Page 122 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

The old man slowed, watching the hearth cast eerie shadows upon the trembling crowd. There were murmurs amongst them, discussion of finding a way out. Jumping out the windows, climbing up to the second floor. If they’d be able to run fast enough with his apparent injury.

When Garin said no more, Artus stepped into the parlor and tossed the deed into the hearth.

A tinny ringing began in Garin’s ears when the room burst into an uproar, every nerve in his body alight with the sound and scent of so much fear.

“What are you doing, Artus?” cried Brient.

Mathias began to shake. “He’ll come in, now, won’t he?”

“Silence! Look .” Artus motioned to the door—at Garin, still tensed against the threshold, peering hungrily into the cage they’d put themselves into.

“Now that there’s nothing for him to sign, he will not enter this house as long as my bloodline lives.

That is a feral animal, and this is the foolproof cage we’ve put ourselves in to prepare for our hunt, just in case something like this happened.

” Artus strode to the aumbry at the back of the hall, opened it, and placed Aimee’s journal upon the top shelf.

“But what happens now?” asked the old woman archer.

“We wait him out.”

“But the sun doesn’t affect him,” Hamon pointed out.

“No matter,” Artus growled. “Someone will come and put a stake in his chest come daylight. We will hunt another day, and his little coven will fall apart without their leader.”

They’d have sent Rupert into Brocéliande first. He was inexperienced, and the only one seeming to wield a blade, which would do nothing against the coven. Even the most clumsy fledgling driven by hunger would have overpowered Rupert in an instant.

Everyone else who was armed held bows and hawthorn arrows stolen from the Trécesson armory. They’d have him walk ahead and planned to attack from a distance. Rupert was meant to draw Garin’s coven out. Then, the troupe before him would’ve ambushed his vampires.

Successfully.

A loud bang pulled Garin’s attention; Artus dusted his hands off after slamming the aumbry shut with a violent kick. “If you want your whore mother’s journal so badly,” he said, returning to the front of the house, “then you can come and get it yourself.”

All the speech in the room melted into a dizzying cadence—shouts of protest, incredulous shouts of hysteria.

A cacophonous, rapturous high washed over him, wave upon wave, mounting upon the unrelenting pulse of pain and hunger.

Garin’s home echoed with the staggered rhythm of dozens of heartbeats, bags of blood ready— begging —to be spilled.

“Garin,” Lilac said into his ear, her voice determinedly calm as she pressed her body against his, squeezing his hand. He blinked. “Listen to me. They’re done, all of them. They will be apprehended and hung in the street by tomorrow, I’ll be sure of it.”

Artus cackled behind her. “By you and what army?”

“That one,” said Myrddin quietly, followed by Lilac’s sharp inhale.

A deep, distant rumble of hooves pummeling the ground cut through the crops.

Garin froze—-then turned to see a small army of Trécesson guards galloping up the hill, weaving and bobbing between the patches of farmland and from behind the parked carriages.

Torches danced, littered among at least twenty others wielding bows and blades aimed at his house.

Yanna yelped and scuttled nearer to the porch.

How this was possible, Garin did not know—nor did he have the energy to find out.

Artus began to laugh, a choking, broken sound as those in the parlor behind him fell silent. “Corruption! Blasphemy!”

The sound of the queen’s slamming pulse drowned the sound of Artus’s shouting.

He hadn’t noticed it growing louder—and the night certainly hadn’t quieted—but it was all Garin could hear.

Lilac craned her head before him. Her cheeks were stained with the salt of tears, eyes bright with concern.

She reached up to stroke Garin’s face reassuringly, but Garin shook his head as his hand rose to envelop hers.

He squeezed her hand in warning and swiftly removed her palm from his face; it wasn’t her fault.

She didn’t know he was fighting the urge to heal himself by plunging his fangs so deeply into her that it would frighten her.

“Guillotines,” she whispered urgently, almost crooning as she tugged him away from the house. “A torturer.” He could tell by her scent that her body was beginning to react to whatever it was he felt. “Whatever you see fit to punish them, I’ll rearrange it.”

“They won’t get that far,” Garin replied through his teeth, his body unfamiliarly rigid against hers. “I won’t allow it.”

“But we have to leave,” she argued, glancing down at his body. “You’re hurt, I need to get you to the infirmary.”

“Kemble would never treat a vampire. Not one looking like this.”

“She has . Just unknowingly. Kemble will treat whomever I ask her to. I’ll notarize your paperwork for this property myself.” When he didn’t answer, she said, “It’s the journal, isn’t it? ”

Garin’s hardened gaze remained on the aumbry.

Lilac spun for the door—toward Artus—but Garin shot his arm out and snagged her waist, tugging her against him.

“Don’t think about it,” he said softly into her ear. Her pulse went haywire in his arms, and Garin forced his mouth away from her delicate neck. “Stand down.”

Outrage sparked in her eyes.

“Down the steps. Stand down and stay there.” Garin turned toward the house, unable to watch as her body raged against her instincts and dragged her down the steps; her fingernails had raked across his shoulder, sending a dangerous surge through his muscles and loin.

She joined Myrddin at the base of the stairs.

Garin stared at his feet.

It had been so long. Bitter memories stained the place, lifting from the floorboards like creeping ghouls. Tendrils of time and past had tugged at him the first time he’d visited with Lilac. Tonight, they had him by the throat.

He saw himself, scrawny and helpless, pulling Aimee’s body from the kitchen and into the yard.

He’d cradled her cold torso to his chest, shouting, waiting for help to come because he’d refused to leave her, cursing the way he’d dawdled for a pastry and cup of milk from the bakery on the way home from the brothel after the Madame told him there must be some sort of mistake: Aimee wasn’t working that evening, and might’ve simply experienced a spell of forgetfulness when she’d asked Garin to meet her there.

Unlike the fantasy he’d painted in a heroic, almost boring lie for Lilac, his childhood—what little he’d allowed himself to scrape from the surface of his muddy memory—wasn’t exactly something to preserve.

His parents’ screaming matches they thought they’d hidden well behind the paper-thin walls, and Pascal threatening to report Aimee to the Church.

It was painful. It hadn’t made him stronger, or better. Time alone hadn’t healed him.

This farmhouse hadn’t been Garin’s home in many years, if ever—not in the way The Fenfoss Inn had become. Bast, Adelaide, the Algovens. Not in the way that Lilac was. There was no use in mourning ghosts, not when his future was paved with them.

Not when Garin promised Loumarch he would live .

Flashes of unwelcome memory assaulted him: the witches’ uncertainty surrounding Lilac’s survival, pouring over that book as he’d sat at her bedside and hating what he’d read as he monitored her every pause in breathing, every irregular heartbeat.

Lorietta begging him to reconsider as he mounted Lo?g and dragged Myrddin with him, pleading Garin to simply tell Lilac the truth about what he’d done.

As if there was any easy way to explain why Albrecht was being picked apart at the bottom of the Argent, along with Lori’s copy of The Histories of the Lasting Night .

Garin had thrown it in, hopeless, wholly convinced there was no other choice—that he could never be her choice, with or without the threat of France.

Then, watching Lilac awkwardly sway with Rupert at the feast, trying to distract himself from the thought of massacring half the room to steal the dance.

Fool , he thought aggressively, regarding his empty hands that wished to tear, maim, and—and hold. The moment you let your walls dissipate, the fangs of love impale you.

“Garin,” came Lilac’s voice, a hymn to his ears. “Come to me. Let us leave.”

She stood next to Yanna, who’d shifted her body protectively closer to her friend, arrow still aimed. Myrddin hovered behind them both, glancing occasionally over his shoulder at the guards.

Oddly, not one of them had uttered a single word since their arrival.

The corner of Garin’s mouth quirked. He peered back at the aumbry, then hummed to himself, lifting the nearest flickering oil lamp from the porch railing as he made his way down the steps. “Goodnight, Artus.”

“What? Where are you going?” the fallen duke spat.

“To be a proper gentleman and see a woman to the altar.”

“You, a gentleman?” Artus tutted, chuckling in pity.

“France will reign. A formidable army does not matter when one’s neighbor has a flaming arrow aimed at their window.

They will conquer, and I’ll rejoice in soon seeing the day your queen is overthrown and hung from the gallows once Maximilian realizes she is not worth the resources.

I tried to finish the job at the castle, that fateful eve of our meeting. ”

Garin stopped at the last step, refusing to allow the memory of that night into focus.

Still, his body remembered for him. The world began to slowly spin, and he grasped the bannister for support.

Lilac was there, straight ahead. Her arm was outstretched, those generous, round eyes beckoning him further.