Chapter
Fourteen
Lucian
Istand frozen in front of Vittoria’s living quarters long after Elliot’s retreating footsteps echo down the corridor, with the choker necklace I gave her broken at my feet.
Her words…her anger…they hit harder than anything I could have imagined.
I’ve hurt her. She thinks I’ve betrayed her.
The thought claws at me. Picking up the collar, it feels heavy in my palm, like it now holds all my sadness.
I want to run after her, to pull her back into my arms, to explain, to fix, but I can’t. Not yet. Not like this. Not when she needs space to breathe, to process what I have done…or what she thinks I’ve done.
My attention snaps to Vittoria. She’s leaning casually against the wall where Elliot had landed, the hole in the plaster big, her expression neutral like she hasn’t just detonated my world. I feel a sudden, icy pulse of anger.
“You,” I growl. “What did you do?”
She just stares at her nails, picking blood out from underneath them—Elliot’s blood—unbothered. “What do you mean?”
I step forward, my eyes narrowing. “Don’t act stupid with me. Her friend, Kayla. You turned her. Without telling me. Youhid it.”
“I did.” Vittoria shrugs, as if this were an afterthought. “So what?”
Her disobedience scrapes against my control.
“If she doesn’t matter to you, then I’ll kill her and whatever inconvenient attachment you’ve developed along with her.”
“V-Vittoria?” the girl calls from the bed, her voice thin with worry.
I step toward the bed, but Vittoria moves fast and blocks me.
“Don’t.”
“You have one chance—just one—to tell me how this happened and convince me not to end her,” I say.
“Lucian—”
“Onechance.”
She bares her fangs at me. “Fine.” Then, after closing the door and blocking Kayla from view, she says, “The girl…became someone I care about, if you can believe it.”
“I can’t.”
She ignores me. “And I knew if I told you, you’d either forbid it or, worse, mock me for it. So I kept it quiet.”
She’s right. I would have done both those things because with the way Vittoria is, I have to keep limits on her younglings, otherwise she’d raise an army of them and bleed Tenebris dry. Not to mention she was my harshest critic when it came to Nell and also with Elliot.
“I thought loving a human was a weakness,” I say and cock a brow.
She grunts. “See, this is what I mean.”
“But am I wrong?” I ask. “There’s a saying about glass houses and throwing stones.”
“Fuck you. I told you I had my reasons.”
“So you want me to believe that you turned Elliot’s friend because you actually have a heart?”
