Page 6 of Vervain

“It’s about time!”

“Someone bonded to Lord Serun?”

“Love blossoms where shadows once rejected desire!”

High praise. Serun being alone seems to have been a hot topic among nightwalkers.

“Eh…I wonder who this lucky dove is?” my nightwalker neighbour says. My cage trembles, and his focus snaps to me as it starts to descend. I plunge into the darkness, away from the other cages still illuminated in radiant light. “Huh. Look. At. That. Not a midnight snack after all.”

My ears pull back, and I scowl at the man centre stage as he flashes a pearly smile in my direction before stepping to the edge of the stage. He raises his arm and says, “Let the bidding begin!”

CHAPTER TWO

EXSANGUINATION

Saya Claymore

Raised voices from the undead set me further on edge. Countless glowing red eyes regard me with admiration, while some fix their gaze on Serun. He hasn’t budged from his casually slouched position, shielding his feelings in his shadows.

It would be easy to assume he doesn’t care, but I know that it’s when his shadows are motionless that he is most tense. Those very shadows stilled when I rejected him, as if an extension of the tightening of his muscles.

And then there was the time I visited him after Jaxton made me feel inferior. His shadows quivered, enraged, only to still a moment later.

Does he truly want me, or am I his property?

With a shake of my head, I stare daggers at Serun. Even from afar, his eyes lock on mine, the crimson in them softening into pools of running blood. And there, with minimal contact, I have the same rising urge to love him as I did when I first saw him.

My stone-cold heart cracks, like a chisel is chipping away at my barnacled heart.

“She has a heartbeat!” someone shouts from the crowd of nightwalkers.

“Is she human?”

“We are forbidden to love humans. We must convert them.”

“She has red eyes and pointed ears. She is one of us…but not like us.”

“A nightwalker from a human womb?”

“Can that happen?”

Voices worm into my ears as they speculate over what I am. Funny, because I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing all my life. Mum never told me who my dad might be, or even how she became pregnant. Every time I asked her, she brushed my words away like smoke, telling me not to pose questions I wasn’t prepared to have answered.

Now here I am, far from home, desperate for answers. After I get out of here and find Cole, I’ll return home and try to find out who I am. My fingers twitch and my heart races as fear floods me at the thought. My Blessed will be there, waiting for me like a curse.

Serun’s brother brings his hands together in a sharp clap, drawing all eyes away from their ogling. “Would anyone like to challenge Lord Serun and bid on his dove?”

The room suddenly drops in temperature. Low hissing noises escape a few as they watch Serun, but none raise their hand in interest. It doesn’t surprise me. I doubt the Nightwalker Lord would let anyone try, and truthfully, if I must be sold, I’d rather it be to a nightwalker I know.

“No? A pity. Shall we start the rest of the auction then?” His words spark excitement that flits through the air like embers. “Wonderful. Bring down the next cage!”

The blond nightwalker folds his arms across his chest, a stone-cold glint flashing across his eyes as he descends and replaces me centre stage.

Nightwalkers in the audience speak in hushed voices, assessing his physique, and his firm arm muscles tense.

“Devan is a newborn nightwalker. His old master changed him seven months ago, yet saw little profit in him. He was from topside and a blacksmith in Belmore. He developed weapons to fight the slayers.”

“Slayers!” the crowd hisses, rage thick on their tongues for the bio-engineered humans who combat nightwalkers.