Page 34 of Once Upon a Dark October
Chapter Thirty-Four
“ I t’s been a long while since I’ve worn so many petticoats.”
I twirled in a circle, eyeing my reflection in Morrigan’s long, arched mirror. Part of me wondered if she ever used it; the edges were spotty with age, divots and imperfections in the glass obscuring or exaggerating my mirror image whenever I moved.
Morrigan ducked in and out of frame behind me, half her clothes folded over the bed, laid out with precision. She had only gotten as far as a pair of tailored trousers and high-collared shirt that was more within the current style than her usual tunics. Her waistcoat—pitch-black as the rest of her ensemble—was draped across her arm while she pretended to pluck lint from it.
I suppose all of us were stealing every last second we could. It had taken me at least a half hour to convince her to get her clothes out of the wardrobe and twenty additional minutes after that for Morrigan to put on her shirt. In the meantime, she’d helped me into my layers, her hands lingering while she tied the laces of my corset. Another half hour disappeared then, once she’d gotten preoccupied kissing the back of my neck, trailing her mouth down my shoulders, finding the quickest path to the soft rise of my breasts spilling from the corset. She’d teased me with a scrape of her fangs, knowing how much I’d fantasized about her bite.
Morrigan hadn’t bitten me since the night I’d been Turned.
If she finally decided to do it then, I feared I’d be utterly and completely useless for the Blood Moon ball. Though it pained me—the ache unbearable, unsatisfied—I’d had to shove her away, the two of us cackling like a pair of adolescents nearly caught rutting on the beach.
I blushed at the thought.
Morrigan laughed somewhere behind me, likely sensing the fire that shot through my veins, my heart hammering. She’d made me do little else today than take as much of her blood as I could in preparation for the ball.
My first battle as a blood sorcerer. I hoped there wouldn’t be any others.
Another twirl, faster this time, and my skirt and petticoats fanned outward around my ankles. Morrigan had tied my boots for me, too, since we’d accidentally laced me into my corset first. I wasn’t quite sure I would be able to move about easily while wearing these wide skirts and a cumbersome bustle, but the silhouette it created was certainly dramatic enough for my liking. The firelight played across the black silk taffeta, a glossy sheen like Morrigan’s lacquered nails.
The off-the-shoulder bodice was more form-fitting than I was used to, but the details were exquisite—black lace adorned the low neckline, and hundreds of tiny sparkling crystals had been woven into the silk. More lace edged the hem of my skirt, the crystals dotting the fabric in a sporadic pattern, random as the night sky.
Our coven chose to dress in black. Not out of mourning but strength. We were as the rock that had built our home. The foundation of the harbor and its coastline, its steep cliffs, its windswept shore. Formidable against the tide of sorcerer’s blood and demonic ichor trying to whittle us down .
“Let’s see if I can remember…ah, yes, that was it. Stars above, that was ages ago. It was the last autumn before Father fell ill. I think it was a little ways past the cove—do you know the Bidwell estate?” I heard Morrigan hum, though I couldn’t decipher it. She was finally pulling on her waistcoat, fussing with the buttons.
“Anyway, Father didn’t like attending them much—though he was fond of dancing, if he’d had enough wine to be brave about it. My insufferable stepmother used to drag us all over…she was absolutely desperate for invitations. Never declined a single one. My stepbrothers would make complete asses of themselves getting uproariously drunk, which usually ended in scandal.”
I came to Morrigan’s rescue, pushing her hands away to work the stubborn buttons through their slits. The fabric enveloping them matched the silk of my evening gown, the tailored waistcoat shimmering with silver embroidery and the same glittering crystals.
“It was tediously boring, that one,” I continued, smoothing my hands down the front of her pockets. “But I’d have it back if I could. That hour when Father and I escaped to the rooftop balcony overlooking the sea. The Blood Moon had risen by then, and we could see all of it—clear skies just like tonight. That eerie moonlight dancing on the waves.”
I let myself ruminate in the melancholy for just a moment, tracing the silver brocade with my fingertip. Morrigan took my cheek in her palm and her thumb worried at my bottom lip. “Thank you,” she told me softly.
Returning to the bed to retrieve her coat, she huffed out a groan.“No one’s extended invitations to our coven in decades,” she commiserated. “Unless it’s the occasion of plotting our deaths, it seems. Though, I’ll admit…we haven’t exactly made ourselves available.”
“You’ll have to be a gracious host again soon,” I teased, trying to dispel the tension. “I’ve put a lot of work into the ballroom, you know. It would be an awful waste with that view. ”
“Hmm,” Morrigan considered. “I’ll need you to dust off my social decorum, in that case. I’m not fit to be good company to Dreadmist’s scrutinizing public. Or perhaps you’ll just have to sweep up the aftermath when polite society inevitably finds me exhausting, inept, and intolerable. That is, if they even dare to venture anywhere near me.”
“Always cleaning up after your messes, aren’t?” I helped Morrigan into her coat, rising onto the tips of my toes to pat down the shoulders so it wouldn’t wrinkle. “Very elegant. I can almost picture you at the bow of a ship.”
“I knew you’d like it.”
The tailoring was similar to her other coats, high-collared with a row of gleaming silver buttons, a sweeping hem that brushed her ankles. Her waistcoat’s glint of embroidery continued on the coat’s collar and the wide cuffs, while the back had been scattered with crystals where the pleats gathered. I slipped my hand under the lapel, fingers meeting the pearlescent cream velvet beneath that lined the inside.
“For Clarabella, a little hint of starlight,” Morrigan explained.
The rest of us had decided to do the same. Though Clarabella was bound to the estate, we would each carry a fragment of her luminous soul with us to the ball. Morrigan had surprised me with a silver necklace dripping with iridescent white opals. She wore matching ones in her ears, tiny as distant stars.
“When did you find the time to manage this?” I had asked, watching her fasten the delicate clasp in the mirror.
She had raked aside the loose, wavy curls to press her lips to the back of my neck. “While I was having your chatelaine crafted. I made sure there was extra silver to spare.”
Gifts crafted through blood alchemy—and not simply deathbed mementos passed down as inheritance—was a vampiric custom I supposed I would have to become more familiar with. Beautiful and morose, it was achingly romantic to be wearing Morrigan’s blood like this. Her blood that had saved me time and again, given me another life and sustained me, and now it adorned my scarred neck as jewelry, as battle armor.
If we survived this night of the Blood Moon, I knew I wanted to gift her something in return.
“You look beautiful.” Morrigan touched the long golden curls cascading over my shoulder, letting the strands slip through her fingers. “Don’t be nervous, you’ve a sorcerer’s blood. You are a sorcerer. No curse binds you.”
“Telling me not to worry doesn’t exactly make it disappear.”
She kissed the end of my nose. “You’ll be all right. I promise.”
I glanced up into her eyes, where the red clouded with a somber darkness, an unspoken yet palpable moment of hesitant grief. “And you?”
“Let’s join the coven in the parlor,” she suggested. “We’ve kept them all waiting long enough.”
Worry pooled into the chambers of my heart, turning it leaden as stone.
“I called on you both over an hour ago,” Gwen fussed, ushering us into the parlor.
It was all she could do to keep herself from pacing the floor, though I was sure she’d been doing exactly that before she found us at the top of the staircase. Every other moment, she fixed her long evening gloves, tugging nonexistent wrinkles from the cream-colored silk.
Her evening gown was a confection of ruffled silk that hugged close to her generous curves, waves of black cascading from the bustle in the back. Where the ruffles gathered, there were fabric-crafted flowers with a metallic shimmer, the center of each one made up of tiny, pearlescent-cream beads. With her pale red-gold hair twisted into an updo, she’d crowned the curls with small white autumnal flowers.
“The coach has been waiting outside for twenty minutes already.”
The coach cannot possibly ride away without you , Clarabella reminded, an attempt to calm Gwen’s nervous fretting before she despaired. She levitated above the arm of an upholstered chair, a book opened on Josephine’s lap below. Clarabella flipped the pages with an unearthly touch when Josephine did not turn them over fast enough. She couldn’t tear her loving gaze away from her wife, solemn as her eyes looked, Clarabella’s starry glow reflected in them. They are quite used to waiting, you know.
All of this anxiousness building under my skin had made my hands numb and cold. I wanted Morrigan to conserve her sorcery for more important enemies, so I held them closer to the roaring hearth-flames. Morrigan shadowed me, rubbing the small of my back absently. I turned halfway, warning her with a stern look. It was only instinct to her, I realized, but she couldn’t afford to drain herself.
Gwen groaned. “I’d like to skip to the part where Jo and Bella turn what’s left of her into a chamber pot. After we’ve squeezed her heart to a bloody pulp. I cannot stand the thought of Estella being in that dungeon a moment longer.” She went to sit on the settee, lowered to the cushion, and then straightened again, pacing toward the doorway instead. “I’m sweating through these gloves.”
You look ravishing , Clarabella said, wistful. You all do.
“Never as radiant as you are, love,” Josephine assured, kissing her fingers and offering them to her wife.
Josephine’s gown had an off-the-shoulder neckline, too, the black fabric light and airy with more lace than silk. A gauzy black overskirt laid an ornate pattern over the cream-colored petticoat beneath. She wore Clarabella’s wedding jewelry, a pair of glittery stones in her ears and a layered gold necklace. Her braided hair had been threaded through with golden thread and small pearly beads and shells.
“Can we please leave and get this over with, then? All this waiting has been absolute torture—getting my brains ripped out through my nostrils would hurt less,” Gwen sighed.
“ Gwen .” Morrigan pinched the bridge of her nose, but I knew she was only hiding her smirk. Barely hiding it, more like.
Josephine picked up the book from her lap and replaced it on the chair cushion as she stood. “If we must…”
“Do you both have what you need?” Morrigan asked of Gwen and Josephine.
Lifting her lacy skirts, Josephine grinned while she showed off the blood-filled vials tucked away in the leather holster buckled around her thigh. “Spent all of yesterday working protections into it so Her Royal Highness doesn’t get a drop of Morrigan’s blood. The rotten crone.”
She beamed at her wife, who was still perched above the chair. “Took a bit of inspiration from you , Bella.”
Clarabella returned it, twisting one of her curls around her index finger.
Gwen patted the silk flowers dotting on her gown’s skirt. “I’ve got the spare, just in case.”
Morrigan took my hand and laced her fingers between mine. The ocean-blue stone in her ring felt like the first snowflakes of the approaching winter on my skin. Her thumb worried over my own.
“And you know your way around?” I asked. “Which path you’re going to take? It can be treacherous, narrow—lots of crumbling stone. You’ll need to keep your wits about you down there.”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Josephine reassured. “Isn’t that right, Gwen?”
Gwen made a face, then pursed her lips. “Right. I may have chosen the wrong shoes. Are you climbing broken stairs in those , Jo?”
I’ve made them both memorize the path, Clarabella said, ignoring the slight disagreement that blossomed about appropriate footwear. They know it backwards and forwards and back again.
When I offered to exchange my boots with Josephine, she assured us her heeled shoes—pearl-white, delicate things—would be fine.
“Let’s be on our way, then,” Morrigan announced. “It’s ten o’clock already.” As the clocks finished chiming the late hour, the coven looked to Morrigan halted in the threshold of the parlor. I gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. She cleared her throat, shifting on her feet while she looked past them at the hearth, at the clock still ticking away.
Morrigan rubbed at the back of her neck. “Well. Here we are, I suppose…the light of the Blood Moon upon us at last. I was never much good at this, but you’ve all worked too hard to deserve anything less. These last few weeks have been challenging for our coven at best—horrific at worst. I’ve asked much of you all, and we’ve gotten ourselves this far, haven’t we? Our coven is stronger for it.”
She allowed a small grin at the corner of her mouth when she glanced over at me, swinging our hands. “We’ve grown, all of us. A hundred and fifty years we’ve endured our curses. That ends tonight. The light of the Blood Moon will see us through. It’s her blood that will spill on the floor this time, until there is not a drop left to sustain her. Until she is nothing but a silent heart. Dreadmist Harbor depends upon our courage, our strength of heart. Our hope.”
Gwen cheered, and that dissolved the unease enough for the rest of us to break into laughter and quiet applause. I leaned into Morrigan, resting my head against her arm while we finally poured into the foyer. When we passed the grand spiral staircase, I couldn’t help but shiver at the hazy circle of pale red moonlight bathing it from the domed window above.
I love you , she whispered for me alone. Our curses made me believe I could never feel this way again. You’ve been my hope these past few weeks.
And I love you , I promised back. Just don’t make this feel like a goodbye.
Morrigan said nothing, leaving a kiss in my hair.
It was the first occasion where Clarabella followed as far as the front entranceway to see us off. Her dress’ long train swirled around her feet like a falling star streaking across the night. Her luminous halo seemed brighter than the moonlight above us. I hoped it would be the last time we’d see her like this, that Josephine would return to her awakened from her glass coffin up in the laboratory tower.
She and her wife exchanged kisses at the edge of the doorway, moonlight creeping in as Josephine sent her last on a gentle current of breath. Josephine hesitated on the pumpkin-lit terrace, surrounded by a garden of vibrant mums, her eyes watery.
“I’ll be coming back home to you as quickly as I can,” she vowed.
And I’ll be waiting , my dearest heart, Clarabella promised, a hand resting upon her chest, upon a ghostly heart that was no more than a faint shadow.
The gem set into her wedding ring glinted, the beacon that would guide Josephine home again no matter how far she strayed from the shore or how badly she was tossed about by the merciless tide of our enemy’s blood.
Send her all of my rage.
Clarabella stood there long after we had climbed into the coach and the horses had whisked us away from the cliffside into the thin mist, toward the flickering pumpkins and gaslamps and the late night revelry. Josephine was turned around in her seat, watching from the carriage’s back window until our home disappeared out of sight.
I had never seen Dreadmist so deserted at the height of the Blood Moon. A yearly tradition of endless celebration, the streets were usually impossible to pass in a carriage, easier on foot. Parties spilled out onto the cobblestones and gathered around bonfires in the squares, where people still in their finery sipped hot cocoa and cider, mead and tavern whiskey. The wharf became a wild tangle of drunken whimsy—pumpkin smashing contests and the like, which inevitably ended with someone being fished out of the water. In years past, I had watched the fireworks brighten the early morning’s darkness after the eerie glow of the Blood Moon faded. From the lonely window of my room, I had been lulled to sleep by the harbor’s one true night of hedonistic frivolity, as our ancient vampiric founders intended.
It seemed that not everyone had accepted Lady Tremaine’s invitation, but we navigated the streets with such ease that I felt hot anger unfurling within me. She’d already stolen a night from the people of the harbor. Her first act as queen upon a broken throne that they would set alight again if they could. Morrigan had been right. She wanted spectacle, gruesome as it was. An audience, because our quaint traditions were beneath her. A kingdom to claim in blood.
The central district was haunted by the absence of its people. Carved pumpkins had only vacant stares to offer, their grins empty despite the flames behind them. Paper garlands rustled sadly in the breeze, abundant bouquets of mums abandoned. Rusted orange leaves pinwheeled across cobblestones glazed in a fine mist. The people of the harbor had no idea what Sonia had lured them into, the depravity and violence they would witness in those ruins. The carnage they would become in her bid for power.
They did not deserve this.
The nighttime sky was painted a macabre red by the time our coach pulled into the castle’s winding, pitted drive. The Blood Moon had risen up behind the ruins and cast them in a lurid silhouette, so close and so huge that it seemed an arm’s length away. We’d driven here in silence, and once our wheels stopped, our coach joining the endless line of invited guests, the rustling of silk made the anxiousness tangible. Four heartbeats sprinting alongside each other.
I’d never heard Morrigan’s filled with such strained panic.
“We’ll find you later,” Gwen said, leaning across her lap to watch me and Morrigan alight from the carriage. “Hopefully. If I can find Estella in all that gloom.”
“Look at this crowd.” Josephine sighed, rearranging her gown when she took the vacated seat. “Be careful, both of you. Don’t you dare do anything rash before we get in there— Morrigan .”
“It isn’t me you have to worry about,” she assured. Then, into our thoughts, Lady Tremaine’s the one who wants a gory duel.
“Be safe,” I told them. “I’ll make sure Morrigan will be too distracted trying to remember how to dance.”
“I know how—it’s just been a long time—”
“Come on.” I held out my elbow and Morrigan closed the door, tapping it with the flat of her palm before hooking her arm through mine. Glancing over my shoulder at the carriage, I found myself reluctant to leave my coven-mates behind.
Morrigan tugged me onward. They’ll be all right.
I didn’t expect nearly the entire harbor to show.
People are naturally curious, as you know, Morrigan answered, a hint of teasing in her voice. The vampires might remember her—depending on their age, a lot of them might’ve attended Jo and Bella’s wedding ball. But not many will realize her true nature, her sorcery. There are few who know the truth of what happened to us that night…the rest are rumors to keep our coven at a distance.
And the ruins, they’ve been a stain on the horizon since after the High Council abandoned it. They’ll want to see it for themselves. To them, it’s a story, something so faraway and forgotten that it hardly seems real. They think they’re safe from the blood that was spilled here. They think it cannot happen again.
I drew closer into Morrigan’s side, desperate to feel her beside me.
We joined the crowd making their ascent up the twisting path. Pumpkins lined the drive on either side, some of them whole, others carved out with haphazard grins and lit with stubby candles. They were arranged in clusters of different shapes, the wild autumnal colors obscured under the blood-red moonlight.
I’ll bet she wanted to hand that task off to me , I said. Can you imagine? If I’d stayed, she would’ve had me carving all these pumpkins by myself.
Morrigan snorted a laugh. Yours might’ve looked better.
The two of us maneuvered toward the front doors, Morrigan leading me through while I tried not to crinkle my skirts. I caught pieces of conversation as they fell around us like autumn leaves—whispering about the ruins’ bloody past, the mysterious lady of the castle. Whispering about Morrigan, which came with stares and a few pointed fingers. My grip on her arm tightened.
Don’t pay any mind to them, she said. I’m not the blood sorcerer they should be gossiping about.
Doesn’t it bother you?
After a hundred and fifty years, I hardly feel it anymore. She met a lingering glare with a grin, pulling me flush to her side as we entered the castle’s grand, dimly-lit entranceway. The whispering spread down the hall, other guests giving us a wider berth once they saw our arrival. Don’t let it become a distraction. These people will need our help soon enough .
The throne room’s doors were thrown wide open, yet whatever light the candles in the hallway had to offer, it wasn’t enough to carve out the gloaming. The swirl of red in the marble floor seemed to echo the moonlight that filtered through high windows, tossing a bloody veil across the ceiling’s moody harbor painting.
Garlands of crimson leaves had been strung around pillars and trickled from archways. Painted pumpkins adorned the perimeter, scarlet and wine-red with gilded stems. Along the dais, candles haloed arrangements of glass pumpkins, throwing a mosaic of autumn colors onto the marble. Fractured light in muted red, orange, purple swathed the altar and its tiered steps.
Though she’d abandoned her coven, Drusilla’s touch remained, and I knew Sonia and the others were haunted by it in every corner of the throne room. Inescapable as the dhampir blood on their hands.
But the room was dark and dramatic as ever. I realized that no one had lit the tapers I’d worked so hard to get into the chandeliers, leaving a heavy pall of shadow for the Blood Moon’s light to find.
A makeshift throne sat atop the dais, some gaudy wood-and-gilt chair they had perhaps uncovered from a neglected drawing room. Sonia was seated there as if she’d already claimed her title, hawkish eyes assessing the town in all its finery, silks and satins hushed across marble. She wore ichor-burgundy, an evening gown in a shimmering silk with a plunging neckline, though it was flanked by a high, lacy collar. Her long, layered sleeves—a waterfall of silk and lace—spilled over the arms of the chair. An unusual style, not of this current age, but perhaps she’d wanted to evoke a more traditional vampiric fashion.
My insides cinched into a knot at the sight of her sitting above us—blood sorcerer and self-appointed queen. Anastasia stood dutifully at her side in berry-colored silk taffeta, glowering at the uneasy celebration. It seemed that her coven had chosen to wear shades of red, which was rather expected, if a bit uninspired. Members of the High Council filled out the dais, glasses of wine or blood-wine in hand. The councilors’ pins were missing, I noticed. It was customary that they were worn in any public appearance, like a few of their remaining colleagues who swept by us and exchanged tense looks.
The High Council’s numbers had certainly dwindled. Rumors must have run wild about that, too.
Anastasia found me staring before I could evade her, and it took everything in me not to recoil. If she’d had sorcery in her blood, she would’ve stopped my heart where I stood with her icy gaze. She took a step forward, only to be restrained by a few of her underlings.
I gasped into Morrigan’s thoughts. She’s going to kill me before this night’s over.
Morrigan touched her fingers to the side of my face, a silent request to meet her eyes. When I turned away from the dais—away from the high-born gossips who had likely discovered my fangs weren’t a costume, away from the murderous stare of our enemies—Morrigan brushed her lips against mine. For a few moments, time stopped, the flow of the guests breaking around us. Morrigan eased me into her kiss, stealing every second. The whispers became the dull roar of ocean waves, our kiss deepening while we tasted each other, everything else left behind. It was only Morrigan and I.
She’d made me hers again with nearly all of Dreadmist to bear witness. Revealed herself to her enemy with a kiss.
Morrigan released me with a ragged breath. I opened my eyes again, shoving aside the hushed words and politely stifled gasps, the mortifying notion of being at the center of the entire throne room’s attention. Morrigan had met Sonia’s scalding gaze—she’d risen from her false throne to look down her nose at us, her lips pursed in a way that always managed to crawl underneath my skin .
My body went rigid, waiting on bated breath for her to advance. But she did not step down. Morrigan, with her stare unbroken, lifted my sweating fingers to her lips and kissed my knuckles softly, brimming with desperate longing even though I was hers, in her arms, still undone by her kiss.
She’s disappointed , Morrigan said. She expected our entire coven.
And she absolutely loathes seeing me in your arms.
Morrigan laughed against my knuckles. Everything I wanted.
With our fingers entwined, she led me into the sea of hoop skirts and tailcoats, a riot of autumn color in silk and lace, satin and ruffles, jewels and ribbons and feathers. We were a shock amid the warm, vibrant hues fluttering and twirling around us—golden yellow, burnt orange, sage green, rich amber-brown. Morrigan spun me in a circle, moving on a current of harmonious string music from the other end of the dais.
Should we steal a dance before the bloodbath begins? Morrigan asked.
I nodded, trying to keep my eyes upon her. It was an excuse, at least, to make our way around the room.
“Have you seen Estella anywhere?”
“No,” she said, peering somewhere beyond. “But I can hear them—the dhampir. Their hearts are like the beating of bat’s wings.” Morrigan leaned into my shoulder, and her words dropped against the shell of my ear. “They’re close at hand.” And then, into my thoughts, Perhaps Jo and Gwen have found the dungeon abandoned.
I didn’t know how the coven could keep them tamed with all the fresh, pulsing blood in the castle.
Do you think they’re doing all right down there? I asked.
Whatever happens, Morrigan answered slowly, we should buy them every minute we can.
We should get the councilors out, I suggested. She’ll only use them to paint the floors red and feed their bloodthirst. There won’t be anyone left to rebuild .
They’ll never leave their people, Morrigan argued. The ones who remain know what it might cost them.
Following Morrigan’s lead, we took a few turns around the floor, settling into a graceful waltz to a dreary yet soaring melody. Underneath the somber notes and roar of chatter, I strained to listen—and caught the feral, quickening heartbeats of the dhampir. They were just within reach. The servant’s corridors, I suspected. A few of them were concealed in the alcoves, but I knew of only two that were passable. I’d told Josephine and Gwen to find the easiest path to the ballroom through one of the servant’s doors. When I stared past Morrigan’s shoulder a moment too long, she carried me away, twirling me from her embrace and back again.
“You dance well.” I returned to Morrigan’s arms, her hands steady upon my waist. “A little stiff, but it’s nothing we can’t fix with practice.”
Morrigan shook her head with a gentle laugh. “I told you I’m decent enough.” As if incensed by my mild critique, she loosened her posture, one hand sliding up the small of my back. We moved into one another—as my wide skirts would allow—and I rested my head on Morrigan’s shoulder, breathing her in once more.
She kissed my temple, swaying with me where we stood. “I’d rather be at home dancing with you like this under starlight. No music except the rush of the ocean beneath us. Dancing until we’ve burned away the terrible words still echoing somewhere in there.”
I shifted to bury my nose in her neck, then upwards, my lips trailing her pulse. “I’ve forgiven you for that already.”
Morrigan glanced at the unlit chandeliers, pulling in a sharp breath at the graze of my fang. “I haven’t yet forgiven myself.”
A thump , and then another shortly after—like distant fireworks above the wharf. I picked my head up from Morrigan’s shoulder, but she kissed me to hide my sudden alarm as Clarabella’s wailing resonated from the pit in the ruins. The mortals would be none the wiser. But perhaps the vampires and dhampir among us would think the ruins were haunted, that a banshee roamed somewhere below.
Sonia would not be so easily fooled.
The doors to the throne room slammed closed, eliciting a ripple of screams and high-pitched gasps. The guests traded wary glances across the expanse of the floor, mouths agape, the dreary string music cut short. Morrigan pulled me into her chest, and my blood seemed to answer, the monster within me rearing up, fangs bared. The candles across the ballroom guttered, flames bowing to a rising tide of blood sorcery that was neither mine nor Morrigan’s.
It felt like a kiss from Death itself upon my skin.