44. Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Four

Eldrick

E ldrick tossed and turned in his bed.

The village had been brimming with guards when they’d arrived back at the bakery. Lou had encouraged everyone to rest. No one had objected, and certainly not him. The angst of the mission had tired his muscles and thoughts of the Lone Wolf and their mystery of an identity raced through his mind.

Yet, it was a kiss, the single taste of a vampyr princess that kept him wide awake. She’d been sweet, slightly sour, like her ripe stone fruit scent. Plum sat on his tongue, and his wolf howled for more. Never had a female lingered on his mind for so long. Eldrick hadn’t been numb to the effects of want though. He’d had his casual fun before and a few serious courtings here and there, but this was different. Feelings haunted him, one’s he couldn’t put a name to.

Or perhaps he was too frightened to.

Eldrick had thought feelings would be like a cage holding him back, and yet his blood rushed through his veins, his wolf jumping deep inside him. Energetic. Buzzing. Wild. The inability to grasp control did frighten him.

He rose from bed, stretching his spine as he did so, as if he could squeeze these feelings from his lean body. His feet pattered against the floorboards but stopped midway to the window, hearing another set of footsteps echoing from the hallway behind his door. From the heavy fall of the soles, it was clear they wore boots, and when he opened the door, he caught a glimpse of Tovi descending the steps at the end of the hall.

The memory of her lips against his, the tantalizing sounds she made and the responsiveness of her body, came back to him. Suddenly, this coming and going in the night didn’t sit right. After such an intimate moment, did she not trust him enough with this secret? The notion she didn’t want him to know ate away at him. It made him all the more curious, so much so, Eldrick dressed for the cold, and in a moment’s time, he was slipping out into the night.

He caught Tovi’s distant figure turn down a street. He veered left, a few blocks back. During the times he’d left the bakery to scout the village, he’d learned which ones intersected.

Fog lingered like the town’s ghosts, rising and falling around the squat buildings. It wrapped around passing vampyrs and clung to scampering humans. The slow, dreadful kind of rain soaked the roads. Eldrick used it all, letting the grayness shadow him as he trailed his target. Like he’d hoped, Tovi crossed the road, darting down the alley across the way. As he passed by it a few yards later, he swore plum invaded his wolf’s senses.

He kept straight, flexing and unflexing his hands, unable to fight the urge to touch his now tainted lips. Would she linger on him for the rest of his days like the fog in Drystan?

In the tunnels of the castle, Eldrick had fallen into the kiss before he even knew what had happened. He’d caved into her, grasping at reality as his world spun out of control. And now, like some beast in the night scouting its prey, Eldrick realized he didn’t regret it.

Not one bit.

The notion had him hurrying his steps, and through the alley gaps between buildings, he caught sight of Tovi’s weaving figure. Too focused, Eldrick collided into someone. He muttered an apology, but the figure, a woman by the shape, didn’t turn or stop. A hood concealed her face, and she strutted by and disappeared down an adjacent street and into the engulfing fog.

Every sense linked to his being became alert—he knew that woman. Eldrick halted on the road and shook his head, not trusting the foolish notion.

No, there was no way in the stars above. He stepped forward, but movement in his peripheral halted his advance. Tovi’s plum cloak passed by a block away. He fell back into step with her, not daring to lose her wherever she went.

Eldrick turned at the last minute and flanked against the brick of an alleyway. The path between buildings opened to the street Tovi walked up. Eldrick exhaled a puff of his nerves, his cloudy breath floating in the cold air. Boots clicked and clacked against the cobblestone street. Eldrick peered around the corner, skin prickling at the possibility the boots belonged to a guard.

But it was the same hooded figure from before, the one he swore held a familiarity. Her pale hand clutched the edge of her hood, keeping it close to her cheek. Eldrick couldn’t make out her face or her features, aside from a dark strand—

Eldrick stepped out from his hiding place, chancing a closer glance. His inner wolf raced in his blood. The female vampyr had the darkest shade of brown hair, like Lorkan’s.

Like his mother’s.

Moons.

No.

Eldrick retreated down the alleyway as she approached a courtyard with a frozen fountain. Laundry hung from twine between buildings, soggy blouses, tunics, and britches curtaining his view. He tore his gaze back to Tovi who was yards away. He kept his sights on her, shaking the ridiculous hope.

There was absolutely no possibility. It was coincidence. The fog was playing tricks. His mother may have had the same dark hair, but that was not his mother.

She was dead.

Because of him .

Yet again, feelings got in the way. Emotions, grief, sadness, hope, all of them wormed themselves through him, and he buried them down and down—

Tovi turned onto the same street as the other woman, parting through the hanging clothes and getting swallowed by fabrics. Eldrick froze in place. The frigid wind blew by, blowing the clothes out of the way until he could clearly see Tovi meeting the woman at the fountain. Was this her contact?

His heart stopped dead in his chest. A thin nose, high cheekbones, eyes the color of honey. It was as if a soul from the underworld had grabbed ahold of Eldrick and tugged him forward against his will. He moved on shaky legs, treading toward the two women and their meeting place.

His heart, his sanity. Eldrick had to know he was wrong, had to get a closer look. He knew his mother was dead. In his soul, ingrained in his memory. He’d watched as vampyrs overtook her. He’d witnessed her death. And yet, Tovi spoke with his mother.

Fierce. Beautiful. And alive.

Eldrick clutched his chest, unsure if his heart was ripping in two or if he was going to be sick. What were they discussing? Why was Tovi with his mother?

“What…” He shook his head. “What in the hel is going on?”

Both Tovi and his mother whirled. Their eyes went wide. Tovi appeared stricken, and his mother blinked back tears.

“Eldrick,” she whispered.

That’s when he noticed. Fangs peeked out as she spoke. A bloodstone sat on her chest—she, too, wore the magic to block her vampyr scent. His head grew heavy, his world tilting and his heart tearing.

“You’re…” He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t stomach it. “No.” He refused to believe it. “This isn’t possible. I watched you die. This isn’t real.”

His mother flinched, and Tovi approached him with hands out as if he were some wild beast about to unleash.

“I— we —can explain,” Tovi said, taking a step towards him .

We.

Eldrick saw red, charging towards her. “You knew? You’ve known all this time that my mother has been alive!”

Tovi held up her hands, but his mother stepped between them. “I know you have questions, but we can’t afford to attract attention to ourselves.”

Eldrick blinked, trying to grip reason or sense, but every fact he conjured rallied a wave of emotions he couldn’t handle. His mother was alive, but she was also a vampyr, and Tovi had met her here. Eldrick shook his head, the realization dawning on him.

“My mother’s your contact in the castle.”

Not a question, a fact.

Neither disputed it, and before Eldrick had the time to ask questions, a horn blared through the village. Guards shouted commands. Tovi and his mother shared a look.

“You should go, Nadia,” she whispered.

“What?” Eldrick roared. “You’re going back into the castle?” Panic laced his every word. “But if you helped get Evelyn out, doesn’t that put you at risk. Stay with us. Come home.”

His mother grabbed his shoulders, golden eyes burrowing into him. “I can’t yet.”

“What about Father?”

His mother blinked back pain. “Your father will understand. I love you, son. Always have and always will. I am so, so proud of the man you’ve become. I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but trust Tovi. I swear it, Eldrick, she is on our side.”

His mother kissed his cheek and then hurried past him, vanishing through the clothes and down the path. Eldrick moved to follow her, his heart refusing to let her go after all these years, but Tovi grabbed his arm, stopping him.

He snatched out of her hold, turning to her. “Don’t you dare touch me! ”

“If you go after her, you risk my brother discovering who she is. He will kill her and hunt you and your brothers down next. It’s why she never found you, never told you she survived. She did it to protect you.”

Eldrick stilled. The finality in Tovi’s words rooted him in place. He’d never risk his mother’s life again, not even when emotions warred inside him to find her and demand answers. So many questions left him off balance, his heart dropping like a stone in his belly.

Because his rational side understood. If his mother was indeed a spy, the decades-old secrets made sense. Moons , he even understood Tovi’s motives, her reasoning for keeping her contact in the castle coveted information. But the issue wasn’t that Eldrick didn’t recognize the facts or reasoning.

Tovi wasn’t the problem.

He was.

His feelings were always far too big. It was why he had to work so hard to tamp them down in the first place, ever since that dreaded day when his mother—or so he thought—had died.

And to learn she was alive was too much. How could he possibly grapple with his years of guilt sparring against relief? It was as if everything he’d felt, done, worked toward had been a wasted effort. All for nothing.

Tovi stepped towards him, but Eldrick countered it by stepping out of reach.

“I was beginning to trust you,” he whispered. “I was beginning to—” Eldrick stopped himself, and Tovi sucked in a breath.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Eldrick,” she said. “I swore an oath, a promise that I would not tell you, or your brother Kade, for that matter, that she was a vampyr. I’m so sorry—”

“Sorry?” Eldrick held out his arms, gesturing at the emptiness of her apology. “Sorry!” he said it again, but this time as a hiss. His anger, disbelief. All of it surged like some wave, his control trembling.

The village closed in on him, stone by stone, building by building. The truth, his fear, wedged a darkness in his heart thicker than the fog itself, and anger won .

“How can you live with so many secrets? You’re like poison,” he said.

Tovi stumbled back. The sadness in her face hardened to fury, and this time she charged him.

“I do have secrets, Eldrick Drengr. Ones that I am most certain, undoubtedly sure you will never deserve to know.” She pointed back at where his mother had been, tears now long gone in her cutting stare. “That secret was not mine to tell.”

“Save your apologies and bullshit excuses,” he said. They stood so close, their noses almost touched. Eldrick’s next words were venom. “From here on out, every time I hear your voice, I’ll regard it as lies.”

He pushed past her, knocking his shoulder into hers. Even with the truth that his mother was alive, Eldrick couldn’t shake the sense he was grieving the loss of something else with each step back to Lou’s bakery.