even owe me that much. She couldn’t have possibly forgiven me yet.
“Did you see your parents?”
“Only my father’s Familiar,” she says. “Father was too busy, and my mother was indisposed.”
Aliz finally walks across the roof and rests her hands on the railing, our arms almost touching. “I’m sorry,” I say carefully. Her hands tighten on the rusting metal. “I wanted to tell you the truth. But I was a coward.”
Aliz doesn’t reply. Maybe she isn’t ready for my apologies yet. But if she’s only here to say goodbye, I must tell her. I think of what she asked me to say the last time we were up here, before our first kiss.
“I don’t love you,” I whisper.
It’s the most honest lie I’ve ever told.
She doesn’t say anything. The wind blows my hood down, red hair whipping my face.
“I know you said it was just the mark,” I start, taking a careful breath.
I have to say as much as I can before my mind gets in the way.
“Okay, I’m sure the mark helped. And I know you don’t feel the same.
I’m not expecting you to forgive me, but you told me that the wind would carry away all the things we’re not supposed to say.
” I bite my lip, digging my nails into my palms to keep my hands from shaking.
I feel her hand on my shoulder, gentle, and wait for her to say that it’s too late.
That the effects of the mark have worn off, and my lies washed away whatever feelings remained.
Instead, her other hand nudges my chin up, her dark eyes glistening before she presses her lips to mine.
“I don’t love you, either,” she whispers, between one kiss and the next.
I don’t move at first, unsure of what she’s doing, of what’s happening, before the kiss deepens.
“I can’t tell if you’re lying or not,” I murmur, and she smiles against me, lips moving to my cheek.
“These three weeks have been hell. I didn’t know I was capable of missing someone this much,” she says, running her fingers through my hair. “Of loving someone this much. And it’s so much clearer now, Rebecca.”
I gasp at the sound of my own name. She pulls me into an embrace just as I feel my eyes burning, taking in her words.
Her arms wrap around my back, and I squeeze her tight.
Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe I’ll wake in the morning and it’ll be over.
But right now, it’s real. She loves me—without a blood contract altering her thoughts.
“But I lied to you,” I say, my voice small.
“I know,” she whispers. “But Elia told me that you also saved her from a hunter. She told me everything. And I don’t know what I would have done in your shoes.” I wait for her to change her mind. My throat burns, and I tighten my grip on her.
We stay in this quiet embrace for minutes, not even a light drizzle pulling us apart. I sigh and look up at her. “Now what?” I ask.
“Do you want to be with me?”
I hesitate, just to tease her. “I guess I can put up with you a little while longer,” I whisper as the wind blows, rustling her moonlit hair. I draw her closer, holding her tight.
I’ll protect her.
I’ll keep her safe. Safe from Callisto, safe from Penny, safe from the Vassals.
“That’s very kind of you,” she says, before our lips meet in another kiss, a kiss that cares not for the danger and consequences of what we’re doing. A real kiss, an honest one, which promises many more to come.