Page 76 of You’re So Vein

I hold up a hand. “Mina’s husband is outside. He’ll escort me home.”

“Komal, wait—”

I dash out of the cottage, my heart pounding as I hurl myself into the gloomy woods. Quoth squawks as he swoops down to keep up with me, but I don’t wait for him. I squeeze the spell bag in my fist as I bolt down the forest path, my chest hollowed out and barely able to see where I’m going through my tears.

I’m in such a hurry to escape the dark, and the raw hurt on Augustin’s face, that it’s not until I reach the lit-up village green that I realise something.

That was the first time Augustin called me by my first name.

27Augustin

I’M A FOOL.

28The Killer

NOT GOOD.

Very not good.

Nothing is going according to my plan. First, someone I never wished to meet shows up as part of the Conclave delegation. When I wrote to him about Augustin I never thought that he’d come in person. If he learns the truth about me, I’ve no doubt he’ll kill me too, even though we share blood.

And now, I arrive at Augustin’s cottage in time to see him carry Komal inside. I’ve been here for hours, watching, but I can’t see in the windows. I don’t have to use my imagination to know what they’re doing in there.

My worst fears are confirmed when he opens the door, presses her against the frame, and kisses her like he needs her to breathe.

Komal and Augustin are sleeping together, with barely a thought to the consequences.

What if Augustin convinces Komal to pull out of the race?

What if he makes her pregnant?

What if once again, he gets to have what he has taken from me?

I won’t stand for it. I can’t watch that smarmy vampire get everything he wants.

I can no longer sit back and wait for Komal to crush him.

It’s time for me to bite again.

29Komal

Argleton Weather Watch: I hope you like drama, because Mother Nature is about to throw a hissy fit.

I PACE AROUND THE DESERTED village green several times, trying to get my heart rate back to normal. I need to be somewhere with lights and noise that doesn’t taste like the forest or feel like cool fingers against my skin, but I can’t go home just yet. Then I’d have to confront the fact that I just promised my rival I’d withdraw from the mayoral race.

I need… control.

I need to figure out what’s broken inside of me that’s making me act so irrationally – and fix it.

Augustin kissed me.

He swore and he kissed me and I kissed him back and I liked it.

And now I hate myself. Because I don’t get to enjoy nice things. I don’t get to kiss someone – I don’t get to kiss a father – without remembering what I can’t have.

Thunder rumbles. Lightning cracks overhead, and the rain that’s been lightly falling all night stirs up into cold sheets that pound me from all directions. I crouch down low beneath the awning outside Glazed and Confused, clamp the spell bag between my teeth, ball my hands into fists and shove them in my eyes, and I count backwards from one hundred the way my therapist taught me. When I take my fists away, the first sliver of sunlight peeks over the horizon.

I survived the dark. I’m safe.