The small hour of the direwolf neared when the vampires finally finished telling their tale. I shivered and pulled my blanket tighter around me. We had not dared to light the fire in case the smoke from our chimney drew attention so late. As a result, the annex was frigid and not only from the cold. The vampires’ story chilled me to the bone.
Sisters. Three of them. All taken from Winter’s Realm. All slaves to none other than Prince Gervais and later sold to the Red Assassins to pay his staggering gambling debts.
If I thought I couldn’t hate the vampire I’d killed more,I’d have been wrong. What he’d done to these sisters was beyond horrific.
And all of that might have happened to me.
Well, maybe not the being sold to an assassin’s guild part. I hadn’t had the prowess these sisters had accumulated before their turning, but all the rest . . . The abuse that Gervais was famous for,thatwould have been me.
I didn’t regret killing him. Not even with the consequences that action rained down on me. He deserved a hundred painful deaths.
And these faeries of Winter’s Realm turned vampires deserved more than the hand the Fates had dealt them. The issue was helping them when I held so little power and influence among the rebels. Among anyone outside this small annex, really.
Vale and the Riis brothers continued to pepper them with questions, so I sat there and watched Astril, Freyia, and Livia.
Each one had wings as white as snow and skin only slightly darker. With striking hair the color of a starless night sky, they appeared around thirty turns. Their differences were slight—found only in their builds, and in Livia’s charming lopsided smile. Her older sisters’ smiles were straight and brilliant. It was easy to tell that they were sisters. Invisible threads of love and loyalty bound them, and one could feel those bonds.
Would I ever have that love with Thyra? My heart, though guarded around her, wished for it so.
“You hail from Virtoris Island then?” Luccan asked, and my ears perkedup.
“That’s why we grew up sailing,” Freyia, the middle sister, answered. “Our parents were merchants before they journeyed to the afterworld.”
“Were murdered,you mean.” Astril, the oldest and the leader among the trio, scowled.
Like her sisters, Astril’s eyes were still red, and they seemed to burn with hatred. Though red eyes had often terrified me in the past, now they helped me trust these sisters. Red eyes meant the vampires had not fed recently.
“I’d like to take down the entire Laurent family for what they did to ours,” Freyia added.
We shared that rage, that hatred of the royal vampire family and, more specifically, the queen who wanted me dead. Some might think me crazy, past me would have, but after hearing their tale, I sensed that these vampires and I could work together.
“Did you know the Virtoris family?” I wondered where Sayyida and Vidar were now. While I hadn’t known either for long, they’d burrowed their way into my heart. I hoped my choices had not put them in danger, though I doubted Sayyida would allow such a thing. None in the House of the Sea Serpent would.
“We were too lowborn to be friendly with them,” Astril replied.
I doubted that very much. I’d seen Sayyida around sailors and she hadn’t cared about the details of their birth at all. I doubted Vidar would either.
“But I saw the Lady of Ships many times at the docks,” Astril continued. “Her mate too.”
“Once, I spotted the heir of the island. Handsome, thatone was,” Freyia smirked. “I wouldn’t have minded getting to know him better.”
“Well, he’s no longer betrothed to Princess Saga,” Luccan muttered. “Maybe you’ll get your chance.”
The middle sister’s face lit up, and unable to help myself, I shot an amused look at Clem. My quiet friend loved a romance story, and one featuring a vampire assassin and an heir to a great house famed for their armada would certainly be a story worth reading.
“All of this is interesting, but I cannot help but wonder what to do with you now.” Vale asked.
My mate was ever a fae of strategy, and as dawn neared, I could not deny we needed a plan. These vampires would stay, but I needed Thyra to see how valuable they could be. That they deserved to be brought in by her, as well as I.
“First, you should reverse your compulsion on the guards,” I said. “The longer they stay out of it, the more likely they are to question things.”
“Are they staying here tonight?” Anna asked, her voice high.
Like me, she’d spent many turns around vampires. She knew how they thought, how they lived, and how they disregarded humans, fae, and pretty much anyone who wasn’t a vampire. Anna had a right to fear the sisters staying in the annex, and while I trusted the sisters, I wouldn’t make my oldest friend live in fear.
“No.” I turned to the vampire sisters. “I don’t feelthreatened by you.”
A soft exhale left Astril’s lips. “Thank the stars.”
