Page 17

‘Fuck off. I absolutely did not.’

‘You did.’

Damn it. It wasn’t amusement. It was horror getting lost on the way to my face.

‘Well,’ I say, because my mouth is a menace, ‘maybe I was thinking how much more charming this place would be with throw pillows.’

Luca lets out an actual laugh. It dies fast when Malachi turns his head. But before the tension can sharpen again, Valentin gasps.

The sound tears through the room and every vampire moves.

This time I move too. I’m at the edge of the barrier before I can think better of it, one hand out. The red-black sigils rise, then part around my fingers.

Malachi’s curse is vicious.

I ignore him because Valentin’s body is arching again, head thrown back, throat exposed. The mark has reached the hollow at the base of his neck. Its light pulses like a second heart. His lips move but no sound comes out.

Calling fuck it, I step through the barrier.

Heat slams into me and the chamber vanishes.

For one dizzying second I’m somewhere else entirely. Again.

A black sea beneath a red moon. Five thrones cut from bone and obsidian. Valentin standing at the centre, chest split open with light, while a woman’s voice laughs from inside a cocoon of crystallised blood.

Then his eyes open in the vision and he sees me.

Eira.

The name hits like a hook through my ribs. I stumble back into the Vaults, gasping. Valentin’s hand closes around mine; the real one, his fingers scorching.

His eyes open by a sliver. ‘Run,’ he whispers.

My blood turns to ice. Is this… warning or threat? Or some sort of sick bloodsport type Hunger Games fresh hellscape?

‘Run,’ he repeats, voice ruined. ‘If I wake… wrong.’

The sigils flare high.

My throat tightens. ‘You’re not making me responsible for that sentence without context.’

A ghost of a smile, blended with pain, moves over his mouth. ‘Context… will… kill you.’

‘Very dramatic. Useless, but dramatic.’

His fingers tighten, and I feel him in my mind again, pushing something through. The pressure inside my skull sharpens until my vision blurs.

Do… not…

The sigils around the obsidian slab pulse once.

O’Rourke.

Iskander straightens from the wall. Gideon’s head turns with slow, lethal attention, and Malachi looks at Valentin as if the name itself has drawn blood.

Then Valentin forces one more thought through the fractured tether between us.

I… call.