Page 68 of The Vampire Debt

The thought is cut off and my blood turns to ice as I watch the cold smile spread across her lips.

Elise reaches toward the fireplace mantle. She grabs something and drags it along the top. It makes a horrible scratching sound against the wood as she drags it. Firelight gleams off the night-forged silver blade. I swallow hard as my mouth goes dry.

“What are you doing?” I rasp.

She waves the dagger back and forth in her hand, testing the weight of it.

“At first I thought you might be good for the Master. He has never taken part in the claiming, but when he arrived with you, I thought that maybe it would be easier for him, to have a meal on hand rather than having to deal with those annoying girls who want him for the status a mark brings.” She presses the tip of her first finger to the point of the blade then lets out a soft hiss and sucks on the wound.

I try to stand, but my muscles are sluggish and respond clumsily. I only make it halfway up before my legs give out on me and I drop back down.

“This is sharp,” she says almost absentmindedly before continuing. “But then,” Elise says, pacing before me, entirely unconcerned with my efforts. “The Master never marked you, he gave you everything and look how you repay him.” She whirls to face me, pointing the dagger at my chest. “You try to kill him, and with Rosalie’s dagger at that.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grind out through clenched teeth.

It all rushes back to me in a tidal wave. The looks she gave me, how she defended Alaric when I first arrived, her outbursts, and countless other instances that had seemed benign at the time.

“I know he did everything for you, and you are ungrateful. Do you know how many women woulddieto be in your shoes? He deserves a human who is loyal, someone who will love him.”

“It’s not what you think, he is not my enemy,” I say, trying to talk her from her plan to kill me. “We are friends.” I’m not sure how true that is, but it’s close enough.

“Shut up!” she snaps, her cool demeanor slipping. “You don’t deserve to be claimed by him.”

“And I supposeyoudo?” I say derisively. She’s no better than the other girls she looks down on—the ones who see the mark of a vampire as a symbol of status.

“I have been serving him all my life. Since I was old enough to walk, my mother trained me to be his.Ideserve to be claimed.”

I don’t know a lot about injuries, but my gut is screaming that something is wrong. I should be feeling better by now, not progressively worse. My limbs tingle, becoming harder and harder to move, and my eyelids are heavy. I look from her to the half-drunk tea. Understanding dawns.

“You drugged my tea,” I say. My words slur slightly.

Breathe… breathe and focus.

“Yes,” she says without the slightest hint of emotion, then goes back to playing with the dagger. It’s more than clear by now that she means to kill me. I have to keep her talking until whatever she gave me wears off.

I close my eyes for a moment and will my body to regain control.

“I have seen you,” she says. “Practicing with this.” She waves the dagger as if I wasn’t aware of what she meant. “While you lack technical ability, you do have more training than I do. I needed something to slow you down, so I can finally be rid of you.”

One word sticks out. “Finally?”

“Yes,” she sighs dramatically and collapses in the chair across from me. “I had hoped that when you cut yourself, he would have fed on you until you were nothing but a dried up corpse.”

“And the atrium,” I say. I wriggle my fingers and toes as feeling starts to return to my muscles, small movements as to avoid drawing her attention.

“Yes, it was easy enough to borrow a tool from Mr. Steward. Though it was a gamble you would even climb the stairs at all. Though I had hoped you’d climb to the top before falling.” Elise stands and stretches.

“What have I done to you to make you want to kill me?” I ask, trying to sound as wounded as possible.

I can feel my anger starting to boil over, but rather than spit out the venomous words on the tip of my tongue, I use them to burn away at the poison and clear my head.

She lifts her chin and dons a haughty air. “You tried to kill the Master.”

“I—”

“You tried to kill him,” she says again, but this time there’s something wild and unpredictable about her. “And instead of getting rid of you like the trash you are, he gives you more special treatment.” Her voice cracks as her large blue eyes fill with tears. “I love him—you should have loved him, but you are ungrateful and undeserving.”

In another life, another world… another situation, I could almost feel pity for her and the unrequited love she feels for Alaric. But not now, not when she is too cowardly to even admit her feelings to him, to do anything she could have and instead take it out on someone who has no bearing on whom he loves.