Oh, never mind,I think, realizing the assassins and their shadows have brought me to the next room over.
I quickly put the defenseless vampire missing his hands out of his misery. His angry comrade manages to get a few parries and lunges in since he’s seen my shadowwalking ability already, but I finish him off swiftly with a few well-placed strikes.
Then I calmly walk through the room, down the hall, and into my study.
“Now,”I say in my mind, pushing out the word in every direction.
Light, bare footsteps pad swiftly down the hall, muffled from their distance. I sit at my chair, staring down at the oak desk in front of me, waiting. My fingers tap on the well-worn edge of the desk.
The door flies open and Palacia charges in, her pale face plastered in a sheen of scared sweat.
“Run into the wall, little daisy,” I command, and fly my shadow to the bookshelf behind me, creating a circle of undulating blackness.
A second figure is seconds behind, chasing her, glimpsing a final gaze at the interfolk girl before Palacia vanishes in my shadow portal.
I close my eyes, making sure she emerges from a safe shadow: one of the acolytes outside, who will undoubtedly be shocked to see her sudden presence around the butcher’s table.
When my eyes open, I tilt my head.
I have to admit to being surprised by who I see in front of me. Slightly surprised, anyway.
“I expected Madame Mortis. Not you.” My hand falls on the hilt of my curved saber at my hip.
The dhampir frowns at me. “Sorry to disappoint.”
With my free hand, I run a gentle touch over the spine of a leather-bound book on the desk in front of me.
“Oh, don’t be,” I say. My gold-flecked eyes become alight with menace, my wicked smirk equally vile. “I’mthrilledyou’re here, Lukain.”
Part
Five
The ancient vampire pulls another empty page onto the desk, readying his quill to finish his tale. He has no need to preamble with a timeline for this page—the events running roughshod through his mind are recent enough to convey on paper without chronology.
The ones who were there will remember.
The Silverknight threat to Olhav ended more than twenty years ago. Though the fire was put out, the embers remained, smoldering just under the soil, waiting for a fresh wind to breathe new life into them.
Kavorin Mortis, adulterous, corrupt nobleblood, leader of the Intelligence Ward with its gang of unruly spies, and husband to a defiled wife, was dead. Killed by her hand.
Alacine placed the blame on her firstborn son, who only fought with Kavorin to save her and her second son, the half-blood Lukain.
Fearing retaliation from the remaining Five Ministries, the firstborn son fled Olhav for a time. He was betrayed, but as a vampire turned more than a hundred years before, he had no means to quantify or understand his feelings.
So the years of brooding began. Living alone in quiet contemplation, while planning his revenge against his own mother who failed him. Alacine believed he had become too ambitious and threatened her rise as the replacement of her husband in the Intelligence Ward. Even the son’s thralls and close allies knew not where he went. His location during this bleak time is not important for the subject of this writing.
The firstborn son heard the news in passing, though he didn’t know what to believe being so far removed from the court of vampires in the mountain city. He learned Alacine had married her Silverknight lover in secret, Heskel Angul.
Even as the firstborn son wallowed in obscurity and negligence, Alacine prospered. She became the lauded Spymistress of Olhav and struck terror into the black hearts of all who opposed her. Her second son, though still forced to live in secrecy alongside the petulant humans in Nuhav, was given a lauded position and made a name for himself as an underground leader of sorts. He poured decades of his life living this lie—that he was no more special than the slavefighters and broodstock he lorded over.
The firstborn son continued reviling his mother, having no emotional tools to forgive her for betraying him.
And so it was, after years of contemplation, the firstborn son decided to harm Alacine Mortis where she would feel it most and expect it least. He wanted her to feel whathefelt.
He would go after the aging human she loved.
He always found it odd the man never agreed to being turned, when promised with immortality and a life alongside his vampiress lover. Perhaps Heskel didn’t want to be a bloodthrall to anyone, least of all the kind of monster he had fought all his life.
