Everyone’s eyes lift to Lukain behind my mother. Garroway and Skartovius are still armed, I notice.
“Alacine Mortis is dead,” he announces. “I killed my mother.”
The rest of the evening goes in a flurry. Our long nights of anxious rest and disquiet drown away, replaced by blurring action.
Skartovius sends a vampire scout to the Chained Sisters, to report Jinneth has been safely returned to us—mostly intact—and Iron Sister Keffa can expect her shortly. We give my mother the most comfortable room in the manor to rest, and she’s out like the dead before I can ask anything of her.
Garroway keeps our borders under close watch with his woodland friends, bouncing between birds in the sky and rodents on the ground. Alacine’s death has changed everything, and rather than filling us with relief, it only seems like a dark omen as to what might happen next.
We force Lukain to tell us what he did to Alacine. I’m perplexed and astounded at his story of redemption, betraying his vile mother, though Skartovius seems less surprised. Clearly he knows something I don’t, and I’m tired of waiting to learn what it is.
“How did you do it?” I ask Lukain.
We’re sitting in the conference room on the first level, where most of these important meetings take place.
Lukain draws his sword with a rasp, setting it flat on the table, and I notice the silver gleam of it’s thin blade. “Wasn’t difficult with this. I’ve alerted the Five Ministries of Alacine’s death, as a fair warning.”
“That was stupid of you,” Skar grumbles. “Takes away our advantage.”
“Ouradvantage,brother?”
Their gazes lock across the table—Skar’s gold-tinged orbs meeting with Lukain’s lavender-hued eyes, both pairs tinged with a red tone belying their vampiric nature.
They look ready to leap across the table and tackle each other.
I stand, pounding a fist on the table, drawing everyone’s attention. “Just what in the Truehearts and Damned is going on here?!” My voice is shrill. “He has your sword,” I say toSkar, “and you just called your sworn nemesis ‘brother,’” I chide Lukain.
“It’s not my sword,” Skartovius answers softly, nodding his sharp chin across the table to Lukain. “It’s your father’s. Keep it.”
Lukain nods curtly, reaches into his tunic, and pulls out a small leather-bound tome. “This explains it better than I could, little grimmer.”
He slides the thin tome across the table at me.
I begin reading the pages, written in elegant script I notice as Skar’s handwriting. By the end of it—all one hundred fifty years of detailed explanation—my mouth hangs open, jaw to the floor.
“You truly are . . . brothers?” I croak, gazing up.
“Half-brothers,” Skar mutters.
“Believe me, I didn’t know either,” Lukain says with a sigh. “Alacine was keeping the truth from me my entire life, to paint Skartovius in a bad light. It appears she indoctrinated me to her beliefs in a way I’ve only recently come to reconcile. She couldn’t deny any of the claims in that journal.”
Skar sits back, smug. “I’m surprised she didn’t try.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. I finally saw through her web. The writing was on the wall just as much as it was on the page.”
Deathly silence falls over the room. It’s the first time I’ve seen Skar and Lukain vaguely cordial in . . . well, ever.
When my former master’s eyes land on me, there’s a plea in them, and it almost brings me to tears.Losing Vallan is unbelievably awful and heartbreaking . . . but the only thing that might make it better is gaining Lukain.
“The only thing that matters,” Lukain says in a soft, choked voice, “Is ifyoucan forgive me, little grimmer.”
I want nothing more than to do exactly that—to reach across this table, take his hands in mine, and accept him. To press my lips against his like we did so many years ago, now that the confusion and anger and betrayals have started to wash away.
But it’s not just me. I’m not alone in this world, this endeavor, and I have to take Garroway’s and Skartovius’ opinions on the matter into account.
So I look sidelong at my mates, impossibly hopeful, a painful fist squeezing my heart.
Skar says, “Whatever is good for my little temptress is good for me. It is her decision alone.”
