I cataloged each face, each twitch of muscle and flicker of unease. Confidence lived in certain postures, fear in restless hands and darting eyes. I marked who could be useful and who should die first.
Felicity stepped toward the Flask next, and the necklace quivered in her grasp. It pulsed once against her skin, flared white, then settled into a steady glow. She let out a shaky breath and nodded to herself.
“Accepted,” Mathias announced.
She moved to stand beside me, close enough that I caught the faint scent of lilac from her hair. “Do you want to pretend to know what the other aspirants are saying while we wait?” Mischief danced in her eyes as she smiled.
When I didn’t respond, she nodded toward two candidates locked in an animated discussion. The first had hair teased so high it defied both gravity and good taste. “I made my coiffure so magnificently tall so everyone can see I have a brain up there somewhere,” Felicity said in a breathy, affected voice as the woman gestured grandly.
The second contestant, a woman with a nose like a hawk’s beak, leaned in closer. “Well, perhaps I could raise my children in that glorious nest of yours,” Felicity continued, switching to a simpering tone. “Think of the real estate value!”
I pressed my lips together, fightingback a laugh. Felicity must have caught the tremor in my shoulders, because, emboldened, she turned her attention to another pair across the room.
“My lovely,” she declared, pretending to be a contestant swathed in pink, “your complexion is stunning. What’s the secret? The blood of tortured artists or just classic aristocratic spite?”
Effortlessly switching gears, she imitated the female vampire in the cape beside the pink atrocity: “Spite is underrated. I exfoliate with betrayal twice a week.”
“Indeed. How do you stay entertained after eight centuries? Personally, I’ve already mastered boredom, chess, and murder,” Felicity continued, mimicking Pink.
She hummed, adopting a saccharine lilt as a third contender wandered in to join Pink and the caped vampire. Speaking as their lips moved, Felicity said, “She tried knitting once. It ended in flames and a missing stable boy.”
I snickered before quickly schooling my expression into a clinical mask. Yet warmth lingered in my chest as I scanned the crowd of spectators, oddly grateful for this strange, irreverent girl who could find humor even here.
I almost regretted that I would have to kill her. Not today, but soon.
The great hall stretched before us like a monument to vampire excess—soaring arches carved with scenes of human hunts, massive columns twisting toward a vaulted ceiling painted with constellations. Tapestries depicting the founding of the House of the Sanguine hung between towering windows, their deep crimsons and midnight blues shimmering under the glow of crystal chandeliers.
Yet beneath all this grandeur, I felt the familiar suffocation of this place. The weight of centuries of cruelty presseddown all around us. Every stone had absorbed the screams of those who’d served here, each shadow hid the ghosts of the broken. This had been my prison once; these halls, my cage. Now I was back, and the air tasted of old blood and older sins.
The hairs on my arms rose as I spotted more of my childhood tormentors.
Head Priest Bruvor stood near the eastern wall, his brown hair tied back in a low tail. His cruel smile was unchanged.
Beside him lurked Lord Elliot, massive and brutish. His strong hands had once held me underwater until my lungs burned with desperate need. Both watched the proceedings with the casual interest of predators selecting prey.
My fingers curled into fists. The scars they’d left, both physical and emotional, throbbed with phantom pain. I forced myself to breathe, to maintain the facade of just another ambitious contestant. The glamor I wore had held up so far. Yet being this close to them, in this cursed place, made my skin crawl with the urge to drop all pretense and make them burnnow.
Survival first,I reminded myself.Revenge is worthless if it gets you killed.
Still, my internal war raged on. Every fiber of my being screamed to lunge at Bruvor and Lord Elliot, to wrap my hands around their throats and squeeze. I wanted Bruvor to feel the same helplessness he had forced on me so many times. I would destroy them all, down to the system that’d created them.
From the spectators, voices carried with the typical vampire disregard for discretion.
“MoreTurnedpretenders.” A feminine voice drippedwith aristocratic disdain. “In my day, they knew their place.”
“Your day is ending, Lorelei,” came the smooth reply of a male’s voice. I didn’t have to look up to recognize Lord Valerius’s deep tones. “Merit over birthright…that’s the future. These trials will prove it.”
Lady Lorelei’s chilling laugh had my fingers curling into fists. “Merit? Oh, you mean desperation. Look at these street rats, thinking they can claim what belongs to the pure bloodlines.”
“While your precious Born children play at politics, the Made have been forged in actual fire. They have built their own fortunes and understand survival in ways your pampered whelps never will.”
“Survival is not the same as worthiness to rule,” she shot back. “They lack the wisdom that comes with centuries of noble blood.”
Finally, I spotted them in the crowd. She sat next to Lord Valerius, draped in shimmering copper, her brown hair styled with pearls. From a distance, her face was a mask of polite interest. Yet I remembered it up close, recalled the ancient winter trapped in her eyes.
The world faded. I was a child again, no more than six, and Nemea had lent me to Lorelei for a few months. It was one of her punishments, to serve in the opulent halls of her old friend’s estate.
My small hands burned, raw from hours of scrubbing stone floors. Dust still clung to my sleeves as I slipped into the drawing room. The scent of polish and old velvet was thick in the air.
