3. Chapter 3
Logan
My brand-new bride followed after me, dragging her feet, biting her inner cheek, and spinning her wedding ring over and over with her thumb like it was suffocating her. She’d changed into a black, comfortable dress and braided her hair to the side, letting it rest down her shoulder.
“You should go say your goodbyes to the others.”
She shook her head. “I can’t face Ronnie again right now.”
Her lover, I presumed from the defeated look on her face.
Saints. This was a mistake. A ridiculous mistake.
Not to mention that even though I was one of the youngest of my kind at thirty-six, I was much older than her twenty-six years.
If it weren’t for the king forcing this pact on me, I wouldn’t have entertained this whole show.
I’d never planned to marry, let alone marry a witch.
A young, dark-haired witch watched my wife from across the gardens. She was wearing a black cloak, with a red sash tied around her throat—the Bloodletting ceremonial garments.
You’ll be kind to her, she’d told me.
She’d been waiting just outside the church doors after the ceremony. From the wet lashes, the red nose, and her swollen eyelids, it was clear she’d been crying, but her voice had been strong. And had she been able to look me in the eye, it would have almost sounded like an order.
Something passed between them, but neither made any step to approach the other. Willow lifted a palm, facing in her friend’s direction, and the other witch did the same. They stayed like that for a while. Until my wife brought her palm to her lips, blowing a kiss in her direction.
A firefly left from her fingertips, landing in her friend’s hand.
Witches were not solitary creatures; they stayed in packs like lycans did, but they never quite fit in the ecosystem of Epiron.
The fae, lycans, vampires, and even humans were creatures of habit, hunt and feed, predictable to the core.
There was nothing predictable about a witch.
In every war, they had always ended up on the winning side.
Not because they had won any of them, but because they had never participated in one.
At least not directly. Their influence had always been like that of a puppeteer and a puppet, manipulating the battles and wars indirectly without even taking a side, and then simply joining the winning side.
That’s how they’d survived for so long. They never engaged in conflict.
They found us all violent, brutal, animals.
My men were pretending to steady their horses, but all their attention was on the four-story, dark-tiled covenstead towering over us and the crows lining its stone edges.
With dry branches hitting its walls and omens hung on every window chiming each time the wind dragged north, it was easy to believe every tale written about them.
The air was poisoned with magic, prickling every sense in our bodies with warning and etching a cold foreboding feeling in our stomachs.
Everyone wanted to get out of here as fast as they could.
“They gave you a weird one,” Henry said, glancing at Willow who was now walking in circles around a gargoyle statue spurting water from its horns. “She keeps talking to herself.”
“She’s not talking to herself,” I snapped, surprising even myself.
The head of my guard and one of my oldest friends raised his hands up, quietly chuckling. “My bad.”
Arthur, my third in command, had angled in Willow’s direction as he walked across the courtyard towards us.
Unlike Henry who was the son of a witch himself, Arthur had always worked his best to keep away from their kind.
He’d grown up in an extremely religious home in the poorest region of Mortdale where faith was often the only thing the clergy fed the poor.
And faith knew how to inject fear into someone and infect them with hate.
“Why’s her hair grey? Do you reckon it matches—” Arthur asked, and I grabbed him by the collar of his uniform before he’d say something else like I knew he was wanting to.
“Lower your fucking voice. And careful,” I said to the both of them, letting go of him. “She’s my wife, not one of your bloodwhores.”
Henry chuckled. “Sankta Katarina! People are going to be curious about your witch.”
“She’s not my witch.”
“Well, she’s definitely not mine,” Arthur said, chewing on a carrot meant for the horses. “I would rather cut my cock off and chew on it than stick it in a witch.”
“Promises, promises,” Willow casually said, strutting straight into the carriage.
I shot them another warning look. Though not by blood, they were my brothers.
We were all the same. Bonded over the fact that we were third, fourth, and fifth sons who’d been worth nothing more than war fodder to their families.
We’d fought, fucked, and fed together for nearly a lifetime.
But I needed them to understand that Willow was now my kin despite what she was.
She carried my name, wore my ring, and would sleep under my roof until death took us.
She stopped mumbling to herself when she spotted me heading her way. For some reason, she’d avoided looking me in the eyes ever since we’d left the chapel.
“Don’t mind him,” I said, climbing halfway in to throw a small blanket over her lap when she started shivering.
She sniffled, sticking her red nose up in the air. “Hard not to mind such an ugly face.”
I glanced back at one of my oldest friends, who was sought out by the ladies particularly for his good looks. Was my witch blind, too?
A loud drumming sound pulled my attention back to her. She was staring straight at me, her heart running numbers in her chest. The sound was near deafening, and I had to force myself to step back just the slightest.
And then, blood started trickling from her nose.
“Did you hurt yourself somewhere?” I asked, gritting my teeth as I handed her my handkerchief. She’d had a nosebleed twice inside the chapel.
She quickly took it from me, shaking her head. “I’ve been getting a lot of nosebleeds since I was a kid. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Why would it be a problem?”
“I don’t know. You’re the vampire.”
My tongue briefly pressed against my burning fangs as I reached for a cigarette. “I’m not an animal.”
She stuffed the corner of my handkerchief in her nostril, letting it hang like a curtain, and leaned over the seat to bring the tip of her finger to my cigarette, lighting it. “I’ve not met a single violent animal, but I have met plenty of violent people.”
My eyes travelled down the length of her grey hair draped down her chest. “You assume I am violent?”
“I assume everyone is until they prove me otherwise. People learn one of two ways. Either by recognising patterns, or by consequence of misplaced trust. I prefer the first way.”
Her dark-as-night eyes met mine when I licked my thumb and wiped the small bloodstain that had settled on her chin—her skin was warm and soft, and she smelled as if she’d walked through a field of violets. “Arthur means no harm.”
“And the others?”
Though her round gaze told me she was curious, her heart that was still beating a mile a minute wasn’t giving a very cogent argument that she wasn’t scared.
“You’re the Duchess of Darkheim now. And my wife.
They’re here to keep you safe from harm.
” Her gaze still followed my hand as I brought it to my side.
“There’s two things you need to know once we leave Meridian.
The first being that you cannot leave this carriage at any point in this journey. ”
“What if there’s a fire?”
“Even if it rides straight into Hell itself. Silver Woods is a hunting ground. There’s hunters from this continent and many others who would test me and my soldiers for a single lock of your hair, you hear me?”
She wiggled her napkin-stuffed nose. “What’s the second thing?”
“No magic.”
“No magic what?”
“You cannot cast any spell once we leave Meridian borders.”
“Because of the hunters.”
“Because magic is forbidden in Mortdale.”
Her lashes fluttered fast. “A bit drastic.”
Sighing, I rubbed a hand across my eyes. “Thought you’d know this much.”
“I never cared to know how people are and what rules and laws they inflict on each other. Once dead, it’s all the same inside.
None of those rules and laws will even matter at all when I have my hand shoved up all the way in your guts.
Besides, it takes away all the fun if I know all the rules to the game. ”
“This isn’t a game, Willow.”
“It is to me. Nothing is truly real. You live by your made up laws, I live by mine. And who’s to say which is right and which is wrong.”
It was impossible to argue with that. Shrugging out of my jacket, I threw it around her trembling shoulders.
“Won’t you be cold?” she asked, briefly pressing her nose to the collar and inhaling deeply.
“No.” Did she really know nothing about my kind, or was she feigning it to make herself seem less threatening?
I reeled back when she grabbed my tie, pulling me to her. “Where are you going?”
“It’s safer for you if I stay out there. And there’s not enough space in here for the two of us to be comfortable.”
She still wouldn’t let go of my tie. “Don’t you people sleep in coffins? This is basically a manor to you.”
Funny. “Do you jump from roofs on the full moon to ride a broomstick?”
She looked me dead in the eyes. “Yes.”
“Liar.”
When her face broke into a huge smile, I realised Agnes might have tricked me into something far more wicked than I’d originally thought. “Well, we could. We just don’t make it a habit to ride our cleaning tools.”
“I’ll let my butler know not to hide them from you.”
She made a face and then fixed my tie, letting go of me.
Stretching my neck from side to side to relieve some of the tension building at the back of my head, I shut the door and quickly undid my tie before the scent of violets choked me.
Saints.