Chapter 29 – Cassini
CASSINI
“No.”
Lily’s voice is steady, unwavering, and even though she’s outnumbered, she shows no traces of fear or concern for her own survival. She offers no further justification or useless details. She says a single word as if it’s a complete sentence and leaves it hanging in the air.
Pride and terror battle in my chest. She’s incredible—and she’s signing her death warrant. I want to reach across the table and kiss her. To tell her how sorry I am for hurting her. For using her.
But right now I know it wouldn’t be welcome. It would probably just piss her off.
Instead, I watch in awe as she turns down the most well-connected and powerful vampire in a five-hundred-mile radius like it’s nothing. Like she has a choice. I know he won’t appreciate the rejection, but I silently pray she’ll change her mind.
Lazaro’s expression doesn’t change, but something hot ignites behind his eyes. “How disappointing, Miss Vervain. I had expected more from you. Truly.”
He crosses his legs and grabs his goblet from the table, holding it up to the light like fine wine and studying it curiously as he swirls it around the rim of the glass.
“Disappointing?” Lily’s laugh is bitter. “You want me to help you torture and kill people. Good. I’m glad. I am happy to be a disappointment to you.”
“I see.” Lazaro taps his fingers on the mahogany table, suddenly looking bored. “Julian, perhaps our guest needs a little more convincing—”
The threat doesn’t sit well. In fact, it prompts white-hot rage to rise like bile acid in my throat.
Julian still has the crossbow trained on the center of my chest. It hasn’t moved an inch.
Nor have his eyes, which stare endlessly at me like he’s willing me to commit the tiniest infraction so he can kill me.
I wonder if I could make it across the room before he could fire that thing?
Maybe I’d make it? If I did, I’d rip the crossbow out of his hands and ram the stake through his smug face, then I’d tear Lazaro apart for even suggesting he’d harm Lily.
But I’m not stupid. I know the risks are too high. My strength is still in the process of returning, and there’s no guarantee I could do it. If I wasn’t quick enough, and something happened to me, she’d be alone without my protection, and that can’t happen.
She briefly acknowledges the threat, and a flash of fear sparks on her face, but she regains her composure. Doubling down and becoming even more stubborn. Even more fearless. Even more Lily.
“So, come on. What are you going to do to me?” she says.
Stop it, Lily. Don’t antagonize him.
“That depends, dear. Can you be convinced otherwise?” Lazaro asks, giving her one last opportunity to save herself. “Answer wisely. The offer will not come again”
“I won’t be anyone’s pet psychic,” she says defiantly, her gaze locked on Lazaro. “I won’t help you manipulate people for more power. I won’t be your weapon.”
He lifts his hands and gives a nonchalant shrug.
“Very well. Such a pity.” He takes a sip of his blood wine, and the red liquid catches at the corner of his mouth, giving him a sinister joker smile.
“You will have to be dealt with, you understand? A prize as lovely as you cannot fall into the hands of my enemies.” He lets out a sigh of resignation with a final shake of his head. “Such a pity. Julian—”
“Wait.” The word tears from my throat before I can stop it. The atmosphere stills, and every pair of eyes in the room turns to me. “Wait. Please. I have another offer.”
Lazaro raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
I clench my hands into fists and press Lily’s silver necklace deeper into my palm. The burning sensation grounds me. I know what I have to do. I know the sacrifice I need to make for her to be safe.
“Let her go. Take me instead.”
A sick smile creeps across Lazaro’s face. “What an interesting turn. Are you going to tell me you’re a medium too, Cassini? Is that what you’re offering me?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll bind myself to you,” I say, the words coming faster now, desperate. “The Sangretà. I’ll take the blood oath. Complete loyalty, complete obedience for eternity. I will be your loyal dog. Just…let her walk away from this. Please.”
The silence that follows feels endless. Lazaro studies me with the kind of calculating look a Grandmaster gives the board before delivering checkmate.
“Interesting,” he says finally. “You would trade your freedom for hers?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No doubt.
“The binding is permanent, Cassini. Eternal. You will be giving up your bloodline. You would never be able to harm me, never be able to disobey a direct order. Your will would become mine forever. As if you were a son of my very own.”
My throat feels like sandpaper. “I know.”
“And you believe she’s worth such a sacrifice?”
I look at Lily—beautiful, fierce, stubborn Lily who deserves so much better than this nightmare of blood oaths and darkness. “She’s worth everything.”
Lazaro’s smile is slow and predatory. “How romantic. Very well, Cassini. I accept your terms.”
Relief floods through me so powerfully I nearly collapse. “You’ll let her go? You’ll leave her alone?”
“I am a man of my word. I’ll let her go…but I will not leave her alone.”
I almost rise from my chair, but Lazaro continues with a smirk.
“I believe it’s best that I place her under the protection of the Sixth indefinitely. She will become untouchable under my ward. A creature as special as she could surely come to harm without a powerful custodian to watch over her.”
He gestures dismissively toward Lily. “It is done. Angel will escort you home and make the necessary arrangements.”
She looks across at me, concern etched on her face, but her posture buckles under the guilty weight of her own reprieve. When Angel appears silently at her side, she stands and holds my gaze for a long moment, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.
Then something hardens in her expression. When she speaks, her voice is ice-cold.
“Thank you, Cassini. I appreciate all you’ve done for me.
” She looks down at the table for a moment, like she’s gathering her strength.
“This will be the last time we see each other. I think it’s for the best. You should know that you are no longer welcome in my home.
” Her voice wavers. “Or in my thoughts.”
She pauses and swallows. “Or in my life.”
It hits me like a stake to the heart, and I want to do everything in my power to convince her not to shut me out. To stay with me and let me protect her. But I know I deserve it all.
But words won’t work. There are none that fit. Only actions count.
So, I do the most loving thing I can think of.
I let her go.
The words feel wrong in my mouth, but I say them anyway. “I understand.”
As she stoically blinks back a tear, Angel appears at her side and gently helps her to her feet. With a hand hovering behind her back, he guides her toward the exit. She doesn’t look back. The sound of her footsteps echoes off the stone walls until it fades to nothing, and then she’s gone.
Gone.
The Sangretà is older than Christianity, older than most written languages. The words I’m forced to speak come from a time when vampires existed in the open, when blood oaths were the foundation of civilization itself.
Lazaro slices his palm with a ceremonial blade, letting the blood drip into an ancient chalice.
The brass cup sits on the center of a bloodstained shroud spread on the table in front of me.
The mountain of food from earlier is gone, replaced by candles and artifacts.
Cleared by some of the same vampires I violently tore through in search of Lily.
They had stared daggers as they scraped the food into garbage bags. Muttering curses under their breath as they replaced the china plates with long votives and opulent relics, trinkets and icons lifted from tombs and cathedrals long forgotten.
Now, gold filigree gleams dully in the flickering candlelight as a silver brand glows under the hiss of a blowtorch, the metal blushing red, spitting sparks as if eager to taste flesh.
“Drink,” he commands, offering me the cup.
His blood is bitter. The sharp frost of winter and deep tang of iron. The taste of power and cruelty distilled into liquid form. It burns going down. It spreads through my veins like acid, rewriting something fundamental in my nature.
The ancient words spill from my lips without conscious thought, pulled from some genetic memory embedded in my bones:
“Sanguis meus, sanguis tuus. Voluntas mea, voluntas tua. In aeternum vinctus, in aeternum servus.”
My blood, your blood. My will, your will. Bound forever, servant forever.
I kneel at his feet. Offering my shirtless body to him, head bowed like a sacrificial lamb.
A click echoes through the room as someone shuts off the blowtorch and carefully carries the brand by a handle carved from bone.
His footsteps echo as he circles me. His prized cattle, caught, immobilized and totally at his will.
He hesitates for a moment, as if savoring the power, then presses the glowing metal against my side. I brace and grind my teeth together as my flesh sizzles. Lazaro holds it still, gradually applying more pressure as he burns his seal into me.
“Ita est. Servus in aeternum. So it is. A servant for eternity,” he says, reaching for a pinch of ash from a gold ciborium. A bastardization of the vessel for holding the consecrated Eucharistic bread, now filled with the charred ashes of his enemies.
He rubs the mixture of salt, ash, his blood, and fine-milled silver into the smoking wound to seal it and keep it open forever. Much like my tattoos, this will never truly heal and will sting for eternity. A constant reminder of my dedication to this man.
He gestures for me to rise, and I do, falling immediately into his embrace. He hugs me tightly, his palm against the back of my neck, and then pulls back to kiss me on both cheeks.
“Welcome home, Cassini.”
At first, I feel nothing, but as Lazaro takes a step back to observe me, the binding takes hold like chains wrapping around my soul. My free will gutters like a flame, replaced by something else. Compulsion. Absolute obedience. Servitude.
The candles flicker, then all extinguish at once as pain lances through my temple so sharp it steals my breath. I drop to my knees once more and throw my head back. Letting out a primal howl as the agony rips through me.
My maker’s mark burns white-hot between my shoulder blades. My father Notte’s mark seared into my flesh centuries ago when he turned me from priest to predator. As if the skin itself recognizes that I now belong to another. The grief is excruciating, as if my very blood is at war with itself.
But through it all, I think of Lily. Safe. Free. Alive.
It’s worth it.
I stay on the ground, hunched forward, knuckles digging into the stone, waiting for the throbbing sensations to subside. Sucking in deep, slow breaths that reverberate through the room. Rough, ragged, and desperate.
“Fascinating,” Lazaro says, watching me writhe through the binding process with clinical interest. “I wondered if that would work differently, given your royal lineage.”
Something in his tone makes me look up sharply. “What?”
His smile is all teeth. “Oh, did you think I didn’t know who you are, Cassini Valbruna? The firstborn son of Notte DiMarco. The prodigal prince himself.”
Ice floods my veins. “How—”
“You still don’t get it, do you? Nothing happens in this city without my say-so.
I have eyes and ears in every corner. In every rat hole.
In this kingdom…I. Am. God.” He circles me slowly, like a predator savoring a kill.
“You think removing the Fontaine girl from Nocturne with such little resistance was accidental? I have been nudging you in the right direction and removing roadblocks for months. Patiently waiting for you to free yourself from your bloodbinding so I could tether you to me instead. A gift for your father.”
I use what’s left of my strength and attempt to stand, but he swiftly kicks me in the ribs. The metal cap of his foot lands right on the still-sizzling wound and sends me crashing back to the ground.
“Stay where you are, Valbruna,” he warns.
“You knew my father?” I wince. “He won’t let this stand. He’ll come for you. He’ll kill us both.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it,” he says, baring his teeth. “Notte and I have…history. Old grudges, philosophical differences. He betrayed me once, cost me dearly. I’ve been waiting centuries for the perfect revenge.”
“You wanted me specifically.” It’s not a question.
“Yes. Though I must admit, I never anticipated you would sacrifice yourself for that captivating woman. I assumed you would try and keep her for yourself. Perhaps run when pressed, as you’ve been doing for so long.
Either way, I was prepared to hunt you both.
” He laughs, delighted with his own cleverness.
“But this? This is so much better. Notte’s precious heir, bound in service to his greatest enemy.
A medium on my doorstep, infatuated with a cursed man. The poetry of it is exquisite.”
Rage builds in my chest, but the binding crushes it immediately. The pain is so intense I double over, gasping.
“I wanted you both, of course,” Lazaro continues conversationally. “But I’m sure she’ll come around eventually. I can be very persuasive.”
The casual threat in his voice makes me want to tear his throat out. The binding responds with agony so severe I taste copper.
“Julian,” Lazaro says, and I hear the crossbow being lowered. “There’s no need for that anymore. Our new friend won’t be causing any trouble, will you, Cassini?”
I try to speak, to tell him exactly what I think of him and his fucking blood oath, but the words won’t come. The binding won’t let them.
“No,” I force out through gritted teeth. “I won’t.”
“Excellent.” Lazaro claps his hands. “Welcome to the family.”