‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do,’ I insisted.‘I’ve been here for months now.You could have done anything.You’ve never needed my permission to use your powers against me, and if you’d wanted to you would have done it by now.’I grabbed his collar.‘I trust you.’
His hands closed over mine.‘A lasting entrancement is different from a simple glamour.I can create one, but it won’t lift if I dropconcentration; I’m not sure how to lift it at all.There’s no going back if you change your mind.’
‘Then don’t do anything that would make me want to change my mind.’
He hesitated a moment, then his eyes found mine.I’d never had the opportunity to study them from so close before.At this distance I could see where traces of green pierced through the hazel.And then I felt him slip inside.
His will engulfed me.He felt nothing like Lukas.Where Lukas was slime, Raleigh was silk.Dread became anticipation.I let my mind fall to his searching, allowed my being to be shaped by his hands.He could have taken anything.Everything.I was his to command.
‘Your will is mine.From now, as long as your heart beats, you are beholden to me.No other man or beast may command you.’His words were distant, yet everywhere.They wrapped themselves around me, curling inside my lungs, my heart, the deepest reaches of my mind.‘And I command you …’ He tipped my chin.I tried to jerk away on instinct, but found myself frozen.The enormity of what I had given him crashed over me.It was too late.I couldn’t move.I was powerless to deny him, no matter what his next words would be.
‘Live for yourself,’ he commanded.‘Obey no orders but your own.From now until your final breath.’
And with that, I was back in my own body, as I had always been.I felt no different than before.Had it worked?
Raleigh looked just as doubtful.‘Leave me and save yourself,’ he said.
Then I felt it, a golden barrier within.His command glanced off it and was swallowed, transforming into a renewed sense of determination.
I grinned.‘No.’
Twenty-Two
THE FIRST WEEK OFour journey to court went forebodingly smoothly.
Raleigh’s carriage was a custom monstrosity that required four horses to drive, with the look of a stagecoach somebody had bred with a hearse.There was a single seat inside, facing backwards, so one could sit comfortably inside as they would in a stagecoach, but the only door was fitted on the back as it would be on a hearse, with a tiny curtained window peering out.The majority of the space inside was dedicated to housing a great wooden chest filled with bedding.This, Raleigh explained, wasnota coffin.It was simply a padded chest he lay in as a safety precaution to protect himself from any fleeting glimpses of sunlight that might shine through the curtain.He then reiterated that it was not a coffin and made it clear that if I didn’t stop laughing I would be left behind.
It was a coffin.
Moira and Enrique came with us.Lukas protested at first, insisting that the invitation only extended as far as me and Raleigh, but Raleigh insisted that a prince should never go anywhere without hispersonal attendants.Enrique, he added, was technically a member of the court and didn’t need an invitation anyway.Besides, we needed drivers.
Personally, I was glad for the company during the day.There was space enough on the driver’s bench for the three of us to cram in side by side, though we took turns retiring inside to sit among the bags, the coffin and the small armoury of weapons Raleigh, Moira and I all thought we’d managed to hide from each other.
‘It’s for self-defence,’ Moira grunted on the first evening, after Raleigh rifled through the bags in search of the source of an apparently intolerable reek of garlic and discovered that Moira’s was filled with anything and everything that could be used to kill a vampire.
‘Adaggeris for self-defence – yes, Clara, I don’t know how you got your hands on my father’s knife, but I found that too.You,’ he turned back to Moira, ‘brought a bloody hunting kit.’
Moira scoffed.‘You know there’s a silver sword hidden behind your coffin?’
Raleigh bristled with embarrassment.‘It’s not a coffin!And the sword is part of my regalia.Of course I’d bring it for an audience with the Queen.’
‘Didn’t bring your robes, though, did you?’Moira said.She winked at me as Raleigh stormed off in defeat, but rummaged through her bag and tucked a bulb of garlic into her pocket regardless.
We saw little of the Queen’s men as we rode, which I was glad for.Lukas pretended our altercation the other night had never happened, but I had no desire to find out if he’d keep up the act if we were alone.Each night when we stopped at an inn Yorik had marked on the route, they would join us for a terse drink that was fun for them and torturous for the rest of us, then disappear off into the nearest town or village to hunt.
Raleigh never joined them, but I could tell the temptation grew stronger each day.Three days in he took a sip from one of the bottles he’d packed and found the whole batch had gone rancid.He insisted it didn’t matter, that he’d make do with animal blood in the meantime, but this didn’t sit well with any of us.Animal blood could stave off his hunger for a time, but it wouldn’t keep him sustained.It was the same as the sawdust we used to bulk out our flour during the famine.
Each night Raleigh vanished to hunt.And each morning he was a little more withdrawn, a little closer to madness.
On the eighth night Raleigh joined us in the inn, looking paler than I thought was physically possible.His eyes were sunken, and he jumped at every sudden movement.I could feel him watching me when I wasn’t looking, his stare full of a hunger I couldn’t possibly sate.I readjusted my blouse, allowing the silver chain of my necklace to peek above my neckline.
‘You need to hunt with the others tonight,’ I told him.
‘I can’t.It’s bad enough killing someone who is already going to die.I won’t hunt a stranger just to sate myself.’
‘So you’d rather kill us?’Moira chimed in.
