Letting the corridors guide me, I kept walking. As I turned toward his chambers, I shaped the words I would offer.Lorelei is dead. I killed her. One more name off the list.
A woman sat behind the heavy central desk that anchored the foyer outside his office. Her muscular frame filled the pristine white and gold surcoat of a captain: Darli Stark. Her blonde hair was pulled into a severe knot that sharpened the angles of her face and drew attention to pale blue eyes with the chill of a frozen lake. Scars, a lattice of old battles, marred her neck, each one a reminder.
Weeks had passed since she’d crossed my mind. A flicker of warmth stirred in my chest to see her again.
“Captain Stark. How’ve you been? I was hoping to catch Carlyle.” With a smile, I stepped up to the table and reached out to clap her on the arm.
She flinched, recoiling as if my touch carried a blight, and my smile faltered.
“What do you want?” She returned, her focus remained on the ledger she was marking. “Carlyle’s in council. He doesn’t have time for reports from someone who’s spreading her legs for vampires.”
I recoiled as if she’d slapped me. The venom in her voice didn’t match the friend I remembered, andCarlyle had never refused me, not once. “I do what is necessary to keep my cover.”
Captain Stark slammed the ledger shut, the crack echoing through the room. “Necessary?” Her scarred lip curled. “We buried Dustyn, who had his throat torn out while you’ve been playing princess and sipping vintage red. Don’t talk to me about necessity.”
My stomach dropped. “I didn’t know.” I’d liked Dustyn from the start, enough to slip him a placebo before we set out to kill Ilyana weeks ago.
“Of course you didn’t.” Her pulse thrummed at her temple. “You’re too busy with your vampires to care what happens to us.”
I gritted my teeth. What else had Carlyle told her? He was the only one I’d reported to, and clearly he must’ve exaggerated the truth about what I was doing in the House of the Sanguine.
My chest tightened, stomach churning with sour bile. Captain Stark and I had fought side by side. I thought we were, if not friends, then sisters in arms. Now she looked at me as if I were one ofthem. My mind drifted back to Carlyle’s voice at our last meeting:“Your dhampir blood has always been a liability, Sidney.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe that liability had finally tipped the scales, curdling the person I used to be into something unrecognizable. I looked at my fingers, half expecting to see them stained with a darkness I couldn’t wash away. Maybe I’d crossed a line I could never uncross.
No.I gritted my teeth, forcing away the doubts.I am still myself.
“I’m doing exactly what the temple asked.” The words came out defensively, and my hands curled into fists.
“Then why are you here beggingfor Carlyle’s approval instead of out there killing them?” She gestured toward the door. “We don’t need your reports. We need dead bodies.”
My breath quickened. I counted. One. Two. Three. Slow exhale. My arms trembled, but I locked them at my sides. “Tell Carlyle that Lady Lorelei is dead. Another name off the list… Justice for the temple.”
“You’ve been there for weeks. It’s not enough.” Captain Stark stood and rested her hand on the hilt of her sword.
The death of a council member wasn’t enough? One of my grandmother’s old confidantes? I huffed in disbelief.
“You think you’re still one of us? You smell like them, Sidney. That copper tang of old blood, drowned under their crimson myrrh perfume.” Captain Stark’s lip curled. “You look like them, move like them. Only Carlyle’s pity keeps you breathing. If he didn't think you could be saved, I’d have put a bolt through your eye the second you walked in. You disgust me.”
She turned and walked away. I watched her disappear around a corner, reeling. If Captain Stark, a former sister in arms, felt this way about me…what was the consensus amongst the other slayers?
I found it hard to breathe. The air in the hallway was too thin. I fled to my laboratory, skin prickling with every step. This sacred space had always smelled of incense and candle wax. Now it carried the tang of suspicion.
The door to the lab slammed behind me, and I clicked the lock into place as my heart hammered. Pressing my forehead against the cool wood, I waited for my breath to settle.
Had the entire temple turned against me?
Maybe it was just Captain Stark, raw with grief and looking for someone to blame. I lingered on the possibility for a hopeful moment.
No, the guards also watched me differently. The templedidn’t feel like a sanctuary anymore. It would never be again if my name was already so tainted.
I’d never come here to make friends, though. My time amongst the followers of Aetherius had always been a matter of mutual survival. And if they didn’t want me here…I would survive without them. I focused on the only thing that remained of consequence: science.
My equipment waited exactly as I’d left it. Glass beakers. Copper tubing. The microscope Dr. Hillman had helped me acquire years ago. I slipped out of my cloak, prepared my tea, and let the herbal taste of it settle my nerves before turning to the tasks ahead. The formula was close—so close I could taste it.
I pulled out the heated vial Noir had given me. If he was right about the creatures being immune to vampirism, this could be the missing piece, the catalyst that reversed the turning process.
I laid out the components of the serum. Each step, each measure, each drop carried me toward a future I’d dreamed about…a cure. My dhampir essence sat at the center, flanked by the compound I’d been perfecting. The final piece waited beside them: phoenix blood.
