My breath stills.
It’s from Arabella’s chemise.
The same chemise I tore from her body, before I became a monster and she… and she…
She came here.
Grief shatters the ice around my heart, and my heart with it. There is nothing in my chest but raw, pulped meat within a hollow shell of hate.
Vengeance.
“It’s all very tragic.” Lucien’s hand clamps on my shoulder, his fingers digging into my flesh. “I’m told that no one inside the theatre survived.”
Thatnight,that beautiful night when we lay on golden sheets and showed each other slivers of our true selves, wasn’t supposed to be the last time I saw her. I was supposed to win her over with my charms and help her and Jacob escape Paris and marry her on the stage at a theatre in Vienna and stand in the wings holding her furs while she toured the world bringing audiences to tears with her dancing, and every night I would kneel at her feet and worship her until she screamed my name like she might grant me godhood if only I’d give her one more orgasm.
She can’t just begone.
There isn’t supposed to be a world without Arabella Macquart in it. Even if she never stopped hating me, at least the venom of her hatred would have flowed in my veins, and I’d carry that piece of her with me everywhere.
Now all I have left is a singed ribbon of gold and a whisper of hate in my veins.
The fabric slips through my fingers, dancing across the cobbles.
“What is that you have there?” Lucien asks. “A little souvenir?”
I snatch up the silk before he can kick it away. I bring it to my face and breathe in. Ginger and myrrh fill my head, chased by the faintest scent of raspberry.
I turn away, not wanting Lucien to see me cry. He grabs me, his grip like steel, steering me along the street towards another lively cabaret.
“My poor sad Little Prince. I brought you here to teach you a lesson about being one of us – you can no longer tie yourself to the mortal world. You cannot love your food. I know you are sad to lose yourcocotte, but it will pass. Nothing cures sadness like the power now flowing in your immortal veins. That is what you must experience tonight. Obliterate her memory with the hunt.”
He pulls me into a dark alley, surveying the street beyond with the steely intent of a predator.
My stomach churns. I am hungry.Starving.The blood of that scarred creature churns inside me, its whispers growing louder. I do not feelright. I do not know what is me and what is Lucien and what is a darker, older magic. The hunger rises like a beast clawing at my chest, giving me the briefest respite from my grief.
“There.” Lucien points at a woman in a dirty green dress who tarries in the entrance of the alley, calling out a list of her services to the men who hurry past. “She is tonight’s feast. Streetwalkers are easy pickings, because no one will stop to investigate their cries of pleasure, nor believe them when they wail about a client sucking on their neck. But you have to be careful not to drink too deep. You can’t take enough to kill. If we leave a trail of dead bodies behind us, sooner or later, we end up on the end of a stake.”
He nudges me towards the woman.
“Go, Little Prince. She is yours. Take her. Embrace the gift I’ve given you.”
My fangs slide down. The hunger burns in my veins. My whole body trembles with heat and grief and rage as I grasp skin and pull my prey towards me.
“Very good, Little Prince,” Lucien praises me as my fangs descend on his neck. “But you must practise on the human.”
Lucien’s body jerks as my fangs sink into his flesh. His blood floods my mouth. I gulp him down, blood spilling over my lips as his crimson river flows faster than I can drink. I’m drowning in him, and it is nothing like the human blood he’s fed me from bottles these past days, or the dribbles from his veins to ease my transition from man to monster. He tries to shove me away, but he’s no match for me. Now that I’m at full strength, now that the scarred shadow’s ancient blood courses through me, I tastemorethan Lucien’s claret. I’m swept away on a molten river of Lucien’s essence. I lose myself in the rush of his avarice, his cruelty, his quest for power. Iamhim, his blood is my life now, and I think of the love he’s taken away from me and I take more, more, more for her…
“Gideon, stop! I told you, we don’t drink the blood of our kin.”
I don’t let go. I suck harder.
“She’s getting away,” Lucien snaps.
I’m faintly aware of a woman screaming in the alley, of footsteps scuttling away. Lucien jerks in my arms but the bite holds him captive and I won’t let him go.
This is for Arabella.
Lucien’s struggles grow feeble. “Gideon, you muststop.You are draining me. Gideon… you willburnfor this sin…”
