Mistress Mortis moves to the broken table, inspecting every shard like a detective. “You said she burned her way through her shackles and used them to kill Kleora?”
“Yes. With her Loreblood.”
For the first time, a wicked smile slashes across my mother’s face. She tilts her head, finding something, and crouches. Reaching down, knocking a broken table leg aside, I see she’s moving for the broken shackles Sephania used. Only one section of it remains.
“Careful!” I call out as she reaches for the manacle. “It’s silver.”
She wags her fingers, showing blackness. “I’m wearing gloves, fool.” Picking up the manacle, she leans close and smiles wide. “Excellent.”
“What is it?”
“Blood. Just as you said, sapling.”
Sephania’s blood.A wave of nausea runs through me.
“All is not lost.” Alacine stands, tucking the manacle into her cloak. “However, this won’t be enough.”
“Enough?”
She shakes her head. I know better than to think she’ll tell me her schemes. She always has five or six of them going at once, and I’m kept in the dark about all of them. No one knows Alacine Mortis’ mind completely. Damnation save me, I don’t thinksheknows her mind completely, the lunatic vampiress that she is.
I consider myself an intelligent, savvy half-blood. Compared to her, I am a child. She’s lived for too long, seen too much, and knows things I never will.
Most of all, she knows how to be evil. It comes to her naturally, while the vileness of my cursed blood is something I’ve fought against my whole life. There have been times I’ve slaughtered for the sake of making a point, or ruthlessly murdered someone who has annoyed or wronged me.
Alacine makes sport of it though. Compared to the Spymistress, I am a pacifist. I wish I had never been born to the Overlady of the Intelligence Ministry.
Alas, we don’t choose our parents.
“What now, Mother?”
She stops at the door. The blackness of her soulless eyes nearly makes me shiver. “Now we get her back, little sapling.”
Chapter 5
Sephania
The day passes in a dreamless slumber. As suspected, I sleep like the dead once I make contact with a bed. When my eyes crack open, the side of my face is sticky from a pool of drool.
I cringe and lift my head as footsteps pad down the hallway outside. My heart leaps to my throat, hoping it’s one of my men coming to ravage me.
A small, freckled face pokes into my room, beady eyes trained on me. Her pale lips slip into a smile.
Confused, I sit up and swing my legs off the bed. “Sister Lyroan? What’s going on?”
I hardly know the Sister. All she’s ever done is glower at me because I “stole” her “dashing prince,” Vallan Stellos. Of course, I never had the choice to steal anyone. My connection with Vall is simply too frenetic and heated for there to be any other outcome.
Standing with some trepidation, I wonder if the short, stout half-blood has come to attempt something dastardly while the evening meal is cooking downstairs.
I’d like to see her try,I think, towering over the girl and bunching my hands into fists.
Sure enough, she enters the room holding a pair of swords—a longsword and shorter blade. She holds them like a bundle of sticks, clearly unaccustomed to using them.
I bump back against my cot but then recognize the weapons. “What’s this?”
She shuffles into the room. “I went to your eastern hideaway to bring you these. They’re yours, aren’t they?” Her eyes are hopeful, as if the grayskin is looking for approval for doing something kind.
“Erm, yes, they are. You went out in the sunlight for my swords? Why?”
