Page 144 of A Vow of Shadow and Blood

Athriel,I call out, but his reply is so distant that I can’t make out the words he’s saying.

“What did you do?” Finn asks as his eyes fall on us. I feel his hands on my face, trying to steady my now drooping head. “What have you given them?”

“Exactly what I should have given to the last set of abominations you brought here. But don’t worry, son, I never make the same mistake twice.”

I hear words leave Kaia’s mouth, her voice once again sounding like her own, but I cannot make them out clearly. Before I can try to understand what’s happening, the world starts to fade to black, and the last thing I hear is Finn shouting my name.

Ashroud of darkness meets me when I awaken, and the thumping inside my temples causes me to squeeze my eyes closed for a moment. Someone groans beside me, and I snap my eyes open. A thin thread of light slips through the bars of the door, just enough to reveal Piper, chained in the space next to me. Her hands hang above her head, the metal shackles around them welded to a gray stone wall. My wrists ache with the weight of something cold, and when I look up, I find the same rusty metal wrapped around them.

Across the room, Kaia and Ajax emerge from their slumber to find themselves in the same position. My eyes dart around the small space searching for Finn, but he’s nowhere to be found.Did he turn on us to spare himself from his father’s wrath?

Kaia tries to rip at her chains, causing a loud clanging sound to fill the small space as she fights against her restraints.

“My magic. It’s gone,” she hisses.

“Mine too,” Piper says.

I sink deep within myself for the feel of Karius’s power flowing within me, but it’s gone, yet oddly, I can still feel Athriel, though it is faint. I call out to him, but there’s no answer.

“Looks like your little friend set us up,” Kaia says.

I hate that I can’t even deny it since the thought crossed my mind, too. “Maybe he had no choice.”

She laughs at this, but it lacks all humor.

“Everyone has a choice.”

I say nothing, knowing that she’s right. No matter how many times I’ve tried to justify the things I’ve done by telling myself that I had no choice, I know that it’s simply not true. There’s always a choice. We may not like it, but it’s there. My eyes scan around the room, trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of here, but the only way out is a thick metal door that no doubt is bolted shut from the other side.

“Why do you think he’s doing this to us?” Piper asks.

I sigh. “I guess he thinks that Finn brought us here to set him up or something.”

“Maybe we can talk to him, explain what we came for. He may understand.”

I shake my head at her.

“People like Finn’s father don’t want to understand. They hate your kind. You may forget that being locked up in your fancy castle, but not everyone has the luxury of being able to pretend,” I snap.

She dips her head and mumbles an apology, and I instantly feel like an ass.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t your fault.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t understand what it’s like to be human in this world. I say that I want a better world, but I do nothing to help make it happen.”

“It’s not your job to make it happen,” Kaia says. I look up and find her face twisted in anger that is directed at me.

“Then whose job is it?” I ask.

“Your kind decided to start a war, and now that you are living in the aftermath of it, you want to bitch about it and blame us.”

Her words fill me with a rage that heats every vein in my body.

“Maybe they did, but have you ever asked yourself why? Vampires are the ones who were too greedy to keep us as equals. You’re already stronger and have magic, but that just wasn’t enough, was it? How many humans did you kill in your righteous war?”

She tries to leap forward, but the chains hold her back, and her eyes turn to slits.

“You have no idea about the war. You think you know everything. Karius wasn’t supposed to inherit the crown—his brother was. He thought he could broker peace with your people so we could all live as equals. You know what happened? They turned on him just like he was warned they would, and then they started a war that killed children and innocents, so don’t you dare sit there pretending to have any idea what actually happened.”