Page 8 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow (The Ravaged Kingdom #1)

“Well . . .” I drew a finger along the rim of my teacup, allowing the pad of my thumb to snag on a crack in the porcelain. “I left Silas. Tried to leave the Quarter, but . . .”

Imogen’s eyebrows shot up. “What happened?”

“With Silas?” I looked down at the cup clutched in my hands and shook my head. “I should have left him a long time ago.”

“No shit.”

I loosed a heavy sigh. “I went to one of our black-market dealers to try to hunt down a relic to help me escape this godsforsaken place. Tonight was supposed to be the night I left. But when I showed up at the dealer’s shop, I was attacked by a horde of demons.”

Imogen’s mouth fell open, and her eyes went wide. “Demons? In the Quarter?” She shook her head. “But that’s impossible. There hasn’t been a demon sighting in the Quarter in years .”

“Yeah. Tell that to my hair.” I fingered the singed locks, cringing as I imagined what I must look like.

Imogen’s smooth caramel skin had paled. “H-how many?”

“Three.” I ticked them off on my fingers.

“There was a fire demon . . . a demon that could make copies of itself, and one that could . . . take over a person’s mind.

Possess them. I don’t know.” My chest tightened at the memory of that horrible demon’s claws scraping against my mind — the sheer helplessness I’d felt as those voices filled my head.

“Demons,” she repeated, looking sick. “How are you even here right now?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. “Turns out a witchwood blade really can kill a demon,” I said. “And I might have had some help.”

I found myself unloading the whole story on my friend. I told her all about my stupid plan with the apokropos stone — how Julian had hinted that the buyer would be interested in my dagger. I told her all about my fight with the demons, Kaden showing up, and how the other demons had fled.

“How do you think they got in?” Imogen asked once I finished my story. “Any tears in the veil between realms are supposed to be warded.”

I shrugged. “Maybe there’s a new one. A tear that no one knows about.”

“Maybe.” We fell into thoughtful silence, though I could feel her watching me over the rim of her teacup. “You really left Silas, huh?”

I nodded. I still hadn’t told her why I couldn’t go back. Imogen wasn’t stupid, though. Silas was infamous in the Quarter, and she knew where his money came from. But even after five years of doing Silas’s dirty work, I was ashamed to tell my one and only friend the horrible things I’d done.

It didn’t matter that killing was a hunter’s nature.

It didn’t matter that I captured vampires who would have ended up killing innocents — or that the vampires were already dead.

Draining their blood, harvesting their venom, and then discarding their desiccated bodies made me just as much of a monster.

“The hellfire destroyed the blood bags I was supposed to sell for Silas,” I told her. “I can’t go back without them.”

“Do you want to go back?” Imogen asked, not bothering to keep the harsh edge out of her tone.

“ No .” My voice broke on the word, and Imogen leaned back on the beanbag. Her brows creased in sympathy, but I didn’t deserve her pity.

I’d done Silas’s bidding for years — not because he’d forced me — but because I was a coward. Because it had been easier to live under the protection of a monster than to face the terror of being alone.

Even when I’d been forced to listen to what he did to that huntress who’d escaped.

Even when Silas dragged me into that basement, stripped me bare, and made those cuts on my back — one cut for each mistake, carved into my skin over and over again to make sure they’d leave scars despite hunters’ quick healing .

“I can’t —” I broke off, unable to draw a full breath with the panic that was clawing its way up my chest. “I can’t leave the Quarter — not without that stone. Do you know how fast he found the last hunter who tried?”

“So stay.”

I gave her a look. “You know what the clans will do to me once word gets out that I’m no longer under Silas’s protection.”

Imogen swallowed. There was a reason Silas stayed safely tucked away in his house while the rest of us risked life and limb to harvest the blood. The vampire clans looked out for their own, and if one was caught poaching, well . . . they made sure the punishment fit the crime.

“Are you sure this stone even exists ?” Imogen asked after a moment.

“No,” I admitted, my chest clenching at the possibility that I’d risked everything pursuing a myth. If Julian hadn’t been able to track down the stone . . .

“There is someone who might know about the stone,” said Imogen slowly.

My brows lifted in surprise. Despite being a witch, Imogen was a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic. She didn’t trust magic she didn’t understand, and I could tell she thought the stone was a long shot.

“Who?”

She bit her lip, and I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to like the answer.

There was only one person I knew of who could cause Imogen to make that face, and that woman wanted me dead.