16. Isolde
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ISOLDE
S elene wasn’t at the cabin when Isolde returned after leaving Bastian on the roof, and she didn’t make it back before the sun rose.
It wasn’t uncommon for Selene to get carried away with a feeding partner and not come home before morning, so Isolde crawled into bed to sleep without even bothering to change out of the shirt she’d borrowed from Bastian.
She was exhausted from spending the previous day listening to the pounding of steel as he worked in the forge, and from enduring the tension between them all night.
Isolde woke the following night to the sound of the cabin door banging open, and Selene’s voice rending the silence.
“Isolde? Isolde!”
She’d never heard Selene’s voice sound like that before—sharp with panic, verging on shrill.
“I’m here!” Isolde scrambled out of bed and down the ladder from the dormer, her own alarm mounting at Selene’s tone.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Isolde’s feet had barely touched the main floor of the cabin before Selene was on her. Her Sire’s long fingers dug into her arms with enough force to leave bruises, had Isolde been human.
The bite of pain chased away the alarm, bringing Isolde’s sense back and her anger right along with it. “Why have you never told me about nightsbane?” she blurted.
She’d had a long time to think, between her lonely day in Bastian’s rooms and their silent night on the roof. The more she’d thought, the angrier she’d become.
Selene had saved Isolde from the brutal death that would have claimed her on that day ten years ago. She’d given her strength and protection she’d never had as a human. She’d trained Isolde to defend herself with knives and allowed her to avenge the human she’d been.
When Isolde had woken up a Vampire, her body healed but her spirit still broken, Selene had vowed to teach her everything she’d need to be safe forever. I can teach you to be untouchable, she’d said. I will make sure you have the knowledge to keep yourself from ever being hurt again.
But Selene hadn’t warned her about the one thing that could make a Vampire vulnerable.
“Nightsbane?” Selene repeated. Her dark hair was wild around her shoulders, tangled from the wind. “You don’t come home at dawn, don’t bother to send word, and the first thing you want to talk about is nightsbane? ”
“Well, I was poisoned with it,” Isolde said bluntly, “which is why I didn’t make it home. So, yes. I want to talk about nightsbane.”
“Poisoned?” The word came out in that shrill, panicked tone. “Isolde, if you don’t tell me what happened and” —her eyes flicked down to Isolde’s chest, then narrowed to slits— “ whose darkness damned shirt that is , so help me, I’ll?—”
“ Why have you never told me about nightsbane?” Isolde yelled.
Selene fell silent, staring at Isolde like she’d never seen her before.
In all fairness, Isolde had rarely ever talked back to Selene, much less shouted at her like that, so she supposed the shock was warranted.
Any other day, Isolde would have been horrified at herself, but she was too angry to care right then.
But instead of shouting back at her, Selene took a step away.
“I don’t know,” she said, all the anger gone from her voice.
“It’s been so long since I even thought of nightsbane.
The humans don’t know about it these days, only the Wolves, and we never have contact with them.
It just never crossed my mind to tell you. ”
“How could you forget to tell me about the one thing that can make a Vampire vulnerable?” Isolde demanded.
“I don’t know, Isolde,” Selene repeated. She seemed to deflate, her shoulders curling inward in a way Isolde had never seen. “I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry.
Isolde paused for a moment—really looked at Selene.
She saw the tangled mess of her hair, her rumpled clothes, the haunted look in her eyes.
Selene had never left the cabin with her hair unbound, not once in all the years Isolde had known her.
She said it was improper. And wrinkles in her clothes?
The Selene Isolde knew would never be caught dead in a wrinkled shirt, but here she was, her hair a tangled mess, her tunic creased, every inch of her looking damp and disheveled.
Vampires didn’t get dark circles, or the waxy pallor of exhaustion after a sleepless night, but Isolde suspected that if Selene was human, she’d have both.
Like she’d been out all night, searching for Isolde, sick with worry that she hadn’t come home.
Isolde felt her own anger drain away. “Is there anything else I should know about?” she finally said. “Any other herbs that might render me blind and keep me from healing?”
“No. There aren’t.”
Blowing out a breath, Isolde nudged her way past Selene and went to sit on the settee.
“I’ve been patrolling the village, trying to figure out what’s been attacking the villagers,” she said, sinking into the cushions. “Last night, I caught it tearing a farmer to pieces.”
Selene’s jaw dropped, revealing the points of her canines. Unlike Isolde, she preferred to keep hers elongated. “You saw it?”
“Not well. It’s definitely an animal—big, with pale fur—but I couldn’t tell exactly what.”
Isolde told Selene everything about her patrols of the village—that night when the beast had eaten the goats, and then her chase through the forest after it eviscerated the farmer.
She left Bastian out of the story, but when she got to the part about him finding her in the woods, she knew there was no more hiding it.
She was still wearing his damn shirt, after all.
“There’s a Wolf living in the village,” she admitted. “He and I have been working together, trying to at least catch a glimpse of the beast.”
Selene went deathly still. “You’ve been consorting with a Wolf ?”
“I’m not any happier about it than you are, Selene,” Isolde said.
It was the truth, though not for the reasons Selene thought.
“But he did save my life last night. I was bleeding badly, and the nightsbane had made me completely blind. If the beast had come back before he got there… I wouldn’t have been able to run or fight it off. ”
“I don’t care if he saved your life, Isolde.” Selene had sunk into an armchair while Isolde told her story, but now she shot back to her feet. The anger had returned, too, her dark eyes glittering with it. “He’s a Wolf . Wolves are not our friends, and they are certainly not to be trusted.”
“I’m well aware, Selene,” Isolde snapped. “And I’m certainly not friends with the bastard. He’s an arrogant, brutish ass, and I’m only spending time with him because he wants the same thing as me.”
“And what’s that?”
“To find out what’s attacking the village and stop it.”
Selene stared at Isolde, her eyes narrowed and her slender jaw tight. Isolde braced herself, ready for Selene to launch into a tirade about Wolves, how they were savage and flea-ridden and hateful. It was a lecture Isolde had heard so many times, she likely could have recited it herself.
When she finally opened her mouth, Isolde couldn’t have been more surprised. “Did you feed, to recover the blood you lost?” she asked.
“Yes,” Isolde said.
“Not on the Wolf, I hope,” Selene said sharply. Her eyes practically burned right through Isolde as she said it.
Isolde didn’t give herself a moment to hesitate. “No, Selene,” she lied.
Something told her that confessing to drinking Bastian’s blood would be a bridge too far.
“On who, then?” Selene demanded.
“Some red-haired man from the village. I didn’t ask his name,” Isolde replied, referencing the man she’d fed from on Burning Night. Not exactly a lie, that way. “Though I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
Selene stared at her for another long minute, eyes narrowed dangerously. Isolde held her stare, hardly daring to blink, much less glance away.
“You’re not going out tonight,” Selene finally said. “Not on the full moon.”
Isolde glared at her Sire. She wanted to argue, to point out that someone needed to catch the beast before it killed the whole village, that she would hardly be in any more danger on the full moon than she’d been the night before, even if it turned out that the beast was a Wolf.
But… Isolde could still see the worry in the set of Selene’s shoulders and the tightness of her mouth, and if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t like the idea of patrolling on her own after the other night.
With Bastian gone, there was no one to come for her if she found herself stranded and blind in the woods again.
“Fine,” she said, and then went to change into a clean set of her own clothes.
When she’d finished with that, Isolde came back down and plucked a book from one of the many shelves to pass the night away. Most of Selene’s collection was old history tomes and barely legible journals from ancient Vampire ancestors, but there were a few odd novels mixed in.
Isolde chose a romance about a farm girl nursing an injured huntsman back to health and curled up on the sofa to read.
All the while, she could feel Selene’s gaze on her, watching, as if afraid Isolde might disappear if she dared to blink.
Neither of them spoke, the only sound the gentle crackling of the fire.
Until the screaming started.