Page 147 of You’re So Vein

If only life were that simple.

Augustin reappears, his face grave. “They’ve agreed to see us.”

“Isn’t that what we wanted?”

He presses his lips together, like he’s going to argue, but then decides better of it. He holds out his hand and I take it, ignoring the zing that sizzles along my arm. He presses his fingers to the statue again, and…

… the room disappears…

… time…

… fizzes…

… and then flattens out…

… and the world returns, but not as it was.

We stand in a circular hall, so vast that the walls are only suggestions of shadows. A glass dome above provides a view of the Milky Way. Before us is another altar, carved with a labyrinth, and around it stand several figures in midnight robes embroidered with gold designs. Their collective power hums through the stone room – older than kingdoms. They don’t turn to us, don’t react, but simply keep staring straight at the altar.

Cold air bites the back of my neck. My heartbeat screams in my ears. Augustin’s fingers crush mine.

In the centre of the altar stands Hannah. Her lip trembles as blood drips from a wound in her arm into the channels of the altar below.

55Augustin

“STAND BACK,” THE HIEROPHANT CALLS out, his gold diadem glinting in the moonlight. “She’s dangerous.”

That’s not what his eyes say. They glint with academic curiosity. The priests must have argued about killing her outright, but decided to study her instead. They will cut her to pieces to see what makes her work, before they drain her blood for spells and string her bones around their necks for good luck.

A miracle. An abomination. A Dhampir. A creature that should not be, within their walls, claiming to be the blood of Dusk Court. They see her as their property.

But she is mine.

Hannah whimpers. Her blood dribbles through the channels of the altar. Raw panic claws at my throat, like I’ve swallowed a family of spiders. I think of the way Komal described her fear of the dark, how breathing becomes impossible, how the world narrows down to a single point of terror. That’s what I feel now.

I know what happens once Hannah’s blood fills every channel.

How can they do this to her? Can’t they see she’s a child?

Moments of her life flash before me – taking her into the village in a sling and having the old ladies at the market fawn over how cute she was with her dark curls; her first teetering steps through the forest; the silly, delightful games she invented in her labyrinth; a powerful talisman of Dusk Court that has helped me to keep her safe; and her and Komal filling our cottage with laughter and mirth.

“I know exactly what she is.” I step forward, facing the Hierophant. “She’s my daughter.”

“Technically, she’s my daughter.” Dante steps before me.

“Silence, both of you!” the Hierophant cries.

“We have to do this,” a familiar voice says. A priest tips their hood back, revealing Irene. “We need to study her. We need to know that her kind aren’t a danger to us. You’re disturbing—”

His words cut off with a cry as Komal hurls herself at the altar. She’s got the leg of a gryphon statue in her hands, which she brings down on the stone slab with all her might.

SMASH.

Hannah leaps back as the leg disintegrates, sending up a cloud of dust that settles over all of us, dusting the Hierophant’s golden headdress with a layer of grey snow. I rub dust from my eyes and see to my delight that the broken pieces of stone have blocked the channels in the altar. Hannah’s blood no longer flows.

“Oops,” Komal says. “Butter-fingers.”

“That is a sacred altar.” The Hierophant rounds on her.