Page 3 of Vervain

“Take. Me. To. Bianca! Feeder zero-three-seven! We aren’t far! I need to see her! Please! She is fucking pregnant!” The shouting turns into desperate sobs.

Ugh. Fuck that. I keep walking to avoid that shitfest, my brow twitching at the sight of my brother doing the same.

“Hey, Jaxton!” I shout as he reaches the exit of the Prayer Sanctuary hospital ward. He grabs the handle, and as he pulls the door open, I reach him and slam it shut. Grabbing him by the shirt with both hands, I pin him against the wall. “What the fuck are you right now? A nightwalker shows more fucking emotion than this!”

He stares at me for a long moment. The blue in his eyes seems to bury itself deep inside him.

With a muttered curse, I lift my elbow to his collar. “She was a vegodian. Worse than a bloodsucker. A siphon leech who steals the powers of others. Just one of them can kill ten of us if they know how to abuse their fucking magik. You know this, so why are you acting like you don’t?”

My eyes widen a fraction before narrowing on the tears that slip from Jaxton’s eyes.

“Saya was different. Good.”

I grip his shirt tighter, pull him from the wall, then slam him back against it. The tiles on the wall crack from the impact. “There is nothing good about vegodians. Naive or not, once she finds out what happened to the others, all the love she held for you would be out the fucking window, and you know that.”

Jaxton glares at the exit.

“You are a slayer,” I say, giving him a shake. “We protect humans, and there’s a human in that room who needs you now that his leech of a sister is gone. Be there for him.”

“He will hate me…”

My hands slacken their hold on his shirt, and I take a step away. “Not if he doesn’t remember. Besides, it’s not like he has anyone else. The echoes massacred almost everyone from Darkovish Feeding Ground.” I scratch my head and glare back the way we came. “I should have tossed Serun’s Law and entered earlier. More people would have survived.”

“Fucking Serun,” Jaxton growls, his ghostly pallor turning red as his veins bulge and thicken along his throat. “This was all his fault.”

What the fuck is he talking about?

“Care to⁠—”

“Ever since she entered that damn private room,” he seethes, and I take another step back. “She went…weird. Wrong. Controlled. I could see it in her eyes. It was controlling her. It was him.” He nods his head as if to convince himself. “That’s why she was asking so many fucking questions about him while we were trying to escape.”

I blink and bite my tongue. Anger is good. An emotion I can work with.

I slap my hand on his shoulder. “Come. The council would want to hear everything that has transpired—and then tomorrow, I’m off again.”

“Where are you going?”

“Our vegodian friend told us vervain grows in more than one place. Rumour has it that it grows on the nightwalkers’ border. I’d like to find out if that rumour is true.”

PART ONE

THE SUNKEN CITY

You can find sanctuary in the darkest of places.

CHAPTER ONE

AVIARY

Saya Claymore

When I was young, my mum told me Mother was always watching. If I were ever to drop my glamour, Mother’s disappointment would stir the very core. The crust of Kepler would split and collapse in on itself.

It was no surprise that I clung to that fear until I grew up and saw the lies for what they were. Because if Mother disapproved of me removing my glamour, would she not have scorned those who caged me? Or those who pinned me to the ground and tore my dignity from me, rubbing it into the dirt? Or did Mother not care because half of me was already dead?

A glamour once hid my fingernails, but now they are pointed. Sharper. Blending into the skin in a way that looks unnerving. My pointed ears move, twitching and alert to nearby sounds.

I sigh sharply, then open my eyes at a nearby whimper. Illuminated red eyes watch me, sending chills up my spine from the nightmares that once gripped me in the Darkovish Feeding Ground.