Page 1

Chapter

One

Iam dying. The thought had crossed my mind more than once over the last few weeks, but today the words became a mantra in my weary soul. I couldn’t escape the incessant hammering in my head.

I am dying.

I am dying.

Vampires were difficult to kill. Some would say impossible. But every time I got close to the edge, and I thought I might finally feel some relief from this never-ending pain, something brought me back—life and death being equally cruel mistresses.

I wasn’t quite a vampire, but I had enough of their genetic material to be difficult to kill, have blood cravings, and whatnot. But I was also something more.

Even the something more couldn’t save me from my current fate.

I was thoroughly trapped in a cage devoid of life. Mom, the clever bitch, had thought of everything. She’d removed every single plant and green thing within several miles, ensuring Evie wouldn’t be able to find me. My best friend could track me anywhere across the world if there was a plant nearby, and Mom had killed everything, destroying even the faintest whisper of life from this place. Even the soil lay still and lifeless beneath me.

Cernunnos, my sort of maybe not boyfriend, had magic similar to Evie’s. If he hadn’t found me by now, he was probably as magic blind as she was.

In other words, I was thoroughly fucked. With a capital F.

I’d used most of the leftover magic stolen from Cernunnos’s blood to keep myself alive, but I was down to the last dregs. I had to save at least a little bit to make a last stand.

And it was coming soon. I was withering away, slowly dying. Starved, beaten, and devoid of hope, my life expectancy had dwindled to weeks. Maybe even days if they kept forgetting to feed me.

Or hells, maybe I wouldn’t die at all, and I’d go into stasis, not quite dead, but not alive either. Whether I could be saved if that happened was entirely up to the gods, I supposed. Whether I wanted to be saved was a decision I hadn’t quite made yet.

“Good morning, Moira,” my mother said from the dark hall, her voice a sandpapered rasp over my skin.

She wore a good glamour and never let the magic slip, but I’d injured her not too long ago. I knew her well enough to see the hitch in her step and the grimace of pain she made when she thought I wasn’t looking.

She couldn’t heal what I’d done to her. Wasn’t that curious?

“Do you have a menu?” I wheezed, my voice a hoarse croak from all the screaming. “I think I’d like steak and eggs this morning.”

Mom’s mouth tightened. “Even after all this, you still retain your smart mouth.”

The vampire appeared from thin air to stand beside her. He was handsome in the way a corpse was when it was all dolled up. At a distance, one might mistake him as attractive, but up close you’d notice the waxy sheen to his skin and the too-cold color of his eyes. He looked worse every time I saw him, something about this place and its depravity wiping any lingering humanity from his skin and turning him into the monster he’d always been.

Liaza’s eyes raked over me, avarice and lust glimmering in the pale depths.

I stifled my shudder. Once I thought he might have a little decency left in his shriveled soul. That belief had died when he’d torn me from Evie and locked me up. His sessions, as he liked to call them, were cruel and depraved, and I knew if I ever made it out of here, I wouldn’t come home the same way I’d left.

Even the blessed dark frightened me now.

“I can work on her mouth,” Liaza said slowly, his gaze dropping to my lips.

“I don’t want her quiet permanently,” Mom said, giving the vamp a withering look. “Her screams give me peace.”

A fine tremor rolled through my body. I was enough of a vampire to be blessed, or cursed, with immortal grace. As long as they were careful not to go too far, I’d be stuck in this state forever.

Since they would, too, there would never be an end to their depravity. She’d turn Liaza loose, and Mom would suck down my power like a southerner sucked oysters down in early spring.

I’d tried to kill myself several times. Starvation, hanging, bloodletting—nothing had worked so far. They’d either been close enough to stop me, or I’d healed too quickly, even in this wasted body.

For one horrible moment, I wondered, could I die? Or had she done something so unfathomable that I’d be stuck here forever, hanging off the edge between life and death? Conscious and miserable no matter how many pieces they cut away from me.

But my mother would never scar me so cruelly, at least not in any of the areas she could see. She loved aesthetics, above all else, especially when it came to herself and the love of the mirror.