Chapter 3
Three
SOPHIE
Ihear noises around me, voices, but I don’t understand the meaning of what’s being said. The words are jumbled and distorted. All I know is that I feel unbearably weak and lost.
“Sophie. Wake up,” a male speaks near me.
His voice sounds familiar, but I’m having difficulty placing him. I want to wake up, but my eyelids feel as though they’ve been glued together.
“You said the spell would work, Hector,” the male snaps.
“It should have worked. Give it time,” another male voice replies. I assume it’s Hector unless there are more people in the room.
“I don’t have time! Boone is gone, and Tatiana isn’t herself.”
Boone. That name feels like a bucket of ice-cold water has been poured over me. My skin prickles, and it seems I can’t get air into my lungs. With a gasp, I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling with lights that are far too bright.
“Sophie!” My father’s face appears before me. He looks frantic.
I open my mouth to say something, but my throat is dry, and it seems I forgot how to use my tongue to form words. How long have I been hibernating?
My father turns to the other person in the room. “Give me one of those damn blood bags.”
I follow his arm movement and see that the other person is human, and he feels powerful. He must be a mage.
My gums ache as my fangs descend. Father puts a blood bag against my lips, but I’m not interested in the stale liquid inside it.
I’m craving fresh blood from the source.
But I’m far too weak to move, so I drink what’s offered first. It’s no surprise that I empty the bag within seconds.
Father offers me a new bag, but I push his hand away and pounce on the mage, who was too distracted to stop me.
He yells as we both fall on the ground, but he grows silent when I sink my fangs into his neck.
His body becomes limp as his blood fills my mouth.
A rush goes to my head and I become delirious thanks to the heady feeling of drinking blood after so long without it.
It’s not only the satisfaction of quenching my hunger, but also the flow of information my brain receives from the mage’s blood. Blood remembers.
“Sophie, that’s enough!” Father tries to pull me away from the mage, but it only makes me clamp my teeth harder into his skin. I keep drinking until his blood becomes tasteless. That only happens when the heart stops beating.
I pull back and confirm what I already knew. I killed the mage. His eyes are wide open but seeing nothing. In my bloodlust, I tore through his throat. He would have died even if I had stopped in time. I wait for the guilt to come, but all I feel is a great void as I stare at the corpse.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you cleaned up.” My father takes my arm, and this time, I let him help me to my feet.
“Who was he?” I ask.
“No one of importance.”
I frown. “He helped bring me back from hibernation, didn’t he?”
My father waves his hand. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just a rogue mage. He won’t be missed.”
I look at the dead mage once more, trying to imagine what kind of life he lived before he accepted a job from my father. Maybe he had a family, children even. Surely someone will miss him. But I say nothing. My musings won’t change what happened, and it will only irritate my father.
He returns to me holding a wet cloth. His eyebrows are pinched together while he cleans my face.
Second-generation vampires stop aging at some point when they hit maturity.
My father still looks like a man in his mid-thirties, but he seems older somehow, and his once light brown hair has silver streaks in it.
“How long have I been gone?” I ask.
“Too long, darling. Too long.”
He doesn’t want to be specific, which is a bad sign. I take a deep breath and attempt to sort through all the information I received from the mage’s blood. He didn’t live long enough, so the knowledge is confusing to me. I’m missing a lot of history.
“What happened to Tatiana and… Boone?” It costs me to say his name, and I wonder why. Even though he was Queen Tatiana’s son, I never liked the male. He always gave me a bad feeling.
My father grimaces, then steps back. “Queen Tatiana is ill, and Boone… well, Boone is dead.”
Boone is dead. A strange sense of relief washes over me.
“How did he die?”
He sneers, and pure hatred shines in his eyes. “Lucca.”
Lucca Della Morte, the usurper king’s nephew. It’s been centuries since we’ve been at war with his family.
“The war isn’t over, then?”
“We had reached a truce, but Lucca killing Boone in cold blood changes everything.”
Boone was no saint. He was a sadistic male who took pleasure in killing vampires and humans alike.
I’ve never met Lucca, and if the rumors are true, he’s just as ruthless as Queen Tatiana’s heir.
And yet, I don’t believe Lucca killed Boone in cold blood.
I’m sure Boone deserved whatever happened to him. But I keep my thoughts to myself.
“What ails Queen Tatiana?”
The rage gives way to worry in my father’s expression. He rubs his face and looks away. “No one knows. I haven’t been able to see her in months. I don’t even know if she’s aware her son is dead.”
“If she’s sick and Boone is dead, who’s going to lead us?”
He squares his shoulders and stares straight into my eyes. “You, my dear. You will lead us.”
“Me? I don’t understand.”
“There’s something I never told you before. It’s about your mother.”
My heart clenches in a painful way. Very few things can make me feel anything, and my mother’s abandonment is one of them.
She didn’t want me, so my father raised me alone.
I’ve always wanted to know who she was and why she didn’t care for me, but Father always evaded my questions about her.
Now he’s willing to tell me about the female without a prompt.
“What about her?”
“It’s Queen Tatiana. She is your mother.”
My stomach seems to drop through the earth while my heart hammers inside my chest. I shake my head. “No, it can’t be.”
“It is, my dear.”
I think about all the times I interacted with the mercurial queen, and not once did she show me any form of kindness. She always watched me as if I was an insignificant gnat, a nuisance.
Tears prickle my eyes. “She loathed me.”
“No, she didn’t. That was all for show. She feared your life wouldn’t be safe if the court knew about you. It was all for your protection.”
I want to believe my father, but his words sound hollow to my ears. Queen Tatiana doted on Boone, her heir, so I know she’s capable of showing affection. Perhaps my father is only saying she cared for me so I’ll remain loyal to her.
“Did she say she wants me to ascend to the throne?”
Guilt shines in his eyes. “No, she didn’t say. But I know that’s what she would have wanted if she and Boone were gone. We cannot let those savage Della Mortes win the war, Sophie. They’re vile, and they’d rather see our race perish than accept defeat.”
“Queen Tatiana isn’t dead, though.”
“No, but while she’s sick, I… we must take the reins. Only chaos awaits us if we don’t take action now.”
In that regard, my father is right. We can’t rest. It’s thanks to the Della Mortes that the Nightingales closed off the portals, taking their magic with them. Our race is weakening because the usurper king betrayed Queen Maewe, the most powerful Nightingale queen.
Even though I’m still lost about everything, I square my shoulders and say, “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“We must end the Della Morte line, but Raphael is heavily guarded. We’ll start with his nephew and avenge Boone.”
A shiver runs down my spine, and my heart rebels against the idea of doing anything to avenge that asshole.
“It’s a good thing I’ve kept you hidden all this time,” he continues. “The enemy doesn’t know who you are.”
“You want me to kill Lucca?” I squeak.
An almost fanatical emotion shines in his eyes. “Yes.”
“He’ll be heavily guarded too.”
“True, but I have a weapon, and you, Sophie, are the key to unleash it.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “What weapon?”
“Madeleine Boucher.”
The name sounds familiar. I search through my memories until it comes to me. “I thought she died.”
“I thought so too, but it seems Solomon Corvicus and the High Witch have been keeping a secret right under everyone’s noses. Madeleine is a prisoner in the bowels of Bloodstone Institute, and you’re going to free her.”
I shiver. The stories I’ve heard about the Boucher family are terrifying. “Why me? Surely you could have already freed her.”
“Because your blood is the key, my dear. Madeleine is Queen Tatiana’s sister… your aunt.”
Son of a bitch.