Page 60 of Wedlock

“Yin? You’re going to have to fill in some gaps for me here.”

“I need you to get rid of anyone who might recognise your baby and meet me in your castle kitchens two nights from now with your son,” she says quietly.

“Meet you? Yin, you can’t come here. You know that no one who left The Games with the Life Token has ever been allowed to live. The vampires are still hunting you.”

“Let me worry about that, you just do as I’ve told you.”

“About that,” I frown. “By get rid of, you don’t mean kill?”

“If I did, could you?”

“Ah,” my mind buzzes furiously as I consider murdering the nanny and the wetnurse, the only two who would really recognise my child amid a sea of others now that Eleanor’s been banished. “I don’t think so….”

“Who are we talking about?” She asks, her tone business-like. “How many?”

“Only two,” I whisper, looking down at my son, his eyes beginning to droop now his tummy is full, “but they aren’t bad people. One’s his nanny and one’s his wetnurse.”

“They definitely need to go,” she says firmly.

“Yin, is killing them really necessary? I’ve seen so much death since I’ve been here, honestly…”

“fu da bu ji da jiou tan bu cheng dan bing, Angie.”

“Translation, please.”

“You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

“Yes, but…these aren’t bad eggs we’re talking about, Yin. It would be murder.”

“Are they willing to help you escape?”

I bite my lip.

“Angie?”

“No,” I reluctantly admit, “they used to keep me locked in. But,” I add hastily, “only because they think I’m suicidal.”

“Let me put it this way. Do you want to live, Angie?”

I say nothing; she knows the answer.

“Be ready tomorrow night.”

“Wait…”

I stare at the phone, the line already dead. I’d wanted to talk more, learn more about the plan, ask about my daughter.

Instead, all I know is that I need to be in the kitchen tomorrow night, and I need to figure out a way to get rid of my nanny and wetnurse between now and then.

“Eggs. Fuck.”

46

The cell is spectacularly free of all modern conveniences and comforts, and I’m not surprised. The Queen’s dungeons and torture chambers, built specifically to hold vampires, have a long, bloody reputation that stretches back a millennia and continues to this day. If ghosts were real, I’m quite sure there wouldn’t even be standing room where I’m currently incarcerated.

I’ve never been here before, but I’ve heard reports of what goes on, and I know there’s no possibility of escape. The walls are at least two metres thick. There’s no window, naturally. The only light is shed from the bare bulbs running the length of thehallway between cells. The floor is equally as thick as the walls, and I expect just as reinforced.

At the sound of a key in the lock at the end of the hallway and boots on the flagstones, I stay seated on the hard, rock shelf built into the wall, the only nod to furnishing, and look up to see the familiar face of my friend staring through my bars, shaking his head.