Kissed by Midnight

by Cate Corvin

  The door finally opened, and Covenmaster White poked his grizzled head out. “He’ll live,” he said gruffly. “You’re up next. I’ve sent a message to my coven. They’ll bring the necessary medicine and a welcome casserole.”

  “Dibs on the casserole,” Shane said, slumped on the floor. “I’m fucking starving.”

  Cradling my broken hand, I stepped in at Covenmaster White’s invitation, sitting next to Dominic. He was out cold, pale and bloodless, but still breathing.

  I covered his hand with my unhurt one, squeezing his fingers as a little seedling of hope unfurled in my heart.

  Everything was going to be just fine.

  Chapter 19

  Lu

  I closed my eyes and concentrated hard, and opened them to bare white walls. That godawful floral pink wallpaper was finally gone. I hated staring at it every time I paused in writing these endless letters, searching for words to express how deeply sorry I was for my predecessor’s actions.

  There was a lot to be sorry for, even if I hadn’t directly caused any of it.

  In the month and a half since I’d purified the cornerstone and taken over as Cimmerian’s new covenmistress, we’d recovered nearly three hundred bodies, most of which were unidentifiable and their records lost.

  Of those we could identify, we built coffins for their remains, and I wrote a letter detailing all I knew about them and their time here. I was careful to cushion my words, even though there was every chance the covens who’d abandoned them wouldn’t care. Some were so old, the records so faded, that their home covensteads might not even remember their existence.

  But even so, it was worth writing letters until my hand was cramped and bloodless to tell their story and give them some hope of peace and closure.

  The door opened and I paused, raising my fountain pen from the parchment where I was expressing my condolences for Carmen Flora’s death.

  Dominic stepped in and shut the door, taking in the letters strewn across my desk, each shut with a plain black wax seal. I refused to use Gilt’s personal seal to send these letters.

  He was still a little paler than I was used to seeing, drained both by mirrorwalking and how close he’d come to death himself. A scar cut through the reddish stubble on his cheeks, and the tip of his ear was permanently notched.

  His left arm now ended just below his elbow. He hadn’t voiced a single word of complaint, but at times his face tightened with frustration, and I knew he was reaching for something with a phantom limb and feeling its loss.

  Despite that, there was a serenity about him. He’d fulfilled his goal and made his peace with Simon’s loss. We’d brought the boy up and burned his remains, and when the time came, we’d travel to Steelblood for his funeral and to meet the coven.

  I was looking forward to making our relationship- and engagement- a little more official, and meeting the others, even though my heart still squeezed at the memory of Simon and what he’d done for me.

  I hoped his rest was peaceful.

  “Bluejasper’s sent a warlock,” he said. I stood up, abandoning my letters, and stepped around the desk to wrap my arms around his neck. The waystone’s awakening and the new warlock’s arrival had felt like a ripple of water in my consciousness. He was outside now, waiting for me. “And my report is complete. I’ll be delivering it to the Tribunal’s hands myself.”

  His hand snaked around my waist and pulled me close. He closed his eyes as he kissed me, sucking my lower lip between his teeth. I didn’t protest when he lifted me one-handed and sat me on the desk, pushing between my legs.

  He released me with a final gentle kiss. “I was thinking of turning in my medallion while I’m there.”

  The ouroboros hung heavy around his neck. Now that the Gilts were gone, he wore what he was openly. Several witches and warlocks from other covens had showed up looking for trouble or revenge when the waystone put us back on the map, but when faced with a Justiciar, they backed down quickly.

  “Is that what you want?” I touched the ouroboros. Its ruby eyes shimmered at me like a living creature.

  He shrugged one shoulder, but the corners of his lips were curved down. “Being a Justiciar means traveling from home and long hours. I owe them service as long as I’m part of them.”

  “And I hate Wardens.” I let the medallion fall back to his chest. “Or used to. Most of them. What I’m trying to say is that I think you should keep it, if you want.”

  A faint hope kindled in his eyes. “Being handfasted to a Warden wouldn’t disturb you after what you’ve dealt with?”

  I shook my head, running my hands over the planes of his chest, only a pressed shirt between us. “It would make me feel so much better knowing there’s one decent Warden out in the world. And where there’s one good person, there’ll always be more. You need to keep the next generation of potentials in line, Dom.”

  “If they’re willing to keep me on,” he said, looking at the remains of his left arm. “This might limit what jobs I take.”

  “They’d be stupid not to want you. You’re the best of them.” I ran my hands over his shoulder, touching the ragged scar tissue. Covenmaster White had spent days working on him, replenishing his blood, tidying the scar tissue where he could, but it would never be a pretty wound.

  I didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was still here with us, among the living. I had nightmares about how close we’d come to another outcome.

  Dominic rested his forehead against mine. His eyelashes brushed my cheeks when he blinked. “I’m leaving tonight, then. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be waiting right here for you,” I whispered, tracing the sharp angle of his jaw. We weren’t handfasted yet, but as soon as we had Cimmerian’s affairs in order, we’d finally have time to start planning it out. As far as we knew, nobody had ever attempted a handfasting between a witch, three warlocks, and a vampire, but we were going to do it anyways. I wondered how many handfasting guests would show up just out of morbid curiosity.

  “Speaking of waiting…”

  I pressed a kiss to his lips, making it last until I had to breathe again.

  ***

  The warlock from Bluejasper accepted the coffin with David Jasper’s remains, hiding a sea of pain behind his stoic expression.

  A few of the covens who had arrived to collect their dead had been blindsided by what they found here. Apparently, Jasper’s family had been under the impression that he would be serving his five years of juvenile correction in Serpentine and had never heard of Cimmerian at all.

  Dominic’s face hardened each time we gave remains back to their families. Joshua Jasper, David’s cousin, had offered his earthshaping coven’s magic to design a mausoleum for the nameless dead we couldn’t return to their rightful covensteads. I’d accepted the offer gratefully, hoping I’d handled covenmistress protocol correctly.

  Joshua returned to Bluejasper on the waystone with David’s remains, and Dominic’s hand tightened around mine.

  “It astounds me how easily they operated in plain sight,” he said bitterly. “The Wickes gave Simon up to what they believed was an institution for nonmagical warlocks. The Jaspers thought their son was in Serpentine. The Cinders were never even registered for Serpentine- Lyle Vega diverted them enroute to their correctional sentence.”

  It seemed that a small group of Wardens on Gilt’s payroll had been skimming off the top of Serpentine’s overflowing prison for Minor Magical Infractions for years. Vega was already in custody.

  Daphne had sniffed when I told her, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Serves him right, the pig.”

  But everybody believed something different about Cimmerian. Nobody had realized it was a farm for magical batteries.

  Daphne had also outright refused to return to Starlake, even though I’d burned her contract for Cimmerian right in front of her. “Some of my family knew about this place,” she’d said, her eyes dark. “I’m not going back to that snake pit.”

  S
everal covens never came to collect their dead, and I took their silence as an admission of guilt. There was no doubt that a few covens, more than just Starlake, had an idea of what Cimmerian had been, and had turned a blind eye to it.

  The knowledge left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  “You’re still fine with this? You’ll be okay for a few days?” Dominic asked, pulling me back to the present. The sun was just starting to dip towards Cimmerian’s wall, sending long shadows across the grounds.

  With a little direction, the wards and I had smoothed out the ruined lawn, leaving dark scars across its surface. Maybe someday I’d have time to grow another garden, but I didn’t want to see roses here again.

  Two wolves rambled from the forest, both shining with different patterns of scars. “I’ll be fine, Dom. No one will try anything funny with them around,” I said, watching them bolt over the flat, empty stretch of grass. “Besides, I keep the sword on me at all times now.”

  If two horse-sized therianthropes didn’t deter any angry relatives, I had no idea what would. One witch, a lesser cousin of one of the dead, had attacked me as soon as she’d materialized on the waystone. In that case, it had been both Shane’s flashing teeth and Dominic’s dagger that had stopped her from attempting to bury her sword right through my chest.

  I tried not to be angry at the near-miss. As soon as I’d reached out to Whitefawn through the waystone, a hundred other covens had immediately gone into disarray, sensing the awakening of Cimmerian’s waystone after decades of silence. Rumors were flying thick and fast, coven to coven, and some family members had showed up with vengeance on their minds, full of righteous fury when they’d discovered the fate of the missing.

  I couldn’t blame them. I would’ve done the same if I’d discovered that one of my own had been betrayed and sent here to die. Many of the covens who came to collect the bodies were not the ones who had sent their kin here to die, but relatives who had gone years without knowing what had become of the lost. I was glad that it wasn’t the careless traitors, those like my own matriarch, who were coming to collect.

  But I’d had to repeatedly explain that Mallory Gilt was dead, and that I wasn’t her. Even so, some had taken their dead in a huff and gave me the evil eye on the way out, and others had broken down in front of me.

  It was exhausting and awful, but also cathartic. One by one, Cimmerian’s spirits were slowly being laid to rest.

  The twins shed their wolfskins and ambled over. Shane’s twilight eyes ran up and down my form from head to toe: I’d tossed most of my school uniforms on a pile of debris and set them on fire. One set I kept, a sick, masochistic sort of memento from my trials as a student of Mallory Gilt. I also kept the Giltglass ring, a heavy reminder on my hand next to the Steelblood ruby.

  Now I wore the same clothes I’d showed up in: a dark blue silk blouse, jeans, my Docs. It wasn’t exactly covenmistress-issue apparel, but it would do for now.

  And yet, the guys made me feel like I was wearing nothing at all when they eyed me like that.

  “Is it time?” Shane wrapped a lock of blonde hair around his finger and brushed my cheek.

  Dominic glanced up at the sinking sun. “I should go before nightfall. Deepwood’s guardians get a little twitchy at night.” In contrast to my casual attire, he was wearing his Warden armor, the medallion gleaming against the black leather. His report was a stack of papers he kept tucked under his right arm. We’d cut and sewn the left sleeve, making his injury all the more obvious.

  I kissed Dominic deeply, my nails sinking into his back. He didn’t pull away until I released him but stepped on the waystone decisively with a scowl. “I love you, and I’ll be back as soon as they release me.”

  “I love you too, and if they don’t want to release you, you’d better just come back anyways.”

  “Don’t let anyone so much as lay a finger on her,” he said. “And don’t let her overwork herself. This doesn’t have to get done overnight.” Roman tipped his hand in a salute.

  With a burst of light, he vanished, zipping through the web of the waystones to Deepwood Sanctum. With the report under his arms and the help of the Tribunal’s archivists, we might be able to piece together more of the unnamed dead.

  I didn’t fool myself that anyone would pay the price for what had been done here. Those responsible were already dead, but Dominic didn’t want me going anywhere near Deepwood Sanctum in person, not until the rumors had cooled a little.

  The Tribunal’s sentence against me was still in effect, after all. Becoming the covenmistress might play a role in freeing me, but there was no way to be sure, and he refused to risk a sentence to Obsidian for me.

  I sighed as the sparkles faded from the air, but the twins surrounded me. “Don’t worry, we won’t let you get bored,” Shane said, nibbling my ear. “Or overworked. Sometimes it’s okay to leave the offices and catacombs for a mental break, Lu.”

  The two therianthropes had found themselves in a strange quandary since the night we’d won: their protectiveness had increased tenfold, but with the wards bound to my mind and the ability to control almost every aspect of Cimmerian, I was almost untouchable while I remained on covenstead grounds. There were no inherent dangers here anymore.

  “Being bored would be a luxury right now. Bluejasper is starting on the mausoleum next week, we have to figure out a budget, and-”

  “Please don’t talk about budgets and mausoleums while I’m trying to seduce you,” Roman growled. He hooked his fingers in the loops of my jeans and pulled me backwards. My ass bumped against his hardening cock.

  Shane kissed his way down my neck, making me shiver under his touch.

  “Was I not invited?” Locke tipped my chin up, his fangs sliding over my lips when he kissed me. The sun had finally dipped below the wall, casting the grounds in darkness.

  “Is this what I’ve been missing out on the whole time I was here?”

  I yelped and jumped back. Beckwith Tatter cocked his head, amber eyes as vivid as Locke’s in the darkness.

  “Not with me you haven’t,” I said, backing away into Locke’s arms.

  Daphne came around the North Entrance, a shovel resting on her shoulder, herding Anthony and Anne, the stitchwitch, in front of her. “Keep it moving,” she snapped. They both looked miserable, covered in dirt from digging up the Gilt’s crude graves.

  I didn’t feel bad at all. Once the Tribunal had gone through Dom’s report, they would decide the fate of these two. I doubted there’d be much mercy, but they didn’t deserve any. It was only right that they help uncover the people they’d helped murder.

  Beck licked his lips as Daphne strode by and she put her nose in the air, but I was sure there was a little extra sway to her hips.

  “You’re free from class today,” Locke said, watching Beck watch Daphne. He’d taken Beck under his wing, both teaching him about their kind and studying Beck’s apparent immunity to madness, and the lack of effect he had on Locke himself. “No feeding without permission.”

  Beck grinned and vanished, appearing at Daphne’s side a second later. To her credit, she barely flinched at his sudden arrival.

  Locke slid an arm around my shoulders. “I’m stealing her for a moment,” he told the twins. Roman groaned. “Guard the waystone.”

  He led me back to Cimmerian, more than a touch possessive in the way he held me. I leaned into him and looped my fingers through his as we walked.

  I’d renovated most of the North Entrance to be windowless, providing Locke as many corridors as possible that he could traverse during the day. Most of B Wing had become windowless as well, and he’d spent the last month combing through Cimmerian’s stores of old medical asylum equipment. He’d pieced together a passable laboratory, where he combed through various books on vampirism and took new notes on all he’d discovered about vampirism and his abilities.

  Beckwith Tatter was a major factor in his decision to study his own kind. They were the first two vampires to co-exist sanely in reco
rded history.

  But Beck’s brethren hadn’t been so lucky. Locke had killed the batch of fledglings in the underground laboratory himself. They’d been turned so quickly, and treated so brutally, that their minds had formed a singular hive that was impossible to untangle.

  I’d comforted him as best as I could, but he’d brooded for a week after his grisly task was done.

  What had once been Room 96 was now Locke’s main haunt. He ushered me inside, and I was greeted with an array of mismatched tables covered in foreign equipment. The room looked like a cross between an antique store and a mad alchemist’s lab, complete with an alembic full of vampire blood. Sometimes I stopped by just to watch a shirtless Locke poke away at beakers and take endless notes. He probably qualified as the world’s most gorgeous vampire scientist, fangs and all.

  This time, he shut the door behind him, his face uncharacteristically drawn.

  “Locke, what’s wrong?” I pushed back my constant awareness of the mansion and wards, focusing only on the vampire in front of me. His skin was silky and warm under my hands.

  He closed his eyes, the coal-black lashes shadowing his cheeks. “There’s something that’s been weighing on my mind since the night you were taken by Albrecht.”

  I breathed in his natural incense scent and ran my thumb over the sharp angle of his cheekbone. Locke’s lashes fluttered open, revealing the dark amber of his irises, flecked with bits of bright gold.

  “Albrecht took everything from me, my home, my sister, my humanity, and used it to build that vile machine. But when we destroyed it… I felt regret. I regretted destroying the only thing that could keep you with me forever, even though that machine was built of the blood on my family.” His brows drew together and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “I feel such conflict over what I’ve done. If the others hadn’t been with me, would I have become the same kind of man that Albrecht was? Would I have sacrificed the innocent and unwilling to keep you alive, even if it was for my own selfish desires? And yet, despite my disgust at myself for doing that very thing, I fear the answer would have been yes.”