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When I woke hours later, ordaysjudging by the intense pounding in my skull, I looked around the pristine SUV with panic. From my prone position in the backseat, I noticed Silas in the driver’s seat, but my relief was short-lived as I watched the frozen terrain swirling past us.
“Where are we?” I groaned, reaching for the wound on my neck but finding it closed.
Silas was silent before he replied curtly, “Slovenia.”
The deadness in his voiced coupled with the heart-stopping realization that I was no longer in Salem, or even the U.S., nearly sent me back into the dark recesses of my mind. I forced myself to think. To remember what had happened before I passed out.
Trystan attacking the Salem Coven with the staff, him drinking and nearly killing me, my outburst of magick, and then Silas…
The vampire said nothing as he parked the car. From the passenger seat he grabbed his duffle, the gleaming Staff of Borislav hanging from a pocket damningly.
“You traitor,” I seethed brokenly, my throat tight with unshed tears.
“Best keep your mouth shut, Belle,” he sighed, as unemotional as ever. “Alistair won’t take to your snark like Alexei has.”
He jumped out of the car and was at the back door in the next instant, lifting me up to stare transfixed at the freakingcastlebefore me. I shot another accusing glare at Silas, realizing he had knocked me out with his blood and transported me across the globe to Slovenia with my cellphone and the talisman in his possession.
The double-crossing asshole.
I could only describe the vampire royal seat as magnificent, with the impressive, slightly eldritch stone castle built atop a mountain range that overlooked the glittering, frozen lake below. Barren trees lined the palace like a blockade, looking like skeletal guards, yet somehow I knew in the spring they would blossom into beautiful swaths of green against sapphire-blue water. Shining glass panes, tinted to keep out sunlight, imparted a sense of foreboding that no amount of greenery could hide.
A flurry of snowflakes covered the car’s hood, and I sighed unhappily. There was no way in hell I would escape in this weather. Certainly not with thirsty vampires on the prowl.
“Come along, Belle,” Silas said with his usual scowl.
He never gave the frozen ground an opportunity to trip me in my completely inappropriate footwear. Instead, he simply lifted me off the ground by my waist and carted me to the castle entrance like one of the duffle bags.
“Chivalry isn’t dead,” I replied snarkily, yanking away from his grip the second my feet touched solid ground.
The marble steps led up to a grand entrance, the Vasilyev crest bold and impossible to miss as he banged on the serpent knocker. The door opened, revealing the butler—a small male with a surly frown, not unlike Mr. Simmons back home at the Coven estate. He greeted Silas, ignoring my presence entirely, before he led us to the foyer.
The room branched off to different wings of the castle, while an elaborate staircase wound to the upper levels. Before the stairs stood two of the most beautiful and deadly intimidating vampires I had ever seen. They wore mirror expressions of disapproval and outright hatred as they watched me trudge wearily behind Silas.
I shifted on my feet, wondering if the vampire had just delivered me to my doom, and felt my magick bubble inside me, readying to attack if necessary. As if sensing my unease, Silas’s hand settled against my back, surprisingly firm and comforting.
It kept me from turning on my heel and fleeing back into the white tundra outside.
He dropped to his knee, bowing low. “My king. I have brought Jade Belle and the talisman as requested.” From his leather duffel, he pulled loose the gleaming staff, and dark magick permeated the air.
Leaning against a maple-colored table adorned with impressive blooms of midnight roses, as intricately decorated as any vampire manor I had visited, Alistair Vasilyev and his wife approached us with displeasure curling their lips.
Alistair’s eyes flashed ruby-red as he grasped onto the staff. “I am pleased to have such a powerful weapon returned to me in time for the Wild Hunt in two nights’ time. Your assistance in this delicate matter will not go unrewarded, Silas.”
Silas angled his head, finally surging back to his feet. He stared straight ahead as Alexei’s father finally turned those eerie eyes to me.
Alistair’s lips curled, and for a moment I saw a flash of Alexei beating the vampire in Thibault’s dungeons within his father’s features. “So, this is the spirit witch that has enchanted my son, making him lose all reason,” he murmured, almost too soft for my ears. “You’re taller than I envisioned.”
Irritation replaced my terror. I smirked insolently, not saying a word.
Alistair’s rage-filled gaze never wavered from me, but Alexei’s irrefutably lovely mother stepped around her husband to ease the tension.
The memory Alexei shared of her exasperated affection towards her son and the doomed love she left behind for the vampire king came to mind as her lavender eyes stained with crimson shimmered.
She clasped Silas’s face in her hands, clicking her tongue chidingly. “Silas, how I’ve missed you. You have stayed away too long. Ten years feels like an eternity.”
Silas’s cheeks pinkened, but she had already turned those strange eyes on me, losing any touch of warmth.
“You were foolish to trifle with vampires,carovnica.” She sniffed dismissively.
