“Me, too,” I admitted. We shared a soft laugh. “But it fascinates me, too. Like walking into the past. I remember when ornate train stations like this one were all the rage. Now, everything is so utilitarian. Plastic and aluminum. Disgusting.”
“I can’t imagine how anyone ever thought they were prettier than this.” She waved an arm over her head. “I mean, this is real beauty.”
“You talk like an artist.”
“I guess I am.” She giggled at herself. “I mean, I had to come up with a cover all these years, not to mention something to do with my time. I didn’t need to work and wouldn’t know the first thing about getting along in an office. I hate being around a lot of people at once, especially the whole forced companionship idea.”
“We have a lot in common.”
“Yeah, it seems like we do.” She nodded toward the door. “You have a lot in common with her, too. I think the two of you are going to make a hell of a team.”
“And what about you?”
“Me?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Magda has hinted once or twice at me being part of things. Sophie’s rule, I mean. Between you and me, I’ve wondered if she was only stringing me along so I wouldn’t lose it at having to hide my powers and, you know, learn to cook.”
My brows lifted. “You learned to cook? No takeout?”
“I had to at least pretend like I was human.” She winked. “And I can boil a mean pot of spaghetti.”
We shared a smile and I found myself hoping Magda hadn’t been stringing her along. That she would be a part of Sophie’s rule.
That she would be part of my life.
Dominic opened the door a crack. “Magda’s asking for you both.”
Poppy pulled an almost comical face. “I guess she got all the rest she needed.”
* * *
SOPHIE
Once she had us gathered together, all sitting on the cushions scattered around the room, Magda smiled. Her faded blue eyes twinkled in the candlelight. “To have all of you here, together, even with Gabriel in his condition. It goes my heart good. Just as it thrills me to finally set eyes upon Sophia.”
Nobody had called me by my full name in so long. Not since I was little and getting in trouble. The full name meant I was in for it from Mom or Dad. Or both.
Now, she spoke it with love. Tenderness. It was almost like feeling the love of a mother again, like balm washing over my soul.
Bringing me peace.
And it wasn’t the tea working on me, either.
“We don’t have much time, I’m sorry to say.” She clasped her ringed fingers in front of her.
“You want us to go?” Dominic looked downright disappointed.
“No, no, of course that isn’t what I meant.” She smiled again. “What I mean is, there isn’t much time before a war erupts between Lucian and Augustine.”
My blood simmered. So much for the balm over my soul. “A war?”
“I’ve seen it all,” she murmured, staring into the fire still blazing away. “I’ve seen so much. Death. Destruction. Pain. Loss. Unnecessary, all of it. I carry those visions with me every waking moment and when I slumber, too. Yes, the brothers will go to war once you, Sophia, are not produced as Lucian has promised. Augustine will seek to take advantage of the uncertainty resulting from your absence. Lucian will be called a liar and much worse, and his brother will seek to undermine him and absorb his tribe, creating the strongest and largest tribe by far.”
“And then he’ll try to take over everything.”
“I am afraid so.” Magda sighed. “The notion of Lucian taking power is no better. He could only do that once you were dead and gone. The same is true of Augustine or of whomever decides to make a play for the throne. They will never be the legitimate ruler. Only you can be.”
I tensed. There wasn’t any helping it. I still couldn’t get over the idea of being a ruler. The ruler to end all rulers, at least by the way everybody talked about it.
“I’ve seen your indecision, as well. I cannot blame you for it.” Her eyes probed me when they locked onto mine. “What I will tell you is this. You, Sophia, would be the greatest queen to ever reign. You are fair, wise, strong. You do not back down from a challenge. You would not fly to war at the slightest provocation, unlike others who wish to rule. You have the power to unite rather than tearing down. I’ve seen it all, and it is a lovely vision.”
A sly smile played over her thin mouth. “Not that I would ever wish to sway you.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” But I managed to smile, even if the way she’d read my mind was more than a little unnerving.
“What about the others?” Poppy asked. “You’ve always told me how important her consorts and advisors would be, but you never got into specifics. Now that I’ve met them, I’m dying to know.”
She answered Poppy’s question but never took her eyes off me. “Each of them will bring something different to your rule, to your life. Dominic with his strategic mind. Gabriel with his innate understanding of the inner workings and motivations of those he encounters. Kristoff, always the peacemaker, who will comfort you in times of indecision and, yes, grief. For grief touches us all. Jessabelle—not a lover, but your closest advisor of all—who is able to cut to the heart of a matter with no effort. She sees through problems and identifies the best solution. The world’s most powerful leaders would do well to have her counsel.”
Looking around, I could tell everybody was absorbing this in their own way. And I wished Gabriel was awake. Having him there-but-not-there made having my future dictated for me even creepier than it would’ve already been.
“You’ve seen all this?” I could hardly keep it all straight.
“All of that and more. Did you believe it was chance, the strong attraction you’ve experienced toward the three men?”
I couldn’t look at them. A flush crept over my face, down my throat. “I figured it was a vampire thing.” It came out in a choked, embarrassed whisper.
“It is.” She shocked me worse than ever by winking. “But it goes deeper than that. The five of you, along with Poppy’s protection, will form an unbeatable alliance. You only have to accept your role.”
Why did Jessabelle look so happy all of a sudden? So many weird things happening all at once. My brain didn’t know which of them to pay attention to next.
Oh, right. There was one very big, very pressing issue looming over me. “Which I guess means being turned into a vampire.”
“Not necessarily.” When I gasped, clinging to this, she shook her head. “Though you would be hard-pressed to earn the respect of any supernatural creature without first being turned.”
There I went, embarrassing myself again. “I hope none of you are offended by that little gasp,” I offered. “It’s not that I don’t want to be—”
“It means a great deal.” Dominic was sitting closest to me, and he took my hand. “That isn’t lost on us.”
“It means asking you to stop being human.” Jessa even managed to look sympathetic. “And not the way we did. For me, it meant surviving. Either I turned, or I died.”
“The same went for me. For many of us, in fact. We were saved and damned all at once.” Kristoff looked sorrowful.
“I don’t want to be damned.”
“It wouldn’t be that way at all—not for any of you.” Magda held her hands up to silence the questions that naturally came from this. “To be a vampire is not to be damned. That is old superstition which I’ve witnessed from the beginning of your kind. A means to keep you hidden, to keep you hating your very nature. To make you believe you must behave in a depraved manner, as you are depraved. To rob you of any power you might wield.”
It looked like I wasn’t the only one having truth dropped on them today.
Magda looked to me again. “There is more I will want to share privately. About your lineage, about Aurelia. About how to best navigate what lies ahead. For now, I must change the poultice on Gabriel’s wounds.”
“I c
an do that.” But the head-splitting yawn that came out of Poppy’s mouth right after told a different story.
“You rest. I might be old, but I can manage.”
The circles under Poppy’s eyes showed how tired she was. That, and how she didn’t argue with Magda. She curled up in the corner with a pillow under her head and was out in no time. Like she had only been waiting for somebody to give her permission.
“And when I’m finished, Dominic, I would like to speak privately with you. About what’s to be done with your sire.” She spat the word like it curdled in her mouth.
Even an ancient witch couldn’t hide deep hate, I guessed.
Seventeen
KRISTOFF
Dominic and Magda spoke in what I supposed served as her bedroom, while Poppy slept in one corner of the chamber in which we waited. My sister sat next to her with a thick, dusty book open in her lap.
She hadn’t left Poppy’s side since the girl fell asleep.
Could she…?
Sophie nudged me, breaking me free of this train of thought. I’d taken a seat beside her once Dominic rose from his place. It would be cruel to leave her sitting here alone, watching as Gabriel took one labored breath after another.
When I looked down at her in surprise, she said, “I need you to promise me something. And when you do, I need you to mean it.”
“Anything you want.”
She blinked, frowning slightly. “That was quick.”
“What?”
“You agreed so fast.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Kristoff.” She lowered her brow. “What if I asked you to kill somebody? Or yourself? What if I wanted you to throw yourself off the Ben Franklin Bridge?”
“I’ve never been on that bridge, but I’ve seen it.” Most recently, while disposing of that filthy lycan’s body earlier in the day. “Trust me. I would survive.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. And I trust you. You wouldn’t ask me to do anything I would regret.”
Her soft sigh went straight to the heart I’d imagined dead before meeting her. What use did a vampire have with a heart? What use was there in loving when, in the end, everything an immortal being loved would eventually die, leaving them alone?
She hadn’t asked me to love her, but even if she had I wouldn’t have regretted saying yes. Even though it was the most dangerous request I could imagine when she wasn’t one of us yet, not fully. Too fragile, easily injured, easily—
“I never knew anybody could be like you. All of you. I don’t mean vampires. I mean, you know.” She looked down at our clasped hands, running her thumb over mine. “People ready to drop everything for somebody else.”
“For you. Why don’t you say what you’re really thinking? We’re ready to drop everything for you, because you’re worth it. Not only because of who you are to us and what you mean to our survival.”
“Why, though? I don’t get it. I feel stupid saying that, but it’s how I feel.”
“Because you’re you. You feel alone, but you don’t have to. Not anymore. You’ve fought so hard for so long.”
“Against myself, most of the time.” She snorted. “I wish I had listened to that damn therapist. Pick one.”
I was careful to keep my laughter soft for Poppy’s sake, and Gabriel’s. “You’re stubborn, too. With an understandably large chip on your shoulder.”
“It’s heavy. I’ve been carrying it for a long time.”
“You should set it down. Be better to yourself. No one deserves carrying that weight around.”
“I’ve had to take care of myself for so long. Even when I didn’t have to, technically, I didn’t want my uncle to be the one to do it.”
“Because he wasn’t your parents.”
“Right.”
“You wanted them.”
“Right again. You’re pretty smart.”
“With age comes wisdom.”
She rolled her eyes, and deservedly. “So I’ve fought on my own for a long time. That’s why I’m worth going to all this trouble?”
“Part of it.” I tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear and allowed my hand to linger against her ear, her soft cheek. “You deserve to have somebody on your side, fighting for you. I admire your courage and strength. I admire how you’ve borne up under this.”
“I practically fell apart.”
“But not for long. Here you are. And now that the shock is wearing off, you’re doing better than ever. It won’t be long before you’re ready to take your place.”
“My place.” Her brow creased like she was in pain.
“You’re still unsure.”
“Who wouldn’t be? You’re asking me to turn my back on everything I’ve ever known. My whole life. Sure, it was shitty, but it was mine—and I was working hard to make it better. I wanted to go back to school, I wanted to somehow make things up to my uncle someday. He deserves it after the hell I put him through. Now? How can I do any of that?”
“There are plenty of opportunities open to you. Do you think we live completely outside the human world? Certainly, my uncle prefers it that way and we’ve gone along with it, but there’s nothing keeping us from being part of humanity if we want to be. And now that it looks like I’ll never return to the manse…”
Her grip on my hand tightened. “Are you okay with that?”
“Better than okay. Completely fine.” I fought to keep bitter rage from leaking into my voice and upsetting her. “It was never my home, not really. Home isn’t the place you flee to. The lesser of two evils.”
“Is that what the manse was for you?”
“Anything was better than living under Augustine’s thumb.” Just the mention of his name turned my stomach.
It was good timing, the opening of Magda’s bedroom door. Dominic peered out. “Jessa. She wants you.” Instead of joining us, though, he ducked back inside.
I was glad for it. I had Sophie to myself for a little while, and she needed comfort after everything she’d been through these last several days. I felt her uncertainty, the way she was torn between her human life and everything that waited for her.
When we were alone again, except for the sleeping and unconscious, she asked, “What’s Augustine’s deal? I hear so many things about him, but it’s all been so vague.”
She needed all the information I could give her. The more she knew, the better prepared she would be when the day came to put an end to him.
“He lives in a castle. Nothing less. I know,” I chuckled when Sophie groaned. “It’s what he believes he deserves. He and my many brothers and sisters enjoy luring poor, desperate humans under the guise of giving them a good life. They dazzle them with clothing, expensive food, luxurious surroundings. They toy with them, and why not? To Augustine, humans are nothing but animals. Pets. Once Augustine tires of a pet, he destroys them and finds someone new. There isn’t any shortage of poor, hapless humans in the world.”
“What about what he thinks about other vampires? I’ve heard he thinks his sires are, like, the best.”
“Of course. They—we—come from him. And he is the cleverest, most powerful of all of Vlad’s children. Yet even he knew it was wrong to execute Aurelia. In a way, her execution was what led to the greatest instability for our kind. Not the lack of her leadership, but the rift between my father and my uncle which resulted from it. I never quite understood why that rift came about until now, hearing about it from Magda. Even Augustine knew better than to come out and accuse his brother when he had no concrete proof.”
“What made you leave?”
I winced. “It took far too long. I admit it. I was just as much under Augustine’s thumb as anyone else. Jessa, too.”
“I can imagine that.” There was a dry note in her voice, and it made me laugh.
“She hasn’t lost all of her old ways of thinking. You’re right about that. But she’s come a long way—we both have. It takes time to unlearn what you were taught from the moment yo
u were born, so to speak.”
“Born as a vampire.”
“Yes. But I did wake up.” Memories threatened to choke me, they came so hard and so fast. Crowding in on me. “I suppose I watched one too many pets being destroyed. The poor girl. I’ve never forgotten her. I know Jessa hasn’t, either. They might have been sisters, they were so similar. I think she reminded Jessa of where she’d come from. Her circumstances were terrible. I didn’t know her then, in the before times, but I had already been turned by the time Augustine brought her home. Crusted in filth, crawling with lice. Thin to the point of emaciation. She lived on the streets, in alleys, eating rats when she could find them and whatever scraps of rotten food were thrown from windows, out of doors. He must’ve seen something in her, for he chose to make her one of his own rather than feeding from her.”
A range of emotions washed over Sophie’s face. “I guess we’re not that different in some ways. She had it even harder than I did.”
“Suffering is suffering. It’s relative. You can imagine how eager she was to leave all of that suffering behind. And she did. We lived lavishly. But that girl…”
Sophie leaned against me, and her touch bolstered me. The past was not a threat. My memories couldn’t cause harm. They were nothing but illusions now, living only in my mind.
“She begged for help. I never found out whether she heard or saw something it would’ve been better to keep from her. All I know is she ran the halls, barefooted and wild-eyed, beyond the point of being frantic. Horrified. She could barely speak. The only word she could gasp was help. Over and over.”
“Oh, Kristoff.” Sophie laid her head on my shoulder. “What happened after that?”
“Somebody came and took her. One of my father’s trusted guards. I never saw her again.” I lifted my chin, remembering. “We left that night, Jessa and me. I wanted to take Graziella but we had to go straightaway—there was only a slim window in which we could escape, when I knew Augustine would be busy demanding answers for how his pet had escaped her gilded cage.”
“You make it sound like a prison.”
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