“Hadrian put this on you.”
“He calls himself king,” Victor snarls. “Every day, he brings me another piece of material cut from Emiliana’s dress and every day he tells me that as long as I do what he wants, he won’t cut her body instead.”
The fury in my brother’s eyes…
He loves Emiliana as I love Thyra. To be unable to protect her, to know she’s threatened every minute of every day and he can’t do a fucking thing about it…
“I can’t lose you, too, brother,” I say.
His brow furrows. “Antony?”
“If Hadrian put this on you, then the blood magic recognizes him as king, not me.”
Victor’s anger fades. “I don’t know what happened to you, Antony, but at some point, you must have died. When Hadrian latched this circlet, I believed you were gone.”
“I was. I died. And then I revived. But what does this mean for the circlet?”
Am I still the king?Did Hadrian latch the circlet during the window of time when my heart had stopped beating? A temporary power?
Or, as far as the blood magic is concerned, is Hadrian now the king?
Victor clasps his hand on my shoulder. “Anybody can touch the circlet without harming themselves or the person it’s wrapped around. The only danger to me is if you try to cut the circlet off me.” He looks me in the eye. “You have to try.” Then… “I trust you, Antony.”
But I’m shaking my head because he shouldn’t trust me. I lied to him for years.
I was certain Hadrian would have spread far and wide the fact that I’m a vampyr, but Victor hasn’t said a damn thing about it. He doesn’t look at me with fear. He doesn’t look at me any differently than he did before…
“My lungs are damaged,” Victor says, more quietly than I was expecting. “My first job was to design the tools to grind iron. I inhaled some of the dust. I don’t know what that means for me. I don’t know if the iron’s eating me slowly from the inside out. I don’t know if my time is limited.”
He places his other hand on my other shoulder, now gripping me firmly. “Antony. Brother. Hear me when I say this: I don’t fucking care if you’re a vampyr.”
Fuck.
My heart hurts. Jabbing pain.
For a moment, I think my nightly torture has arrived, that I’ve stayed too long, but then I realize it hasn’t, and somehow, that’s fucking harder to face because acceptance is not what I expected.
I allow my fangs to descend. “This is who I am.”
Victor doesn’t flinch.
He gives me a firm nod. Then he turns his head and points to the clasp. “Get this off me.”
Before I can second-guess myself, I run my forefinger across the clasp, pricking my skin to draw the smallest smear of blood that will either do nothing or?—
The clasp clicks open.
Seconds later, the silver chain unravels from around Victor’s neck and slithers to the floor.
He stands straighter, a fearsome smile growing on his lips.
Victor was always the most peaceful of my siblings. Clever. Considered. Dedicated to his work. Banished to this forge.
No longer.
“Let’s go,” I say.
His grip on my shoulders hasn’t eased. “You have to stop Hadrian. That is your purpose. But I have to get to Emiliana. Hadrian let it slip that he’s making her copy the pages of the Chronicle. He wants a replica he can read without fear of the book’s protective magic. As long as she’s useful to him, his harm of her is constrained, but once she finishes her task, he won’t be so restrained.”
