Page 21

I woke, first slowly, then as awareness teased at my edges, I grabbed it and slammed my eyes open. Fear chased away any drowsiness. Defenseless . Where was I? I craned my neck up from where I lay prone. Above me was an angled wooden roof. Under me, something I hadn’t slept on in ages—a bed.

I tried to prop myself up on my elbows, the blanket covering my back falling to reveal I was shirtless. My chest was wrapped in fresh bandages. My back ached like it had been ripped open.

Which it had been.

Memories crashed into me. My hand flew to my throat, then over the bandages as my movements grew more frantic. “ My necklace.” My voice was a raw rasp, but all I could do was push through the pain and twist to try to locate it. Was it lost forever?

No, no, no. Anything but that .

“On the table. Now, be still, lest you undo all my hard work.”

My head jerked at the sound of a voice. Raphael stood in the entrance of the room, propped against the doorframe. He was back to white hair and red eyes, though something about him was different.

Exhausted. He looked exhausted. His hair was unkempt, eyes sunk farther in with dark rings around them. His shoulders were partially slumped, as though he’d been standing too long in that spot. Even after they’d spent days whipping him raw, he hadn’t seemed this rough.

Something I now understood in a visceral way.

He lifted his chin to the other side of the bed.

I twisted my neck, my head already spinning from the small amount of movement.

Relief flooded my throat, letting me breathe again.

The bedside table held a pathetically small stack of cards and the necklace I’d retrieved from Greymere and carried hidden on the journey.

I reached for the necklace, but the movement was too much.

Raphael crossed the room and handed the chain to me.

I snatched it once it was within reach, wrapping my fingers around the cool metal as I tried to make sense of my immediate situation.

I didn’t hear any noise aside from the crickets outside, so we were unlikely to be in an inn.

A window was cracked open, letting the night breeze in.

“Your handiwork?” I croaked, pointing weakly at my wrappings.

The vampire grimaced. “You’ve been unconscious for three days. Your body’s been fighting an infection, which the salve has mostly dealt with.”

A fresh awareness of the bandages came over me. Raphael had dressed my wounds—multiple times, if he was putting salve on.

“Where are we?” I asked to distract myself from the thought. Since Raphael stood next to the bed, I had to crane my neck to face him.

“An abandoned house, about an hour’s ride from the city.”

“Was it abandoned when you got here?”

“Does it matter?” he growled. “Anyway, now that you’re awake, we can be done with this.”

I was going to ask what he meant, but I could only stare as he lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit down, scoring his wrist with a fang. He extended his arm in my direction, inches from my mouth.

Blood beaded on the skin, an invitation.

I tried to inch back, but it was hard with my back still wounded.

“Drink. It will heal you.”

I shook my head, decisive and disgusted. “I’d rather die.” Screw surviving. Not at that cost. I hadn’t known there was a line for me before—team up with a vampire to escape my sentence? Fine. But become one of those abominations?

Raphael didn’t look like an abomination, but I knew just how deadly he was. Even if it felt unfair to judge him for being deadly protecting me .

His gaze narrowed on me. “Do you know what others would do for this gift?” He actually sounded affronted.

“I don’t care. Never, Raphael. Never .”

He rolled his eyes. “You know drinking my blood won’t turn you into a vampire, don’t you? For that, I’d also need to drain your blood.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want any of that in me.”

Frustration etched over his features. “Back to thinking of me as a monster, I see. Even though it was your fellow humans who beat you like an animal.”

I flinched at his words. Shame filled me, twofold. For one, he was wrong. I wasn’t a victim. I’d done it to myself. Or at least I had, until Devoin took over.

All because I wanted to prove I was worthy.

And again… I did consider him a monster. In the most literal sense: Vampires were animated after death and consumed the life-force of others with their teeth.

But I wasn’t so na?ve that I couldn’t see there were monsters made in life too.

I forced my shoulders to relax, if only because squeezing them hurt. “I begin to wonder if there is anyone who isn’t a monster.” Nelson. Devoin. “I am… grateful for what you did. But this is my line. Please respect it.”

I readied for him to argue that I was being stupid again. That he knew better, and I should stop being foolish. Though I couldn’t fathom why he cared if I lived or died. I’d served my purpose.

He exhaled in resignation and slid into the chair by my bed. “Very well. If you insist. Though I’m going to need to change your bandages. You sweat through them before your fever broke.”

He left and returned a moment later with a jar of salve. A single whiff told me it was higher quality than anything I’d ever touched at Greymere.

It would’ve been easiest if I rolled onto my stomach.

Even propping myself up on the pillow hurt.

But that felt too vulnerable, and I couldn’t feel vulnerable now.

Not around anyone. It was a massive effort to sit up enough for Raphael to slide behind me.

Sweat covered my forehead by the time I managed, my breath coming in shallow pants.

Raphael simply waited. Then slid behind me on the bed and began to remove the bandages. I clutched the thin sheet for—modesty? Support?

The salve stung when he applied it, and a hiss escaped me. But despite that, his touch was… gentle.

The vampire, with the same hands that tore heads from shoulders, could be gentle.

I hadn’t known any kind of gentleness for so long that I found the sensation unnerving.

Maybe because of the pain I was acutely aware of every point of contact, every whisper of his palm against my skin.

Despite the pain, I wanted to lean into the touch.

Because I wanted any touch while in this shape? Or because I wanted his?

“What a reversal,” Raphael mused.

Despite myself, my lips twitched. Indeed . Then it faded. “Yours was much worse than mine.” The sight of his back flayed open would haunt me no matter how long I lived.

“It’s hardly a competition,” he retorted.

“You’d never have begged the way I did.” I wasn’t sure why the words came out. Wasn’t sure why I could taste the bitterness in them.

His fingers stilled at my back. I twisted to look around and regretted it. His ruby eyes were blazing .

“Raphael?” I said quietly.

“You should never have had to beg.” The words were as vicious as a slice from the scourge, but the anger in them wasn’t directed at me. “They beat you like a blood-damned animal.”

I turned away. Tears pricked my eyes. He was angry, on my behalf. Was I so pathetic that it was a comfort? But his pity was misplaced. “I did it to myself.”

“You had no way of knowing what they would do to you.”

I shook my head. “No. I mean I did it. Devoin—the priest. He told me I had to prove to the gods that… I don’t know, that only they could save me? That I was unworthy? I made it worse by sneaking the cards in. I should’ve sold them before going to the Monastery.”

“He knew you were desperate, and he used that to degrade you. To punish you for needing help. Any excuse they gave you—as if the gods give a fuck how much you suffer in their names. As for the cards, of course you had the cards. Every fucking mortal who’s not one of their cultists carries a deck.

You had no knowledge of what to expect, that it would make it worse. ”

A tear threatened to escape as he spoke. I rubbed a palm across my eyes to stop it. “I still agreed.”

“You told him to stop. And no one intervened.”

I recalled the way I’d looked at Slyne, desperate. The way she’d looked back, confident that things were exactly as they should be. “He was their leader.”

“And they’re dead for following him blindly,” Raphael replied.

They were. Bloody, bloody deaths. I’d seen him kill before. Nelson, the guards, Tom. But those had been quick, clean kills. What happened in the Monastery was a slaughter.

Would I be a traitor if I didn’t mourn their deaths?

“Is that why you took us an hour from Apante?”

“I thought it wise for us to not be around in case questions were asked,” Raphael agreed. “Not that anything they would do could truly threaten me, but in your condition…”

Weak .

“How did you hear me? I thought you were leaving for the marshes.”

“I decided to remain in the city for a little longer. Vampire’s prerogative.” There was a casualness to the words that rang false to my ear, but I was too weary to interrogate it. Raphael closed the lid of the salve and began to wrap my back once more.

“Why?”

Why did you save me? Why bother? Why are you angry on my behalf? I’m a human. I mean nothing to you.

I don’t mean anything to anyone. Not anymore.

“I suppose because I wanted to,” he said with utter nonchalance, the bed shifting as he rose and walked to the door.

A whim. That’s all my life was for him.

Any further questions were cut off as my stomach let out a loud groan. Raphael’s head tilted at the sound. I flushed. Of course I was hungry. I’d slept for three days. Familiar pangs pierced me. How quickly I’d forgotten the sensation after traveling with the vampire for a time.

“I’ll address that,” he said, leaving the room before I could respond.

In the distance, I heard a series of clangs, curses, and eventually footsteps when he returned maybe half an hour later, carrying a plate.

A vampire is actually serving me a meal. Maybe I really was dead.

He placed the plate in front of me .

I looked at it.

Then I looked up at him, in horror.

“All that effort to save me and you’re going to poison me?”

“Only cowards resort to poison,” Raphael groused.

“Then what do you call this?”

The plate held a horrific mix of foods—berries, meats, beans, and at least two bones—bound together by something that might have started as eggs but was now closer to charcoal.

“I call it food . Now eat, Samara. Your body’s healing relies on you using that mouth to masticate, not argue.”

I gave the mound of “food” an experimental shove with a fork. “Don’t vampires start out as humans, or is that just a myth?”

Raphael sank into the chair next to me. For the first time, his gaze seemed deliberately pointed away from me. His cheeks were just a touch brighter than I was accustomed to seeing on the pale vampire. “You go six hundred years without cooking and show me how good you are.”

Six hundred years. But still… he’d done it. For me.

There was something nearly sweet about it.

Not sweet enough to counter the fumes rising from the plate, but sweet all the same.

“It’s blood or eggs. Pick one,” Raphael snapped, when I kept moving the food on the plate, trying to find some part that looked less noxious than another.

I picked the eggs.