Page 5 of Vervain

Nothing. Not even a damn keyhole.

Seeped in warmth, my body twitches as the light hits me. My dirt-stained gown, caked with dried blood, is now illuminated, and my long, pointed fingernails catch on my sleeves.

Serun’s bite seems to have shattered everything I’ve tried to hide, exposing me for what I truly am: part nightwalker and part vegodian.

And I’m not familiar with either side of myself.

“Huh, would you look at that? So this is why some call this the reaping?” murmurs the man in the cage above me.

I look down to see hundreds of red eyes filling the stalls of a grand theatre. The nightwalkers watch in silence. Not a murmur. A dead crowd.

As I crawl away, giving up on the lock, I notice a man standing centre stage. An orange glow radiates from him, outlining his body. Unlike the other nightwalkers in the crowd who are drowning in bleak greys and blacks, this man stands out. He’s dressed in a white shimmering suit, the sequined embroidery sparkling with diamonds, twisting with the design of a dragon head on either side of the buttoned jacket.

He is lanky, his blond hair slicked back and glistening with gel that keeps every strand trapped in place. Pale, beautiful—and like Serun, he has an aura of powerful magik coming from him.

And as if I conjured the man who festers in my thoughts, my attention snaps to the gallery. There, Serun sits between the two nightwalkers who were with him when I crawled out of my grave. The only difference is the woman standing behind the blond man’s chair. Her hand is on his shoulder, his resting over hers. Her short, black hair sits above her shoulders, and her lifeless crimson eyes gaze off into the distance. Blue glitter dust shimmers over her long dress, and jewels sparkle across her neckline, wrists, and fingers. And as much as I want to figure out who they are, my focus keeps snapping back to the nightwalker who caged me.

The nightwalker I kissed.

The nightwalker I enjoyed the company of.

He is slouched against the side of his chair, his elbow on the armrest, knuckles on his cheek, and cloaked in shadows.

Cinder-crimson eyes roll in my direction. My heart sputters for a second before the formidable wall of reasons I am in this situation blocks the feeling from going any further.

“I’m surprised our lord came,” the male nightwalker near me says with a dramatic roll of his eyes. The room brightens, and he becomes more than a silhouette. Sandy-blond, shoulder-length hair curls down his neck. The scar across his brow is prominent, and he has a sculpted, angular face. The nightwalker brushes at the dirt and debris matted into his rumpled clothes.

He must have crawled his way out of a coffin as well.

“Like what you see?” he says, arching his left brow with a smirk.

Quickly looking away, I direct my attention back to the nightwalker on stage. He clears his throat into a microphone, and the sound vibrates through the silent room. “Welcome!” His voice overlaps a thousand times in my ear until it stings. “The annual bidding is now underway. This is your chance to claim a newborn spawn to join your household until they come of age.”

“What’s a newborn?” I murmur.

The man beside me cranes his head to hear my breathy voice. “We are. Humans turned by the blood of another, then killed. You must be very new if you didn’t know that, heartbeat.”

With my frown deepening, I take in the man on the stage once more.

“Hmm…I see you’re not the talkative type,” the man in the cage beside me chuckles darkly.

The man on the stage below raises his hand. “Above you are newborn nightwalkers without a House. Their masters cared little for them, and because a House can only have one newborn, they have sold them to me.”

“Heh…” The blond man leans his arms against the cage, eyes sweeping the room. “Seems my old master didn’t care to come to buy another.”

The woman with curly brown hair leans against her cage, tilting it further. “I tied my master up outside before the sun rose. Seems the sunlight did its job and rid us of a master unworthy of the title of his House.” Through the corner of her eye, she looks at me and says, “How ’bout you? Where is your master?”

“I don’t have one,” I reply. “I am no slave.”

The man huffs a laugh. “We will see about that, heartbeat.”

“One nightwalker has already been claimed,” the presenter says, and we turn our attention back down to him. “Our dove with clipped wings. Serun, Lord of the Undercity, has made her his consort, and I doubt any of you will dare try to outbid my brother.”

His brother? So that likely means we are in the Sunken City Serun mentioned before he clouded my mind with shadows.

The sea of red eyes snap to the gallery, but it isn’t like they can see anything. Serun remains hidden in shadows as murmured conversations rise with a stir of excitement.

“Finally!”