7. Montana

We travelled into the city and the pale daylight was soon drowned out by the shadows of the colossal skyscrapers that stood sentinel either side of the roads. We moved away from the central streets where the darkness was heavier, and only a few vampires roamed the area, looking at ease in their homeland. As we arrived outside an enormous building with imposing stone pillars supporting the entranceway, trepidation seeped through me.

Sabrina got out of the car, glancing up and down the street before gesturing for me to follow.

I stepped out, gathering my coat around me as I gazed at the menacing structure, thinking of what was to come. Of Wolfe trapped in there with my father’s blood on his hands. The rage that caused me was so potent that a mist of red seemed to curtain my vision, my teeth grinding in my mouth and Nightmare urging on the violence I ached to deliver.

The driver rolled down his window, looking to me. “Tell Prince Erik to call us when you’re ready to go home.”

I nodded, irrationally angry that Erik had declared I was free now when I clearly wasn’t. Though why I had expected more of him than that, I didn’t know.

I followed Sabrina up the stone steps into the fluorescent light of an entrance hall with a white marble floor and flags of the New Empire hanging from golden poles on the far wall. Several guards stood around the place, backs ramrod straight and weapons on display. An iron door between two of them was the only way forward, and Sabrina promptly guided me toward it.

“Prince Erik summoned his fiancée,” Sabrina told the guards, and my gut tightened at hearing the word again.

If Erik really expected me to marry him, he was going to be sorely disappointed. But my next moves were unclear. Escape was my only option, but it was hard to think of anything beyond Wolfe right now.

The guards opened the door for us, bowing low as we passed, and I scowled at them, feeling very much like a bird in a gilded cage.

We walked down a dreary corridor, and an officer greeted us in a navy uniform. She had short hair and a sharp nose; a gun was at her hip and a sword was strapped to her back. She exuded an aura of authority that made my skin prickle.

“Just this way, Miss Ford,” she said, opening another security door and guiding us through it.

The officer pressed her finger to a panel beside a door on our left and it slid open. I followed her into a dark space with a window overlooking another room. Inside it, Erik had his hands around Wolfe’s throat as he held him against a concrete wall. The prince’s shirt was splattered with blood and torn in places, his hair a wild mess of dark strands and his face twisted into a vicious snarl. His fangs were bared, and he was nothing but an animal with prey in its jaws, ready to deliver another ruthless blow.

My breathing stuttered as I absorbed the sight, moving as close to the window as I could get.

“Please – I wouldn’t betray you, master,” Wolfe begged, his voice sounding through a speaker on the wall beside me. “The girl is lying! How could she possibly know such a thing to be true?”

Erik threw him across the room with such force that he smashed into the opposite wall, crumpling on the floor like a rag doll. My breath hitched at how easily he laid into the general, a monster who had seemed so unbreakable before now.

Wolfe groaned, nursing a wound on the back of his head, his fingers shaking as they came away wet with blood. He rose cautiously to his feet, more blood staining the wall, the damage Erik had done to him abundantly clear. Fear was etched into his beautiful face, and I revelled at the sight, my breaths quickening as I drank in his pain, wishing every drop of it on him for what he had done to my father.

Nightmare emitted a sense of satisfaction against my side, purring beautifully in recognition of the vampire’s pain.

Erik stalked towards Wolfe once more, his knuckles wet with Wolfe’s blood and a manic darkness in his eyes that didn’t frighten me for once. This was the power needed to bring Wolfe to his knees, and as much as I wanted to be the one causing that pain, perhaps Erik was the only one capable of inflicting true agony on this asshole.

“Lie one more time and I’ll turn you to ash, Wolfe,” Erik snarled, and I felt I was seeing the most feral side of the prince, the layers of his beauty peeled back to reveal the beast within.

I was half aware he was doing this for me, making Wolfe suffer in penance for my father’s death, and there was a part of me that couldn’t help but be grateful for that.

Wolfe raised his palms, trembling as he tried to keep Erik away. “Please, please, your highness. Her father tried to escape from the blood bank, I was only trying to stop him. To bring him here as you asked. I may have been too rough, I may have injured him, but he was alive when I last saw him. If he is dead, it wasn’t my intention. You know how fragile humans can be.”

I bared my teeth, fury tangling with my veins. “Liar!” I shouted at the glass, but if either of them heard me, they didn’t show it.

I sensed Sabrina shifting closer to me, seeming uneasy.

“So you admit it?” Erik growled. “You bit him? You drank from a human?”

Wolfe cowered, looking left and right as if the answer would appear out of thin air. “I- I was injured. I needed blood. I wasn’t thinking straight,” he pleaded his case, but it wasn’t convincing.

Pain welled inside me at the thought of what Dad had gone through, and I screamed my anger, wanting to break through the glass and get into that room.

Erik threw a punch to Wolfe’s gut, making the general double over and cough blood. He groaned, stumbling back to get away, but Erik kept coming, throwing another punch to his head before snatching his collar and slamming him into the wall, sending a crack through the stone and shaking the very foundations of the building.

“It is illegal to drink directly from humans,” Erik spat.

“Forgive me, sire!” Wolfe wailed. “It won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t,” Erik said darkly, releasing him and stepping back. “You’re finished, General.”

Wolfe lunged forward and tangled his hands in Erik’s shirt, his fingers grasping frantically. “No - please. I’ll never drink from a human again, sire. It was one mistake. I shall make up for it.”

“It is far too late for that,” Erik hissed.

Wolfe shrank back, shaking his head, and a coldness filled his eyes that made a chill creep down my spine. “They’re beneath us, why does it matter? Why should I be punished for it?”

His words sent a jolt of hatred through me that cut deep enough to tear a fissure into my heart.

“He was more than you’ll ever be!” I cried, and Sabrina rested a hand on my arm as if to comfort me. But there would be no comfort from this pain, it was too profound, too raw.

Erik punched Wolfe hard in the face, splitting his lip wide and making his head snap back against the wall with a loud crack.

Wolfe snarled his fury, touching the wound as it slowly healed. “I have been loyal to you for hundreds of years - how can you be so unforgiving?!”

Erik glared at him with disdain. “Because I suspect this isn’t the first time. You have a taste for it, don’t you, you piece of shit?”

Wolfe slowly nodded, a glint of salvation in his eyes. “Yes, that’s it, I am a slave to it, your highness. It’s the curse. It has taken root in me. Please help me recover.”

“We are all a slave to the curse, Wolfe. Our nature may drive us to bite, but we can be better than that if we so choose,” Erik said, and my breath stalled at his admission.

Did he want to bite me just as Wolfe had bitten Dad? Was he always one poor choice away from giving in to that twisted urge? The possibility left me reeling.

Erik continued, “The curse does not guide our actions. You made your decision, and it was the wrong one.” He moved toward the door, then glanced back. “We are far from done here.”

Wolfe cowered against the wall, holding his head in his hands as a whimper escaped him and Erik exited the room, slamming the door behind him.

Wolfe looked broken, pathetic. And I had no pity for him. He deserved every ounce of the pain Erik had given him.

The door beside me opened and Erik stepped into the room, his ash grey eyes landing on me.

“Come,” he commanded.

I strode toward him with my head high, not liking the way he summoned me, but I wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to pay Wolfe a visit.

“Out,” he barked at Sabrina and the officer, and they promptly obeyed, following us from the room.

As Erik turned away and I kept to his side, Sabrina tried to follow us, but he glared at her in warning. “Stay here. No one goes in that room, no one watches, and no one comes with us, understood?”

She nodded quickly, looking a little taken aback before she fell still, and Erik led me around a corner out of sight.

We approached a door where a final guard was standing, and I quaked with my hunger for revenge. Nightmare buzzed with a keen anticipation, and I let that feeling roll into me, taking courage from its presence.

One sharp jerk of Erik’s chin sent the guard scurrying away out of sight and leaving us alone in the quiet stone corridor.

I gazed at the door, desperate to go in there and deliver Wolfe the death he was owed.

Erik took my hand and turned me to look at him with an intensity in his eyes. “His death is yours.” He took a serrated knife from his hip and placed it in my palm. “Strike deep and true. No hesitation, rebel.”

I startled at the icy feel of it but nodded firmly. I could do this. For myself. But most of all, for my family.

Erik reached out and brushed a lock of hair from my face. I took in his blood-speckled face and the wildness in his eyes that told me this had all been for me. That he was bending rules for me that should never be bent. Especially not for a human.

I pushed him away, needing to remain cold and not let any ounce of warmth into my chest. Because right now, I didn’t hate Erik Belvedere, I revered him as the dark god he was. And I believed that he had never intended for my father to die, that he hadn’t known what Wolfe would do, because why else would he have dragged him here and punished him so severely?

“Thank you for understanding the importance of this to me,” I said. “And for believing me about Wolfe.”

His brows drew low, his eyes shadowed. “My brothers and sister are all I have. I may have grown numb to the world, and time may have ravaged the light in my soul, but I shall never forget how to love them. If someone took my family from me, I would seek the bloodiest of vengeance in payment for their deaths. That is the least you deserve.”

My throat thickened at that word on his lips. Love. It was at odds with him, this tainted creature who surely couldn’t feel so deeply as to love. But I’d seen how Miles adored Warren, how Clarice had shown concern for Erik. It was no illusion. It was a truth I could no longer deny.

“There is a saying my people once had. Gammel kjærleik rustar ikkje,” he said in an accent that rolled easily off his tongue.

“I saw it carved into the rafters at your house,” I said in realisation, and he nodded once.

“It means ‘old love does not corrode’,” he said, and something about those words sent a rush of warmth through my chest. Because they were true. Truer than any words I’d ever heard. My love for my family was as long living as I was, and it would never be tarnished, never fade or alter or shatter. It just was and always would be.

I swallowed the ball of emotion rising in my throat. “I won’t forget that.”

Erik’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to say something more, staring at me without a single blink. Instead, he opened the door, leading the way inside, and I stepped into the room where Wolfe awaited us.

“Master, I beg of you-” Wolfe started in terror, reduced to a quivering wreck on the floor. And it felt damn good to see him like that, stripped of his position of power.

“Quiet,” Erik barked, stepping aside so Wolfe’s piercing gaze landed on me, then dropped to the knife in my hand.

“What’s going on?” he whispered to Erik, but he didn’t reply, simply shutting the door and approaching Wolfe at a slow, prowling pace.

Erik took his arm, hauling him in front of me and shoving him to his knees, his hand fisting in his silver hair as he presented him to me.

“No! Prince Erik, please!” Wolfe howled, gazing up at me in fear.

“You killed my father,” I hissed, and Wolfe shrank back against Erik as I shifted toward him. “Admit it,” I ordered, and Wolfe stared at me in disbelief.

“How can you bring her here to kill me?” Wolfe begged Erik. “She’s a slayer, master. Our sworn enemy!”

“Yes, she is. And she will be your end,” Erik snarled.

Wolfe struggled but Erik held him with ease, gripping his hair tighter to keep him still. I hesitated on the strike, unsure what to do next. When I had killed the vampire at the castle, it had been in self-defence, adrenaline and fear fuelling my motions. But this was different. This was an execution, and now that I was faced with it, I wasn’t sure how to go through with it.

Let me help you, Moon Child.

I dropped the steel blade to the floor, reaching into my coat and taking out Nightmare, the blade glinting wickedly.

Erik raised a brow. “I can’t hide anything from you.”

I kept my eyes on Wolfe, the gold glimmer of Nightmare reflecting in his eyes.

“Get away from me, wretch!” Wolfe bellowed. “You are nothing, and I will not die by the hand of a worthless hu-”

Erik slammed his face into the floor before hauling him back to his knees again, his nose dripping blood.

“I will rip your worthless tongue from your mouth if you dare speak to her that way again,” he spat, and Wolfe whimpered, bowing his head in submission.

I stepped closer, raising Nightmare, a tremor rolling through my body.

I had to do this. I wanted to. And no force on earth would stay my hand in this act.

“This is for my father,” I breathed as tears scorched the back of my eyes, the loss of him so sharp it felt like an open wound in my chest.

But I wouldn’t let my tears fall. I would be the last thing Wolfe saw, the daughter of the man he had torn from this world. And he would know that I was not nothing. Not to him, at least. Because I was his death.

I let the blade guide my movements and aimed it directly at Wolfe’s heart. Gathering my strength, I took a breath and released all of my grief into the strike, bringing it forward at speed.

“Stop!” Strong arms surrounded me and I was yanked backwards so that Nightmare met nothing but air. Fright made my heart pound, and I lost my grip on the blade, the hilt clattering as it hit the floor.

“What the fuck is this?!” Fabian roared as he locked me in his hold.

I struggled against him, but it was useless. My heart sank toward my stomach and anger flared through the core of me.

“Let me go,” I demanded, fighting to break free, but he was unrelenting.

“Erik, explain yourself this second,” Fabian barked.

Sabrina rushed into the room, looking unsure of how to act as she assessed the two royal brothers.

“Wolfe drank from a human. He killed the father of my fiancée,” Erik snarled, shoving Wolfe to the floor, and slamming his boot to his chest.

“So you brought a human here to kill him?!” Fabian roared, his booming voice resounding through my bones. “The punishment for such a crime is banishment, not death. And certainly not death by a fucking courtier’s hand.”

Erik bared his fangs, looking deadly as he pressed his weight down on Wolfe. “She is no longer just a courtier, and Wolfe disobeyed a direct order from me.”

“It is still not enough to have him killed. Are you insane, Erik? This could start an uprising in the city,” Fabian hissed.

My heart juddered. Was that true? Had Erik really risked all that just to hand me my revenge?

“An uprising, brother? Isn’t that what you want anyway?” Erik accused, a terrifying look in his eyes. “I know what you’re planning. You want to take the crown for yourself alone. You want me dead.”

“You are losing your fucking mind. How many times do I have to tell you I did not try to kill you?” Fabian said in anger.

I clawed at Fabian’s arms, but he still wouldn’t let me go, his grip almost bruising.

“Unhand her,” Erik commanded. “She isn’t yours to touch.”

Fabian shoved me away from him and I nearly fell over, but Erik snatched my hand, dragging me to his side and clamping me there.

“So many of my men have died, Fabian,” Erik growled. “Do you really expect me to believe you’re not behind it? That you weren’t involved in the bomb that killed two of the courtiers? A haphazard attempt on my life perhaps?”

“Listen to yourself,” Fabian snapped. “Why would I set a bomb to kill you? I know it wouldn’t work.”

“I know you are plotting my downfall,” Erik seethed. “I have intel. Hard fucking evidence.”

“From who?” Fabian demanded, his face skewing in confusion.

“That is none of your business,” Erik said, recomposing himself and pulling me tighter against him. “Although I am sure you are aware of those I have had watching you, because half of them have ended up dead. Faulkner did not string himself up in a tree and gut himself, did he, Fabian?”

“Faulkner?” Fabian gasped. “You think I had him killed? My own Elite have been dying too, Erik, I am obviously not involved.”

“Those Elite are dead because I retaliated,” Erik revealed, and a shudder of fear went through me. They looked ready to rip each other apart, fangs bared and muscles tensed.

Fabian shook his head, a dark comprehension filling his expression. “You fucking idiot, brother. By the gods, how could you be so stupid?”

“You strike at me, Fabian, and I’ll strike back,” Erik snarled, but there was a hint of doubt in his tone.

I gazed between the two of them, trying to work out if Fabian was telling the truth.

“I am not the culprit,” Fabian insisted. “But I know who is.”

“Who?” Erik whispered, clutching me even firmer and making me curse.

“I…” Fabian’s eyes moved to me. “We should talk in private.”

“You can speak freely in front of her,” Erik said, and I glanced up at him in surprise.

Fabian looked down at Wolfe who was in a trembling heap on the floor.

“Not here,” Fabian said, then gestured for us to leave the room.

Erik stepped off of Wolfe, pulling me down to crouch beside him.

“Apologise,” Erik snapped at Wolfe, but at the same time he forced my hand toward Nightmare beside him. I grabbed it quickly, stuffing it in my coat as panic scattered through me. What if Fabian had already seen it?

“I’m s-sorry, sire,” Wolfe stuttered at Erik.

“To her, you piece of shit,” he ordered.

I stood upright, hugging my coat tight around me, and my pulse drummed in my ears as Wolfe’s cold gaze moved to me.

“Sorry,” he whispered so lightly I barely heard it.

Erik booted him in the ribs before snatching my arm and tugging me out of the room past Fabian.

Sabrina followed us, keeping close to my side, her eyes darting between us as she awaited orders.

A ping sounded from Erik’s pocket, and he took out his phone, gazing down at the screen. His brow creased and his jaw pulsed with anger, setting me on edge even further.

“What is it?” I asked, and Erik hesitated a moment before showing me the screen.

A video played, revealing Callie within a group of trees. The brutal-looking slayer was with her, killing a vampire with a savage strike from a glimmering golden sword. My heart soared, relief and hope colliding within me as I reached for the screen just as the video ended, pausing on Callie’s expression as she glared at the camera recording her. A blade was in her grasp, stained with blood. It looked just like Nightmare. And her hair was caught in a breeze, loose and more golden than I’d ever seen it. She looked…incredible. A force to be reckoned with.

“You’re still trying to catch her,” I said in fury, my gut clenching.

“I’ll bring her to you,” he said.

“No.” I stopped walking, yanking my arm out of his hold. “You owe me. You-”

“Quiet,” he clipped just before Fabian stepped into the corridor, and I bit my tongue.

Erik promptly stuffed the phone into his pocket, leaving me with an imprint of my sister in my mind. She was okay. Still alive. And fighting against the vampires like an angel of death.

Holy shit.

“Call the car and take Montana home,” Erik rounded on Sabrina.

“No, I want to hear what Fabian has to say,” I demanded.

Fabian glowered as he slammed the door behind him.

“I’ll ensure he repeats everything to you,” Erik said, the shade in his eyes saying he would not be swayed on us parting. “I’m going to follow in Fabian’s car.”

Fabian’s upper lip curled back. “I’m not going anywhere with you unarmed.”

Erik shrugged. “Bring a weapon then, brother. But if it comes to a fight, I will need no such thing to defeat you.”

“Arrogant as always,” Fabian hissed.

“You’re both arrogant,” I muttered, and their eyes whipped towards me. “And I think your rivalry is pathetic. Family is all you have in this world, and it can be taken from you in the blink of an eye. I’m glad I never wasted a second of my time on such pointless feuds. Maybe you’ve gotten complacent with your immortality, thinking no end will ever come for any of you and that your time is limitless. I thought that about vampires too once, but now I know the truth. You can die. And with so many years stretching out before you and so many enemies lurking in the shadows, the odds are that one day you will.”

I strode past them down the hall, leaving them with surprised looks on their faces, and apparently no words to say in reply.

My heart warred in my chest and Nightmare hummed softly like it was trying to soothe away my agony. But this grief was here to stay, a jagged splinter lodged deep into my heart, never to be pulled free. At least I could say my time with Dad had been full of love and no wedge had ever been driven between us. We’d adored one another right until the end, but the hardest part was that I never got to say goodbye.