He didn’t flinch, only glared downhis nose at me. “You think that because he loved you as a human, he can love you as a vampire? That there’s anything left of the man you knew?”
My fingers curled into fists. Where was this doubt before, when he was sending me on a mission into the House of the Sanguine? “He’s still in there. And I’ll save him with the cure.”
Carlyle stepped back, something pitying twisting his features. “Will you? Or are you just clinging to a memory? Look at you, already defending him. He’s a beast wearing your betrothed’s face and manipulating your emotions.”
“He’s not—” Heat flooded my cheeks, creeping down my neck. My hands curled tighter, nails biting crescents into my palms. “You didn’t see him. You don’t know?—”
“They all manipulate, kid. It’s what they do. They find your weakness, dress it up as desire, and make you believe they’re anything but predators.” He lowered his voice to his usual gentle tone. Yet his words struck me like hammer blows. “Remember who you are. Remember why you’rehere. Your testimony was a baptism of blood and violence.”
A sick taste rose in the back of my throat. My fists loosened, fingers trembling.
“Your actions can prevent another vampire from tearing out an innocent woman’s throat,” he continued without mercy. “Like your father did to your mother. Did he show mercy while she bled out right in front of you? No. The only good vampire is a dead one.”
The past crept in unannounced, a darkness I had neither summoned nor desired.
Hot blood slicked between my small fingers as I tried to hold the wound in my mother’s throat closed. I pleaded for her skin to knit back together, desperate for it to heal with the same speed mine did. It didn’t listen.
She made a sound then, a broken gurgle as crimson surged between my palms. Too much. Her lifeblood stained the carpet.
“Mama, please. Mama!”
She hadn’t deserved this. She hadn’t done anything wrong! Tears blurred my vision, wetting her face like rain.
Her gaze had gone distant, already fixed on something beyond me. A broken smile graced her lips. Her chest lifted once more, a thin breath slipping past her lips, and nothing followed.
Then came the silence—the terrible silence of a heart that would never beat again, of lungs that would never draw breath.
Father’s grip closed around my arm, wrenching me upright. My mother’s blood smeared across his fingers as he dragged me backward.
“Enough,” he snarled. “Quit your pathetic bleating, dirty-blooded whelp.”
I couldn’t. The sobs kept coming, choking and desperate, as he hauled me toward the door. Though I reached for her, I couldn't do anything but watch her still body grow smaller as he dragged me away, my screams echoing uselessly down the hall.
Panic seized my throat, and I swallowed only dry air. The frantic drum of my pulse hammered against my eardrums. My father had lost control that day. Justice had come for him much too late, as there was no punishment for a prince who’d killed a lowly servant in a fit of passion.
I drove my nails further into my palms, wrenching myself back from the violent tremor that seized my core. “Zane is nothing like him,” I said, but the fight had left me.
“Vampires wear our faces, speak our words, and sometimes lie in our beds, but they are parasites, Sidney. Beautiful,seductive parasites.” He reached as if to touch my shoulder, then let his hand fall. “Don’t forget, I pulled you from the gutter when you had nothing. I gave you purpose and trained you. And this is how you repay that faith?” Disappointment layered over the pity in his tone.
“I haven’t forgotten what they are,” I managed, throat tight.
He turned away. “The Sidney I raised would never hesitate. She would never let a monster’s pretty words cloud her judgment. She certainly wouldn’tdefendthem.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Perhaps I was wrong about you. Perhaps you were always going to choose your vampire side over good.”
Something splintered in my chest. “No. Carlyle, I—” I pressed my shaking hands flat against the table to steady them. “Please. I’m not choosing them. I’m not?—”
“Then prove it.” He turned back, his eyes dark and hardened with anger. “Complete the mission without letting sentiment interfere. You’ll claim that throne, regardless of who stands in your way.”
I met his glare, forcing a steady tone. “I’ll complete the mission.”
He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring slightly. “What else do you need to tell me?”
I stared at the bloodied towel wrapped around his hand, fighting the urge to drag my tongue across my lips. “Nothing.” It came out too quickly, too high. I swallowed and tried again. “All is well.”
He searched my face, and I forced myself to hold his gaze, refusing to look away like the guilty creature I was. I wouldn’t let him know how the thirst still burned my throat.
With a shake of his head, he sighed.
“Your dhampir blood has always been a liability,Sidney.” His tone remained clinical, as if he were diagnosing a disease. “We’ve worked for years to help you suppress it, to strengthen your human side. But now you’re surrounded by vampires constantly, breathing their air, living their lifestyle. Of course the corruption would resurface.”
