Chapter 3

I ’d always wondered what the cold ones were. Where they came from and why we, the Order, were the only ones who could kill them. And now Ordell was telling me that he created these monsters?

“Why? Why would you make such horrific creatures?”

“They weren’t always horrific,” Ordell said. “I dreamed into being guardians. Sentinels to protect settlements and homesteads. But after Loviator negotiated the curse, she claimed the cold ones, tearing them from this world and taking them with her. When they made an appearance in our world a century later, they were changed. Filled with bloodlust and darkness, killing and wreaking havoc under her influence. Although she couldn’t pass into our world, she was using the cold ones to assert her influence.”

“But it’s more than that,” Hemlock said. “She’s feeding on the souls of every being that the cold ones kill.”

I was suddenly back in the dorm room at the School of Creation, facing off with the alpha cold one as her laughter rang in my head. “She was there at the dorm. She spoke to me.”

Both males sat forward.

“What did she say?” Hemlock asked.

What had she said? “Something about souls, and the fact that we had history. She must remember me from all my kills of her minions.” Had she been watching me through their eyes?

“Fuck, she’s getting stronger,” Ordell said.

“But she can’t break free, can she?” I looked between them. “She needs Ezekiel to fail at finding his humanity.”

“Or die,” Hemlock added.

“Are you sure he can’t find his humanity without Ariella?” I chewed on my bottom lip. “I mean…I feel like we were getting close. That he was opening up and?—”

“She has to fall in love with him,” Ordell blurted out.

I stared up at him. “What?”

“His humanity will return when she falls in love with him. It must be her and no one else. That’s the crux of the curse. “

“And you thought…You thought I was her. You wanted me to fall in love…in love with him…” My throat pinched, and tears sprang to my eyes. “You pushed us together hoping…” My chest hurt, and it was suddenly harder to breath.

“Orina!” Ordell cupped my shoulder. “Breathe. Slowly. In through your nose and out through your mouth, that’s right.”

Dammit, what the heck was wrong with me? I needed to pull it together. I did as he instructed, taking measured breaths until the buzzing in my head calmed, and when I spoke, I was pleased to find that my voice was calm and steady.

“Is there anything else that I should know? Any more secrets?” I lifted my chin and looked at them both. “I need to know everything if I’m going to help you.”

They exchanged glances, communicating silently, and the urge to smash their heads together and scream coursed through me. I fisted my hands and waited. Cool. Calm.

“There is one more thing…” Ordell said finally. “About The Order of Helsing…”

“Just spit it out.”

“It was formed by us.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. “ You created the Order?”

“Along with the white wings, of course,” Hemlock said. “We needed a force to cull the cold ones and keep Loviator weakened. We couldn’t risk her circumventing the curse if she got too powerful.”

“Our family name is Helsing Tepes,” Ordell said.

E.H.T. Ezekiel Helsing Tepes. I was working for them, had been all along. And although I understood why they’d held back in telling me all this—they’d thought I was Arabella—it still stung.

It stung, and it made me feel like a fool.

“Orina, I know it’s a lot to take in but?—”

“I’m fine.” In fact, the truth was liberating, and any residual pain it brought would melt. The knots their task had tied me up in slackened, and I slipped free.

Well…almost. There was still one entanglement to release myself from. “Can one of you drive me back to the chapter house in an hour?” No way was I staying the night now.

Ordell watched me for several beats, his gaze searching. What was he looking for? Grief, loss, disappointment? He’d find none. I was a member of the Order, a soldier of the white wings, no matter who had instigated the formation of the organization.

I’d pledged myself to a higher power to protect this world, and going forward, that would be my only focus, not golden eyes threaded with crimson or a sarcastic drawl that both set my teeth on edge and sent a shiver up my spine. Going forward, I’d be a watcher and nothing more. But if I left the castle, what excuse would the brothers have to stay and watch over Ariella?

“How will you keep an eye on Ariella if I leave? Ezekiel allowed you to stay here because of me.” I sounded too eager, too hopeful, and shame burned my cheeks at the pity in their eyes.

“We have Ingrid,” Ordell said, “and there are passages in the castle, areas that Ezekiel doesn’t go.”

Of course…this wasn’t the first time they’d played this game. “Good. Great. Will you drive me back?”

“Of course,” Ordell said.

“Thank you.” Now, before I left there was one important thing I had to do.

All this time in the castle, I’d never been permitted into Ezekiel’s quarters. Not until now. Now when I was due to leave, Leo, the door knocker, let me in.

The door swung open, admitting me into a narrow hallway lit by wall sconces. A large room decorated in dark muted colors and antique furniture lay beyond. There were bookcases bulging with books, and maps and papers were scattered on the table that sat next to an easel covered with a cloth. And, of course, there was Ezekiel himself, sitting in an armchair, looking out at a moon-washed view of Old Town.

I crossed the room to stand beside him and take in that view. A sense of déjà vu, of home, washed over me, because hadn’t we done this very same thing in my dreams? How many days? How many weeks had we spent together in our dreamscape when only a handful had passed here? Enough for me to know him. To understand him. To want to be close to him.

Enough for me to hope that this time…this time he would extricate himself from his curse. I’d hoped to be party to his liberation, not because of Loviator or the world, but because of him. Because I wanted him to be whole. I wanted him to be free.

I couldn’t give him that any longer; heck, I could never have given it to him. So it was time to step back and let Ariella take her rightful place by his side.

The woman he’d loved.

The only woman whose love could free him.

My throat pinched, and I blinked to dispel the heat gathering behind my eyes.

“You look better,” he said. “You have a little color in your cheeks.”

“Yes, I feel better. I feel almost like myself.” Small talk hurt. I needed to broach the subject and?—

“Orina…what you saw in the dining room…It isn’t what it looked like.”

“I know what I saw. You were about to have that woman executed.” I made my tone curt and cold, the tone any Order member would adopt in response to what had happened in the dining hall.

I couldn’t tell him that I knew about the curse, not without revealing who’d told me. Ordell and Hemlock needed to be kept out of this. He couldn’t know they were his brothers. That knowledge would send him spiraling into insanity. I had to play this carefully. “After everything that we discussed. After everything you said?—”

“There’s more to this than you know.”

“What more could there be?”

He made a sound of exasperation. “That woman is part of my eternal curse. I know it sounds insane. But it’s true. Every century…Every fucking century she’s here, and I…”

“You what?”

“I find myself drawn to her only to have her die,” he said in a rush. “It's an eternal torment. Something that I am not willing to go through again. Something that I don’t feel I need to go through anymore. I’m done playing the games of an unseen puppet master who’s placed me in this predicament. I’m done being a pawn. I’ve decided to choose my own destiny.”

My pulse thrummed in my throat, making it hard to speak so that when I did, my voice was nothing but a whisper. “And what is that?”

His eyes glittered in the gloom, softening as they raked over my face, unsaid words hanging between us. I wanted nothing more than to tell him everything, to tell him that I knew, that I understood, that as much as it hurt, I needed to leave. But I held back the words and kept the emotions from my face. Don’t cry, Orina. Don’t you fucking cry.

I had to end this. Now before I broke. “I’m glad you feel liberated, Ezekiel, but if you are under a curse as you say, then curses have rules, and this woman is obviously important to it. You can’t give up on the chance of breaking free.”

“I’m not giving up. Merely taking a sabbatical.” He shrugged. “I feel that I deserve one.”

He had no idea how little time he had left. He thought that he could ignore the curse this time around. That he could what? Be with me?

I took a moment to breathe through the ache in my chest that made the threat of tears stronger and hardened my tone. “You deserve a sabbatical? Well, I deserve one too. Which is why I’ll be moving back to the chapter house.”

He sat forward in his seat. “What?”

“Yes. Tonight. Ordell will drive me. Obviously, I’m still your watcher, and if you go to any functions or leave the castle, then I will accompany you with my guards, but other than that, I need some space.”

He unfurled his body from his chair, smooth and fast like the predator he was, and I flinched, barely holding my ground.

His eyes narrowed as if he was attempting to look into the heart of me, into my very soul. I quelled the shiver that raced through me and lifted my chin to meet his gaze with a steady one of my own, but he took it as an invitation, hand coming up to cradle my throat, his long fingers tightening ever so slightly.

It took every ounce of will not to lean into that contact.

“What if I refuse to let you go?” he said, his breath whispering across my cheek.

My eyes misted, and I blinked back tears because yes, a small part of me wanted that. It wanted him to keep me. To refuse to let me go, but the bigger part, the part that was blessed and knew her duty, fought back, burying the small voice that begged to be heard.

“What if I keep you here, locked in my quarters, little silver?”

His words, the soft abrasion of his tone, tugged at the knot of longing inside me. “Then I’d think you a fool, and ungrateful too. But I’d stay because I had no choice.”

Hemlock had said Ezekiel had already decided to retreat and reduce bloodshed, so my being here or at the chapter house should make no difference to him. Still, I waited with bated breath for his response.

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “You want to leave…” Me. He didn't say it, but I heard it anyway.

My traitorous pulse fluttered against his fingertips. “That’s what I want.”

“Liar,” he said.

I squeezed my eyes closed, not wanting him to see past my shields. “I want you to be kind to Ariella. Don’t hurt her. Treat her with respect.”

“Orina—”

“If you value me at all, you’ll promise me that. You’ll promise me and you’ll let me go.”

“Look at me,” he demanded. I opened my eyes and fell into the golden abyss of his gaze where shadows waited to dance with me. “Orina Lighthart, you have saved my life and my dignity, and I am in your debt. I will give you a peaceful year as watcher. I will give you your space and allow you to leave my castle. Consider this my repayment, but I will not, cannot vow to do anything more.”

My heart ached, stomach quivering as I drank him in. “I suppose that will have to do.”

He stroked my pulse with his thumb then released me. “Goodbye, Miss Lighthart.”

“Goodbye, Ezekiel.” I forced my legs to move. To take me away.

This was for the best. This was what he needed, what we both needed. He had a destiny, and I wasn’t a part of it.

I wanted to say goodbye to Leo, but when the door closed behind me, he remained inactive. I stroked his cheek anyway, whispering a goodbye before retreating down the corridor.

I couldn’t leave without seeing Ingrid. I found her in the kitchen as always, working dough as if her life depended on it. She stopped as soon as she saw me and rushed over to envelop me in a hug. Up until now, I hadn’t known it was possible for her to touch the living, but she carried plates and cups and kneaded dough, so obviously she was able to manipulate her environment, but still, her embrace was cold. The icy chill of the dead. I leaned into it anyway, taking what comfort I could.

“Oh dear, my sweet dear,” she said.

“It’s fine. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Yes, yes, it will be.” She cupped my face with her spectral hands, and frost whispered across my skin.

“I need to speak to Ariella before I leave. Do you know where she is? Do you know where they’re keeping her?”

“Yes. I’ll take you to her now.”

She led me to the lower levels of the castle, toward the dungeons, and my heart sank. Had Ezekiel put Ariella in the dungeons? I was about to ask Ingrid when she took a sharp left at an intersection and stopped at a wooden door. Not the dungeons, then, something else.

“These are guest quarters,” Ingrid said. “For captive guests.”

“I see…”

Ingrid unlocked the door with the key that was still in the lock and stepped back for me to enter.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find, but it wasn’t this sobbing, broken woman curled up on the floor by the bed, her dark hair with a tangle around her face, her eyes red raw from crying. She scrambled up at the sight of me.

“Please…You have to help me,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I don’t know why I’m in here. I think he wants to kill me. He wants me dead, and I have no idea why. Please help me.”

“He won’t kill you, I can promise you that.” And I was certain that she wouldn’t be in this room for long. “He’ll move you to better quarters.” Maybe he’d put her in my old quarters, or would he put her closer to his quarters?

I didn’t want to think about that.

“I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m meant to be a vein, but I’m afraid that he’ll drain me.”

“He won’t.”

This seemed to calm her a little. She wiped at her face with the heels of her palms. “How can you be so sure?”

“I just…I know he won’t. Trust me. You can relax here. You’re safe here.” But was she? If she went all dark, then Hemlock and Ordell would kill her. “Listen to me, be calm and patient. Exercise tolerance and you’ll be safe. I know it.”

“You live here?”

“I did for a while.”

She staggered to her feet, eyes wide. “You’re leaving?”

“I have to. But I’ll check in on you, I promise. You are safe here, Ariella.” I looked to the door, to Ingrid who hovered in the shadows outside. “There is kindness in these walls. The kitchens are Ingrid’s domain. She’s a good friend of mine, and she’ll take care of you.” I beckoned Ingrid, and she glided forward.

Ariella’s shoulders dropped in relief. “You live here?”

“I do,” Ingrid said softly. “You can come to me for anything.” The way she studied Ariella with such hope and intensity made my chest hurt because hadn’t she looked at me that way once?

It was time for me to leave. “Take care, Ariella.”

I made my way back to the upper floors, back to my room where my small case waited for me to fill it and be gone. I packed through a sheen of tears, each item placed in the case adding to the weight sitting on my chest.

My time at Branwood was at an end.