Page 65 of Vervain

I slowly blink, staring at the crimson that softens with sincerity in those sharp eyes. But I quickly step away and enter the store, my light merging with another person’s inside, illuminating the shoes.

He can’t just say that on an open street, catching me off guard.

With a stifled breath, my nose wrinkles at the odour of the leather. Three rows of shoes fill the shop, packed in boxes, lined up neatly on the shelves. Olivia follows while Serun seems out of sorts. He steps back and waits by the entrance. Leaning against the shelves displaying heels with his arms folded across his chest, his piercing eyes never leave me.

As I move down the row and sense someone nearby, I shift position so Serun can still see me. Somehow, he doesn’t feel as suffocating as Jax or my Blessed.

I sweep my fingers against dusty boxes to find something comfortable to wear other than the heels in the cupboard.

“What are you looking for?” Olivia asks.

“Comfort.”

“I forgot about that…” she murmurs.

“Do you not feel pain?”

“Not like you do. I hear sunlight hurts, and so does getting stabbed with wood, but most everything else is just a sense of shock. I can’t really describe it.”

My frown deepens as I scan the shelves, looking for something flat. I tap the heel of my shoe against the floor before reaching up and sliding a box away from the others.

“Eight, not nine,” Serun murmurs, his breath tickling the back of my neck. Olivia flinches, shrinking further away from the shadows while he reaches out, grabs a box further up and hands it to me. I blink, trying to digest what is happening, but then he is back by the entrance, watching from afar again.

“How does he know your shoe size better than you?” Olivia murmurs, her focus locked on Serun as if that will help keep him in place.

“I tend not to ask questions I might not want answered,” I say as I open the box to find a pair of flat-heeled boots. “Good enough.”

“You aren’t going to try them on?” Olivia asks when I close the box and leave the lane.

“No need. Serun seems confident, and”—my stomach takes that moment to grumble, loudly—“I’m hungry and want better food.”

“But you just ate?”

“And?”

Olivia raises her hands and laughs nervously. “I mean no offence. Since becoming a nightwalker, I’ve been on a three-day feeding cycle. I forgot that humans eat more than us.”

“What happens if you don’t eat after three days?”

“Our dead blood stirs, and hunger can become craving. Five days and the frenzy kicks in. A week and our skin ages, turning leathery.”

Like the nightwalker in the private room.

We leave the store, and Serun steps into the light without a murmur of sound. He raises his hand in offering, and I take hold. We are magnets. There is an indescribable pull that lures me to the nightwalker.

Humans roam with nightwalkers as we make our way to the grocery store. In the dim flames flickering behind glass walls, grins beam on their faces and claiming tattoos paint across their flushed skin.

They seem happy.

Most of the faces in the feeding ground were blank and hollow when they entered. If only they knew what the Undercity was really like instead of the horror stories Jax filled their heads with.

Murmured conversation in the dark catches my attention nearby, and red eyes watch us. The stench of iron comes from them, the same scent that lingered in the blood bank whenever we donated.

“I heard Lord Serun wanted her because she can produce an heir. Half nightwalker, half human. Her blood must be special. An exotic.”

“Could be,” another voice says from the darkness. I lift my lamp higher, hoping to see them, but the aura struggles to reach past the sidewalk. “And her scent…If she weren’t Lord Serun’s, I’d have taken her as my plaything. I doubt I’d stop biting her.”

I want to hurt them. I want them to swallow light, but if I show my magik down here—light in a place of darkness—would it cause an uproar?