Page 53
As common earth
So did rot
The words are wrenched from me through cries of pain. I don’t even feel the carving of old scars.
My Dark hits him like a tidal wave. The pull on my blood stops, and he makes a choking, gasping sound in his throat. Then his hands are clawing at his chest, his arms, his face. Another heartbeat, and I see why. Every vein in Galvin’s body swells and blackens, spreading outward from his heart, until he’s covered in veins like the roots of a tree. The skin between them turns ghostly white.
I gasp, pushing myself away from him, and run up the stairs. Galvin charges after me, grabbing me by the hem of my dress, dragging me to him. My nails chip as they claw at the fibers of the carpet that lines the stairs. I try to kick him, but he pins my legs, his arms stronger than they should be. He pulls me under him and pins my arms to the ground. I’m staring up into a pair of depthless black eyes, spidering veins spilling from them. Galvin opens his mouth, the snarl of a predator.
“You—you’re a Dark wielder,” Galvin growls. “You’ve turned against Gault! You’ve betrayed the Light! Treacherous lying bitch!”
“I like the sound of that,” I hiss, and knee him in the groin.
He blocks my blow with his thigh and then flattens himself on top of me, pinning me down. “How dare you? You’re my bloodmate,” he says, “and you belong to me—to Gault. Submit.”
My body descends into some sort of paralysis, and even as my mind begs my legs to move, to fight, to flee, I’m frozen. A captive. I’m defenseless. For all my training, all my magic, I have no way to fight his commands.
This bloodbond is bondage, this new monstrous power in me no better than shackles. If I am destined to love Galvin, then love is a terrible, nightmarish cage.
Chapter Thirty
Fate is a funny thing. In Gault, it’s accepted that the Saints steer our fates, as inevitable as the turning of the earth, the seasons, and the stars. And yet, we make choices. Every day we live as though our times are not already marked out for us, like the Sisters do not spin and measure and cut every thread of life. I’ve never wondered before which is the illusion—choice or destiny? But I’d never had a Saint appear to me and tell me when my life would end.
And that is a thought too difficult to wrap my mind around. There has been so much—death, destruction, my best friend becoming a siphon, my bloodmate turning me into one, Lonan’s allegiance to the Kingdom of Darkness. A Saint declared to me that I will die tonight. But it feels like such an impossibility that I feel nothing. Or perhaps that’s just my shattered heart, compartmentalizing the horrors of life again, keeping me going, marching into the worst of life’s possibilities like a soldier. Because I must. Because falling to pieces isn’t an option.
Galvin marches me through the halls, not telling me where he’s taking me. A different girl might be fearfully compliant now—a girl who hadn’t lost her parents, who hadn’t spent childhood being trained in deadly magic, who hadn’t climbed trees in the Blood Woods and learned to slay monsters—but I’m not that girl. I don’t cower. I’m furious, and I decide to be very unpleasant about it. I’ve been commanded to follow him, not to keep my mouth shut.
“What’s your plan now?” I ask, compelled to walk beside Galvin through the halls. “Sit back and let the Ridding do your work for you? Want the Dark gone but won’t get your hands dirty?”
He eyes me viciously, that same glower that Lonan has, but it looks so different on him. “Did it look to you like I have any issue with killing?”
“Right, you murdered a little girl in the Founders Hall. Was she a Dark wielder, then? A deadly traitor, working for the enemy? No, of course not. You just got hungry, and you killed a little girl.”
He’s weak, I realize. I was able to resist biting Lonan even when the urge was so overwhelming I thought I might die without a taste of him. But Galvin is so easily plowed over by his instincts. He wasn’t brought up to be a soldier. He’s a prince—handed everything he could ever desire. That kind of entitlement makes monsters of men.
He grabs me by the neck and pulls me toward him. “Keep talking and I’ll remind you of my appetites.” He pushes me in front of him roughly.
The black veins produced by my Dark magic still wind over his skin, and if I’m not mistaken, he looks a little sickly. I did something to him. It didn’t bring him down, but it wasn’t useless.
He tried to take my timepiece once he realized what I could do with it. The touch of it burned him, and his hand now sports an angry welt. All his health and beauty isn’t immune to the Dark, it seems, and that gives me hope. As his bloodmate, I shouldn’t be able to hurt him. But I suppose the laws governing bloodbonds don’t apply to Dark magic. It might be enough to kill him, if I could just find the right moment.
He leads me down the corridor toward the guest quarters, and my chest tightens. “I swear, if you lock me in that coffin again—”
“No need. You’re more useful to me now that you’re under my command. But I do have a surprise for you.”
I only have a moment to steel myself for whatever that could mean before he’s forcing me through the door of his room.
Poppy is sitting on his bed. Her eyes are clear, but her arms are wrapped around her knees, terror written on her face. “Pop,” I whisper.
The moment she sees me, her eyes widen in terror. “No,” she says, turning to Galvin. “You said . . . you promised . . .”
“I promised you I wouldn’t hurt her. And I haven’t.” He looks between us. “Now, isn’t this lovely—the beginnings of our little coven. A family. This girl is your roommate, isn’t she, Vesper? I found her in the dungeon and freed her. I am her sire, so she’s also under my command. Now you can spend eternity together. Far be it from me to separate my bloodmate from those dear to her.”
I might be sick.
“I’m so sorry, Vesper,” Poppy croaks. “In the dungeon . . . I’m . . . Oh Saints, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, trying to meet her eyes. “It’s not . . . it’s not your fault.”
