Page 32

Garroway led me through lush fields on the outskirts of Manor Marquin. I kept a healthy distance from the grayskin and he didn’t try to force me to stay close as long as I remained in his sights.

My mind spun with everything I had just witnessed. Lukain’s death at the hands of Lord Skartovius Ashfen. Culiar and Rirth fleeing the manor for their lives. The vampires fighting each other, the Diplomats fighting Grimsons.

I was at a loss. I desperately needed answers.

My thoughts kept my mind busy while my body burned with exhaustion and frayed nerves.

I had been awake for near twenty-four hours now, and after my shadowgala bout against Baylen and the hellbent riding and slaying of my childhood friend—ending that chapter of my life and killing the young man I considered my original traitor—I sorely needed rest.

Garroway did not give me any.

He was lithe and quick, just like I’d seen in battle against him. His crimson eyes stuck out in the purple night, always checking passes before we crossed them and eyeing pastures before we broke out into the vulnerable meadows that stretched far past the manor’s estate.

The man’s ashen skin seemed to blend in with the surroundings, the darkness of nature at its latest hours. A few times I nearly panicked thinking I had lost him, only for the sly half-vampire to appear out of a cropfield or grassy plot to beckon me.

After two hours of sheer running with my adrenaline keeping me upright and my heart pulsing in my ears, Manor Marquin lay far behind us.

Quietness took over the night, mingling with a gentle mountaintop breeze and the soft flapping of nightbirds overhead.

With the manor located on the far southeastern tip of the Olhavian Peaks, we kept a westerly trajectory. The clouds began to shift and stars guided our path, though I had a feeling Garroway didn’t need any guidance to know where he was going.

It also occurred to me we had passed the steep incline our carriage had taken to bring us up the mountain.

In the far distance, looming like a beacon of wealth and prosperity, sat the city of Olhav. Despite the whispers of the golden city of legend while growing up, I never thought I would visit it.

It looked suspiciously like Garroway was leading us right to the city. I finally broke our harried silence once the quietness took over and we slowed our pace, taking to the edges of the roads rather than the rougher terrain surrounding them.

“Where are you leading me, dhampir?” I snarled.

He wrapped his cloak tight around his body before tossing a half-smile over his shoulder. “Is that any tone to show your savior?”

“My savior ? What are you, the head of the Truehearts?”

He barked a laugh. “Fine. Your rescuer, at least.”

Shame filled me. I averted my gaze. “. . . I would have found a way out of there. I always do.”

“Aye, well, you’ve never had fullbloods chasing you, now have you? No, I suspect you would have tried running down your doomed Grimson brethren and gotten yourself killed or captured or worse. I can sense your stubbornness like it’s a living thing, lass.”

I flared my nostrils. I was angry because he was right. “What do you know about me, half-blood?” I chided, sounding childish in my own ears.

“Not nearly enough,” he muttered to himself.

With the wind, I was just able to hear him. My eyebrows joined my hairline. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Garroway cleared his throat. “Just keep walking.”

“You never answered my question. Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe. For now.”

For now? I didn’t like the sound of that. I also understood the sentiment—nowhere in this world was safe forever, or even for very long.

I had been surrounded by strangers my whole life, always snatched away and dumped into a new group of them. In my nineteen years, I’d yet to find a place called home.

And now Garroway Kuffich, another stranger, was leading me to another strange, alien place.

I daresay I’ll never find my lot in this life, this world.

It was a sobering thought.

Even more sobering, and somewhat alarming, was the fact a grayskin who had only ever shown me small kindnesses had saved my life. Vampires and half-vampires were supposed to be monsters—I’d grown up knowing that, learning that, and everything I’d seen so far had proven that universal truth.

So what is this one’s scheme? Because surely Garroway has one. They all do. Every man I’ve ever fucking met has had a devious plot of some kind.

The thought brought anger to my bones. It reminded me of Baylen Sallow, Dimmon Plank—both of whom I’d seen tonight, only one of whom I’d managed to kill. And not the one I had wanted to kill, either.

The biggest culprit of them all was still out there. The man who stole any semblance of innocence I still had, completely and absolutely.

Lukain’s death also made me feel odd. I figured I was in a state of shock because I hadn’t felt any bone-crushing weight at the sight of him lying dead on the ground.

I wanted so badly to believe he had been protecting mine, Rirth’s, and Culiar’s escape. That, at the very end, he had given himself for the Grimsons he raised like his own children.

But I couldn’t be sure. And now I’d never know because he was gone. It angered me more than saddened me.

I couldn’t forget Lukain Pierken had also impaled a young boy right in front of my eyes as a youngling. He had allowed me the “honor” of ending the rapist Peltos to get out my aggression and rage. He had continually reminded us he was the master and we were the slaves.

Would a man like him really have given himself up to protect his property? Can compassion truly strike at a dire time like that?

There was the small mystery of him crashing through the window of the second story, too. I had no idea what that was about or why Lord Ashfen had been chasing him. More questions that need answers I’ll never get.

Garroway’s words rang out in my head. “I’m assuming Master Lukain did something he was not supposed to. Angered the wrong vampire.”

It was hard to deny the truth of those statements.

As we trudged closer to Olhav in silence, the memory that kept returning to me and weighing me down was the single night of softness and tenderness I had shared with Master Lukain.

I blinked at Garroway in front of me, his cloak fluttering in the wind as he walked. The same night I fought this man and lost. The night I should have died.

Lukain had shown me pleasures of the flesh for the first and only time. I’d never known anything like that, before or since. We drank from each other—me to heal, him to excite and enhance our senses as we mated.

And then it was over. Like a dream that never happened, because Lukain never called to me again.

It would always vex me—his cold indifference after that night. It was the source of bad dreams and constant notions of “ what if .”

Garroway and I crested over a grassy hillock.

The man stopped and crossed his arms. We stared down at Olhav in the valley of the Peaks.

It was a sprawling metropolis easily the size of Nuhav, possibly bigger.

It was hard to tell how large the city truly was because many of the buildings were unlike any I’d seen before.

They glittered. The entire city did. The valley was filled with skyrises—as we called them in Nuhav—that stretched up to the heavens and nearly touched the clouds themselves.

Ten- and twenty-story structures of opulence and stained glass that reflected the fairylights of the city.

The buildings dwarfed anything I’d seen from my flat, dreary existence in Nuhav below.

The structures were mostly vertically inclined. I was used to squat, short structures built of brick or stone or wood. These looked made from glass or iron, with winding spires and castle-like fortresses interspersed among the tall constructions.

The city was reflective at night from the moon, the copious torchlights, the fairylight lanterns. I wondered if it retained this brilliance during the day.

“Looks fancy and advanced, doesn’t it?” Garroway asked in a low voice.

I nodded dumbly. My gaze had widened like I was staring into the Truehearts’ own divine sanctuary.

“Would you be surprised to learn it’s actually an ancient city, built on top of old bones?”

My brow furrowed as I faced Garroway. “Older than Nuhav?”

“By far. What do you think the names stand for, lass?”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Well . . . I don’t know. I’ve never ventured a guess.”

Garroway splayed his hand at the golden city. “Old Haven.” His arm moved to the left, south, past the edge of the mountainside that disappeared into darkness below. “New Haven.”

I scoffed, shaking my head. Then I noticed he wasn’t smiling. “Wait. Truly? It’s as simple as that?”

“Simple as that, little honey badger.”

“Have the vampires always called Olhav home?”

“I reckon not.” He put his hands on his hips, striking a pose. “Ours is a gaudy, pretentious people. We love the bright lights but hate the sun. Oxymoron, I know. But only one of them kills us . . . the other illuminates us.”

It was difficult to hide my smile. “Seems the plague of pretension has not eluded you either, Garroway.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Did I call it a plague? No, that was your word.”

The man could be quite sassy, it seemed. I tilted my head on my neck, inspecting him closer. He was dashingly handsome with a smooth face and strong, angular features. I wondered what color his hair had been when he had any, or if he ever had any. I honestly couldn’t tell by looking at his face.

He seemed to have a fondness for this city, the way he gazed down at it adoringly. It’s a city of monsters, I reminded myself. Don’t let the beauty of it entrance you. Remember the bleeding bodies and splayed corpses at Manor Marquin. The splendor, the appeal, is a mask of madness and death.

I asked an honest question. “You do not hate your vampire overlords, even though they force you to fight in shadowgalas for your freedom and life?”