Chapter 20
Cristian
Iwoke before she did.
The room was quiet except for the faint ticking of the clock and the sound of her steady breathing. Morning light crept across the bed, gilding the curve of her shoulder, the stray strands of hair against her cheek.
She looked nothing like the women I once knew and entertained. No powdered wigs or painted lips. Just soft skin that was dewy in the sleep-warmed air, and a serenity I didn’t deserve.
I watched her for a while, trying to make sense of what she’d done to me. How had she made a creature like me feel human again?
Eventually, I forced myself to move. A proper suitor, I decided, would make her a meal. It would show my devotion. My competence.
It could not be difficult. Men had done so for centuries.
The kitchen disagreed.
The small blinking box on the counter glared at me in defiance. I glared back. “Heat thyself, cursed box,” I commanded.
It did not obey.
Fine. The stove, then. A machine with honest fire. I turned a knob. Nothing happened. I turned another. Blue flame burst forth from a different burner entirely, licking at the edge of a towel.
I stared, uncertain whether to retreat or attack.
Lena entered just as the towel ignited. She didn’t even flinch. She sipped her coffee, pointed the sink sprayer at the flames, and extinguished them with surgical boredom. I placed the pan on the burner and cracked eggs into it
“Morning, lover vamp.”
I scowled. “Your modern contraptions are treacherous.”
Smirking, she leaned against the counter. “You’re really in love, huh?”
I grabbed the handle of the cast iron pan barehanded and hissed when it burned me.
Her grin widened. She handed me an oven mitt shaped like a cat. “That’s a yes.”
“I merely wish to honor the intimacy we shared by delivering her sustenance,” I said stiffly.
“Uh-huh. That’s what love is, big guy.”
I said nothing, but the word love lingered. It felt heavy in my chest. But I could not speak it.
The battle continued. I emerged from the kitchen with charred toast, eggs of questionable integrity, half a banana sliced with the precision of a surgeon, and coffee that tasted like the inside of a volcano.
Still, I arranged everything on a tray with a flourish. Presentation, at least, I could control.
When I entered her room, she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing my shirt, glasses sliding down her nose, laptop open. She looked up, startled, and blinked at the tray.
“Did… you make me breakfast?”
“I have suffered many things,” I said gravely, “but none like the trials of this morning.”
Her laugh was bright and immediate. “This toast looks like it’s seen things.”
“It has.”
She pulled the tray onto her lap and resumed typing. I sat beside her, curious despite myself. “What are you doing?”
“Budgeting,” she said. “Paying bills.”
I frowned. “And what, pray tell, is a bill? Is it something you owe the kingdom?”
She snorted. “Kind of. It’s what you pay to have electricity, water, internet… life.”
“And these debts,” I asked slowly, “they never end?”
“Not unless you die. Or become a billionaire.”
I stared at her screen, the rows of numbers, the columns marked due soon. It was all so orderly, yet relentless.
She lived in a world that demanded constant payment. And still she laughed. Still she gave. A knot formed in my chest. I thought of all I took from her—her food, her home, her patience—and how little I gave in return.
“I have a great deal of gold,” I said quietly. “Hidden away. I must find my brother to reclaim it.”
She looked up. “What for?”
“So I may cease draining your resources. I’d like to take care of you for once. And perhaps…” I hesitated. “Perhaps he knows a way to undo what binds us, as I promised you.”
Her face fell, the light in her eyes dimming just slightly. “If that’s what you want.”
It wasn’t.
But I said nothing, because the truth was too much for me to face out loud. And because she deserved so much more in life than to be bound to a vampire against her will.
She leaned her head against my arm. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Her warmth seeped through the linen and straight into the places I’d sworn were dead.
The scent of burnt toast hung in the air between us.
After a long silence, I murmured, “I shall conquer the toast.”
She laughed softly against my shoulder. “I believe in you.”
And for reasons I could not name, her faith in me felt like salvation.
Boston at dusk was a strange, glittering thing—neither day nor night, its streets buzzing with mortal life. The world smelled of exhaust and pastry. It unsettled me.
I moved quickly through the narrow streets, coat collar high, ignoring the curious glances of passersby. Every step carried a pull in my chest—a sharp, invisible hook. The bond.
Nadia was far from me. Too far.
My skin prickled. The air itself felt wrong without her near. I told myself this would be quick. A simple conversation. I will return to her soon.
The farther she was, the more I unraveled.
The Sovereign Court’s manor stood apart from the city, a remnant of another age. Black iron gates. Marble steps. Gaslight lanterns burning with steady indifference. The great double doors opened without a sound, though I had not been announced.
I followed the scent. Copper. Perfume. Blood.
The formal dining room awaited.
Hammond stood at the head of the table, fingertips pressed to the chest of a motionless man.
His mouth was slightly parted in pleasure as he drained the poor creature’s life force.
Ambrosia was sprawled across the table itself, tulle skirt hiked indecently high, drinking directly from the man’s neck.
Her mouth shone wet and red. Their puppets stood around the edges of the room awaiting scraps.
They looked up as I entered, unbothered and amused.
Do they not even pretend to be civilized? Do they feed from anyone who stumbles past their gates?
Then I saw the man’s face. Recognition struck.
No.
It was the mortal delivery boy—the one I’d taken from briefly after waking. The one I’d left alive. He had walked away fine. But fate, or cruelty, had delivered him here.
Guilt curdled in my stomach. I made him prey without permission. I am not like them. But I did not ask. I drank without consent. I still have so much to learn.
Hammond smiled lazily. “Welcome, welcome. Hungry? I’m sure Ambrosia would share.”
Ambrosia giggled through bloodstained teeth. “There’s plenty for all of us, darling.”
“Absolutely not. Have you no couth?”
She licked her lips. “We’re vampires, sweetheart. Such things are for humans and sad priests.”
I forced my hands to unclench. “Where is Cassian?”
Hammond shrugged, still feeding on the man’s energy. “Gone. For years now. Didn’t leave a note, if you can believe it.”
“Is he dead?”
Ambrosia tilted her head, mock pity softening her voice. “If he were dead, we’d feel it. We’d be… diminished.”
Her words landed like stone. I knew she was right.
The Sovereign Court’s power was a knot of lifelines bound centuries ago—one organism feeding upon itself.
They pooled their strength, braided their existence together so tightly that to kill one was to wound them all.
It made them resilient. Almost unkillable.
Unless, of course, the blade came from one of their own.
But none of them would dare. To weaken one was to weaken all.
They had wanted me bound to them for centuries—for my power, for my strength. With me, their collective would be unbreakable. Eternal.
“I have no interest in your games,” I said. “Tell me how to break the bond between a vampire and the mortal who wakes them.”
Silence. Then smirks.
Hammond reached for a glass filled with what I assumed was some kind of potent alcohol. “Why would you want to do that?”
Ambrosia’s grin was small and cruel. “Is the girl too clingy? Or are you getting too attached?”
My jaw tightened. “You know the answer. Say it.”
They exchanged a glance. Ambrosia wiped her mouth daintily with a napkin. “Even if we did know, why would we tell you?”
“What would you take in exchange?”
Hammond waved a hand. “We do not know. Now leave us to our dining.”
I stared at the body on the table. The boy’s pulse was faint. His essence leaking slow and quiet.
My fingers twitched toward the dagger hidden in my coat. I wanted to kill them both. End the court here and now. But even if I could, Cassian would fall with them. The bond that tethered their lives made murdering them a last resort for me. And they knew it.
So, I turned away.
Their laughter followed me into the hall—sweet, silken, and vile. Outside, the night pressed close. The city lights blurred into ribbons of gold and red. Nadia tugged at me through the bond, a small, steady pull in my chest, like a compass needle trembling north.
This is all a game to them, I thought. They are no court. They are parasites wearing crowns.
The wind bit at my face as I stepped into the street. I am one thread from being tangled in it forever.
I clenched my fists, breathed in the mortal night, and whispered to the dark, “I will find you, brother. And I will break this curse.”
The bond burned bright and silent in answer, guiding me home.
I climbed the steps and paused at the threshold. The moment my foot crossed it, the tug in my chest eased. The tightness that had been gnawing at me uncoiled. My shoulders dropped. My pulse slowed. Nadia was close. I was near her again.
The tether steadied with contentment.
Nadia sat cross-legged on the floor. Yarn spilled around her in a riot of color. A half-formed creature lay in her lap, eyes of mismatched buttons. A white, cotton-like substance bubbled out of a torn bag. Ezra hunched at his laptop, fingers moving, unaffected.
I studied her. She was assembling a small army of limp, looped cotton things. I cleared my throat. “Have you begun weaving protective talismans?”
Her head jerked up, then her face softened the instant she saw me. “They’re crochet dolls,” she said. “For anxiety. I guess.” She held one up, its ears lopsided and its head far too large. “This one’s a frog. Probably.”
I examined the frog. Antlers absurdly sprouting from its tiny head. “Why does the frog have antlers?”
She shrugged and avoided my gaze. “Because I’m bad at it. I’ve been trying to distract myself…” She let the sentence trail and finally met my eyes. “The bond. It feels awful when you’re gone. Nothing is right with the world. Where did you go?”
I said nothing. I walked to the couch and let myself fall onto it, then I extended an arm. “Come here.”
She hesitated for a heartbeat, then climbed up and curled against my chest. Her presence settled against me. My fingers found her hair as she pressed her hand against my ribs. I did not move. I allowed contentment to consume me.
Our breathing found a soft cadence. She mumbled, words drifting toward sleep. I kept my thumb moving in slow circles on her back.
“I am here,” I whispered. “Sleep.”
Darkness folded into a different room as I fell asleep beside her.
I stood in a grand hall that swelled and shifted, walls inhaling and exhaling.
Candles burned where no flame existed. Ambrosia spun in a gown of red, her laugh too bright and too full.
She danced toward me, offering a hand with painted nails.
She spoke as if she had been waiting. “You dream of her? That soft, cotton-stitching mortal?”
She tried to draw me into a slow dance. I jerked away.
The floor gave beneath us and opened onto a banquet table dripping with things that did not belong: a silver platter with a frog doll, stabbed through with pins; a goblet half-full of tangled yarn that shimmered with a dark gloss; a mirror that held Nadia sleeping, her form perfect except that the reflection wore Hammond’s face.
“Leave her out of this,” I growled.
Ambrosia’s beautiful face twisted into something sharper. “You turn tender, Cristian. Predictable. Boring.”
Panic tightened my chest. “How do you know this? Where are you right now?”
She laughed and the sound slithered across the hall. “I am always watching.”
She snapped her fingers. The ballroom collapsed into water, cold and rushing. The room imploded.
I woke on the couch with a sudden, heaving gasp. Nadia shifted against me, murmured one word, then settled again.
My hand pressed to my heart. It raced. My other hand clutched the hem of Nadia’s shirt until the fabric creased under my fingers.
Ambrosia dared poison my rest with her venomous treachery and bring Nadia into it? I looked down at Nadia, peaceful in my arms. I would fix this.
I would burn for this woman.