Page 102 of Collared by the Vampire Prince

Clara gives me a modest, pleased smile. “Focus on technique, not speed, or you’ll lose a finger.”

Yes. An embarrassment I would never live down.

Not that I have much dignity left once I finish with the bucket of onions, weeping despite myself from the strong scent.

If it isn’t bad enough that I have been fucking blinded by a vegetable, I discover that every knife here is engraved and recorded on a chart—borrowed, essentially—so there is no chance of me stealing one without getting Clara and me into trouble. And every time I get within two feet of a useful blade, Clara appears from nowhere to hand me a spoon or a ladle.

“Are you sure you want to be a chef?” she asks when she tries to rescue a pan of buttered peas from me. “I only asked you to stir them.”

“And stir them I did.”

“They’re brown, Kira.”

“That is how I like my peas.”

“It’s not funny,” she says, failing to suppress a smile as she tips the scorched mess away and ladles a fresh batch into the pan.

By the time dinner service concludes, I have handled countless vegetables, buttered countless bread rolls—which is all the food preparation Clara dared to trust me with by the end—and helped wash several hundred plates.

Yet after all that, I have failed to steal a single weapon worthy of the name.

Between Chef Haynes’s hawkish gaze and Clara’s anxious vigilance, I doubt I could have smuggled out so much as a potato peel.

I leave the kitchens, and Clara beams at me as we climb the servant stairs. “You did well.”

“I did?”

“Well, Chef Haynes didn’t throw you out.”

Despite her encouragement, she seems relieved when I tell her that I do not think this field is right for me after all.

We are crossing the foyer when a black coat passes at the far end of the hall.

Nathaniel.

“I’ll catch you later,” I murmur. “I forgot to thank Chef Haynes.”

Clara immediately frowns. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. I’ll be quick. Straight there and back.”

She hesitates, but her reluctance to bother Chef Haynes again seems to settle the matter. “Alright. But don’t be long.”

Nathaniel has already disappeared beneath an archway. I curse under my breath and follow quickly, keeping my footsteps light.

I do not have a knife, so I cannot threaten him into removing my collar. But I can learn where he goes when he thinks no one is watching.

I keep a careful distance as he moves through torch-lit corridors, red light glancing over the icy strands of his hair as he crosses a narrow antechamber, then passes beneath another archway. The castle changes around me in subtle ways, the stonework growing darker, the windows thinner, the air colder.

At least it is deserted.

Without dozens of students and their perfumes muddying the air, his scent is easier to follow. Ice and smoke. He turns left. Then left again. A curved passage lets me gain ground while keeping me out of sight, and I quicken my pace as he disappears through a gap so narrow I nearly miss it.

I hurry after him.

A minute later, I step through an archway and find myself back in the foyer.

It’s empty, no sign of the Vampire Prince anywhere.