We waited in tenuous silence until the servant left. I held a piece of cookie out to Nibs under the table. A moment later, faint crunches ticked my knee in a patient rhythm. Razira sipped her tea. Once she swallowed, I did the same, pleased to taste an ordinary blend untainted by eyeballs or bat wool.
“Last year, the late Queen Nemea held a solstice ball. The whole coven was invited here to celebrate on the shortest night of the year.” Razira settled back, a smile tilting her lips. “We mocked the humans who celebrated their extra vampire-free time, for there is no day without the dark and no sunrise without sunset. Do you remember it?”
Would Ilyana have attended such an event? I made a split-second decision that yes, she must’ve. “Of course. It was a grand time.”
“I can still picture it. You were blood drunk and arm-in-arm with Fiorella on one side. And another girl who looked so much like you on your other side.”
“My sister, Tahlia.” I hoped supplying at least one detail would keep her going until she tired of this topic.
She hummed and waved the detail away. “I remember you as you were, carefree in a gaggle of other Born. A young woman who’d never known what it was like to be human, nor the fear that comes with it.” An eager gleam flashed in Razira’s eyes. “There to sip blood wine and brag about the tiniest of conquests. A socialite. A weakling. Someone you’ve never been, Sidney.”
Porcelain shattered in the wake of my real name escaping her lips. I was only vaguely aware that the teacup had slipped from my numb fingers and had clipped the edge of the table, splattering my lap with shards and warm liquid.
Nibs burrowed deeper in his pocket. My hand was already in another, drawing a hidden knife.
“It is unlike you to be robbed for words, dove,” she said, as if she hadn’t just upended my whole cover. She gestured dismissively toward the flash of a blade I brandished. “There’s no need for that. I mean you no harm.”
“How?” My voice was a mere wisp.
“You thought to fool an illusionist with an illusion.” She was still so frustratingly even and sure. Her perfect face betrayed no emotion, while I was about to combust with the force of mine. “Don’t worry too much, I am the only illusionist in this House. It’s a rare ability. And the magic over you is quite strong. I didn’t see through it until I touched you.”
“Oh. During the trial…” She’d brushed my bare skin by accident and gasped. I should’ve known I’d been revealed. Oddly, my muscles began to loosen as I secured my dagger back in its pocket. As with Zane or Finn, there was a bone-deep level of relief that set in to have my true identity out in the open.
But Razira is an enemy. We’ve entered the same competition that only has one winner.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk until now. You’ve grown strong, but you still fight like my protégé and clearly…” She put her teacup down and lifted her chin with pride. “You’re here for the same reason I am. Revenge.”
Her skin shimmered with the effects of an illusion peeling away. Perfectly flawless skin gave way to the roughened texture of scars. Servant’s marks, as the vampires called them, peppering her arms, her wrists, her neck, and the hint of her shoulders peeking out of her collar. Less familiar patterns cut across her arms and throat. Theremnants of blows meant to kill. Wounds she’d taken for me.
The pristine white hair atop her head tarnished to gray, a hue caught somewhere between her illusion and the black it’d once been. And the soft brown of her human eyes had truly become the color of old blood rather than a vibrant red.
The real Razira had something dangerous banked in the expression she wore underneath her perfected mask. Yet she looked more like herself now than any other time during this competition. A servant of Aetherius with her hate for vampires immortalized when she’d become one.
A smile reached her mouth a heartbeat too late, arriving only after something hard and sharp flickered behind her eyes. “Won’t you let me see your face too, dove?”
I brushed the remnants of my teacup off my lap and took the bracelet off under the table. I didn’t mind sharing the truth with her now. “I thought you were dead,” I said in a hush of shame. “Had I known you were here this whole time…”
My stomach turned from the horror of that night, an event that still painted my nightmares in shades of vampire blood and the starkness of my mentor’s eyes as she faced what I thought was her end.
It was supposed to be my great revenge. Razira had taught me how to be a slayer, and I’d executed our plan just as we’d practiced. My father had never paid me much mind, not even when I slunk around his quarters outside of his line of sight. His vampire arrogance was as much his undoing as me slitting his throat with a hidden knife.
The pungent smell of vampire blood thickened in the air as it leaked out of Prince Lazrael’s throat. In death, it seepedin blackened rivulets, staining the carpet of his study. His mortal wound had fountained out blood in a damning flood.
It was on my clothes. Under my fingernails. It tickled my skin as it dried in uneven flecks.
Horror clamped around my chest. I stumbled away from the body and retched, folding over as my stomach revolted. My hands shook violently. It didn’t matter how long I’d waited for this moment. I had ended a life, and my body refused to pretend otherwise.
The thought settled in with sickening clarity: This was permanent.
As he bled out, Lazrael had dragged himself toward the bell pull and rung it several times. The sound still echoed in my ears when Razira slipped inside the study before anyone else, latching the door behind her.
She went to the body and tsked, then bent and picked up the bloodied knife, just to bury it in my father’s chest. I winced as she pressed on the handle with both hands, embedding it deep. “You always have to finish the job with vampires, or they survive what they shouldn’t.”
After wiping her hands clean on his clothes, she went to me. As she brushed my hair back, her gentle touch stilled the frantic, feverish pulse of my senses.
“You’ve done it. Aetherius be praised.” There was a measure of wonder in her voice. I’d reallydone it. I was a vampire slayer just like her. The side of humanity had won the battle over my dhampir soul.
“He…he’ll never kill another woman.” The words came out thin and unconvincing. I waited for strength to follow them. It didn’t. My throat tightened instead, my voice breaking apart under the weight of what I’d done.
