?The silence thickens for a moment right before I step into the ballroom. Then it’s like stepping into the past.
?There’s no sense of déjà vu this time, no flash of light, no internal warning. I step into the ballroom and music is playing but I am no longer experiencing my time.
?Shadows dance before me. Bodies clocked in darkness as their feet move in practiced steps. The entire room filled, a filter of cool tones over the setting with flakes of snow floating. Even the dance floor that I remember should be gold and red is muted.
?I take another step and wait for the whispers. It’s colder in here than it should be, and overhead a presence sits watching.
?Dance with me, Edmond.
?The voice behind me makes me freeze. I hadn’t heard anyone behind me before and I can’t sense any bodies full of blood.
?Glancing around my shoulder, I find the owner of that sultry voice. She’s dressed like a cobra. A skin-tight black dress with plaiting that mimics scales and what would be the hood on a cobra is flared out and decorates her shoulders and neck. Her mask curling up from behind her head and covers only the top half of her face.
?She’s facing Thorne. At least, a version of Thorne, dressed in an all-white suit and unmasked. Red eyes barely a shade lighter than my own that are purposefully turned away from the female.
?She drags her hand up his arm and presses her pushed up breasts against him.
?Please, she drags out mockingly.My Moassi, I want to dance. Do not tell me you are still mad at me.
?A muscle feathers in his temple but his body stays solidly still. His hands folded behind his back and not giving the female any attention. The same female who had been the one whispering with Thorne’s father yesterday when I had been given a piece of the past.
?Shifting my body, I face them entirely and wait, wondering if she’ll notice my presence like she did yesterday. I’m curious about her and what she could be. She has fangs so that limits the races, but not by much.
?Her hand creeps up over his chest and a sick feeling in my stomach makes me hope this is not Thorne’s mother. There’s too much. . . sludge around her. An inky film like oil coating aroundher that makes me want to rip her hands off Thorne’s father who looks like the same age as me.
?Edmond, the blood oath is just a precaution because –
?He takes a deliberate step away from her but keeps his focus on the dancing.You want to make the past forgotten. You want to make the past forgotten just likehewas forgotten. Except you forget that I had seen him, Locklyn.
?She lifts her chin an inch.Seen who?
?He snaps his body towards her and strangles her wrists as he grabs her and pulls her close so he can whisper to her. His voice dark and deadly but straining with control.
?The Forgotten God of Blood Moons.
?That presence above shifts. Neither of them notice it, but I can feel it. The weight of time and space and fate tips.
?I had seen him who they named Godskiller when that was never meant to be his name. All because one of your goddesses was jealous and now the veil is –
?Enough,she hisses. He pushes her away and shakes his head but she wraps her hand around his neck and brings him back in close.What you had seen, she emphasizes,is Sanivin at the end of her immortal life when she passed your garden and consumed the blue belladon that grows. Taking her own life as she had when she was nineteen because immortality was stretching too thin before fading to ashes a decade before the end of the War of Gods.
?She takes a closer step towards him, pushing him back. Two red lights beginning to glow behind her mask as her hand squeezes his neck.
?There was never a God of Blood Moons, only a Goddess over moons, stars, and night. There is no such thing as a Forgotten God because they are forgotten and we would not be able to remember them, and there is especially none named Godskiller because Sanivin the first vampire created had been named Godskiller. A thing that goes against the very balances of the universe, but her death triggered the end of the War of Gods and beginning an era of peace with the primordials and those below them.
?He grips the back of her neck and brings her so close his lips trace over hers, but an icy chill razes through the room as pure black aura floods.
?Says a forgotten goddess. All those keys within me unlock.Trapped within this body that will eventually age and grow old and die.
?Oh my god.
?She’s a blood witch.
?Her glowing red eyes snap over to me and she pushes Mr. Arcturus away.
?You do not belong here, she screams. It makes him glance at me and his eyes widen.YOU ARE NOTHING!
?I know.
