Chapter 18 #2
“Ah.” The syllable was short, clipped, as he studied the lines of my face. “You seem different, Sidney. Lighter, somehow. Almost…” He paused, something flickering across his expression. “Happy.”
I broke eye contact first, turning to the workbench to cork the serum vial. My pulse hammered against my skin as I scrawled a label with shaking fingers. The remaining liquid within quaked as I slotted the vial into the rack with the other failures.
He circled my work bench, forcing me to face him again.
“Something has changed for you.” The statement was flat, leaving no room for retreat.
“I trained you. I carved that mask myself, and I can see right through it. I see it in the tension you’ve lost and the way you hold yourself.
” He gestured dismissively at my face. “You haven’t smiled since you were last with Zane.
And yet, here you are, shouting the truth without a word. ”
His words cut with sharp precision. My gut twisted. This wasn't our familiar rhythm anymore. Ice had crept between us while I wasn’t watching.
The silence stretched between us for too long.
My mouth opened and closed as I struggled to form words.
Admitting what I’d just shared with Zane felt like betrayal, but denial meant I would lie to my mentor, and the weight of fatigue on my shoulders worsened as I considered which path was the lesser evil.
“You’ve seen him.” Carlyle’s voice dropped into a dangerous register as he made the decision for me. “Haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Picking up an empty glass vial, his expression hardened. “I see.”
“He is still himself, despite the change.”
“You can’t trust him.” Carlyle’s tone rose in outrage as he spoke. “He’s a monster now, like all the rest of them!”
The tube shattered in his grip, and glass skittered across the floor. Blood welled along his palm. The scent of copper threaded through my nostrils. My fangs throbbed with need.
I hissed under my breath and crossed the room, snatching a towel from the washstand. “Hold still.” I picked the remaining shards from his skin before wrapping his hand firmly and sweeping the glittering fragments into the trash.
He didn’t flinch, only glared down his nose at me. “You think that because he loved you as a human, he can love you as a vampire? That there’s anything left of the man you knew?”
My fingers curled into fists. Where was this doubt before, when he was sending me on a mission into the House of the Sanguine? “He’s still in there. And I’ll save him with the cure.”
Carlyle stepped back, something pitying twisting his features. “Will you? Or are you just clinging to a memory? Look at you, already defending him. He’s a beast wearing your betrothed’s face and manipulating your emotions.”
“He’s not—” Heat flooded my cheeks, creeping down my neck. My hands curled tighter, nails biting crescents into my palms. “You didn’t see him. You don’t know—”
“They all manipulate, kid. It’s what they do.
They find your weakness, dress it up as desire, and make you believe they’re anything but predators.
” He lowered his voice to his usual gentle tone.
Yet his words struck me like hammer blows.
“Remember who you are. Remember why you’re here.
Your testimony was a baptism of blood and violence. ”
A sick taste rose in the back of my throat. My fists loosened, fingers trembling.
“Your actions can prevent another vampire from tearing out an innocent woman’s throat,” he continued without mercy. “Like your father did to your mother. Did he show mercy while she bled out right in front of you? No. The only good vampire is a dead one.”
The past crept in unannounced, a darkness I had neither summoned nor desired.
Hot blood slicked between my small fingers as I tried to hold the wound in my mother’s throat closed. I pleaded for her skin to knit back together, desperate for it to heal with the same speed mine did. It didn’t listen.
She made a sound then, a broken gurgle as crimson surged between my palms. Too much. Her lifeblood stained the carpet.
“Mama, please. Mama!”
She hadn’t deserved this. She hadn’t done anything wrong! Tears blurred my vision, wetting her face like rain.
Her gaze had gone distant, already fixed on something beyond me. A broken smile graced her lips. Her chest lifted once more, a thin breath slipping past her lips, and nothing followed.
Then came the silence—the terrible silence of a heart that would never beat again, of lungs that would never draw breath.
Father’s grip closed around my arm, wrenching me upright. My mother’s blood smeared across his fingers as he dragged me backward.
“Enough,” he snarled. “Quit your pathetic bleating, dirty-blooded whelp.”
I couldn’t. The sobs kept coming, choking and desperate, as he hauled me toward the door. Though I reached for her, I couldn't do anything but watch her still body grow smaller as he dragged me away, my screams echoing uselessly down the hall.
Panic seized my throat, and I swallowed only dry air. The frantic drum of my pulse hammered against my eardrums. My father had lost control that day. Justice had come for him much too late, as there was no punishment for a prince who’d killed a lowly servant in a fit of passion.
I drove my nails further into my palms, wrenching myself back from the violent tremor that seized my core. “Zane is nothing like him,” I said, but the fight had left me.
“Vampires wear our faces, speak our words, and sometimes lie in our beds, but they are parasites, Sidney. Beautiful, seductive parasites.” He reached as if to touch my shoulder, then let his hand fall.
“Don’t forget, I pulled you from the gutter when you had nothing.
I gave you purpose and trained you. And this is how you repay that faith?
” Disappointment layered over the pity in his tone.
“I haven’t forgotten what they are,” I managed, throat tight.
He turned away. “The Sidney I raised would never hesitate. She would never let a monster’s pretty words cloud her judgment. She certainly wouldn’t defend them.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Perhaps I was wrong about you. Perhaps you were always going to choose your vampire side over good.”
Something splintered in my chest. “No. Carlyle, I—” I pressed my shaking hands flat against the table to steady them. “Please. I’m not choosing them. I’m not—”
“Then prove it.” He turned back, his eyes dark and hardened with anger. “Complete the mission without letting sentiment interfere. You’ll claim that throne, regardless of who stands in your way.”
I met his glare, forcing a steady tone. “I’ll complete the mission.”
He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring slightly. “What else do you need to tell me?”
I stared at the bloodied towel wrapped around his hand, fighting the urge to drag my tongue across my lips. “Nothing.” It came out too quickly, too high. I swallowed and tried again. “All is well.”
He searched my face, and I forced myself to hold his gaze, refusing to look away like the guilty creature I was. I wouldn’t let him know how the thirst still burned my throat.
With a shake of his head, he sighed.
“Your dhampir blood has always been a liability, Sidney.” His tone remained clinical, as if he were diagnosing a disease.
“We’ve worked for years to help you suppress it, to strengthen your human side.
But now you’re surrounded by vampires constantly, breathing their air, living their lifestyle.
Of course the corruption would resurface. ”
I crossed my arms against my chest. “I haven’t been corrupted. I will serve Lord Aetherius until my dying breath.”
“That remains to be seen. Remember whose blood stains your nightmares. There is no gray area. There is the light of Aetherius, and there is the dark. Do not confuse the two because you’ve enjoyed visiting that den of sin.”
Carlyle settled a hand on my shoulder, the gesture gentle in shape but heavy as a benediction. “The reckoning comes for all who stray from the True Path.”
“The reckoning comes…” I echoed, the words clinging to my tongue like ash.
“And Sidney? Do not disappoint me again.” He turned on his heel, and the door closed behind him.
I sank onto my cot, head in my hands. After catching my ragged breath, I rose again and crossed to my desk.
My fingers found the vial of experimental serum, closing around the cool glass.
This was supposed to be the answer, the cure that would save Zane.
But what if it never worked? What if the corruption ran too deep, too complete to ever reverse?
What if I wanted Zane anyway?
The metallic taste of shame coated my tongue.
There is no choice but the light.
I tightened every muscle, gripping the core mission like a lifeline. Focus and observe. Analyze and adapt. The list became my prayer. I must complete the mission. Destroy the vampires from within. Cure Zane and Finn.
But first, I needed Adelaide to refresh the glamor. I forced my exhausted body to cooperate as I stood and gathered supplies, including more ration bars and rupture. Everything went into my satchel before I headed for the door.
It was time to face the witch.