Paul is looking me straight in the eyes and, for some reason, he scares me. So much so that my stomach flips. I shake my head no.
“Seven. Years. Now ask me how long, before right now”—he shakes the dead man in his claws—“has it been sincehefed me?”
It’s a rhetorical question, so I don’t answer. Just ask one of my own. “Who, Paul? Who is doing this to you? The Obscurati?” Because clearly, he really is starving.
He scoffs. “The Obscurati? The Obscurati works for Nero. That pathetic little boy who calls himself a ruler. Seven years. Since the night I was born. That’s the last time he fed me.”
Everything I thought I knew about Paul the vampire gets flipped upside down in this moment. He’s scared. And starving. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
I blow out a breath. The hounds are so close now, we might have thirty seconds before they’re upon us and nothing has been settled. I don’t want to leave him like this because it won’t change anything. So I push my wrist into his space. “Drink me.”
“I don’t need you.” He’s scoffing again.
“Drink me. I’m a true Black witch, Paul.” I point to the body on the ground. “I don’t know who this is, but a Black witch he is not. Drink me, kill Nero—everyone hates him anyway—and I’ll be back to feed you again. Only next time, you will tell me everything I want to know. Do we have a deal?”
He looks in the direction of the hounds. They are so close now, and the baying is so loud, I almost miss what he asks next. “How long?” He looks back at me, his eyes dripping blood as if he’s crying. “How long do I have to wait?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s all very new to me and I don’t have much control, but I will find you, I promise, I will. Now drink!”
Almost before those words are out of my mouth, he’s biting my wrist. He’s not careful, he just rips it open. And once again I’m reminded that he is not the practiced, calculating, master vampire that I know in the future.
He is a frightened newborn.
The hounds are suddenly upon us, and they attack. I slip away as mist, but not before I see what happens next. Paul turns, mouth still blood red, just as it was when I came here. But his eyes are now blue.
He is no longer starving.
My blood did that.
And whatever he does next, my blood does that as well. But I don’t see it, because I’m gone.
It is in this moment that I realize what I have actually started here.
I am supposed to be killing him with dead Black blood, but all I have done is make himstronger.
And not only that, I promised to feed him again.
I’ll find you.
I tell myself it’s for answers.
But I think I have the answers I need.
I think I’m doing this for me, not him.
I think there’s much more going on here than anyone has told me. And while everyone has kept me as ignorant as possible through the careful dissemination of truths and lies, I’m finally starting to see the big picture.
This isn’t about vampires.
This isn’t about Black witches.
This isn’t about my eternal soul, this isn’t about ice castles, or the Obscurati, or the magical purple mist, or even Ryet.
This is a battle as old as time.
Thebattle ofalltime.
And I have chosen my side.
