“Fine,” she answered with the kind of worry and guilt that suggested she wasn’t working on it yet.
“You have less than five days to complete the task,” I reminded her.
“I am aware.”
“What manner of vampire do you think you will have to take to satisfy the Flask?”
“Whatever kind of vampire I can snatch, Lord Regent. But I assure you, I will not disappoint.” She huffed, turning to leave.
“One more thing,” I said, and she paused. “I met your sister earlier. I had to turn her away since visitors aren’t permitted, but she was very eager to see you.”
A flicker of something sharp rippled across her headspace, bright enough to sting my magic before it vanished beneath her other emotions. “I’ll reach out to her when I can. Now if you’ll excuse me, this has been a trying day.”
With a tug of reluctance, I let her go and watched her figure as she sashayed away. The Flask thought Iwanted Ilyana because I was lonely. She was wrong about that. I wanted Ilyana because she was a variable I couldn’t solve. Her mystery would be mine to unravel.
Zane shot me a look of warning as he folded an arm around her shoulders.
“You disappoint me,”the Flask remarked.
“How so?” The quiet left behind now that the great hall was emptied rang in my ears. Alone with my own emotions, they merely deepened, reminding me that there was a slayer in our midst. I sighed to myself. What an absolute calamity. It had been one of those nights, and there was no resolution yet.
I understood my role in the Flask’s designs. Knew she’d chosen me because I was controllable and my magic made me sensitive to her will. And I wanted power badly enough to accept the leash.
But wanting it and liking it were different things.
“Tiptoeing around true power. Never sinking your fangs in,”she tutted.“When will you push ‘Ilyana’ to see whether she rips out your heart…or claims it?”
Chapter 27
Sidney
Shadows stretched and coiled across the floor, their jerky movements mimicking the erratic beat of my pulse. I willed them to hold their shape, but they dissolved into jagged wisps the moment my focus wavered. Butters darted after them, paws skidding on the floor as he snapped at the fleeing dark. Zane’s shadows moved like liquid silk, while mine scattered like startled birds.
“You’re getting better,” Zane said.
I stopped and pressed my palms to my thighs, my heart hammering. “Not nearly fast enough.”
“Remember when the slayers were teaching us swordplay?”
Oh, how could I forget? “I was terrible,” I bemoaned.
I’d had to sneak in whatever training I could. Blood servants weren’t allowed weapons. While the Born and wealthy learned swordplay from tutors, I’d learned fighting from Razira while hiding in storage rooms, mimicking forms with kitchen knives when no one was looking.
“But you got better.” He smiled fondly. “I’d find you in the training yard, beating the straw out of a dummy.”
“Ihadto get better. In the process of learning swordsmanship, I also learned how to fight a vampire holding one. No practice was wasted.”
He gave me a meaningful look. “No practice is wasted,” he said with an agreeing nod. “But I think you’re distracted right now by something else.”
I sighed. An intrusive thought was circling, persistent as a vulture.
“Mathias knows something.” I paced the rug, boots striking the ground harder than necessary. “‘I am merely worried for you.’” I mimicked his faux concern. “He wasn’t chatting. He was hunting for a confession.” Behind that casual tone was a predator counting heartbeats, tracking breaths, waiting for the moment I slipped.
Zane’s jaw tensed, his eyes narrowing. “When he watched you leave, desire was stamped across his face. I didn’t like it.”
The memory of Mathias’s gaze triggered a heat in my veins, a pulse that made my skin prickle with a craving I loathed. Yet something lingered beneath the suspicion, a hollow need that had nothing to do with blood and everything to do with desire.
“You look tired.I’d love to know what caused it,”he’d said. There’d been a starving look in his eyes, the kind that promised pleasure and ruin in equal measure.
