Chapter 5
Chapter Five
AUDREY
Audrey's twenty-first birthday
Run.
I was running, my feet already covered in mud and leaves crunching quickly as my eyes scanned the trees. I couldn't remember where I was or why I was afraid.
‘Run, little girl,’ the voice in my head screamed at me, warning me of what would happen if I stopped. If I were to see…
The monsters are out to play.
The only thing I remembered was a strange man picking me up from the plane, saying how fortunate I was that the Yates family took me in…
Run. Audrey. Faster.
No. No!
He told me all I had to do was…find my way back. There was barely enough time to see the taillights disappear into the fog as I tumbled to the ground.
Run!
Don’t let them catch you. The hounds.
My feet stung as rocks left cuts and scrapes, my search for anyone who could help turning desperate.
‘Run, solnyshka1!’
Mum’s voice in my head urged me on. The haunted edge was one I was familiar with, even at six years old. The tone which I had heard only once before…
“Help!” I yelled, only to be met by silence. The woods were scary at night; every tree casted shadows over the light I needed from the moon…
‘Run!’ Her final shout had my arms pumping, fighting against the stinging ache.
A cold sweat broke out on my forehead as I finally broke through the darkness of the woods and into a clearing where a small figure sat, hunched over in shadows with just the pale skin of his hands visible under the rays of the moon.
I came to an abrupt halt, my six-year-old mind struggling to understand why another child would be out here alone. Like me.
“Who are you?” His voice shattered the silence of the woods. I took a step back as if I needed protection from him, even though he was just a boy.
A young one that couldn’t be much older than me, clear now that he was standing, shaking off the dirt and leaves. White-blond hair that looked almost silvery shone in the moonlight, and the darkest navy eyes—almost appearing onyx—bore into my soul, looking right through me.
“Who are you?” he repeated, silently stepping closer. His gaze was inquisitive, like I was the one who shouldn't be here. Like I had stumbled upon something forbidden…something wrong. Someplace that I should not be.
“I’m Audrey,” I told the boy. “Who are you? Can you help me?”
“Nyet2.”
As fast as he came, he went, and I was left alone.
Frantically running, running, running, until the woods completely encased me again.
Yelling for someone, anyone, to hear me as the light leading my way was swallowed whole, leaving the forest blanketed in ominous darkness.
Silently, I pleaded to find someone to pull me away from this forest and away from this nightmare I had found myself in.
“I just want to go home,” I whispered to the night sky, suddenly angered by the disappearance of that boy.
The boy who would come to haunt me for years to come, once his identity and skeletons were revealed.
His reappearance in my life led to another damned secret, and a long-buried truth I was not supposed to unveil.
I woke up screaming, covered in sweat, my sheets twisting uncomfortably around my legs.
My pillows were thrown haphazardly across the room, the cause of the crash that had finally jolted me from sleep—or my nightmares, really.
Tonight’s wasn’t new, but one that had been occurring more frequently since I formally became an Initiate in the Ludi.
A fractured memory of my first wretched hours in Alabastor Cove—one that put scandal and years of unwanted and unneeded watchful eyes on me as I transitioned into the Yates household.
As I took up the responsibility of what it truly meant to become an adopted heir of one of the founding four.
The Yateses took me in after their own heir was lost during childbirth, a boy—Hunter, I had been told.
He was the bastard child of the Yates matriarch, set to inherit the throne since no legitimate child had been conceived. That title, heir, now fell onto me.
Unwanted. Unneeded. Unnecessary.
The heavy mantle of secrets was slowly revealed as I got closer to the age at which I would take on the responsibility of the Yates family name—even if it was a name I despised, one I had refused to honour, much less acknowledge when I was forced into the public eye.
The Yateses adopted me after my family’s untimely demise, yet the reality about who they were chilled even me when I ventured to learn the truth about the couple housing me.
If only Hunter was here. What I would give to have another person to split this burden with me. This feeling of drowning. Of despair. It never left, but instead, grew exponentially by the day.
The Viperae Rosarum Ludi were not helping my need for control.
My mind had been spinning in a thousand different directions since receiving my trial.
How would I complete this task if it went against the one boundary I still had: betraying my friends?
My family. The ones who built me up after I destroyed myself following the loss of my twin, who was on the plane the day my whole family went down.
The true heir of the Ellsworth name. The one the world knew as Audrey Jamison Ellsworth.
The face I now wore. The one reason the Yateses were so easily swayed to take me in.
The true burden of being an heir in this town was the generations of secrets and skeletons.
The ones that lie hidden and dormant, just waiting to come out to whoever poked the hardest and dug the deepest. Yet mine were surrounded by a nest of vipers and centuries of finely learned deception.
Secrets my birth names had shouldered me with, burdens one should not have to bear from the young age of six.
Secrets I now hide since the Yateses hated the possibility that one day I would honour my blood-born family by stepping into my right as the last living pure-blood Ellsworth heir.
Sitting up, I reached for my phone. Combing through the messages from the group thread between the Sextum Secretum, I caught up on everything I missed while I was throwing my pity party.
Shaking off the remnants of the nightmare that prevented me from sleeping, I laughed when I saw what the Kenton brothers were up to and read how Ellery had to rein in their absolute kink for chaos.
A deep sigh expelled from my chest at the realization that I was still looking for that one name.
The name of the person who had not texted me in months.
Kellan vonBermere, Lilah’s estranged half-cousin and the one man I ever let myself truly get close to, besides Aleksandr. The only person who may rival Lilah in hacking into places you didn’t want to be found.
He went underground a couple of years ago after he called me one night to tell me he ran across something he shouldn’t have and that I should ‘not believe anything the founding families claimed.’
Kellan was once the ‘black sheep’ of the vonBermere line—the one living son, the boy who held onto a secret we both guarded close.
He was always strange, indifferent. It was always difficult to read what he was thinking, but nonetheless, he was the one guy all five of us looked up to.
Even Lilah, who had never been fond of her actual brother or sister.
No new messages.
Biting my lip, I slid out of bed. I wouldn’t be going to sleep again tonight.
Walking to my desk, I powered on my laptop, hoping I could access all I needed from here.
I needed to figure out the first steps in my plan—how I would be able to outmanoeuvre, outplay, and outdance each player on this board for the Viperae Rosarum Ludi and within The Guilda Sanguis Venenati.
It was a well-known rumour that the Volkovitch line had been the bookkeepers for generations for The Guilda, and it just so happened that the one current heir was the widely known ‘golden child’ of the Elite.
I never liked the Volkovitch heir—our connection was too volatile, the pull too intense.
He was too broody, dominant, headstrong, and incapable of ever falling for the games I herded the sheep into—both at Prep, and then at University.
Aleksandr “Artyom” Volkovitch.
For the three years our time at Alabastor Prep had overlapped, he was the absolute bane of my existence.
The one heir whose intelligence knew no bounds, and whose charming smile and dimples had girls dropping to their knees, only to be upset when they realized he only had eyes for me.
He was the one secret I was most afraid of getting out.
The one crack my armour may not sustain.
Aleksandr had a way of casting a muse over me, sneaking past my barriers and dancing with my feelings, then simply turning around and walking away. Nonetheless, he was my sworn enemy if you believed anything the media, our social circles, or the founding families had to say.
My heart, that blackened organ that sporadically beat in my chest, especially needed to remember that.
A heart that used to beat for him, a sole truth that lingered, haunting me even now about a truth I still refused to accept, even while sitting here in the dark by myself.
Lying was always easier said than done, though, and I had never been particularly great at trying to deceive myself.
Digging into their line was not one I could do lightly. The rumours and whispers that surrounded that family were even more fatal and poisonous than my own. But he may also be the one person who could outwit even the trickiest of gamemasters during these trials…
Should I, or shouldn’t I?
A feeling and thought that had always followed me around since the first time I locked eyes with him years ago. It felt like the world melted away, like the two of us shared a secret no one else knew. And I hated it, hated him.
Hated him for the immediate sense of belonging he gave me.
For his refusal to play my games with me.
For the feelings that collided violently inside the box I locked them into after that night fifteen years ago.
But most of all, for the ways his dark, soulless gaze could chip away at me until he stripped me to my bones underneath. Until he could see everything that made me.
No, don’t do it. Not yet.
He would be my ace in the hole, the one thing nobody would expect the Princess of Alabastor Cove to have. Patience, Lenochka, never bow unless you decide to kneel for me. Even now, his voice chided me, always there to halt the way I sometimes acted rashly when I felt the goddamn walls closing in.
The irony of my thoughts was not lost on me.
Aleksandr had always been a wolf, never truly able to hide that edge of his amongst our peers.
Even then, the sheer power he radiated at seventeen tripled before he left Prep at nineteen and went off to University.
And fuck if I dreamed of him just once, bowing to me.
Locking my phone, I decided to put the thoughts aside for now and make my way downstairs.
I was not in the frame of mind to concoct plans tonight.
As I walked onto the main floor of the Yates mansion, I made a hard left towards my wallet and keys.
A low sound at the door to the garage beckoned my attention, stopping me in my tracks.
Ssnick.
Ssnickk.
Sssnickk.
Perplexed at the noise, I inched closer, curiosity forcing my steps despite the stupidity of my not planning looming over me.
As I reached the door, I noticed how still everything had gotten.
How quiet the house suddenly was in the absence of the hum the air conditioner made, and without the beeping noises of technology.
The moment my fingers made contact with the handle, a chill hit the air, like a warning that I was no longer alone.
“Little Audrey Yates, I have been waiting for this.”
I opened my mouth, a retort ready, but a set of calloused fingers sliding around my neck caught the words in my throat. They pulled me into a chest that felt firm, like cement, making me go rigid, but not in fear.
“Not so fiery now, are you, Little Ellsworth?”
Bucking back into him, I tried to wrench out of his grasp, only to find that the hold on me was more solid than I expected.
An eerie sense of familiarity struck me, a sense of recognition—the way his hands felt, flexing and grasping tighter and tighter around my throat until I struggled to inhale the air my lungs desperately needed to scream.
Squaring my shoulders, I steeled myself in a second attempt at breaking free, but before I could, a second voice startled me, halting my movements as a dose of ice-cold fear skittered down my spine.
“Hurry it up, shef3. We don’t have all night for you to get your cock wet.”
I began to struggle more violently, thrashing wildly, making any attempt to get away.
I refused to back down or show a second of weakness in front of these faceless, masked men who had somehow managed to bypass all the security and find their way in without alerting me or the silent trip alarms the Yateses installed when they left for their latest trip.
Except now I was stuck in a lose-lose predicament, as I accepted that this had been planned, and they had already succeeded in capturing the ultimate prize—me, even if I would go unwillingly.
Right as I began to find an area of slack in his grip, I felt the sharp end of a needle press into the side of my neck…
As I began to fall, I saw a brief flash of eyes.
A dark gaze that bore into mine.
A memory of obsidian eyes. So soulless on a boy so young. It was left with him as he turned and walked away.
And then, blackness. Vast nothingness and what I had always assumed death would feel like when it called me home. I knew that there would not be an escape for me this time.
Because death had been following me for fifteen years.
Since I managed to survive the massacre of the Ellsworth line.
Since the moment I woke up in the middle of the night on thirteen August 2004, with a feeling of dread weighing like a brick in my stomach.
Since I woke up knowing something had changed. Since I found out I was the last Ellsworth still breathing after someone sent our family plane crashing from the sky, like a fiery phoenix of death, embodying my true family’s crest.
Since the moment in those woods, with that boy whose eyes still haunt my dreams.
I succumbed to the darkness, feeling myself let go. My eyes drifted closed as a whisper of a voice hit my ears…
“Remember, zmeyushka4, become what they fear.”
1 Solnyshka (Russian): Little sun
2 Nyet (Russian): No
3 Shef (Russian) Boss
4 Zmeyushka (Russian): Little dragon/serpent