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“Maybe he’s referring to Viviana,” Lysander said, pointing to the female Stellaris twin. “With her black eyes and hair.”
“That’s preposterous,” Caelum argued. “Why would the rebels send a message toher?”
“Excuse me?” Viviana tossed a skein of hair over her shoulder, looking affronted. “I’m plenty important for men to send dead bodies with messages written on them for me.”
“This isn’t just any dead body,” Vladimir thundered, and everyone in the room froze as his eyes seared into them. “This is a member of my house, one of my children!” He leaped off his throne and grabbed the messenger by his collar, shaking him hard enough to rattle his skull. “Send out a search party to scour the city and surroundings! I want these rebels rounded up and executed!”
He flung the messenger across the room, and my mouth opened in shock as the vampire slammed into the opposite wall with crushing force. The echoing boom shook the air, dust raining down from the ceiling as the marble cratered from the impact. Shocked cries rippled through the hall as the messenger’s pulverized body slid bonelessly down the wall, landing in a bloody heap on the floor.
The emperor’s chest heaved, his eyes blazing red as he fought to control his anger. The others watched him with a mix of shock, dismay, and fear—all except for Casimir, who remained stoic as ever.
Eventually, the emperor regained enough of his sanity to point to a servant and growl, “Get that cleaned up, and deliver my orders to the captain of the guard. This session is closed for today,” he added, his voice booming across the hall.
As the servant sprang into action and the hall erupted into chaos, Maximillian caught my eye again. I could tell by the grim look on his face that, just as I did, he knew exactly who had sent the message, and who it was for.
It was Sebastian Nocturne, the unofficial Witch King of Trivaea. And the message was for me.
28
Kitana
There was so much chaos as everyone left the summit hall, no one noticed when Maximillian, Lucius, and I slipped away to one of the private meeting rooms upstairs.
“Darkling girl?” Lucius asked as he locked the door behind us. “Is that some kind of nickname?”
“Hang on.” I held up a hand, and shadows poured from my fingers, curling through the air like tendrils of smoke. With a flick of my wrist, I scattered them, sending them into all the crevices, cracks, and corners to search for any peepholes or eavesdropping devices that might be lurking. Once they’d wedged themselves into all possible openings, I let my guard down a little, crossing over to the sideboard so I could pour myself a stiff drink.
“Impressive,” Lucius muttered, staring at the shadow I wedged into the crack beneath the door.
I poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass, thanking the gods that there was no blood mixed into the beverage. “Darkling girl was Sebastian’s pet name for me,” I told them as I lifted the glass to my lips. “It was a reference to my strange powers—how I could do things with shadow magic that most others couldn’t, but I also couldn’t use any lunar magic.”
“Which is unusual among your clan, isn’t it?” Maximillian asked, seating himself in one of the chairs by the unlit fireplace. He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, fingertips pressed together, a pensive expression on his face. It was insane to think that just a few minutes ago, we’d been practically eye-fucking each other in the middle of a hall full of people, and had been seconds from doing a lot more than that.
What kind of madness had taken over me?
“Very unusual,” I said as the whiskey carved a burning trail down my throat. I clutched the glass as memories both sweet and bitter surfaced, coating my tongue like ashes. “Almost every Nocturne witch is born with the power of shadow and light. Lunar and shadow magic. It’s why we’re considered the bringers of balance between the five clans, and also why the witches were appointed as the custodians of the Midnight Accords. We exist in the twilight, belonging neither to the day or the night, yet siblings of both.”
“A pretty speech,” Maximillian acknowledged. “Yet perhaps not so pretty in practice.”
My eyes narrowed on him. “Are you saying that you believe in the emperor’s spiel?” I asked, thinking back to the impassioned speech Vladimir had given yesterday. “That the terms of the Accords were unfair, and that vampires were unjustly punished and victimized by witches?”
“The terms of the Midnight Accords were harsh,” Maximillian said in a voice sharp enough to cut glass, “Harsher than necessary, considering that we'd been cursed, but understandable given the horrors my ancestors visited upon our neighbors. But there is no denying that witches have abused their power as custodians of the Accords in the past. That is partly how we ended up in this situation in the first place.”
“We are getting off-track,” Lucius growled, holding up a hand as I started to argue. “We didn’t come here to discuss the Accords. We came here to talk about your ex-lover, how he knows you’re here, and why he sent you such a public message.”
Anger bloomed in the pit of my stomach as Sebastian’s words ran through my head again. How dare he try to fuck with me like this, to get inside my head and attempt to intimidate me, without having the balls to show his face?
“Perhaps someone alerted him that the coffin was empty," Maximillian said. “He could have had some spell in place set to trigger an alarm in the event of a breach.”
“If that’s the case, then why wait until now to send a message?” Lucius demanded. “It’s been almost eight weeks since we freed Kitana from that hellhole. If the witch king wanted to get to her, Lumina would have been a far easier place to strike.”
“Fair point.” Maximillian tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Any thoughts, Kitana?”
There was no judgment in his gaze, only curiosity and concern. Yet I swallowed hard, not sure how he would react to what I was about to tell him. “The night after Vinicius blew up the secret temple, I paid a visit to The Red Tavern. And ended up running into some rebels.”
I told Maximillian and Lucius about the witch and the human I’d met at The Red Tavern, leaving out that they not only worked there, but unofficially owned the damned place. “I didn’t want to reveal my identity to them, but it seemed like the only way to get out of there without bloodshed,” I told them, ignoring the scowl on Lucius’s face. “The last thing I wanted to do was murder people who are trying to help the humans, especially a witch.”
“One of them must have told their superiors you were in Lumina, and word got back to Sebastian,” Lucius growled. “We didn’t want him to know you were free, Kitana. Not until after—”
