Page 4 of Vervain

In those nightmares, I performed ballet in front of hundreds of thirst-driven nightwalkers. Except now I’m not dancing. I am a bird with my wings clipped. Caged in iron, all because I trusted a nightwalker who hid his venom inside honey-dipped words.

“This is my world, and until you accept that I am not your enemy, you will merely be living in it.”

Yeah, that definitely sounds like something a fucking enemy would say.

I raise my hands, and even in the darkness, there’s no hint of my now white-dotted pale skin. Coated in red blood and soil, I stare absentmindedly at the proof of the horror I’ve witnessed.

“Alti pres,” I murmur. A phrase my mum used whenever she did something her Blessed frowned upon. I quickly learned she was apologising—not from the words themselves, but from the way she looked. Her hands clasped together in prayer and her focus on the ground, among the sea of toys Cole played with.

Serun said the same words when I was barely conscious, as I woke in that coffin. He knows vegodian.

But how?

He must have known others like me.

Secrets and lies. I’m so fucking tired of them. And to think I fell for it all just as I did the promise that Jax would save my brother.

Muttering under my breath, I lean back and rest my head against the iron bars. Chains clink, and the stench of decay fills my nostrils from the nightwalkers caged nearby. After Serun trapped me in this cage, it moved up from the garden I had clawed my way to from my grave, and into some kind of dark storage space.

At least I assume that’s what it is. It’s not lit very well, but there’s the echo of the sound of other cages hanging from chains.

Nothing has happened since.

The nightwalker a few cages down from me grabs the bars and shakes the cage violently, making it sway back and forth. From his cracked lips, he whimpers, “I want to go home, Lucifer!”

Lucifer?

Home…

I grip my dirty, bloody, once-white gown, my fingernails digging into my kneecaps as I think of Cole. He’s out there injured—or worse—with a man who only cared about saving me.

An animalistic growl tears through my lungs, more creature than human. I should have killed Jax. Except, a part of me was too shocked to process that he never really cared. No one cared about Cole like I did, except for Manni.

Tightness constricts my throat, a noose of my own making, at the thought of her. Manni’s blood dripping from the vent, puddling on my mattress, staining it red.

“If we open the door, that creature will slaughter us,” Jax says.

Manni smashes her palm to the glass and screams, “Open the fucking door, Jax!”

I spin around and shove him, but he doesn’t budge. “You promised!” I shove him again. “You fucking promised it wouldn’t be like this! Jax!”

I recoil from the memory.

“And who are you?” A man crouches near the edge of his cage, tilting it towards me as he rests his arms against the bars. “You aren’t human. At least not all of you. Pointy ears, red eyes, yet you aren’t like us.” The man cocks his head to the side, his eyes narrowing into half-slits. “White hair and icy skin. A foreigner, perhaps? Alien from a different world?”

Avoiding his eyes, I focus on the scar cut across his right brow. Nightwalkers are known for trickery. Every word will be a lie. I should know. Serun, Lord of the fucking Undercity, claimed me as his consort without my consent.

It’s my Blessed all over again.

“A half-breed?” another says, her light voice flitting through the air like wind. She sits with her legs hanging from the cage, swinging them back and forth, moving her prison like a pendulum. Her dark hair is knotted atop her head, and there’s a clean scar that cuts along her lip, leaving a white line in her dark purple lipstick. “Didn’t think we could reproduce, even with a human host. One of the perks of being a newborn is I do not know shit. So, maybe there are others like you out there?”

Serun doesn’t believe so. Yet, he could have just said that to make me accept his bite.

Tremors quake my cage, sending acid churning through my stomach. The nightwalker who had been begging Lucifer to free him bursts into a sobbing fit as we start to move. Our cages rotate clockwise, and chains clink as we are lifted towards a new circular light, throbbing red. My cage is last.

I mutter a curse and sit up to see what’s going on. There’s nothing else to do but wait, trapped. The cage of the male nightwalker who was trying to question me lifts higher than mine, but his gaze stays locked onto me with scorn. I am a nightwalker with a heartbeat. I’m sure these true nightwalkers will try sinking their fangs into me when they have the chance.

A ring of warmth hits my cage when it passes through the opening in the wall. In the growing light, the lock comes into focus. I crawl closer, tipping my cage as I reach the other side. Muttering another curse as I right myself, I catch an intricate ripple of light shimmering across the metal above me. What the fuck? I frantically grab at the lock, hoping there’s a way to open it.