Page 43 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

Her body was buzzing, her hands growing numb. She suddenly couldn’t focus on anything else but laying eyes on him, ensuring he was safe with proof of her own.

“Fine. Where is Garin then?” When the witches exchanged glances, the sinking feeling in the hollow of her chest turned to panic as they regarded her with uncertainty. Maybe he was here. Maybe they were keeping him from her. “Let me see him.”

Adelaide crossed her arms, the powerful scent of mead and cloves wafting off her. “He was adamant we didn’t allow him to leave the inn for the next week. I was against babysitting a vampire from the start, but she ”—she threw a displeased scowl at Lorietta—“insisted we help him.”

“We tried to restrain him,” Lorietta said. “But we should’ve known the inn’s magic wasn’t enough to keep Garin.”

“Keep him from what?” Lilac asked.

Adelaide stared. “Are you slow? From you .”

Her heart dropped. She imagined him showing up at the gate and growing furious she wasn’t there. Searching the castle for her. Reeling, she stepped away from the doorframe.

Lorietta approached them, standing beside Adelaide. Their shoulders brushed, and Adelaide, whom Lilac thought would have flinched at closeness, didn’t notice.

“Before you panic,” said Lorietta, “he did leave, but I don’t think he went to your castle.” She gave Adelaide a pointed look. “If he traveled in her direction, he would’ve found her by now. On her way here.”

Lilac would be sick. “You were responsible for him. He asked for your help…” It was difficult to mask the tremble in her voice. “And you lost him?”

“He and his friends ,” Lorietta replied, matching the frost in her tone, “were in his bedchamber when Bastion and Myrddin sprinted up the cellar stairs. They claimed that Garin and Casmir had bolted out of his cellar door. They then dashed out the front to follow behind on horseback.”

“Casmir? The vampire from the bar?”

Lorietta nodded.

Lilac rubbed her temples, trying to understand. “So, he’s with them now?”

“We hope so,” Adelaide answered. “They left together. The nomad vampire, the violent one, and that warlock.” She reached up, unbothered, to smooth a loose lock that sprung out of her updo. “And Garin.”

“Earlier this afternoon, the former three had gotten raucously drunk and burst his door open. They collected several of my wicker baskets and brought down a whole feast to spruce his mood ,” Lorietta quoted. “The vampires brought spirits and bottled blood. They were tired of him sulking in there.”

“I told you it was a horrid idea to let them do that,” Adelaide said.

Lorietta grimaced. “I thought it would be good for him. Garin struggles with loneliness as it is.”

Lilac thought of the fragments of dreams she’d had in her bedchamber.

Garin, pacing the floor, then wrapped in his quilt.

Everything felt far away—pieces were starting to come together, but nothing was making sense in a way that comforted her.

She felt unable to place the details into a coherent picture.

They fuzzed in her brain, which only focused on one thing: locating Garin.

“No one knows where they went? No one heard?”

“No,” Lorietta said, and Lilac thought the witch’s orange eyes flitted quickly over to Adelaide. “Meriam was tending the bar tonight. We’ve been taking turns since Garin began locking himself in his room after you returned home. She was the one who alerted us they’d left.”

She thought of the last few days, the hell they had been.

Feeling prisoner to her own desires, yet unable to act on them, truly, until she did as Garin had asked and found out there had been no propositions for marriage.

It had almost seemed too easy. Once she’d decided to try to leave to find him, most of her physical symptoms had eased.

Had he felt the same tortuous restlessness, the confusion she had? Was it also alleviated by giving up on trying to stay away?

If he’d left, supposedly to find her, and hadn’t… then where was he? “He told me I had to stay separated from him for a week to be cautious.”

“He is right in his concern,” admitted Lorietta. “This behavior of his didn’t start until after he sent you away.” She side-eyed Lilac and rubbed her forehead. “Have you two exchanged any amount of blood before the carriage accident?”

Lilac’s red face answered for her, and the way her voice cracked on her “ No! ” solidified her lie.

“When, how, and how much?” asked Adelaide, a shocked grin blooming .

“We haven’t,” she hissed, composing herself, her face scorched. “Not in an amount that would matter.”

“Your Majesty,” Lorietta said slowly, stepping closer and dragging Adelaide forward with her.

With a wave of her hand, the front door to the inn swung and clicked shut, blocking out curious ears.

“This is important and could cost lives if it hasn’t already, so I encourage you to answer in full transparency.

” She looked this way and that and lowered her voice to a threatening whisper.

“As long as you are on my property, your answers are safe here. But I need your honesty.”

“I can poison the truth out of you,” Adelaide optioned.

“That won’t be necessary,” Lilac snapped, feeling stripped bare. “In my bedchamber, at my tower. He visited me one week after my ceremony. We talked, and he fed me a drop. A prick on his finger, to reveal the memory of me walking into your tavern the night we met.”

Lorietta’s brows creased for a brief moment before the expression smoothed. “He used his magic on you?”

Lilac scoffed. “I don’t think he has a problem with that.”

Then there was that second time when she’d bitten his hand as she came, when his blood had shown her the view of a familiar desk—her father’s study, books and papers askew.

It had looked like it, but in the moment she’d been so shocked she hadn’t thought of what it might mean.

Another question for the vampire. “That’s what their blood does, doesn’t it? Shows you their memories?”

“Sometimes,” said Adelaide, looking to Lorietta for confirmation. “With intent, they can send vivid memories through to the consumer. They show you what they want to, a past vision from their own eyes. It’s part of their Sanguine magic.”

“I thought that only referred to their entrancement,” Lilac said.

“Their entrancement, their ability to host thralls, aromatic lure, and even the strange effects of their vitae are part of it,” explained Lorietta.

She closed her eyes as she spoke, almost as if quoting or paraphrasing something from memory.

“Sanguine magic, though limited in the scope of arcana, is still powerful as it is mystical. Sending visual memories through their blood is how they can recall their own memories that might be lost to time if they’re extremely old or weren’t paying attention in the moment; for them the memory might be something obscure, vague, but it is as if the drinker experiences it for himself, usually under entrancement.

Histories of the Lasting Night, Volume I ,” she recounted.

“Long ago, Meriam had me read up on vampires if we were going to take one in. Since you left, Garin has been on edge and threatened anyone who has tried to enter his chamber. Had Bastion up against the wall on the first night.”

“A textbook.” Lilac thought of the human-authored texts and manuscripts on Daemons that had her making a fool of herself her first time in Brocéliande.

The vampire manuscript, which she’d been meaning to search for in her Accords planning.

“Is there anything in it that might tell you what’s been happening to him? To us?”

“I’ve searched and seemed to have misplaced it. I haven’t seen that book in quite a while, though I am usually able to dig it out.” Lorietta sighed laboriously. “Did he drink from you, too? In your tower.”

“Yes, moments after,” she admitted quietly.

Just to get it over with, she added, “I had his blood once more, accidentally, the night of the Accords meeting. Downstairs in his chamber before everything happened, and it was also a very small amount. A smear, but it wasn’t an exchange.

He didn’t take my blood from me then. We were?—”

“I don’t want to hear it, don’t make me cast a deafening spell on myself.” Lorietta threw her hands up, exasperated. “And those were the only times, outside of the exchange that saved your life? You are sure?”

“Yes,” Lilac said defensively. “He told me how it works. It has to be a significant amount of blood. He did tell me our exchange might cause some effects that would decrease with our time apart.”

“And were there?” Lorietta pressed.

“Sickness without fever. Restlessness. Sleeplessness. Nausea. Now gone,” she lied. The restlessness had certainly returned, morphing into something else entirely.

“You must be drained a large amount, to the point of unconsciousness but not death, which is a very fine line. Then comes the challenge of the vampire bloodletting into the victim’s mouth, getting them to ingest it.

That is why it is always the vampire’s choice to enthrall a person, one with astute self-control and ample knowledge of what a dying pulse sounds and feels like.

” Lorietta eyed Lilac decidedly as Adelaide stared nervously between them and the trees.

“A drop, a smear, not even the amount he took from and fed you the other night comes close to what would need to occur to trigger the thrall bond at any level. If it did, there would be thralls running amuck.”

“Plus,” added Adelaide, “the effects of a first-level blood bond would have eased over the course of the three days you’ve spent away.”