Page 2 of Until the Heart Stops (The Oylen City #1)

With heavy feet I trudged back to the counter where I spent my nights on the stool my mother had perched on before me, and her mother before her.

Once it had been opulent. Now, however, the gold had flaked away, the dark red paint chipped and peeling at the edges.

But I still greeted each customer as my mother had before me, and her mother had, generations upon generations.

“ Serang lan nauth .”

Blood and earth. An ancient greeting in the old language completed with a tap of three fingertips to my lips.

Most of my patrons remembered my however-many-great-grandmères ago when she’d first opened the stall on the river.

Sometimes they would speak of the magic she’d imbued into the doorway that stood behind me, covered with a thick red velvet curtain.

I paused as I rounded the counter, eyeing the small silver bag resting atop the ancient ledger I kept, far finer than anything I owned.

As I’d said—the first gift arrived the day after solstice.

A hiss drew my attention up. Eamon, one of our most loyal patrons, stood a few paces away, staring at the burned remains of Monsieur Dubois’ blood den.

“Merciful goddess,” he breathed, turning to me with wide eyes. “Are you all right? Is Adrienne?—”

I raised a hand to stop him. “She is fine and so am I.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. Though he was thousands of years old, the smooth expanse of Eamon’s golden-brown brow always made me think he’d been closer to my age of early thirties when he’d been sired.

He had been the first to follow the shop into the alley and was one of the only reasons I kept a roof over my head.

He paid an exorbitant amount of money for Adrienne to be his exclusive giver and to spend most nights in her arms.

Eamon murmured something under his breath in Kysol, his native tongue, that sounded like a prayer to the goddess before he brushed his long hair back from his face and covered my hand with his. “If there is anything you need, Lilith, all you must do is ask.”

I patted his hand. “Thank you. She’s ready for you now, if you are.”

He nodded while I rose from my stool. I turned my head away from the smoking remains of the blood den and my eye caught again on the silver bag. “Wait—is this yours?”

“No, it is not,” he answered.

I frowned, touching the bag carefully as if it might bite. “It was not here before…”

He took a step closer, picking it up from the counter and weighing it in his hand. A small smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. “Then perhaps it is a gift and you should open it.”

I rolled my lips together and gestured to him. “You open it.”

His laugh was warm, almost musical the way many immortals sounded. Gently, he placed the bag onto the counter to tug off his cream gloves. “Are you frightened of a gift, Lilith?”

“I am wary of a parcel that appears out of nowhere and has no note or reason.”

The amused expression on his face turned solemn as we both slowly turned to regard the remains beside us. He nodded and tugged apart the drawstrings before he dipped his hand into the pouch.

“Inkpots.”

I frowned. “Inkpots?”

Sure enough, he placed two glittering pots of ink onto the table one after the other. They were nicer than the usual ink I bought. I couldn’t help but frown at them. “Who would send me ink? ”

Eamon rummaged around deeper in the pouch. “I don’t know. Did you need ink?”

The truth was I did need ink. I was close to running out and had been lamenting internally for a week now over how I would afford it when rent was due for our stall in a matter of days.

Buying ink would have meant that I was ten oyista short.

But I didn’t want to admit such a thing to Eamon or that I’d been diluting the ink I had in the hope of making it last.

So instead, I shrugged. “I always need ink for bookkeeping.”

He mirrored the movement. “Perhaps it’s a gift from a kind patron or friend who noticed you were running low and looked to help.”

I eyed him, flipping the ledger open. “And you’re sure it wasn’t you?”

Eamon pulled a small rolled piece of parchment from the bottom of the bag and held it out to me. “I can assure you it was not. Not that I don’t love you, little witch, but I’m afraid my gifts are given elsewhere.”

I took the parchment. Eamon was a generous client as it was, but he did shower Adrienne, my best friend and blood giver, in gifts.

She always tried to share them with me and our other best friend Noah if we could, but we usually refused.

They were her treasures and keepsakes, but if it was extra oyista , she sometimes slipped it into the rent for the month for the small apartment we kept, regardless of how much we fought it.

“You look tired,” he murmured, reaching to sweep back a lock of my hair from my shoulder in a paternal sort of way.

I hummed, flipped my ledger closed and crossed my hands over the faded leather, rolling the parchment between my fingers. “What every woman wants to hear, Eamon, thank you.”

His laugh was soft, like embers crackling in a fire. The sound was strangely homey, perhaps because I’d been hearing it my whole life, though usually threaded with the ringing laugh of my mother and grandmère.

“Are you going to read it?” he asked, gesturing to the tiny scroll.

I huffed, pulled my knife from the inside of my bodice and sliced open the black seal. The message was small, though written with such impeccable penmanship I was sure it came from a vampire. One would have to have been alive for centuries to have the sort of skill dancing across the parchment.

Beauty like yours deserves more than silver and gold.

More than diamond and platinum.

It is a beauty that spurns the gods, begins wars, parts the seas.

A beauty that makes even strong men fall to their knees,

hands outstretched in supplication, begging:

“Please, just a glance, just a look, that is all that I need.”

“Is it…good news?” Eamon hedged.

Heat crawled up the back of my neck and I cursed the flush no doubt bleeding across my cheeks.

Quickly, I rolled back up the scroll and shoved it into the silver bag along with the ink.

I had no idea who it could be from—I’d had lovers, yes, but it had been quite a bit of time since my last encounter.

And, to be fair, none of them would have been able to afford such a gift.

Why me? Why this? And for it to appear so suddenly after such a tragedy …

“It’s nothing,” I answered, rising from the stool and gesturing toward the heavy drape. “Adrienne is waiting, if you’re ready.”

His eyes flashed with hunger as I drew back the curtain to reveal a small sitting room waiting on the other side.

All thought of my mysterious present clearly vanished from his mind.

There, in the center of the room, stood Adrienne, her blonde hair piled onto the top of her head with a few tendrils framing her heart-shaped face.

Her silken skirts moved with her inhale before pooling around her as she curtsied, pressing three fingers to her lips.

“ Serang lan nauth , Lord Azad,” she greeted in her wind chime voice reserved only for our patrons, perfectly composed after the evening’s terror.

We were far too used to horror in our world for it to be anything more than a passing moment.

Adrienne was anything but meek. Eamon knew this, however, and she’d told me a few times of how he liked to pull the fire out of her, how he’d begged her for more than her blood.

But even here in the Souzterain we had rules we abided by.

It was one thing to drink from a living source as vampires had done for thousands of years, but it was wholly another to drink while entwined within the pleasures of the flesh , as my grandmère once said.

A bond would forge between the pair, a sort of link, similar to if a human or Lycan drank the blood of a vampire.

But it ran deeper than merely the ability to locate that individual, to feel their heartbeat.

It was said you could hear each other’s thoughts, feel what the other felt, perhaps even more.

But it had been a century since such a thing occurred.

The Covenant, understanding how dangerous such a bond could be, had seen to that.

Eamon shot me a wink as he dipped beneath the velvet, his hands spread wide as if to receive an offering. “Adrienne, my heart.”

I dropped the curtain, but not before her laugh slipped through, light and airy. A throat cleared behind me and I spun, a practiced smile on my face, only for it to fracture.

A vampire I’d never seen before leaned against my counter, soft brown curls framing his angelic face, but the grin pulling at the corner of his mouth was anything but ethereal.

“Madame Searah,” he murmured not in question, but in answer. His attention flicked across my face, lingering on my hair, a similar color and curl to his, which had slowly fallen from the twist at my nape perhaps as I’d helped snuff the flames with the others.

“ Serang lan nauth , my lord,” I greeted, pressing my fingertips to my lips. “How may I be of service?”

An unknown vampire this deep within the Souzterain and after such events as tonight was a danger to be certain. So, I waited for this male to tell me what it was he wanted, rather than offering up our usual catalog of blood givers.

“Tell me, do you work this fine establishment each night?” His teeth snapped shut on the t , canines glittering in the candlelight, but the impression was not one of imposition. No, instead he appeared like an eager puppy waiting for a stick to be thrown.

“Almost each night,” I answered carefully.

There were nights my heart was too heavy to even sit on the stool and Noah forced me to stay home or else wander the new market on the Rachay.

Those nights he called off from his patrols as a Vyenur and took an elixir to tamp down his demon magic so he could work the booth for me.

But as time had passed the frequency of those nights had grown less and less.