Chapter 23 #2
“You thought to fool an illusionist with an illusion.” She was still so frustratingly even and sure.
Her perfect face betrayed no emotion, while I was about to combust with the force of mine.
“Don’t worry too much, I am the only illusionist in this House.
It’s a rare ability. And the magic over you is quite strong.
I didn’t see through it until I touched you. ”
“Oh. During the trial…” She’d brushed my bare skin by accident and gasped.
I should’ve known I’d been revealed. Oddly, my muscles began to loosen as I secured my dagger back in its pocket.
As with Zane or Finn, there was a bone-deep level of relief that set in to have my true identity out in the open.
But Razira is an enemy. We’ve entered the same competition that only has one winner.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk until now. You’ve grown strong, but you still fight like my protégé and clearly…” She put her teacup down and lifted her chin with pride. “You’re here for the same reason I am. Revenge.”
Her skin shimmered with the effects of an illusion peeling away.
Perfectly flawless skin gave way to the roughened texture of scars.
Servant’s marks, as the vampires called them, peppering her arms, her wrists, her neck, and the hint of her shoulders peeking out of her collar.
Less familiar patterns cut across her arms and throat.
The remnants of blows meant to kill. Wounds she’d taken for me.
The pristine white hair atop her head tarnished to gray, a hue caught somewhere between her illusion and the black it’d once been. And the soft brown of her human eyes had truly become the color of old blood rather than a vibrant red.
The real Razira had something dangerous banked in the expression she wore underneath her perfected mask. Yet she looked more like herself now than any other time during this competition. A servant of Aetherius with her hate for vampires immortalized when she’d become one.
A smile reached her mouth a heartbeat too late, arriving only after something hard and sharp flickered behind her eyes. “Won’t you let me see your face too, dove?”
I brushed the remnants of my teacup off my lap and took the bracelet off under the table. I didn’t mind sharing the truth with her now. “I thought you were dead,” I said in a hush of shame. “Had I known you were here this whole time…”
My stomach turned from the horror of that night, an event that still painted my nightmares in shades of vampire blood and the starkness of my mentor’s eyes as she faced what I thought was her end.
It was supposed to be my great revenge. Razira had taught me how to be a slayer, and I’d executed our plan just as we’d practiced.
My father had never paid me much mind, not even when I slunk around his quarters outside of his line of sight.
His vampire arrogance was as much his undoing as me slitting his throat with a hidden knife.
The pungent smell of vampire blood thickened in the air as it leaked out of Prince Lazrael’s throat. In death, it seeped in blackened rivulets, staining the carpet of his study. His mortal wound had fountained out blood in a damning flood.
It was on my clothes. Under my fingernails. It tickled my skin as it dried in uneven flecks.
Horror clamped around my chest. I stumbled away from the body and retched, folding over as my stomach revolted. My hands shook violently. It didn’t matter how long I’d waited for this moment. I had ended a life, and my body refused to pretend otherwise.
The thought settled in with sickening clarity: This was permanent.
As he bled out, Lazrael had dragged himself toward the bell pull and rung it several times. The sound still echoed in my ears when Razira slipped inside the study before anyone else, latching the door behind her.
She went to the body and tsked, then bent and picked up the bloodied knife, just to bury it in my father’s chest. I winced as she pressed on the handle with both hands, embedding it deep. “You always have to finish the job with vampires, or they survive what they shouldn’t.”
After wiping her hands clean on his clothes, she went to me. As she brushed my hair back, her gentle touch stilled the frantic, feverish pulse of my senses.
“You’ve done it. Aetherius be praised.” There was a measure of wonder in her voice. I’d really done it. I was a vampire slayer just like her. The side of humanity had won the battle over my dhampir soul.
“He…he’ll never kill another woman.” The words came out thin and unconvincing. I waited for strength to follow them. It didn’t. My throat tightened instead, my voice breaking apart under the weight of what I’d done.
I couldn’t even choke out the rest of what I wanted to say. He’ll never murder another mother. He’ll never leave another half-breed child to suffer the silence of a stilled heartbeat.
We both startled at a few knocks coming from the prince’s front door. I gasped and turned, reality crashing down on me. The body remained, the stench of blood thick in the air. There was no disguising this. No version of events where we walked away untouched.
I saw exactly what would happen in my mind’s eye: As Prince Lazrael wouldn’t answer the door, the servants would soon force their way into his quarters.
My mentor and I would be caught at the scene of the crime and dragged before my grandmother.
She’d destroy us for what we’d done…worse than any punishment she’d inflicted before—
Razira took hold of my cheeks, forcing me to look at her. “Breathe,” she reminded me and demonstrated. I tried to get my jerky breaths to match her slower, steadier ones. “Do you remember the escape plan?”
Another series of knocks, these more forceful. The voices outside were lifted in alarm.
“The c-courtyard,” I managed. The loose stone in Queen Nemea’s rose-filled graveyard. In my time here, it was the only exit I knew of that wasn’t under heavy guard.
She left the study and gestured toward the closest window. “Fly away, dove. Don’t look back.”
“W-what about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. It was all worth it, to see such evil silenced.”
“Razira, no…” I couldn’t lose her too, not after she’d made sure I survived when my mother did not.
“Do you want them to take you too? Go! Now!” she shouted. From someone who so rarely raised her voice, the volume shook me to my foundation and spurred me into motion. I opened the window and slipped into the night just as the sound of splintering wood sounded behind me.
I went against her wishes and looked back. She’d turned to meet her fate with fear in her eyes and her chin raised in pride.
The echo of our parting drew tears to my eyes.
To leave my first mentor behind for the torture and death that should’ve been my punishment…
I’d thought the only thing I could do to repent was grow strong and silence more evils.
To turn the House of the Sanguine to ashes and set her spirit free in the process.
“I have not been here the whole time,” Razira said, answering an unspoken question I’d forgotten upon getting lost in the past. “Queen Nemea tortured the truth from me, then had me partially flayed as a feast for the carrion birds. I’d have been dead if it weren’t for Damien.”
“Damien…” I echoed, trying to place the name.
“My first mate. He gave me his blood and venom before I died from my wounds.” She traced the savage one over her throat with a delicate fingertip.
“And protected me while my body turned, unaware whether I would survive the process. With my illusions, I’ve disguised my true identity until recently.
I hid amongst them and found a place for myself, which has only solidified now that Nemea’s died. ”
“I killed her.” My voice still sounded distant to my ears, even though reality was overwhelming me.
I tried to focus on what mattered. Razira knew who I was, and still, she smiled at me. We weren’t enemies in this competition after all. How surreal it was that circumstances could change and yet we remained the same within them.
“I’d hoped it was you. I gave you the best start to life I could, and in return, your actions allowed me to return as this new version of myself. I only wish we could’ve reconnected before we entered this competition.”
Tears stung the corners of my eyes. I stood, and she did the same, waiting as I rounded the table. When we hugged, she held me cradled to her like I imagined my mother would, had she lived.
“I’m sorry I left you behind,” I said, shoulders jumping with a soft sob. “If I could’ve done things differently that night, I would’ve. We should’ve gone together.”
“Shh. Let the past lie,” she murmured. “Just look at you now. Eva would be proud to see the woman you turned out to be.”
“Do you really think so?” She was, perhaps, the only person alive who could share the spirit of my mother’s favor.
“Of course, dove.” Razira gave me one last squeeze before we parted. “And now that we’ve been honest with one another, we can work toward our goals together.”
Revenge. I nodded and drew up the chair next to her, now that I’d dampened my last one with tea. “Who are you here to kill?”
“Would it surprise you if I said most of the bloodsuckers here?”
I shook my head. “Me, too.” Now that I had no reason to hide my hunger for human food, I reached for the finger foods.
“We could work together. Double the retribution in half the time. How does that sound?”
I almost brought a piece of cheese to my mouth but found I didn’t really want it. My belly was still queasy from my memory. Back when I’d felt like a monster for ending a single life. Now that I’d felled many vampires, I’d almost forgotten the overwhelming guilt of my first kill.
I set the food down and forced a smile. “Sounds great to me. Who were you thinking of starting with?”
Her eyes hardened as she sneered. “Genevieve Mercier. You?”
I considered the kill list I had memorized in my mind. It would satisfy Carlyle most if I started crossing names off the top. I stated the temple’s top-priority kill. “Mathias.”
“Oh, but he is running the whole competition. His death would be the only one capable of throwing everything into chaos immediately,” she mused, quirking her pale lips. “Is there not anyone else you could start with?”
With relief, I changed my mind in an instant to the vampiress I really wanted to see die first. “Lorelei, then.”
“Perfect. Let’s take out our marks as quickly and discreetly as possible.” She beamed, flashing her fangs. After we discussed a few details, she asked, “With that out of the way…how’ve you been?”
We both relaxed as the conversation turned into easier waters.
Though we had many years to catch up on, we began to chip away at it.
I told her of my time at the temple, while she shared what it’d been like to hide her identity for so long.
She’d survived for over a decade with a charade that resembled what I’d been doing as Ilyana.
And she’d never been caught, something I respected.
“Say, do you still have Eva’s locket?” she asked.
“I do. I haven’t changed the images inside of it. Did you want to see it?” The precious silver necklace had been around my neck when I’d fled from the mansion. Though I didn’t wear it anymore, I always kept it close.
Her smile pinched with old grief. “If it wouldn’t be a bother, I’d love to see her again.”
Since it was back in my quarters, we both applied our illusions and set off that way together. I startled Finn for the second time this evening when he answered the door and recoiled when he saw Razira next to me.
“I’m just showing her something,” I explained to Zane, who stood from the couch with a question on his lips. I signed the words at the same time.
Do you want us to give you two a moment? Finn suggested.
“Good idea.” I’d explain what’d happened to them later. For now, the locket was a piece of history between Razira, me, and my mother’s memory.
My mates left, and I went searching. “Make yourself comfortable. I just have to find where I put it…” I knew it was around here somewhere, but at some point, Finn had decided to help me and arranged all my things.
Which meant, of course, I’d misplaced several of them from my usual system of organization.
The back of my neck heated as I rummaged, embarrassed that I didn’t know exactly where it was.
I’d wanted the locket hidden in a place where curious servants wouldn’t find it.
I eventually found it at the bottom of a shelf, hidden under a fold of a burgundy shift.
I lifted the old heart-shaped pendant and opened it on my palm.
Two portraits sat within the keepsake, painted in tiny, exquisite detail.
On one side, my mother as I remembered her, the rosy-lipped brunette who’d caught the eye of a vampire prince.
And beside her, the other portrait showed Razira as she’d once been.
My heart twisted in grief for both women hidden in this locket.
Razira waited next to my wardrobe with her hands folded patiently over her middle.
Years of blending into vampire society had left her with effortless poise.
She took the locket eagerly. Her fingers pressed to her mouth as she studied the images within.
Joy and sorrow flickered across her face in equal measure.
Her thumb coasted over one of the portraits as a few tears dripped down her cheeks. For a while, I was the one who held her as she wept over the past.