35. Alaric

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

ALARIC

Gideon: So, did my birds-and-bloods talk help you do the horizontal greasy weasel tango with the lovely Winifred?

Word at the Sanctus Club is that the Lady of Agony has arrived early. She’s already summoned me to the castle to oversee my plans for the ball. Let me know if you need moral support or a new sword…

I fill my goblet to the top once more and tip my head back, allowing the blood to flow down my throat. I’m drinking my way through the fine vintages Reginald has procured for me to enjoy over months and years, but I don’t care if I drink the castle dry.

Winnie’s gone.

She’s not coming back.

I’ve allowed the best thing that’s ever happened to me slip away, all because I couldn’t control myself.

All because she smells like sunshine and strawberries.

And now she’s gone.

I hear my mother’s tinkling laugh through the thick castle walls. She’s commandeered my newly clean office for her meetings, and she’s in there right now with Gideon, putting the final touches on the plan for her ball. When Reginald returns from escorting Winnie to London, he’ll have to find another cleaner to finish the drawing rooms in time for the ball.

The ball where she’ll announce my engagement to Princess Perdita of the Blood Chastain.

I dart my tongue into the goblet, sucking out the last of the blood. This bottle came from an eighteenth century duke – a fine vintage, difficult to come by, aged so perfectly that it almost tastes fresh.

But tonight it turns to dust in my mouth.

It’s for the best that she’s gone .

Why had I allowed myself this delusion that she and I could have a future together? That we would live here in peace at Black Crag and sit by the fireplace every night reading books and arguing about her appalling taste in music?

She is not for me.

Even if Winnie could have loved a monster, Callista Valerian would never have allowed our union. I was a fool to believe that my mother would permit me to remain here, unmolested, when she could use me for her own ends. All this time, I’ve been the chess piece she kept in reserve for her final assault across the board.

My eyes flutter closed as the glut of blood works its way through my body. Beneath it, the hunger for Winnie burns . She is a painting itching on the ends of my fingers, a sculpture bursting forth from a block of clay, a tapestry woven in purest gold.

And she will never look at me with love in her heart.

“You should know better than to close your eyes, son.”

Callista’s voice – so close she’s practically on top of me – startles me, although I don’t allow her to see this. She snuck into the room without me hearing her. There is a reason she is feared among vampires as the Lady of Agony.

For who fears death more than those who can live forever?

I open one eye, and am greeted by the tip of a sword an inch from my eyeball.

“You are out of practice,” my mother smirks, dragging the sword across my cheek as she glides around my chair, shaving the hairs without penetrating the skin. The cold blade against me is a warning, a promise. “You have been such a disappointment to me. When I plucked you from death on that battlefield, you were full of hate and malice. Now look at you, sitting in this castle painting your little landscapes and losing your mind over a human , when you should be leading my army to put down this absurd rebellion. Look at this.”

She picks up one of the few full bottles remaining at my feet, pulls out the cork with her teeth, and sniffs. Her mouth wrinkles with distaste.

“This is foul. Death would be preferable to drinking this swill. No wonder you are weak. You’ve taken a human to bed and yet you won’t even drink from a fresh source.”

Her cruelty stings, but it’s far from the worst I’ve endured from her. I don’t blink as she drags the edge of the sword over my jaw. “Vlad the Impaler didn’t start impaling people until his thirties. I still have time to become the son you always wanted.”

“Your time is now, son. I saw your little plaything fleeing the castle with your Thrall.” She leans in close, her voice hissing against my skin. A smear of blood from her feeding earlier mars her corner of her mouth. “I take it that she found out what you are. Will you chase her down and kill her, or shall I?”

She yelps as I wrap my hand around her throat. She tries to cut me but she’s too close and I’m too fast.

The warrior inside me stirs to life. The battle for Winnie’s heart has been lost, but the war is yet over.

I lift her easily, bending her wrist and flinging the sword away. She gurgles, clawing at my hand with her long, red-painted talons. Her eyes are wide in surprise. Not fear, never fear.

She should fear me.

I am, after all, her son.

Her blood .

I throw Callista across the room. She sails in a graceful arc, nearly scraping along the ceiling, before her back hits the wall with a loud SMACK. She crumples into a heap on the floor, momentarily stunned.

“You’ll not hurt Winnie,” I growl.

She’s up and in front of me in a single human heartbeat, nose to nose, her lips curling back into a sinister smile. “There’s your warrior’s fire, son.”

“Stay away from her.”

“Your pet knows of us,” she whispers. “She has your seed inside her. She cannot be allowed?—”

“She will not tell a soul.” (Except her book club, but my mother doesn’t need to know that. If Mina Wilde and Arabella Lestrange are members, then they already know.) “And as for my seeds, much has changed since the laws were inked in blood. Humans have ways of preventing a pregnancy, and we used them. Winnie won’t have a Dhampir.”

“So the progressives say,” she chokes out. “But laws are laws.”

She knows about contraception. She knows that if we used it, there’s no danger of a Dhampir. But she doesn’t care because I’m not submitting to her will.

“Laws can be changed. I have never asked anything of you since I left the Nightshade Court. I have stayed out of your way as you blazed a path of destruction across Europe. But now you are in my house, and Winnie is under my protection. Hurt her and I will make certain you regret it.”

My fingers close around her neck again, squeezing this time, enough so she can feel the power I wield. I may have an artist’s spirit, but I have never given up on my warrior training. I know too well that one’s greatest enemies will come when you believe you are safe behind your walls.

I cannot choke her to death, of course, but she knows now that I can overpower her, and that she has taught me all the ways to kill an immortal.

“You wouldn’t dare ,” she glares back at me, her words rasping as I close off her throat. “The gravest sin a vampire could possibly commit is to kill their sire. Not even you, in your disgrace, would wish that torture upon yourself. If it weren’t for me, you would have bled out, alone and forgotten, buried in the mud of that battlefield, just another nameless corpse for the archaeologists to jizz themselves over.”

“You don’t know me at all.” My fingers tighten. The sword is within reach. I could do it. I could end her, end this , right now. But then I would only be proving myself the monster. “Do not presume what I will do to keep Winnie safe.”

I release her, whipping out to grab the sword before she can take it again. I stab the tip into the floor, burying it several inches into the wood. The hilt quivers as I sink back into my chair.

Callista rubs her neck, and I hate the slow smile that creeps over her lips. “As you like it, son. It matters not if one human girl is screaming about vampires, as long as she has no Dhampir growing in her womb. They will think those smutty books she reads have addled her brain. She is gone from your life now, and all our plans can continue without drama.”

“Host your revels if you must, but leave me out of your machinations,” I growl.

“My ball needs a spectacle – a public show of the bond between the Nightshade and Midnight Courts. You will marry Perdita before our guests, or I shall be forced to make that spectacle the trial and execution of my son for the crime of consorting with a human.” She glides towards the door. “Your choice, son.”

She leaves me in a cloud of my own rage.

I don’t care what happens to me. The old Alaric would welcome death, even the brutal execution dealt by the Mora for my crime. But without me to protect her and intercede with my mother, Winnie is in danger. If Callista is willing to have me killed to make her point, then she won’t hesitate to kill Winnie.

I will not allow it. I will protect Winnie, even though she doesn’t want?—

“Alaric.”