Chapter 19
Sidney
Ash waited where I’d left him, patient as a statue.
I climbed onto his back, and he took off with that same ground-eating lope.
The world raced by, fast enough to steal my breath yet not so fast that it vanished into a blur.
Trees flicked past in quick strokes of green and brown as we broke from the forest, skimmed across open farmland, and slipped into the darker hush of the next woods.
Adelaide’s lair materialized through the waning afternoon light, her mushroom-stem house rising from the pervasive undergrowth. Its cap cast shadows that shifted and grasped for Ash and me with spectral fingers.
I dismounted, instructing Ash to wait. He blinked once before melting back into the tree line.
The moment I passed through the gate, the garden closed around me.
Vines slithered without wind, spreading out across the ground and rearranging to open a path that hadn’t existed moments prior.
Paving stones surfaced through the soil.
But the cold, damp leaves pressed against my exposed skin again, and trumpet flowers pivoted my way as I stepped forward.
Something rustled in the undergrowth. I caught a glimpse of a bloated figure before it disappeared beneath waxflowers dripping blood-red nectar.
“Right on time!” Adelaide’s voice sang out from within the greenery. I startled, sending up a wake of buzzing flies from the undergrowth. “It’s so refreshing when clients honor their commitments.”
I followed the sound of her voice, pushing aside willow fronds. A wave of warmth flooded over me as I entered her sanctuary beneath the massive tree.
Adelaide reclined on her living-wood throne. Her green eyes fixed on me, and her smile was all teeth. “You look terrible. Like a corpse that can’t decide whether it wants to rot or rise.”
She gestured, and the ground trembled. Up from the earth rose her wooden table and a second bench.
“Charming,” I muttered, dropping onto the bench. I didn’t bother trying to dust off the dirt clinging to it.
Cris wobbled forward, carrying a tea service too delicate for oversized paws. Dread coiled in my stomach as Adelaide poured steaming liquid with practiced grace. “Wool of bat and tongue of dog today. Died of natural causes, of course.”
I lifted the cup she offered me mechanically. The first sip scraped a harsh, immediate bitterness across my tongue. As I pulled the porcelain away from my lips, face screwed up in displeasure, the aftertaste sweetened into warm cinnamon.
“Delicious, right?” Adelaide asked, watching my reaction. Her eyes were creased with amusement.
Before I could respond, a hiss drew my attention.
The raccoon puppet housing Ilyana sat hunched near her grave.
One glass eye glowed red with trapped consciousness and rage, while the other remained dim and lifeless.
She launched herself at me, and I jumped back, pulse skittering.
Yet invisible restraints jerked her back mid leap.
Her tiny paws scrabbled uselessly, claws raking the air in my direction.
Adelaide snapped her fingers at the raccoon, the noise sharp as a whip. Ilyana flinched. “You! Go pull nightshade roots from the eastern bed. And if you try to chew them again to escape your suffering, I’ll make you spend your last week as a millipede in a glass jar in the sun.”
A curve of satisfaction touched my lips, acknowledging the perfect cruelty of the threat.
Ilyana made a sound—half growl, half sob—before shuffling off on her hind legs.
“Tick tock.” Adelaide tilted her head, bird-like and predatory. “Two weeks of your disguise remain. Soon, the corpse you brought me will be rotten, and her soul sent to Terrigana’s embrace.” She gestured toward the disturbed earth near the willow’s base.
“I will be done by then,” I replied, forcing my voice to a level calm. I had to have a crown on my head in two weeks, preferably less. But the trials were meant to drag on for longer. Time was something immortals had in excess, but I did not.
Adelaide hummed and sipped from her cup with a lady’s poise. “So, spill, dear. I’m ready to hear the new details of your revenge quest.”
I took a cautious drink of my tea, nearly gagging at the initial bitterness. This time, I kept my recounting to the bare minimum. The witch drank in every detail anyway, delighted by the death I’d left in my wake.
“And you’ve slept with a vampire. One of your so-called enemies.” She faked a swoon back into her wooden throne. “I want all the delicious, sordid details of your little dance with disaster. Was he utterly marvelous or merely tragically beautiful?”
I kept my distaste at her dramatics behind a clinical mask. “What I do with my betrothed behind closed doors shall remain private,” I replied.
Adelaide waved a languid hand, dismissing the refusal. She set down her cup with a decisive clink. “Very well. Let us return to business, then. Strip down. I need access to your skin for the casting to determine the lingering effects of the first spell.”
I hesitated, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I was in this witch’s domain. She could turn me into one of her stuffed servants or send my soul screaming to Terrigana. Could—
Adelaide rolled her eyes. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be decorating my garden as fertilizer. Now strip, or I’ll have Cris do it for you.”
The stuffed rabbit lifted its head. Its glass eyes gleamed with malevolent glee.
By Aetherius’s light. I removed my armor with fumbling fingers, piling leather and weapons beside the bench. The bracelet of fangs came last, and relief washed over me as my true form reasserted itself.
Adelaide circled me, muttering in a foreign tongue that vibrated through me. She traced patterns across my shoulders, down my spine, and along my ribs. Cold magic pressed against my skin.
“Your aura is different. Changed.” She paused, her fingertips skimming the bite marks on my throat, even though they were no longer visible. “Sweeter. More…” She lifted an eyebrow. “You haven’t just been intimate with the enemy. Have you drunk blood too, Sidney Redgrove?”
My gaze dropped, breath catching as goosebumps flared over my skin. I pressed my lips together, the words sticking like thorns before I forced them out. “Survival required adaptation.”
“Survival,” she echoed, her smile widening. “Is that what you’re calling it? How delightfully pragmatic.”
Adelaide wandered off before I could reply and returned with her earthenware bowl and ivory knife.
“The glamor refresh will hurt more this time. The spell is fighting fundamental changes in your nature. Since you’ve drunk blood recently, you’ve fed the vampire within you, strengthening it.
” Her green gaze locked on to mine. “The magic has to work harder to overcome the resistance, which means I need to force your body to cooperate.” Tilting her head, she examined me like a specimen under glass.
She set the bowl down and reached into a worn leather pouch at her waist. From it, she pinched and added dried emerald leaves and red berries into the bowl, then mixed them with a thick, clear liquid from a stoppered vial.
Then, with a sudden, sharp motion, she turned the ivory knife on herself, cutting a line in her palm. She squeezed the wound, allowing three fat crimson drops of her blood to fall into the mixture. When she stirred it all together, the resulting blend became a shockingly bright green mash.
She painted symbols across my skin with the paste.
More goosebumps puckered my flesh where the frigid goop made contact, raising every hair on my arms. Within seconds, the painted lines began to burn, a slow acid crawl that sank deeper than skin.
Where her fingers traced, my flesh crawled, trying to escape her touch, recoiling from Terrigana’s power like living things fleeing a raging fire.
She slipped the bracelet back onto my wrist, the woven grass and ivory fangs settling against my pulse point.
Then the chanting began, ancient words scraping against my ears.
The bracelet, responding to the sound, flared red.
The shadows under the willow deepened, becoming viscous and stretching toward us with grasping, spectral hands.
The pain hit—not a dull ache, but an explosion in my veins.
I bit down on a scream, the copper tang of my own blood filling my mouth as my elongated fangs pierced through my lower lip.
Adelaide’s chanting grew louder, more insistent, and the shadowy hands closed around my limbs.
They tugged like death’s embrace, pulling my skin in every direction at once.
The agony peaked; my vision went white, then black, consciousness flickering like a dying candle.
Then, mercifully, it receded all at once.
I sagged forward, caught by Adelaide’s firm grip. My body was slick with cold sweat, and the green paste still burned against my skin.
“There,” Adelaide said, her voice rough as she wiped her green-stained hands on her dress. “The dead girl walks again, through my blood and your pain. Remember, seven days is all you get before we do this again!”
I took a shaky breath. My nerve endings screamed with the echoes of agony and my head throbbed. “Can I have something to clean this gunk off? It’s still burning.”
Adelaide pursed her lips. “If you must defile my work with mundane concerns…” She stepped back and retrieved a cask of dark, swirling liquid that smelled faintly of salt, smoke, and herbs. “Use this. Don’t leave the remnants of the glamour spell for the crows to pick over.”
I moved quickly, dipping the cloth and scrubbing the now flaking, bitter-smelling green paste from my torso and shoulders. The fluid stung, but the skin underneath the goop was left numb and unmarred.
Once clean, I pulled my leathers back on and donned my cloak. “Thank you.” I inclined my head toward the witch respectfully before I made a hasty retreat.
I scrambled through Adelaide’s damp, chaotic garden, fists clenched as I barreled through the icy greenery. Ash waited beyond the garden’s boundary. I launched myself onto his back, burying my fingers in his soft feathers as I urged him into a breakneck, ground-eating run.
One more week. The timeline hammered through my skull with each of Ash’s strides.
The massive bulk of the mansion loomed ahead, the sky bleeding deep orange and purple behind it as the sun sank toward the horizon, casting long shadows. Every instinct screamed at me to hurry, to reach it before full dark, before the household woke and someone noticed my absence.
Ash slowed the moment we touched the estate’s boundary, stopping in the long shadow of a tree. I slid from his back. Turning to meet his gaze, I said, “Thank you.”
He trilled and then melted back into the woods, heading, I hoped, to wherever Finn had arranged for him to shelter.
I crouched low, crossing the final few feet of the property line.
I ran my hand over the wall, seeking the subtle markers.
Finding them, I glided my fingers over the seam and pulled.
The loose stones came away easily under my hands.
I squeezed through the narrow gap, replacing each cold, damp stone with meticulous care, restoring the wall to nothing but ivy and weathered stone.
With my hood drawn low, I made my way through the garden and back to my quarters.
Back to the heat of the fire, the sound of Zane’s voice, and the steady comfort of Finn nearby.
Zane was my air. I couldn't survive without him and didn’t want to try, even with Carlyle’s judgment looming over my shoulder.
Finn was my ground, the anchor that steadied me when the world tilted too far.
The lies we lived beyond these walls didn’t matter here; what mattered was getting back to my soon-to-be devotees.
Anticipation and dread tangled in my chest, their edges blurring until they mixed into one bittersweet emotion.
The need to see Zane pressed down like I was drowning until only he could let me breathe again.
Yet Finn pulled at me differently: his crooked grin, the way he weaponized absurdity until laughter spilled out despite everything.
I longed to feel their arms around me. Between them, air and laughter, I found the fragile illusion of safety, even with death waiting beyond the door.
“Vampires wear our faces, speak our words, lie in our beds, but they are parasites. Beautiful, seductive parasites… The Sidney I raised would never hesitate. She would never let a monster’s pretty words cloud her judgment.”
What if Carlyle was right?
What if I’d already slipped too deep into the dark to notice?
I stepped inside to find Finn missing and Zane still asleep, his face softened by dreams. My bones ached with weariness, every step heavier than the last. The sight of Zane, sprawled and breathing deep, alive, almost undid me.
For a moment, I just stood there, watching the rise and fall of his chest and the curve of his mouth.
Carlyle was right about one thing—I had a mission. I would cure Zane and Finn just as I’d planned. I would save them from the monsters they’d been forced to become.
A soft creak of hinges made me turn around.
Finn slipped through the door, his face tight with urgency, and shoved the door tight behind him.
His hands moved in rapid signs. I hid in the corridor outside Mathias’s study, watching through the crack in the door while he and Lord Valerius talked.
He paused, fingers hesitating before continuing.
Mathias said the next trial, the contestants will go to the House of Whispers to cat-if-attire.
Finn scratched his head. Mathias can speak a bit fast, and the angle kept shifting, so I am not sure about that last word.
Cat-if-attire? I repeated in sign language. I rubbed at my eyes, my sleepless day making them gritty and dry.
He shrugged, but the worry in his expression spoke volumes.
“The House of Whispers,” Zane said behind me, voice rough with sleep and edged with something darker. “That alone is a death sentence.”
I turned to find Zane sitting up. His eyes flashed amber in the dim light as he looked between Finn and me. “Whatever word you missed,” he said, his gaze locking on to mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten. “It doesn’t matter. Few come back from the House of Whispers.”