Chapter Thirteen - Sen
Imove to block Kate, my shoulder brushing against Vidar’s. Luc’s forearm remains locked around the struggling blood mage. The tension builds in the stifling flat until the peculiar, scentless mage isn’t the only one struggling to take in a full breath.
Bran is dangerous.
He shifts between enemy and friend at the drop of a hat. When looking for a drinking buddy or someone to cause a little chaos, there’s no one more fun. But with Teagan’s life on the line, I want certainty, not an unpredictable vampire already ancient when he made Vidar a thousand years ago.
“You spend your days with blood mages now?” Vidar asks, his deep voice growling with distrust.
Bran grins, and I have to work to maintain eye contact. Something about seeing his handsome, youthful face stretched over bones that should’ve turned to dust a long time ago has always sent a shiver down my spine.
“I could say the very same for you, offspring,” Bran speaks like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and he’s laughing at anyone who does. “How is Astra Roth? She’s now the blood mage leader, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Did you just bite me?” Lucero asks out of nowhere, somehow sounding both uninterested and annoyed.
“Let me fucking go!” the mage chokes, enraged.
Luc shakes him like a wet ragdoll. “Do it again, and I’ll snap your neck.”
Behind me, I hear Kate shift. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gearing up to arrest the vampire well over three thousand years old for breaking and entering. As entertaining as that would be, I’ve come here for one reason, so Kate and her sensible pantsuit will have to take a backseat.
“Cut the bullshit, Bran,” I say, impatient and ignoring Kate’s indignant sniff. “Why are you here? Does this have something to do with Summer?”
Bran’s intense brown eyes, shot through with flecks of yellow, slowly move to capture the whole of me.
I square my shoulders. He might’ve convinced a village he was a living god eight hundred years ago for the fun of it, but the only way I’m getting on my knees for this psycho is if he cuts my legs off.
“Have you found your soulmate yet, Sen?”
Vidar nearly rips my arm off to keep me in my place when I go for Bran, rage hot and fangs bared. “What do you fucking know about him?”
Bran’s eyes glint with an emotion I’ve never seen in the ancient vampire. One that he hides behind his many masks so quickly, I could’ve mistaken the intensity of it for something else. But I’m sure it was… relief.
“Bran!” the blood mage barks. “Fucking help me out here!”
Bran’s lips quirk up. “Lucero, would you mind dropping Elio?”
No one speaks for a long time.
Vidar gives a single stiff nod.
Thump—Elio hits the floor, swearing while rubbing his bruised neck. He jumps up and storms to Bran’s side, glowering at the smirking vampire.
“What took you so long?” Elio snarks.
“You were doing so well on your own,” Bran replies, strolling towards the window covered in a fine layer of dust.
“Sen,” Kate hisses behind me. “What’s this guy’s deal?”
I clench my teeth, wishing Kate were anywhere else. It’d be so easy to compel her away. But my detective, with her moral code and steady determination that’ll one day get her killed, once made me promise never to play with her mind.
A promise I’ve upheld, and regretted.
“You should really leave, detective,” Luc drawls.
“He’s right, Kate. You said yourself you don’t want to see any more weird shit,” I tell her. “And it doesn’t come any weirder than our family reunion.”
Kate doesn’t say anything.
Then faster than anyone can see, Bran is by the front door and opening it with all the smugness of dismissing a servant.
Kate doesn’t scream, but the breath she sucks into her lungs could easily become one as she stumbles into me.
“This way out, human.”
Kate’s expression is so hard it could crack stone. “Fine, I’ll leave. Try not to burn another mansion down, or a block of flats in this case,” she remarks, chin up as she stalks towards the exit.
“You know about the mansion?” Lucero asks, eyebrows drawn in. “The one Vidar was staying in before Golden burnt it down?”
“That idiot told me about it.” Kate throws a look over her shoulder. “And who do you think he made cover it up?” she replies with a pointed look before her utilitarian shoes tap against the concrete stairs as she makes her way down.
I’m relieved she’s gone. But a part of me wishes I hadn’t promised to never touch her memories. Wouldn’t it be safer if I took this strange world away from her? And me along with it.
Lucero gives me an odd look, which I choose to ignore, as well as Vidar’s gaze.
Heavy with nine hundred years’ worth of history and too many words left unsaid.
They all thought I abandoned the family after Vidar lost himself to apathy, and in many ways, I did.
But staying away from them has always been as complicated as staying close to them.
Bran swings the door closed with a quiet, definitive click and strolls back to the dirty window.
“Would you like to explain why you attacked us?” I demand of Elio since Bran is being as helpful as ever.
“You fucking came into my place,” the blood mage barks like a puppy, either not caring or realising he’s surrounded by wolves.
“I have the right to protect myself and that dickhead.” He jerks his head to Bran, who shrugs with a little self-deprecating smile, like darn it, he just can’t help himself. I manage to resist my eye roll.
Luc doesn’t.
“Elio has you there,” Bran says, drawing a smiley face with fangs in the dirt.
“So you’ve coincidentally taken on a blood mage fuck toy, in the flat of a woman who resembles the Roth family and mysteriously died?” Vidar remarks.
“Granny Janet died of dehydration. How the hell is that mysterious?” Elio snarks, then makes a face. “And who’d wanna fuck a vampire?”
Bran flutters his dark lashes. “You don’t think I’m pretty?”
“What about the landlords’ changed memories?” Vidar asks.
Bran cocks an eyebrow. “Aren’t you also squatting in a mansion where you compelled the owner to leave?”
“He isn’t wrong,” Luc drawls.
“And why doesn’t your blood mage smell of rotting meat?” I demand.
“I’m not his anything!” Elio snaps.
“But the smell?” Vidar pushes.
Elio glares, his mouth clamped.
“Come now, Elio, we’re all friends here.” Knowing Bran, it isn’t about being helpful. It’s because Elio has a secret, and Bran likes nothing more than forcing others to bring to light what they’d prefer to keep in the dark.
“It’s the fucking spellbooks,” Elio spits out each word like he wishes they were bullets.
“The spellbooks?” Vidar repeats.
“Did I stutter?” Elio mocks. Impressive, since Vidar could rip out the boy’s heart before he’s even aware it happened.
“It doesn’t matter if you made one or inherited it; the second you start using those gross things, your magic corrupts.
Magic isn’t good or evil. It just is. But carving runes into someone’s flesh, then skinning them alive to create a spellbook?
That is an evil act. That rots magic, and I’ll die before I ever use one. ”
“Useful information,” Vidar remarks, his pale-grey gaze swinging back to Bran. “But not what we came here for.”
“You want to know what Summer is doing.” Bran shrugs. “I have no idea.”
“But you know about her?” I question, my eyes narrowing.
Bran’s mouth curves. “Her name is on everyone’s lips. She tricked Emma Roth and fucked with a powerful vampire family.”
“I don’t want to get involved in little dick politics,” Vidar snaps.
Bran chuckles good-naturedly. If I weren’t intimately familiar with Bran, I’d think he actually missed Vidar. “Ah, you really haven’t changed, have you, offspring?”
“Enough of all this.” I glare at Bran and Elio. “Why are you here?”
Bran grins, and as the sun rises, orange light filters through the dusty window to frame his silhouette in a ring of fire. But everything else, save for his deepening brown eyes flecked with shards of yellow, remains cloaked in shadows.
My patience snaps.
Vidar grabs hold of me before I can charge at Bran. “I know you don’t fucking care about soulmates, but I care about mine! TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!”
Bran’s smile sharpens.
My stomach sinks.
Bran is the leering monster under the bed, the cackle from the deepest part of the forest. The friend holding the knife in your back—he cannot be trusted and must always be feared.
But for Teagan, I will face anything.
“Your offspring’s offspring will have four chances.” Bran’s voice turns lyrical and familiar, like he’s recited these confusing words a thousand times. “The last will end in pain.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I demand.
“Bran, enough. Speak plainly,” Vidar demands.
Lucero comes forward, his face hard and gaze piercing. “Golden. He’s talking about Golden.”
Bran takes a step towards us, and my throat dries. “While your offspring will only have one chance, that’ll be hidden within flames.”
“Kai.” Vidar sucks in a breath. “What have you done, Maker?”
Elio crosses his arms, his feet shifting and eyes darting like he’s looking for a way out.
“A grave for the third,” Bran continues in his sing-song Welsh.
My mind goes quiet—Apollo. Rurik.
“A sacrifice for the first.”
Teagan.
Vidar holds me so tight, his fingers dig into my bones, and only then do I realise I tried to lash out at Bran.
“‘A sacrifice for the first’? What does that fucking mean?” I shout. “Tell me what’s happening with Teagan!”
I reach for the connection with Teagan—it’s weak but steady. But my heart doesn’t calm down.
“And the youngest will not cave.”
“Ramy,” Vidar growls. “Fucking hell, Maker.”
Bran stands before us, backlit by the heavy orange sun. The yellow in his eyes bleeds into the brown, making them appear red—two sharp points fixed on us.
“Only once complete, shall the raven’s call be known.”
The silence in the room is thick enough to choke on.
Bran’s manic smile grows. “Haven’t any of you thought it was strange that most immortals go their whole lives never finding their soulmate? Yet yours just appear in your lap?” Bran asks, like a little kid finally able to say the secret he’s successfully hidden.
I tug onto my connection with Teagan again and again. Every breath sharp and shallow.
“Two thousand years it took to bring all your soulmates together with nothing but the prophecy from a crazed light mage who was powerful in foresight,” he tells us, opening his arms wide as if revealing a magic trick. “But it worked, and here we all are.”
“Did you know all this time Apollo wasn’t dead?” Vidar snarls. “Did you know we buried him alive?”
Dark amusement flashes across Bran’s face, and it sickens me. If Rurik ever found out…
“You will all find and claim your soulmates,” Bran orders with the same gravity that once convinced a village that he was a living god, “because I demand what is owed to me.”
“And what—” I bite out, filled with a seething rage that we’ve been tricked. That our lives, our soulmates’ lives have been manipulated for this fucking lunatic. “—are you owed?”
The morning sun rises higher, and Bran becomes nothing but a shadow outlined in a blaze. His eyes crimson, his teeth bone white.
“My. Soulmate.”