Chapter 7
SERA
We stand in the clearing, surrounded by mud and corpses, and valleys of blood. The girl lays in a crumpled heap at Nate’s feet and the other hunters with their missing limbs, organs, and skulls are scattered around us.
I feel sick.
When the carriage slowed down, when the hunters were in position waiting for us, Nate was refastening his breeches and I was pinning my hair back in place without any of Mrs Hawley’s skill. It is a wonder we noticed the carriage slowing at all when we had been the ones to make it rock.
But this…
This is what was waiting for us on the other side of such a moment. I have given myself to Nate without pause and then watched as he decimated a dozen humans.
And what sort of monster does that make me?
I wrap my arms around my coat, pulling it tighter. The air is cool after the rain — the smell of petrichor and blood mixing freely around us. All of it makes me shiver.
I try not to look at the girl.
I know Nate could not spare her after all she had seen, but watching him now, licking his fangs, his clothes dripping in crimson, my own blood turns to ice.
Those teeth were ripping at my veins only minutes ago and now they are itching to sink into the valleys of blood at our feet.
What have I done?
The need to be with Nate so intimately was all-consuming in the carriage. It has happened whenever we are alone together for too long — the sensation always heightened when he feeds until I am driven near mad with the desperation to be claimed by him in every way.
But how could I do such a thing?
I have given myself to a monster.
Has it truly taken me to witness a massacre for me to be reminded of what he is capable of?
I have always known what he is. I watched him destroy the girl in Mayfair; I have seen him move with a strength and speed that matches no one else, even his own family thanks to me; and I have felt his power when I have willingly surrendered to his jaws.
But somehow, what he did tonight feels different to everything that has come before.
Nate was brutal. Vicious. Hell-bent on destruction. And being inside his head whilst all that was happening was terrifying. Not least because, as the impulse to kill burned through him, I could not tell whether that fury was his alone, or mine too.
If we were not bonded, would I have saved him? There was a moment when I felt so disgusted by him and by myself that I thought would let the hunters end his life and take mine with it.
But whilst I stood paralysed at the thought of welcoming death when there was still fight in my belly, my magic took over. It would not let me be harmed, nor Nate, when there were ways to prevent it.
Just as Valeria predicted.
“We need to go.” Nate nods to the open carriage door, gesturing me inside. “We have to reach Bath before dawn.”
“You are not a slave to the darkness any longer. Or had you forgotten?” There’s a bitterness in my voice. I gave him every bit of the power he has shown tonight. And I may not have killed the hunters, but it is my blood that let Nate do it, that revived him and gave him the strength to decimate them all and leave their corpses oozing in the mud.
Nate retracts his fangs. “There will be too many questions if we arrive in the light.”
I fold my arms over my chest, trying to shut out the chill that has burrowed its way into my bones. “We are to journey on without a driver?”
“We cannot abandon the carriage. And I am capable of commanding horses. I was not always a lord whose every whim was catered to.”
I shut out the pull of interest, the intrigue in the pit of my stomach that wants to ask about Nate’s life before. How can it matter now, after what he has done?
“Lords do not drive their own carriages,” I say, stepping forward. “If anyone sees you?—”
“We have no choice.” Nate moves past me, swiping his wet hair out of his eyes, and climbs up into the driver’s seat. He frowns as I brush a blood smatter from my mud-lined skirts and reach up to join him. “There may be more of them in the woods,” he grumbles. “It would only take a rogue arrow to end everything for both of us. You would be safer in the carriage.”
“What good can I do back there? I would have thought you would want a witch with such power at your side.”
Nate stares at me, his eyes glimmering black in the moonlight. It is difficult to see the blood in the dark, but I know it is there. He plunged his fist into a hunter’s ribcage, disembowelled another, ripped off the archer’s scalp. Hands that were touching me with tenderness and passion mere moments before will now be painted with the evidence of his brutality. Just as I was when I drove the stake into Ambrose’s heart.
I sink down into the seat next to him, my hip nudging into his as the horses jerk into motion.
Nate keeps his eyes fixed on the road ahead. He does not acknowledge the weight that now hangs between us, but I know he feels it.
“You have never called yourself a witch before.”
“There is no use denying it. If I am to harness my powers, I need to accept them for what they are,” I say it quietly. I loathe him and myself for what has happened tonight, but the thought of sitting inside the carriage without him is almost unbearable. Despite everything, I need to be closer.
“You are learning to control your magic. You are becoming more powerful.”
I do not explain how involuntary my magic is, nor that I hesitated to harness it when he needed saving. I swallow down the guilt, too, that perhaps the girl with the familiarity in her eyes should have been saved. That perhaps there was a way for her to leave the clearing alive.
“The test will be if you can control your powers when someone’s life is not in danger,” Nate continues.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Claiming to be the good witch now, are we?” There’s a trace of a bitter smile in Nate’s voice, though I cannot see it in the darkness, and certainly do not return it. “Not every threat will launch at us from the shadows, Sera.”
“I hope not. I am not sure I could cope with such prolonged excitement for the rest of our lives.”
Nate scoffs out a half-laugh and I hate that my heart beats a little faster, knowing that I caused it.
“How did they know our movements?” I ask, my tone flat. “And why only us? They did not stop the others. Was it all Aulus’s doing?”
“There will be someone else behind it. Aulus has served the Court for years, attending to whichever noble house required his services, and he has never been smart enough to plot something like this, even if he wanted to. He was a pawn in another’s game.”
I stare at the sky just visible beyond the trees. It is the deepest blue of midnight and freckled with the smallest smattering of stars — the kind of summer darkness that is ringed with the traces of daylight.
It was the last sky any of those hunters saw.
“Why didn’t you ask the girl for answers? We might have learned who sent her if she believed her life would be spared.”
“She would not tell me, no matter how much torture or pain she was forced to endure. That is what they are trained for. Their secrets die with them.” Nate rolls his shoulders, moving the reins to one hand. “You may think I was cruel tonight, but I did her the one small kindness of killing her quickly.”
“Valeria would not have given her such mercy,” I say.
“No. Nor my sister.”
“You don’t think…” I fade off. “Was this because of me? Is that why we were attacked?”
“If they wanted you dead, Aulus would not have hesitated to slit your throat. They came for me.”
“But who would want you dead?”
Another scoff. “The list is long enough, trust me. And now I can add my own kin to it.”
“You think one of your family was behind this?”
“Charlotte will be out to avenge Ambrose’s death, but if I were to die at her hand?—”
“She would have to face the Court for such a crime.”
“Yes. It is plausible she enlisted the hunters to do the job for her.” Nate pauses. “But she enjoys games. Suffering. You have seen it. An assassination isn’t her style. And if it were, you would be her target. Charlotte knows losing you would hurt me far more than death.”
I chew my lip, dampening the flicker of tenderness that radiates from Nate before it can spark in my chest. “I would be wise to not find myself alone with your cousin when we reach Bath, then.”
“You should never find yourself alone with any vampire but me,” Nate grumbles back. “Whether or not they are hell-bent on revenge. In case you haven’t learned by now, vampires are selfish creatures and they can’t be trusted.”
We ride on in silence for a few moments, listening to the dulled rhythm of the horses’ hooves as they hit the sodden dirt.
I concentrate on shutting out the connection with Nate. I don’t want to know how he feels in the aftermath of what he’s done. I don’t want to feel the perverse pleasure he took in ripping heads from shoulders; nor suffocate in the anger that still simmers in his veins.
And I don’t want him to sense how I feel, either — the disgust and horror that he could annihilate an entire army of hunters with just a sip of my blood. But pride, too. Passion. A deep, pulsing desire to do what we did in the carriage again and again.
I adjust my skirts, shuffling in my seat and staring at the horizon. “The sun will be up soon. Are we far from Bath?”
Nate’s jaw tics. “Yes. Too far. We were slowed down by the weather and now…” He squints at the sky as a glow of pink sweeps away the gloom. “We will have to stop.”
“Stop?”
We are out of the forest, but if we pull the carriage up once more and wait for the sun to set, then we will be no more than sitting ducks.
“There is an inn at Chippenham. We will rest there.”
“If the innkeeper sees the blood on your sleeves, we will be turned away.”
I catch the ghost of a smirk that tugs at one side of Nate’s mouth. “You forget that most humans do not have the power to resist me, Sera.”