She nodded, and he shut the door softly behind him. So quiet at this hour. She closed her bags and counted to a hundred to ensure he had truly gone.
Thea pulled her bag over her shoulder. It was maybe half an hour until dusk now. But she had one last stop before she could go.
She paused outside Samara’s door and slipped the letter under it, ink barely dried. It was the best goodbye she could do, letting her friend know she wasn’t abandoning her, with vague enough details that she would be reassured but not able to slip something crucial if the vampire compulsion betrayed her.
Thea could’ve delayed her departure another hour and told Sam herself.
But it was so much harder to lie to a friend when looking them in the eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
Samara
The stinging pain ofmy throat woke me. Third hell burn me, my head ached. I crawled out from under the bed and headed to the bathroom.
Ten deep divots circled my neck, flesh torn from where I’d clawed at myself. I scrubbed furiously under my nails until the water went from brown to clear. The skin around my throat knit together before my eyes, as it did each morning.
For all the blood mead I’d had last night, all I had was a headache and no reprieve from my thirst. I looked away from my neck, lifting a freshly cleaned hand to my hair with another wince.
I hadn’t bothered to take out any of the braids and pins last night. I was lucky a rat hadn’t taken my hair as invitation to nest in—though that was likely only because there weren’t any rats in Damerel.
I forced myself to work through every white-stranded knot before I let myself seek out the fresh blood I knew would have been delivered outside my door. In my sleep, I was an animal. Awake, I would subdue this vampire side. Even if I couldn’taccess my magic, even if I could no longer touch the grimoire, I was awitch. I wouldn’t let them change me completely. I would be strong so I could defend those who weren’t.
Control. I neededcontrol.
Finally I let myself leave the washroom and grab the blood. Before I opened my door, though, I found an envelope that had been slipped underneath.
Swooping letters formed my name in Thea’s extravagant handwriting. I snatched it up but grabbed the blood from outside before reading. Once I’d choked down an entire carafe of half-congealed blood, I ripped open the letter.
Sam,
I apologize for leaving without saying goodbye, but time is of the essence. I’m leaving to look for something that might help you. If all goes well, we’ll be reunited in a few weeks and able to begin our efforts in earnest. Raphael knows where I’ve gone, but not the true reason.
Always your friend,
Thea
I frowned at the note, reading it thrice over as if it might say more. I lifted it to candlelight next, in case a message was hidden away. But there were only those scant sentences.
Gone where? “Our efforts” must mean my magic. She really was helping me. But what could she be looking for? Was she worried the letter might be intercepted and thus said so little? Could she really not have delayed her trip just a little longer so I could ask her some blasted questions?
I fed the note to the flame, swallowing down my fears. I’d decided to trust Thea when I told her I was the necromancer. So that’s what I would do.
Raphael had said he wasn’t Demos, and he proved it every time we met in the arena. There was no set curriculum, not likeDemos had, where we worked on the same sequence of drills over and over. But there was something of a routine.
First, Raphael and I would spar with real blades to see if I’d made any miraculous progress in the time between sessions. If I had, it was so minuscule compared to his centuries of battle experience that it made no difference. Thea would call encouragements from the side while I got angrier and angrier at Raphael for being a shit teacher. When I would get too fed up, he’d set me into a series of calisthenics to build strength. After five hundred push-ups, a thousand squats, a truly sadistic number of crunches, and the tea break Thea would insist on, he’d invite me up to get beaten again, this time with some more pointers.
Today, Thea wasn’t here to shout encouragements that drowned out the angry voice in my head, nor to give me a break with tea to calm down.
“Where has Thea gone?” I asked when I could speak again after Raphael released me from the requisite crunches.
“Upset she’s not here to insist on a break for you?” he taunted.
Raphael could be a special kind of ass during training. If I had been thinking more calmly, I might have rationalized it as him provoking me to train me for all kinds of battle—physical and mental.
But it usually just worked in provoking me.
“I’m wondering why my only friend left me a letter before dusk and didn’t say goodbye,” I snapped.
