Chapter 33
SERA
The arena is a seething mass of bodies and noise. In the pit, two competitors face each other, a giant chain being whipped between them. Rafe and Benjamin’s fight is over.
I push through the throng of vampires in their seats, searching for Nate.
Where are you? We’ve got what we need, but Charles is in danger. And Nikolai will be coming for us.
Around me, vampires stare as I brush past them, eyes dragged away from the frenzy of the games. One grabs for my skirt, another for my arm. I push them off, surging heat through my hands.
I do not care if they know what I am. Soon everyone will know.
I keep scouring the stands, but there is no sign of him.
Nate, please.
Panic claws at my throat, threatening to choke me. He’s blocked me out, but this is different. I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel him.
I push out of the throng of vampires, running back through the network of tunnels that the Court’s underground chambers are connected by. The air is thick and quiet around me. It makes my heart speed up; my lungs tighten. I have learned to dread the silence far more than the noise.
I turn a corner, my legs pumping as I dip between the shadows cast from the torches staked in the ground, when I crash full-speed into a solid wall of muscle. Bare skin. Blood.
“Sera.”
I look up at Rafe. Blood is dripping down his face, matting his hair. He is blackened and bruised, his chest gleaming with sweat and imprinted with lacerations from the chain.
His eyes widen when he looks at me. “What happened? Where’s Lizzie?”
“She’s gone. I sent her to find Nate, but—” I lean back against the wall, panting. “We have to go to them now. We have what we need. But Nikolai will be coming here. And Charles… he told me to go, but…”
“This way.” Rafe puts his arm around me and guides me quickly through the last stretch of corridor until we make it to the steps and back into the night. “What did you find?”
“Proof of everything you said,” I pant. “There’s an agreement in place between them — the Court and the hunters. They’re trying to rid the vampire population of any single-sired creatures.”
“You have the evidence?”
“Yes. Lizzie has it. She was taking it to Nate.” I need to tell him about the piece of parchment — the one that might relate to me. But something stops me. I have to tell Nate first. “It’s all there. A contract — signed by the thirteen. There were other things, too. Correspondence between Nikolai and someone by the name of Ackley. It was a list of dates. One aligned with the night of the ball where Gregor was killed.”
“What name did you say?” Rafe stops.
We are out in the streets. It is deathly quiet, and the moon hangs big and round above us.
“Ackley.” The syllables are lead on my tongue. “Is it another vampire family?”
Rafe’s eyes lock with mine. He goes pale — a shade of sickly white I’ve never seen on him before. He looks as if he might break in two.
“Rafe, what is it?”
He stares at me, his jaw slightly open, eyes darting. “Did Lizzie ever talk to you about her step-father?”
“Her step-father? Only that he was cruel and?—”
“She took his name. Fairfax. Her birth name…” Rafe squeezes his eyes shut. “Her father’s name was Ackley.”
The earth seems to tilt beneath my feet. The world goes quieter still, replaced by a rushing, roaring white noise in my ears.
“That can’t be?—”
But Rafe is already moving, pushing through the night. “We have to find Nate.”
“Rafe, I don’t understand?—”
“Don’t you?” He spins on me. “The creature that planted the poison at Nighthaven; the one who gave the hunters and Nikolai our exact movements so Nate could be found and killed on the road to Bath; the very person who we have trusted with everything and now is nowhere to be seen? It is her.”
I think back on all that has happened between Lizzie and me. If this is true, she was not glamoured. She never has been. Which means that all along she has known I killed Ambrose; that I am a witch bonded to a vampire. And now she knows that my name is in that ledger.
“She tried to kill Ambrose the night of the hunt…”
“And I gave her the fucking stake to add to the collection already in her skirts,” Rafe spits.
Nate, please. Where are you? It’s Lizzie. She’s a hunter. You can’t trust her. I scream at Nate in my brain, begging him to hear me.
Nothing comes back.
“She wouldn’t betray us. She wouldn’t.” I stare at Rafe, waiting for him to agree with me, but he shakes his head.
“Everything has been a lie, Sera.” His fangs lengthen. Still painted in blood, he looks every bit the monster. “We thought the Court were the masterminds behind every damned thing. But who’s been feeding them our secrets all along?”