AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Your werewolf won’t be able to sense you here, Daughter of the Goddess. One thing the White Lady was good for was wards and protection spells.” He held out his hands and gestured around the room. Discreetly placed volcanic-rock wards sat on nearly every surface.
Evelyn stilled. She looked between the dead vampyr corpse still steaming from her flame and Riven. “How do you know the White Lady?”
Riven placed his hands in his pockets, calm and cool as she stood there with her flame ignited. “We had a working relationship. Business partners, you could call us.”
“You were working with the White Lady?” Evelyn’s flame flared as her anger grew. At herself. At the situation. “You killed the young women.” Evelyn shook her head, disbelief rooting her in place. Everything had aligned with the White Lady killing those in Callum. She’d been conducting the dark magic and had all the body parts. They’d thought she’d created a decoy, but all along it had been Riven’s servant.
A vampyr.
Anger seared through Evelyn. These past few days she’d thought they’d defeated their enemy. What involvement did Riven have and why?
Suddenly, a cold, unrelenting dread traveled up Evelyn’s spine. No. No. No. She’d already lost Aster. She couldn’t lose another friend. She couldn’t fail someone else she loved.
“Where’s Tovi?” she demanded.
Riven tilted his head back and laughed.
Evelyn took a step closer, flaring her hands even more. “Where is she?” She bit out the words. The temperature of the print shop rose with her flaring anger.
“Indisposed at the moment.” His eyes tracked her slowly. “But don’t worry. As my sister and princess of Drystan, I cannot kill her.”
Evelyn’s flame flickered, her heart tinging at Riven’s words. What did he mean by princess of Drystan? Yes, they had a king, but not a princess. Unless . . . Evelyn shook her head, refusing to believe it. Tovi wasn’t . . . No.
“You’re lying,” Evelyn said. “Tell me where she is.”
Riven stood, laughing. The spidery black veins retreated back into his skin, the color vanishing like disappearing ink. His talons retracted, leaving him with human-like hands.
Evelyn swallowed, blinking away what she’d witnessed. Riven appeared normal again, as if he’d never been a vampyr at all.
“Neat trick, isn’t it? I’m sad to tell you that Tovi can do the same exact thing. She has been fooling you into friendship.”
The White Lady’s last words rang through Evelyn’s mind: “Wait! My Dark Prince! Please!”
Evelyn couldn’t breathe. Her ribs tightened. She held the hope that Riven was wrong. Tovi? Her best friend? A vampyr? No. She refused to accept the piercing pain that drove into her heart. “I don’t believe you.”
Riven shrugged. “Believe it or not, Tovi is a vampyr. One of the first, I might add.”
Betrayal seared through Evelyn like a white-hot burn. Her flame mirrored her anger, threatening to engulf the entire room. She’d trusted Tovi like a sister, had been her friend for years. Tovi had known she’d lost her flame. Why hadn’t the vampyr king attacked with that knowledge? Why had Tovi befriended her at all?
Fucking flames, how had Evelyn not realized? Her magic should’ve sensed the darkness. Even standing in the room with Riven, her magic detected a threat, but not the vampyr curse.
“Why don’t you look like other vampyrs? How can you walk in the sunlight?” Evelyn demanded, stepping closer to Riven and raising her flame to her elbows.
Riven’s jade eyes snagged on her flame, and he held his hands up in surrender. “I can see you have questions, Daughter of the Goddess.”
“Answer. Them.”
“Do you know what is in your blood, Miss Carson? Flame, yes, of course. An element that can kill a vampyr. But as vampyrs, we feed off blood, and your blood, my dear, gives us light. We discovered it after killing Carena, the first Daughter of the Goddess. With it in our system, we can walk in the sunlight and mask our true selves. Poetic, don’t you think? The one destined to defeat us is also our savior?”
He began to pace as sweat trickled down Evelyn’s neck. She felt Kade’s absence, and Tovi’s betrayal weighed on her as Riven spoke calmly.
“Yet, during our attempt at capturing you two years ago, we discovered your parents’ blood did almost the same. The ability to walk in sunlight is within your bloodline. Thanks to some dark magic, we were able to preserve such blood.”
Evelyn’s flame fell back down to her wrists.
“Tovi drank my parents’ blood?”
“No.” Riven shook his head. “Tovi is a thorn in my side, and on the opposing side of the court back home. A fucking disgrace to the vampyr race,” Riven said, picking lint off his shoulder. “After so many years against the witches and werewolves, I began to wonder what it would be like if all my people could walk in the sunlight.”
