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The door opens. I turn to find my brother, Emmanuel, entering.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Tonight, it begins. Tonight is the ceremony of the Tithing where the chosen Wildblood girl, the one wearing the witch’s mark, will be sacrificed to me. She would have been Abacus’s if he’d lived.
Since he did not, the task of accepting The Sacrifice and doing what has to be done has fallen to me. She’ll have red hair and the birthmark. That’s all I know. All these years later, the Wildblood women arrive into the world with red hair in defiance of science or logic. The gene should have died out centuries ago, yet they just keep being born with it.
“How the hell has this thing survived so fucking long?” I ask him, my gaze on the image of the beast looming over the unconscious woman.
“Grandmother’s backwards fairy tale version or reality?” Emmanuel asks.
One corner of my mouth curves up into a grin. “Not sure I’d call her version a fairy tale.”
“No, you’re right.” He comes to stand beside me after pouring himself a drink. “You ready for tonight?”
“Not really.” I turn to study him as he studies the stained glass. Emmanuel and I are very similar in appearance. In height and build, we’re well matched. Our hair is dark, although I wear mine to my shoulders and his is to his chin. When we go into town together, not a single person doesn’t do a double take. We’re like twin marble statues brought to life, almost inhuman in appearance with our great height, powerful build, and bone structure any supermodel would envy.
Ironically, my twin Abacus had looked nothing like me. He was shorter, stockier, more common in appearance–as Grandmother had liked to emphasize with disdain.
Emmanuel and I, though, could be twins. The one thing that distinctly differentiates us is the color of our eyes. Mine are a fiery gold, not brown, not hazel. Gold. Not quite natural in moments, especially when I’m angry. Emmanuel’s are a cool, icy silver that look as if backlit by some otherworldly light.
In dress, we are distinct. He has always preferred more casual clothing, lightweight cashmere sweaters, tailored pants and suits, with his tastes being expensive. Not that mine are any less so, but I prefer an older style of dress. My favorite coat in fact is one from my father’s closet, a lightweight, well-worn leather coat with wide lapels detailed with fine gold thread. The brass buttons, which are antiques themselves, gleam even in the dim light of the library. I remember my father wearing it. It was his favorite.
Where Emmanuel and I are exactly similar is that we both prefer black or gray clothing for the most part. Perhaps it’s just part of our dark nature.
“I checked in on Rébecca on the way down,” Emmanuel says. “She told me to remind you what she said?” he says it like a question, one eyebrow raised.
“Why isn’t she asleep? It’s almost midnight.”
“She’s almost sixteen, even if she doesn’t look it. It’d be weirder if she didn’t stay up until midnight.”
“Is Benedict with her?”
“Yeah.” Emmanuel smiles, and so do I. Grandmother doesn’t like that animal upstairs or in the house at all. If she had it her way, she’d leave him out on the street. Hell, she’d probably try to have the driver run him over. I wonder if she isn’t afraid of the oversized German Shepherd. He certainly has no love for her. “Saw Gran in your room by the way.”
My face tightens. “What was she doing?”
The door opens then, and Grandmother enters, followed by two servants. One carries our cloaks over his arm, while the other holds a tray with our masks and, fuck me, that ring.
“What I was doing was making sure you followed protocol,” Salomé Delacroix says in the tone of one in command. She turns to the man carrying the cloaks. “Wait here. You!” She snaps to the woman with the tray. “Come with me.”
The woman cowers behind my grandmother, who looks like no one’s grandma that I know. First, she is tall and broadly built, and her wavy gray hair is pulled tightly back into a bun at her nape. Her face is, as usual, scrubbed clean. She’s never worn makeup that I can remember, not for any occasion. Her cold eyes, a watery blue so pale they’re almost colorless, miss nothing although I do notice the shadows beneath them. I wonder if she’s dreading what is to come, but somehow, I doubt it.
There is nothing soft about my grandmother. Nothing warm.
“Grandmother. Do I need to put a lock on my door?” I ask her as my gaze falls upon the ring on the tray.
“What have you got to hide from me, Azrael?” she asks, adjusting the lapel of my jacket before taking the ring from the tray and holding it out to me. “You should wear it always. Be proud of it.”
