Page 58 of You’re So Vein

I see red.

It’s too much, after the marriage resume, after Dolly Auntie’s comment about the grandchildren, after his outburst, after all the strange and conflicting feelings smashing about in my head, after I’d seen him with that girl outside Nevermore Bookshop and thought that maybe he understood my pain… I’ve been worried about him and here he is, using my nephews for his own ends.

I march across the room, grab Augustin’s collar, and hoist the vampire to his feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Kiaan and Nikhil wanted to play dinosaur park,” he says simply. “I’m the hapless park ranger, and they are the velociraptors who have escaped from their enclosures and are presently eviscerating me.”

“And what’s that reporter doing?” I jab my finger at the camera, which doesn’t stop rolling. “Is he playing the suave mathematician who makes pithy statements about the hubris of humanity? No, because you’re using my nephews to gain sympathy votes. That’s low, even for you.”

“I was simply testing the impenetrability of the velociraptor fencing—”

“If you think you can play dirty by branding yourself the ‘family friendly’ candidate just because I’m an unmarried woman without kids—”

“That wasn’t what I was doing,” he splutters.

“No? Then what was all that about earlier, with Harish? And with the marriage resume?”

Augustin’s jaw locks. He’s doing battle against his face, and his face is losing.

“I refuse to believe it hurts this much,” he grates out.

I pause. “What?”

“Love.” He spits the word like it’s poison. “Gideon and Alaric are convinced I’m in love with you, that you’re the reason why my heart and stomach won’t behave whenever you’re near. But I know it can’t be true. For I have seen the love my parents had for each other, and it burned bright like a candle in the darkest night. It was not beastly, not wretched, not this agony. It was not watching someone make mistake after mistake and being unable to get through to them. So they must be wrong. I cannot possibly be in love with you. I am leaving now.”

He drops the toy and shoves his way past me, ducking back into the house.

Great, now Kiaan is crying because I frightened away his friend, and that damn photographer is snapping pictures of a discarded plastic dinosaur, and how has bloody Augustin Durant ruined this night for me?

He must’ve been drunk. Can you get drunk on blood? All that stuff he said…

It’s not true. He’s not in love with me.

And even if he was, I couldn’t fall in love with him.

I could never.

Could I?

18Augustin

Hannah: Have fun at the party. Tell me what Komal wears! Send me a photo if you can sneak one, so I can make her a matching scarf. I’ll even give her a discount, since you’re in love with her.

I’M SHAKING AS I FLEE the party. Gideon calls after me, but I ignore him. Let him and Alaric take care of the delegates.

I can’t do this. I can’t be in love with her. I must find a way to make it stop. It’s too painful.

Men like Lord Alaric Valerian get to break the rules of our kin for their true loves, but I don’t have the luxury. I don’t have “Lord” before my name or the Lady of Agony on my side.

I don’t have anyone on my side. Not anymore. And I have Hannah to consider.

The last thing I need right now is—

“Going somewhere?”

Dante di Sangro steps onto the rain-soaked driveway, blocking my escape.