Page 112 of Vervain

My face drops at the title still on her lips. “I am human.”

“But your appearance suggests otherwise.” She cocks her head. “You don’t even resemble one of us. There is something…”

The memory of Mum’s expression changing at the sight of my fangs and blue-tinged skin comes to mind. “Disgusting?”

“No. Ethereal. There is something ethereal about you I cannot pinpoint.”

Ethereal? I’ve not heard that before. Mostly, I am called a monster, looked at with distaste, and spoken about with revulsion. Serun has always been the only one to call me beautiful or perfect in a world that looks at me like an alien.

“Did I disturb you and Lord Serun?” Olivia asks.

With a slow blink, I turn away, hoping it will hide the heat in the cover of darkness. “Yes, you did. But it was a welcome disturbance. I was mere moments away from being split in two.”

Olivia gasps. “Did he try to kill you?”

“Yes. He would have,” I say, imagining his cock entering me. It should be illegal to be that big.

Serun’s chuckle lingers in the shell of my ear, stirring even more emotions.

Olivia grimaces, and I wonder whether it is because nightwalkers don’t understand jokes or because her humanity has forgotten what it was like to have them.

We lapse into silence again. I’m not sure why I’m still out here, but I also don’t want to entertain Serun yet. My mind is still muddied with filth, and with my hunger sated, I have no excuse to start intimacy. Besides, Olivia is here. It shouldn’t bother me. I was intimate with Jaxton while his bunkmates were in the room. Still, it’s different. As if I want to share this experience only with Serun, not with anyone else.

“I can’t believe those creatures overran my city,” she says. “I doubt any of the street rats made it out alive.”

“Does it make you sad? Do you feel any emotion towards them?”

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t, and I think that’s the shitty part of being a nightwalker. There is nothing at all. I know emotions. I know when to get angry or surprised, especially at how much Lord Serun wants to kill me. I know fear, but I can’t feel it.” Olivia turns away from me and sighs. “Perhaps my soul is slipping, and by the time I am no longer a newborn, I won’t know any of it at all.”

“Well, I will be here to pull you out. We are friends, after all.”

Olivia puckers her lips. “Are we? You’ve been distant with me since we met. Now we are… friends?”

I reach for my locket. “I find it difficult to make friends.”

“I couldn’t tell,” she says. “You are so motherly. The magik you did back there even reminded me of her. Are you sure you aren’t her, and that you are playing us for fools?”

“Perhaps,” I laugh at the audacity, because it’s easier than telling her I am a vegodian.

“Just keep your light away from me. I don’t want to die. There is so much to live for now that I’ve seen the world.”

Is there? I wonder if frightened humans, trapped in their homes every night and fighting not only nightwalkers but also echoes and humans who worship them, think like that.

She says the sun will soon rise, so I leave her alone and return to the bedroom. After shutting the door, I face the room. Serun sits against the ceramic tub, his skin gleaming, a towel draped over his shoulders. I draw in a sharp breath, my attention shifting to the bed and away from his broad muscles. As I approach the bed, I grab my backpack to find clothes, only to find it contains nothing but my bloody nightgown. Sighing, I rise just as Serun appears in front of me, dressed only in grey slacks. He offers me his shirt, and when I take it, I turn away to change.

“Do I make you nervous?”

“Not nervous,” I say, stripping off my clothes and shrugging into his shirt. It drapes down to a nightgown. “Frustrated.”

I face Serun, and as he raises his hand to touch me, I duck beneath and crawl onto the bed, resting on top of the covers. Shadows stir, and he rolls those red, raw eyes toward me. Jealousy lies beneath the surface. Obvious. But it isn’t the jealousy Jaxton had, or my Blessed. His jealousy is clearly with himself, and he doesn’t express it to frighten me.

“We should sleep,” I say, lying flat on my back with my head resting on my pillow. Serun moves to the end of the bed, then crawls towards me. My stomach flutters, and I sit up when broad arms wrap around my waist, pulling me to him as he rests his head on my chest. “Serun?”

“Sleep, Saya,” he says.

My hand weaves through his hair, teasing the strands, and his arms tighten as if we aren’t close enough, before he closes his eyes.

“You are…strange.”