I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead, and she sighed. I felt her arms wind around my waist as I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled against her skin.
“It’s not your fault.” When she spoke, her breath tickled my neck. I knew I should probably pull away instead of staying like this, but I enjoyed it too much. I had never been this close to her.
“Thank you, Julian,” Vanessa said softly.
“For what?”
“You’re the only one who’s ever really made me feel like I could tell you anything and you wouldn’t think less of me.”
“Never.” I raised my hand from Vanessa’s cheek to run my fingers through her hair, my eyes still closed. “I think the world of you.”
A moment of uncertainty claimed my mind; I wondered if I’d said too much. I felt one of her hands leave my back, and a moment later, it rested on my chest.
“I think the world of you, too.” This time, Vanessa’s breath met my chin as her face shifted slightly. Her hand gripped my shirt, and I felt her trembling. She seemed to be struggling with something, and I opened my eyes a crack to determine whether she was all right. Her eyes were closed, and as she took a deep, steadying breath, she leaned in to close the remaining distance between us and met my lips with her own.
My heart pounded, my every nerve brought to life by the contact and my eyes closing once more as my hand at her back pulled her closer. Her kiss was soft and tasted slightly of vanilla, but I thought that might just be my confused senses processing her perfume. I kissed her slowly, needing to draw out this moment for as long as I could manage. At length, she pulled back, and the movement was hesitant enough that it wasn’t hard for me to imagine that she’d enjoyed the kiss as much as I had as I opened my eyes to meet hers.
“I’m sorry,” Vanessa breathed. “I shouldn’t have—”
“You absolutely should have.” I smiled, my hand slipping down to brush her cheek. “I’ve wanted to do that for years. You just beat me to it.”
Vanessa laughed quietly. “Good to know.” She yawned, bringing her hand from my shirt to her mouth to cover it as she leaned back a bit. “Well, I’m sorry again. I swear that wasn’t directed at you. Today’s just taken a lot out of me.”
“I understand,” I said. “I should let you rest.” I withdrew slightly, preparing to climb off the bed, but she held tighter to my back and laid her other hand on my arm.
“Would—would you stay? I mean, you don’t have to be here until morning—I think my parents would have a conniption, actually—but I’m still on edge, after what happened, and I think if you’re here for a little while longer, I might be able to get to sleep more easily and might be able to dream about something pleasant. You can leave whenever you want to.” Her cheeks had gone pink again.
“Of course.” It was such a simple request, but Vanessa seemed so flustered to make it, and I wouldn’t bother denying that I wanted to stay close to her, if at all possible. The longer I spent in her presence, the likelier I found it that I would be able to burn the kiss into my memory in perfect detail. “Where do you want me to be?”
“Right here.” She leaned in to kiss my cheek and then shifted, lying down with her head resting on the pillows. My heart thumped obnoxiously in my ears.
“Can I turn off the lights? I don’t want them to keep you awake.”
“Okay.” She smiled and raised her hand to stifle another yawn.
Grudgingly, I slipped away and got to my feet. I made my way to the wall and scanned it for the switch, and when I located it to the left of her door, I turned off the lights. I stepped out of my shoes before I returned to the bed. I lay down beside her and reached for her hand again, interlacing our fingers between our chests.
“Things are going to be better, tomorrow,” I said. “I know it.”
“Things are already better. Thank you.” Vanessa closed her eyes, giving my hand a squeeze.
I lay still, trying not to disturb her as her breathing settled into a rhythm and her eyes began eventually to shift behind their lids. I wondered now and then if I’d dreamt the whole evening, as that seemed much more likely, but if my mind had fabricated the warmth of her hand in mine and the dull tingling still present in my lips, I didn’t plan to object.
“I love you,” I mumbled into the darkness.
*
I winced as Gabriel’s fist sank into my jaw, taking only a moment to spit out blood before returning my focus to the other vampire and driving my knee into Gabriel’s stomach hard. He released a sharp breath as he fell back into the grass, and as I rubbed my jaw, I felt the sting of regret. I had half a mind to take it easy on Gabriel, given what he’d been through in the last week with the loss of his brother at Briarcrest, but if I didn’t win this fight, I wouldn’t be able to face Victor.
It was Victor’s cold face and infuriating smirk I called to the front of my mind as I bent to deliver a punch to Gabriel’s chest. If I could force myself to focus on the man I wanted to tear limb from limb, it would make it easier to beat someone I considered a friend.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, catching Gabriel’s fist and twisting his arm around to stop the punch that had been aimed at my stomach. I didn’t anticipate the kick, which took out my feet and sent me to the floor of the clearing with an oof. Gabriel was on his feet in an instant, but he was unsteady, and I knew that if I was quick enough, I could end this now. I swung my fist upward as I pushed myself from the ground, landing a blow to Gabriel’s lungs. He fell, lifting his head for a moment after he’d hit the ground and then lowering it again as he closed his eyes.
The crowd surrounding us erupted in cheers, and Lysander stepped forward, nodding approval.
“Well done, Julian. Get him up.” Lysander nodded to Gabriel, but I’d already bent to grab my friend’s arm and help him to his feet again.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
Gabriel grunted. “The hell got into you?”
“I’ll explain later. I promise I wasn’t doing it to hurt you.”
“Still did a damn good job, though.” Gabriel grinned, reaching up to wipe a streak of blood from his cheek.
“Will you be okay?”
“Yeah. Good luck with whoever you’re trying to hurt. Or good luck to them, actually.” Gabriel started off into the crowd, and some of the others helped him out of the way.
“Are you ready for the next round?”
I returned my focus to Lysander, taking in the bloodstained eyes and dark hair pulled back behind his head. I nodded slowly, lifting a hand to my temple to rub away some of the residual pain that had splintered from a blow Gabriel had landed to the spot above my ear.
“Victor. Step forward.”
At the sight of him, my body went cold. The tension flooding through me was ice in my veins, and my eyes narrowed as my lips twisted into a scowl. Just as I’d imagined, Victor was smirking.
“You may begin.” With these words, Lysander stepped backward, allowing the crowd to absorb him.
“Go ahead, Jules. Give me your best shot.”
Victor held his arms out at his sides, palms facing me, leaving himself open to attack. A growl rumbled in the back of my throat, and I considered my plan. I would conveniently forget to hold back, aiming a series of methodical blows that would be both very painful and very slow to heal. I’d planned to save face with Lysander by reining myself in and not harming a fellow initiate too terribly, but now, as I surveyed Victor’s taunting stance and heard the whisper of Vanessa’s voice in my mind describing what he had done, I only wanted to make Victor pay.
I charged forward, teeth bared and fists raised. I slammed into Victor, knocking him to the ground and delivering a round of punches to his abdomen. As I struck Victor’s chest, stomach, and ribs, he drew back a hand, scratching hard across my face.
Don’t. Be. Distracted.
Ignoring the streaks of agony running along my cheek and the blood displaced into my eye, I slammed my elbow down into Victo
r’s windpipe, drawing a pained, strangled gasp. Victor drove his knee hard into my side, knocking me into the grass.
Get up. Keep moving.
I started to push myself up, but I was stopped cold by a blow to the side of my head from Victor’s foot that knocked me several feet backward. My vision blurred and impeded, I struggled against the desire to stop fighting.
I remembered the blood in Vanessa’s hair from when Victor had slammed her into the tree.
I forced myself to my feet just in time to intercept Victor’s fist on its way to my nose, knocking his arm out of the way and landing a hard kick to his ribs that propelled him another yard to the very edge of the clearing. I pursued him, and as each of us continued attempting to knock the other off his feet, we stumbled into the trees surrounding us.
I faintly registered someone asking whether the rest of the crowd should follow us and Lysander instructing everyone to give us room.
My fist landed squarely against Victor’s jaw. Though he spat out blood, he did not pause, swinging for my ribs and missing by an inch when I feinted to the side.
“If I didn’t know better—Jules—I’d say you were—trying—to prove something.” Victor spoke between punches thrown and received. My body ached from head to foot, but I pushed myself onward.
“You will never—lay a hand—on her—again.”
Victor caught my fist mid-swing, his eyes widening. Though his breathing was labored and he was bleeding in multiple places, he still managed to laugh.
“Her? Oh, Julian, you can’t be serious.”
“As the grave.” I glared at him, wrenching my fist free.
“You’re trying to hurt me because of a girl? Pathetic.”
I rolled my eyes and kicked for Victor’s shin, knocking him off-balance for a moment and taking the opportunity to wipe the blood from my face onto my shirtsleeve.
“Besides, you’re irrelevant.” Victor cracked his knuckles and pulled a knife from the inside pocket of his jacket. I caught sight of one of the mage crests I’d studied etched into its hilt—an ouroboros coiled around a goblet. “She’s mine. Stay out of my business.”
“She doesn’t belong to you.” My voice was low and deadly, and I glanced from Victor’s face to the knife and back as we circled one another. “Where’d you get that, anyway? Working with the mages, now? Figures.”
Victor snorted. “Nah. Took it off the body of one of ’em after the little bitch left me to fight them alone.”
“Not another word about her from you.”
“Ah, I get it. You know, Jules, I don’t think you’ll have much more luck than I have. She wasn’t too willing, after all. I’ll get that sorted out one of these days, one way or another.”
I lunged for Victor, tackling him at the legs to the forest floor. He moved quickly in response, slicing the knife into my upper arm. The cut was deep and agonizing, but I knew I couldn’t stop moving. If I did, the next swing could very well kill me. I elbowed Victor hard in the face and reached for the knife, struggling to pry it from his grip. The blade scratched and nicked at my hands, and when I managed to free it, the slickness of my blood allowed it to slip to the grass beside us.
Victor reached for it first. I struggled to my feet, and when Victor followed, I slid to the side just in time to hear the whoosh of the blade cutting the air before it sank into the bark of a tree exactly where my head had just been.
I had no other option. If I hesitated, even for a second, Victor would kill me, and then he would do the same or worse to Vanessa.
I reached for the knife before Victor could and yanked it from the tree, whipping it around and diving forward as Victor rushed at me, his teeth bared and aimed at my throat. As our bodies met and we crashed to the ground, I felt the knife break through flesh and sink in farther than I’d anticipated. My eyes had closed involuntarily to brace for impact, and when I opened them again, I realized the warmth flowing over my hand was the blood pouring from Victor’s chest.
The knife had met his heart.
Numb, I pulled the weapon free and let it fall to the earth. Victor fell beside it, gasping and spluttering for a moment before his breath stopped.
Wanting nothing more than to lie down somewhere and sleep for the next decade, I forced myself to my feet and turned away, limping toward where I’d left the others. The forest was far too quiet; the voices in the clearing had ceased. When I emerged into the open space the others occupied, every eye was fixed on me and every mouth was silent.
“It’s over,” I said.
A handful of paces from the trees, I collapsed, my body giving in to its need to rest and begin repairing my injuries. Footsteps rushed toward me, hands touched me, and low voices finally spoke to ask if they could help me. I only shook my head, shook off their hands. I wanted to be left alone and to be far from here.
“You did well,” said Lysander’s cool voice, but I didn’t look up to search for the pride in my leader’s eyes at the savagery to which I had finally succumbed. I knew it would be there.
**
*
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