Chapter 8
Sidney
“This is unacceptable!” I thundered in Ilyana’s arrogant airs. “These are my accommodations?”
Rooms were assigned, and a vampiric attendant had shown me to my new quarters. It was a sparse, two-room setup situated toward the back of the guest hall.
He took me in with a smile of vacant politeness. Dressed smartly in the red and gold livery of a high-level servant, he must’ve seen countless tantrums from noble vampires with bluer blood than the likes of Ilyana Krudelbach.
“Yes, ma’am. As you are a Beloved without a Devotion or servants, this is the space you were allotted,” he said with thinly veiled condescension. “If you take any mates during the trials, you’ll be given larger quarters. It was the regent’s decision.”
We’d split off from the other candidates, who were spread amongst more spacious suites on the floors below us. Felicity, with her oddly friendly overtures, was probably somewhere on the second floor, while I was in an armpit on the third.
“I will be taking this matter up with the regent,” I huffed. In actuality, I would do no such thing. This was the best outcome for my ruse. More privacy suited me fine. It wasn’t like I was about to invite any bloodsuckers into my bed.
He bowed and backed away. “Very well, ma’am.”
I took my bags and slammed the door shut behind me. I had a period of time to settle in, and I intended to spend it recentering myself for the mission ahead.
I swept into the front room of my quarters, scanning the plush furniture and shadowed corners.
Overstuffed chairs loomed like lazy sentries around the cold fireplace, their fabric smelling faintly of rose oil and old smoke.
I searched beneath the cushions, slipped behind the drapes, and traced along the mantle’s edge.
There was no nook deep enough to swallow contraband.
My quarters were not to be confused with a personal space. House servants would be in and out whether I liked it or not. Fellow contestants might come snooping as well. If one of them unearthed a flask of rupture—or worse, one of my stakes—my ruse would be revealed.
The first room provided no ideal hiding places. Cabinets stood along one wall. Since vampires had no need to eat, an assortment of alcohols and other, suspiciously maroon beverages filled them. Glass rattled within as I shut the cabinet doors with a scowl.
The second room had the basics but nothing more, the furniture and sheets all in shades of neutral browns. The mansion had many such rooms, as not every member of the coven deserved gilt-edged wallpapers and the finest of down comforters.
It soothed something in me, to be presented with a serviceable room. My new temple for you, Lord Aetherius.
I put away some of my belongings in the attached powder room before making use of the wooden wardrobe to hang my modified gowns. Then, my hands stalled over the remaining bundle: my old leather armor.
For a heartbeat, I contemplated shoving it into the darkest corner of the cabinet, but the impulse died as quickly as it had flared.
I nudged the gowns aside, making room for my scarred leather next to Ilyana’s pristine armor. There was no reason to bury the truth. We hadn't come for balls or pleasantries; we were here for these deadly trials, and I would protect myself.
As I moved around the area, I thought of Razira. There was a time we’d been gray-clad house servants, inoffensive shadows constantly cleaning up after the endless parade of my grandmother’s guests. I remembered one such day wistfully.
Razira and I were assigned to clean up after a Born noblewoman. The first thing I did was rifle through her clothing. The Born enjoyed such finery, which I rarely got to touch.
I held up a blouse to my chest, posing in the mirror with the too-large garment. It’d never fit on my stick-thin frame. I imagined wearing the plush fabric anyway. The dye alone would’ve cost the vampiress who owned it a fortune; its forest-green color put my faded dress to shame.
Razira stopped scrubbing the tiled floor to take the blouse and place it back where it belonged. “That’s not your color, dove,” she chastised gently.
She would call me dove to remind me our servant garb made us practically invisible. Gray suited us. No one expected a dove to fight back.
“Oh, but it’s so pretty,” I said.
Razira shut the guest’s wardrobe firmly. She handed me my discarded feather duster, tilting her head with a meaningfully raised brow.
I took it with a heavy sigh. “She left behind two vials of poison, one dagger, and a packet of some kind of powder.” Some of my grandmother’s less creative guests hid their contraband on the mantles just above eye level.
Out of sight, out of mind—like the servants didn’t have to climb onto a stool and dust up there routinely.
“So, she’s sloppy. She’ll be dead before sunrise,” my mentor predicted. And, by Aetherius’s light, she was right.
I shuddered to remember Razira as she was. She often wore a head scarf to hold back her black locks. In springtime, she’d weave flowers into tiny braids that hung around her ears, pops of color to add some life and hope to this place.
She’d been in her twenties when my mother was murdered, but she had the face of a woman who’d seen enough horrors to stain even the most resilient soul. Shadows had haunted her brown eyes and darkened the gaunt hollows around her cheeks.
I made my way to the foot of the bed, where a simple wooden chest rested.
I lifted the lid, fingertips skimming the edges of the wooden lining as my old mentor had taught me.
Everything she’d done was in service to the new path she’d shown me: how to murder the creatures that subjugated us without getting caught.
We emptied the chest of the underclothes and other small items the vampire guest had stashed inside. Razira dropped her voice as she bent, feeling around the bare inside of the furniture. “Promise me you won’t tell any of them what I’m about to show you.”
“I promise,” I’d said immediately.
“Most chests on this level have a false bottom. Servant’s stashes, we call them. You can hide any tool you need in them.” She turned her head, eyes narrowing as they locked on to mine, a silent message flickering in their depths. “The duke has a chest like this in his room, too.”
The warmth of a single tear rolled off my nose and plopped onto the wooden planks as it lifted with a soft click. I pulled it open, revealing the false bottom of the chest. Various bottles of cleaning supplies lined the secret space.
“I thought you died,” I mumbled to myself. When Razira had claimed the duke’s death as her own doing, I’d assumed that would be the end of her story. So, how…
I shook my head sharply. It doesn’t matter how we got here. Only that we’re enemies in this competition.
I split up the items of my slayer’s kit rather than hiding it all in one incriminating pile. I gnawed on a ration bar as I stacked up the rest in the servant’s stash. If discovered, hopefully the bars would end up in the mouth of one of the overworked human servants.
I dumped out a container of cleaning chemicals and replaced its insides with consecrated water. Then, I went to the cabinet and selected a couple of pretty bottles filled with blood wine. I replaced the wine with rupture and put the bottles back, hiding the poison in plain sight.
Next to the vanity, I rearranged the tiny medicine cabinet to make room for my healing serum and added my clean syringes.
That only left my knives and stakes. No one would bat an eye at a contestant having blades, but my pair of blessed stakes were troublesome. I rolled them under my wardrobe for now. The shaded nook was full of dust bunnies. No one thought to clean under there with any regularity.
It took me about an hour to hide everything. When there was a knock on my door shortly after I finally sat down, I almost pretended no one was in. I went to the powder room and startled at my reflection.
Sneering at Ilyana’s likeness, I wiped away the mess of tears and fixed my makeup to make myself presentable. I went to the door and opened it to reveal a cheerful Felicity. Fingers tightening on the knob, I resisted the impulse to slam the door closed again.
“Illy!” she exclaimed. “It’s all right if I call you that, right?
You never did introduce yourself, but your reputation already precedes you.
” She breezed on as if she hadn’t even asked a question.
“The girls are having a little gathering to get to know one another. Or catch up. You know how older vampiresses are. They don’t see each other for centuries, but they’re thick as thieves the moment they’re back together. ”
There was so much to unpack in what she’d just said. I opened my mouth; closed it, second-guessing whether I should question referring to ancient vampiresses as girls; and settled on saying, “Ilya.”
She cocked her head. “Hmm?”
“That’s what my friends call me,” I clarified stiffly.
She smiled wide enough to show the edges of her fangs. “Ilya, then.”
“Also, I can’t join you and the girls.” An answering smile twitched at my lips at the irony of the word. I had an urgent message to send before sunrise.
And the idea of socializing with bloodsuckers makes my skin crawl, I refrained from adding.
The brightness of her expression faded. “Oh. That’s quite the shame.
I’ll send your regards, of course. Do try to make time to talk to them at the opening ball.
You know what they’re saying about the first trial,” she said.
I nodded as if I did. “Half of us will soon be gone. You should at least memorize the idiotic things they have to say before they die.”
“Hard to be sympathetic for their deaths if I remember them as stupid,” I said dryly.
“Exactly. I knew you’d get it. Well, I must go weigh myself down with jewels and elevate my hair to fit in with the crowd. Bye-bye, Ilya.”
“Goodbye.” I stepped back to close the door.