Chapter 4
Arabesque Harrow Bell
The robin’s heartbeat pulsed through the silver dish like a trapped moth, frantic wings brushing against my palms where they rested on the desk.
My daughters leaned over the scrying pool, twin shadows rippling across water that wasn’t water, but a mirror.
Through the bird’s eyes, I watched wisteria buds tremble above Serafina’s head as she lingered beneath the pergola, blissfully unaware of the hexed hawk circling overhead.
“Now,” Amabel hissed.
Wind stirred the edges of my hair as their combined magic surged—air currents carrying the hawk lower, talons glinting with our little curse. The Withering Veil had been Eluned’s idea, all spite wrapped in elegance. Charming.
Casimir moved first.
Not a flinch, not even a falter in his steps as he moved in front of Serafina and caught the talons on his forearm.
“No.” Eluned’s chair screeched across the floorboards as she kicked back from the desk. “No, no, look at her! She’s fine!”
“The curse took.” Amabel didn’t lift her gaze from the shimmering surface. “You saw the spark.”
“In him, not her!” My younger daughter raked manicured fingers through hair that still carried the scorched sugar scent of her latest glamour potion. “He didn’t even let her hear him scream. What’s the point of suffering if she doesn’t know he’s bleeding in her place?”
Ah, youth. Such a limited palate for cruelty.
Through the robin’s gaze, we watched Koa pierce the fallen hawk’s heart, as perfect a thrown dagger as ever I’d seen. Zane darted around, plucking cursed feathers before Serafina even saw them.
“You’re certain the curse made contact?” I asked, knowing full well it had.
“It did!” Eluned threw herself into an overstuffed chaise, skirts pooling like spilled wine. “Wasted on a dhampir.”
Amabel’s reflection in the scrying pool sharpened, a predator spotting weakness.
“See how quickly he healed the wound?” Her finger drew a slow circle above the mirror, rewinding the hawk’s final moments. “No blisters. No bleeding. No discoloration. As if the curse rolled right off.”
I let silence stretch until their squirming became palpable. Until Amabel’s shoulders tightened and Eluned’s toe began tapping an uneven rhythm against the rug. Only then did I lean forward, letting lamplight catch the witchfire burning behind my eyes.
“Tomorrow, we’ll scour the Rosu genealogies,” I said.
Amabel opened her mouth, perhaps to argue that she’d already considered this angle, then snapped it shut at the brush of my thumb over her knuckles. A spider’s caress. A queen’s command.
“This is dull.” Eluned slumped deeper into the cushions. “Let’s send a banshee next time. Or a shadow wraith. Something with proper theatrics.”
“And risk alerting the entire vampire court?” Amabel’s laugh held edges enough to draw blood. “You might as well hang a sign announcing ‘Dark Witches At Work.’ ”
Their bickering faded to static as I studied the dhampirs through fractured moments—Koa methodically scraping our hawk into a bucket, Zane searching out every fallen feather, Casimir distracting Serafina in the distance.
He should’ve staggered under the Veil’s kiss. That he didn’t suggested possibilities.
“He reacted too fast,” Amabel said.
“He’s a dhampir,” Eluned groaned. “Everything about them is supercharged, and the oldest is—”
“No, not him.” Amabel’s nail tapped the mirror’s edge where Koa’s blade still gleamed. “The quiet one. He didn’t wait for orders. Didn’t hesitate. Just killed.”
“You think he enjoys it?” A shiver ran through Eluned—the good kind, the kind that precedes midnight mischief. “Killing?”
“I think he doesn’t trust magic to finish what steel can,” Amabel retorted.
Their heads bent together, twin crowns of ambition and idiocy. Through the remaining sliver of the robin’s vision, I watched Zane pause mid-step, red hair catching sunlight as he glanced toward our spy. Clever boy.
“The redhead knows,” I pointed out.
“Should we make him scream?” Eluned perked up.
“He’s already screaming.” Amabel leaned closer to the fading image. “Look at his hands.”
Zane’s fingers flexed at his sides as he glanced at Seri, a telltale twitch.
“Maybe he wants her dead, too.” Eluned flopped onto her stomach, chin propped in hands. “Maybe we’re doing him a favor. Could he be turned to join us?”
“They didn’t flinch. Not really.” Amabel’s eyes narrowed on the scrying pool. “The dark one’s hunting for traces, but the blond…”
“He didn’t even blink when the curse bit him,” Eluned interrupted, pacing now.
Then the robin twitched.
A minute shudder ran through the connection, the bird’s instinct flaring like a struck match. Through its eyes, I watched Koa Cimmerian tilt his head like a wolf catching a scent. Zane’s lips moved, soundless through the scrying link, but the shape of them was unmistakable: Robin.
Our spy’s final vision: Koa hurling a silver streak as Casimir’s shoulders blocked Serafina from view, then the world fracturing into prismatic shards as the spell shattered.
The mirror cracked with a sound like frozen bone snapping. Eluned shrieked as the vision dissolved, leaving only our three reflections warped in the fractured glass, Amabel’s lips pressed into a bloodless line, Eluned’s face flushed with rage, my own expression a mask of detached amusement.
“Those monsters!” Eluned slammed her palm against the desk. “That was an innocent bird!”
“They’re faster than I thought. Smarter, too,” Amabel acknowledged.
“You left the bird watching too long,” Eluned accused.
“We needed data!”Amabel paused as her phone buzzed three short, one long. She glanced at the screen. “Foster’s finished sweeping the eastern perimeter.”
“Tell him to check the apple orchard.” Eluned was already flouncing toward the door. “I’ll wager my best athame the redhead planted listening charms in the—”
“No.” I didn’t turn from the window, didn’t raise my voice. “You’ve shown your fangs. Now let them wonder when you’ll bite.”
My daughters stilled. Good. Even vipers know to freeze when the shadow above might be wings.
“You wanted the girl’s pain? Crude. Common.” I trailed a finger along Amabel’s rigid spine. My other hand settled on Eluned’s shoulder, nails biting through silk. “But those creatures’ instincts? Their secrets?” The mirror went dark as I severed the connection. “That’s information worth savoring.”
“You’re not even angry,” Eluned pouted.
“Darling,” I breathed into her ear, “I’m fascinated.”
Eluned opened her mouth to whine, to argue, to pick at the scab of her humiliation. Amabel caught her wrist, dragging her toward the door. They left arguing about surveillance routes, and I waited until their footsteps faded down the hall before exhaling.
Children playing with live ammunition, I thought.
How many times had I watched them trip over their own ambitions? Each failure a stitch pulled tighter in the shroud they wove around themselves. I’d made certain of it.
Amabel would rather swallow live coals than admit weakness. Eluned needed constant proof of her own cleverness. And Serafina… Oh, that ragged little sparrow. So desperate to protect, she’d walk into hell wearing kerosene perfume.
“They will never stop chasing you, Serafina,” I purred. “That makes them predictable. It also makes them fools.”
Their fixation on Serafina was a bonfire in a drought: Useful for now, but requiring careful containment.
Let them rage at the dhampirs’ interference, let them plot increasingly elaborate traps.
Every moment spent scheming against the Cimmerians was a moment not spent questioning my growing influence in the vampire courts, my quiet acquisitions of land bordering the werewolf kingdom, my secret meetings with a certain desperate king…
While their eyes remained fixed on Serafina’s shadow, they’d never notice the knife at their backs.
“Obsession makes such pretty shackles,” I murmured, picking up my favorite pen.
My journal lay open to yesterday’s note.
Shipments of wolfsbane tincture diverted to Montreal, three human familiars “retired” near Lake Erie.
With a tiny smile, I crossed out Lord Mordecai Wince’s name.
His demise would serve me well, so long as that icy little wife of his didn’t start asking questions.
Although if she does, her death will prove just as useful to hide my tracks. I tapped the pen against my chin. And now what to do with Foster Collins and Austin Cho?
Foster. Lone wolf turned rogue. My new enforcer.
My fingernail idly tapped the silver bell on my desk.
Last week, I’d sent him to intercept a certain courier near the Ro?u border, but he’d returned empty-handed, claiming someone beat him to the package.
That evening, however, his boots had bore traces of cemetery soil that stank of vampire.
As for Amabel’s new pet, Austin’s file still sat in my top drawer.
Human, twenty-two, former everything: pool cleaner, computer repair, gas leak detector, security camera installer…
The boy hadn’t been able to settle into any kind of career after high school.
Seemingly clean, but there was something hidden. I was sure of it.
I didn’t care that Eluned and Amabel dallied with the hired help. I did, however, care about the hired help dallying with my plans.
Opening the bottom drawer of my desk, I withdrew a vial of mercury.
It slithered against the glass, alive and hungry, then trembled as I poured it onto the scrying mirror’s surface.
It pooled, then surged into the cracks, stitching the silver with quicksilver veins.
A petty waste of resources, but symbolism had its uses.
Let the girls find it later. Let them wonder what secrets the reflection now held. Tools always showed their wear eventually.
The clock chimed, and the mirror finished repairing itself just in time. My spy in the vampire court would be waiting.
“Arabesque.” Recognition pricked my skin at a familiar voice warped by the mirror’s Dark magic. The surface darkened, then bloomed with a wavering silhouette. “Your stepdaughter has charmed the king. He hasn’t stopped singing her praises since returning from Evermere.”
I schooled my surprise into a laugh.
“Tell me all about it,” I crooned, my mind spinning each tidbit like a jewel in the light, looking for where to best place it on my future crown.
“—and now Kaori has asked to meet her.”
With that, the spy severed the connection, and I allowed myself a tiny smirk.
Lucian was enjoying his new queen too much. The distraction provided an unexpected advantage. By the time he smelled the poison in his court’s veins, I’d be carving my throne from his ribs.