Page 91 of Inked & Bloodbound

Then something hardens in her expression. When she speaks, her voice is ice-cold.

“Thank you, Cassini. I appreciate all you’ve done for me.” She looks down at the table for a moment, like she’s gathering her strength. “This will be the last time we see each other. I think it’s for the best. You should know that you are no longer welcome in my home.” Her voice wavers. “Or in my thoughts.”

She pauses and swallows. “Or in my life.”

It hits me like a stake to the heart, and I want to do everything in my power to convince her not to shut me out. To stay with me and let me protect her. But I know I deserve it all.

But words won’t work. There are none that fit. Only actions count.

So, I do the most loving thing I can think of.

I let her go.

The words feel wrong in my mouth, but I say them anyway. “I understand.”

As she stoically blinks back a tear, Angel appears at her side and gently helps her to her feet. With a hand hovering behind her back, he guides her toward the exit. She doesn’t look back. The sound ofher footsteps echoes off the stone walls until it fades to nothing, and then she’s gone.

Gone.

The Sangretà is olderthan Christianity, older than most written languages. The words I’m forced to speak come from a time when vampires existed in the open, when blood oaths were the foundation of civilization itself.

Lazaro slices his palm with a ceremonial blade, letting the blood drip into an ancient chalice. The brass cup sits on the center of a bloodstained shroud spread on the table in front of me. The mountain of food from earlier is gone, replaced by candles and artifacts. Cleared by some of the same vampires I violently tore through in search of Lily.

They had stared daggers as they scraped the food into garbage bags. Muttering curses under their breath as they replaced the china plates with long votives and opulent relics, trinkets and icons lifted from tombs and cathedrals long forgotten.

Now, gold filigree gleams dully in the flickering candlelight as a silver brand glows under the hiss of a blowtorch, the metal blushing red, spitting sparks as if eager to taste flesh.

“Drink,” he commands, offering me the cup.

His blood is bitter. The sharp frost of winter and deep tang of iron. The taste of power and cruelty distilled into liquid form. It burns going down. It spreads through my veins like acid, rewriting something fundamental in my nature.

The ancient words spill from my lips without conscious thought, pulled from some genetic memory embedded in my bones:

“Sanguis meus, sanguis tuus. Voluntas mea, voluntas tua. In aeternum vinctus, in aeternum servus.”

My blood, your blood. My will, your will. Bound forever, servant forever.

I kneel at his feet. Offering my shirtless body to him, head bowed like a sacrificial lamb. A click echoes through the room as someoneshuts off the blowtorch and carefully carries the brand by a handle carved from bone. His footsteps echo as he circles me. His prized cattle, caught, immobilized and totally at his will.

He hesitates for a moment, as if savoring the power, then presses the glowing metal against my side. I brace and grind my teeth together as my flesh sizzles. Lazaro holds it still, gradually applying more pressure as he burns his seal into me.

“Ita est. Servus in aeternum. So it is. A servant for eternity,” he says, reaching for a pinch of ash from a gold ciborium. A bastardization of the vessel for holding the consecrated Eucharistic bread, now filled with the charred ashes of his enemies.

He rubs the mixture of salt, ash, his blood, and fine-milled silver into the smoking wound to seal it and keep it open forever. Much like my tattoos, this will never truly heal and will sting for eternity. A constant reminder of my dedication to this man.

He gestures for me to rise, and I do, falling immediately into his embrace. He hugs me tightly, his palm against the back of my neck, and then pulls back to kiss me on both cheeks.

“Welcome home, Cassini.”

At first, I feel nothing, but as Lazaro takes a step back to observe me, the binding takes hold like chains wrapping around my soul. My free will gutters like a flame, replaced by something else. Compulsion. Absolute obedience. Servitude.

The candles flicker, then all extinguish at once as pain lances through my temple so sharp it steals my breath. I drop to my knees once more and throw my head back. Letting out a primal howl as the agony rips through me.

My maker’s mark burns white-hot between my shoulder blades. My father Notte’s mark seared into my flesh centuries ago when he turned me from priest to predator. As if the skin itself recognizes that I now belong to another. The grief is excruciating, as if my very blood is at war with itself.

But through it all, I think of Lily. Safe. Free. Alive.

It’s worth it.