by Ali Winters
I mourn the freedom slipping through my fingers like sand. I am doing this because I cannot win against her and also for Clara.
Moving as fast as I can, I rush to my own rooms, wanting to put as much distance between me and the unpleasant future to come. I will pretend to be complicit, to be under her control, but my resistance will not last forever, and one day, she will control my every thought.
I have always known Elizabeth would get her way in the end. She always has. Though I’d hoped to grow tired of living before it came to this, I hoped to no longer have a reason to resist, but as long as Clara lives, I will fight.
I push open the doors to my room, unsurprised to find it cold and dark. The door shuts with a quiet click. The drapes are drawn, and no fire burns in the hearth. It’s dark and fits my mood.
“Alaric?” Clara’s voice is a ghost of a whisper.
I whirl at the sound of my name.
Clara emerges from the shadows to stand in a thin shaft of light, wearing a black cloak over dark clothes.
Seeing her face is a relief, but it also breaks a piece of my soul.
She inches forward, cautiously.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
Clara sucks in a sharp breath.
“You need to leave.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Clara
Alaric closes the door behind him and stops halfway into the room. He hangs his head, heaving a sigh, letting his shoulders slump.
I lift my hand, reaching out then curling my fingers back into my palm. Something is off, and it sends a sense of foreboding through me when seeing him should feel like a relief.
“Alaric?” His name slips out from between my lips.
He whips around, startled. I expect him to close the distance, to smile, but his face remains an unreadable mask.
“How long have you been here?” he asks. The coldness in his question takes me aback. “You need to leave.”
I take a tentative step forward, uncertainty tugging on the corners of my heart. “Several hours. I snuck up here once the halls quieted. When you didn’t show up yesterday…”
I’ve been afraid Varin was right. I chanced a visit because I have to see for myself if they lied. Looking at him now, I can’t be sure.
“Where have you been?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything.
He recoils. The movement is subtle, but I catch it.
“What are you doing here?” He takes a step forward and another, stopping an arm’s length away.
The unease coils tighter, settling between my shoulders. “It’s been two days. You said you would come back, but when you didn’t, I thought…” My throat constricts, and I can’t voice the words. He feels distant, and the space between us might as well be a chasm. “I hate it here. When can we go home to Windbury?”
I never considered Windbury home before this moment. Now I realize it is, more so than Littlemire ever was.
Alaric lifts his hand, and for a brief moment, I think he might pull me into him. My breath catches as I wait to feel his touch.
Instead, he shrugs off his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair. His hands grip the backrest, fingers tightening.
Alaric rubs his forehead and says, “We don’t.”
I inch closer, stopping at his side, and reach for him. He pulls away and looks me in the eye.
“We will never return to Windbury.”
The words are harsh and unexpected. I suck in a sharp breath. It’s a simple statement, but I can’t accept it.
I take a step back and shake my head.
“Stay with Cassius,” he says darkly. “He will be your guardian as long as you wish him to be.”
Irritation flares. I press my lips into a tight line to keep from snapping at him.
“I do not wish him to be,” I grind out between clenched teeth. My temper rises, refusing to be held down. “I never did.”
Alaric looks me up and down. “He has been training you well.”
Cherno cuts through the air between us. I flinch and glare at the demon as they land on the fireplace mantle.
I return my focus to Alaric. He stares blankly at the wall, avoiding my gaze.
Though we never trained more than a handful of times, I can’t help but feel that doing so with Cassius has been a betrayal on my part, that I took something that was ours and moved on without blinking.
“I never asked for him to train me.” I shake my head, trying and failing to contain my rising voice. We’re fighting. We shouldn’t be fighting. “He’s only my guardian because he’s following orders. He insisted—”
Alaric holds up his hand, stopping my rush of words. I feel a slight pulse of his power caressing me.
“I know. I was merely stating a fact.” A ghost of a smile turns his mouth upward then quickly disappears. “You will more than likely need it until you two leave.”
Leave with Cassius? He says that as if Cassius was the one to mark me.
My throat grows thick with emotion. Scanning the room, I retreat.
“Is… is someone here?” I ask. It’s the only thing that would explain this change in Alaric.
“No, we are alone.”
Confusion and hurt bubble up, and my eyes grow warm with building tears. “Then why are you saying these things? Is this part of a plan?” I spread my arms wide, palms up. “If so, let me in on it, so I can play my part.”
“There is no plan, no trick. It is simply what is best for you.”
I blink, and the first hot tear escapes, burning a wet trail down my cheek. “Don’t I get a say in what I think is best for me?”
Alaric’s eyes soften as he opens his mouth then snaps it shut. “No,” he says thickly. “You are only a human.”
He turns his face away.
“Stop it.” I ball my hands into fists, my nails dig painfully into the delicate skin of my palms. “You said our fate would be what we choose.” I swallow hard as another tear escapes. “Why would you mark me at all if you planned on giving me away like I’m nothing?” I fling the words at him. I want him to feel the lies he fed to me as much as I want this moment to be the lie.
“You are not nothing,” he retorts with the same level of anger. Alaric thrusts his hand through his thick, black hair, tugging on the strands.
The silence is suffocating, filling the space. It grows more oppressive the longer we stare at each other. His tongue darts out, dampening his lips. My gaze trails from his mouth to his neck, watching the knot of his throat bob.
“Cassius wants you, Clara. Now go back to him.”
Those words cause a physical pain in my chest, and all the air leaves my lungs in a sharp exhale.
In the background, I barely register the squeak Cherno makes and the skittering of their small feet.
“And… what about you?” I ask, my voice cracking on the last word. “You said… you wanted me the last time we were together.”
I returned to Windbury for him. I chose him over the rest of the world. I came with him of my own free will to this demon-cursed place because I thought—
I squeeze my eyes tight for three heartbeats before looking up at him again. Coming here had been my choice, and now, regret is a bitterness coating my tongue.
“I don’t want you,” he says, voice gravelly and low. “I never did.”
My heart is breaking, crumbling, and it leaves a hollow pit in my chest. I’m stunned into silence.
The door opens, but I can’t take my eyes off the man who is breaking me in a way I never thought possible.
“Alaric, I—” Lawrence stops. “What is going on?”
I don’t turn to look behind me at the vampire as scalding tears fall freely.
“Alaric,” Lawrence says, pulling Alaric’s attention from me to him.
Alaric gives a single shake of his head.
I swipe at my face with the back of my hands to hide the evidence of my tears, though I doubt it matters. I can feel how swollen my eyes have already become and the
prickle of heat across my cheeks.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I don’t want to be here while they have a silent conversation over my head.
I want Alaric to look at me one last time, to tell me this has been some terrible plan he doesn’t want to continue. Even when he claimed me, things between us were never like this.
Spinning on my heel, I push past Lawrence, making him leap out of my way. I run from the room, but the wide, open hall does nothing to alleviate the crushing feeling that presses down on my shoulders.
“What have you done? You fool, go after her,” Lawrence all but shouts at him.
If Alaric replies, I don’t hear.
I push myself as fast as I can until I am down in the servants’ quarters, panting hard, pulse wild. Bursting into my room, I slam the door shut. The small, nearly empty space feels more foreign to me than it ever had before.
Gradually, my breathing slows, returning to normal. A small part of me clung to the hope that Alaric would listen to his friend and come after me, but that part is mistaken, and it hurts more than I want to admit.
I feel lost…
Hopeless.
A fresh wave of tears wells up. Dropping down onto the uneven mattress, I curl into a ball.
I bring my knees to my chest and stop fighting the ache in my cracked heart.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Clara
I understand everything Alaric said to me that night in his room. I’m willing to accept it, but there’s a voice in the back of my mind screaming that something is wrong.
He set me free, never expecting to see my face again. If he didn’t want me here—if he truly felt this way—then wouldn’t he have refused my company outright? When I told him I would come, I felt his relief.
Every day for the past week, I go out of my way, attempting to cross paths with Alaric… much to Cassius’s annoyance. If this end is real and not some part of a plan, then I want to know what changed, and why.
He marked me. He came to my room and promised to return, so I can’t help but feel that the man I spoke to wasn’t really him.
All the air leaves my lungs in a painful whoosh, and before I can inhale, my legs are kicked out from under me. I land with a brutally hard thud on my back. The practice pole flies out of my hand, clattering on the stone floor and rolling out of reach.
Cassius places a foot on either side of my ribs and squats down, straddling me. He fists the front of my shirt and jerks, pulling me into a half-sitting position as he lowers his face within an inch of my own.
“Focus,” he snarls. “Wherever your head is, you need to come back.”
With some effort, I pry his hand free from the material of my shirt. He releases me, and I flop back on the ground.
“I don’t care,” I say.
Cassius upped our training from once to twice a day—first in the morning for three hours before breakfast and then after lunch for another two.
I’m exhausted… and my heart aches.
Cassius narrows his eyes. “Why do you look like you haven’t slept in a month?”
With the amount of training we’ve been doing, I should sleep like the dead. But each morning, I wake more exhausted than the day before—and those are the mornings when I do manage to sleep.
My night terrors with the demon Varin in the oubliette have increased, except they aren’t night terrors. They are real. As soon as my eyes close every night, Varin calls me down to their cell. When I open my eyes, I’m standing before them, my outstretched hand reaching for the night-forged silver band.
When I refuse, they ask for me to free them, but I will never do that. This world doesn’t need another greater demon haunting it.
The demon reaches out with their twisted, elongated fingers and brushes my cheek. Their power flows through me, silky and cool, as they attempt to possess me long enough to free them.
Cassius flicks my nose to bring my attention back to him. He shifts so that he hovers over my knees and pulls me up to sitting. Bothered by his continued closeness, I lean back on my hands. He watches me curiously. I squirm under his study, uncomfortable with how his gray eyes dance over my features as if he’s reading my thoughts.
“What’s on your mind, Clara?”
His concern irritates me. I grit my teeth. “Stop pretending to care. What makes you think I would ever open up to you? We’re not friends.”
“So you’ve said… You don’t have to be my friend, but you can’t stop me from being yours,” he says in all seriousness, not in the least bothered by my tone.
Friends with a vampire. I used to think that was impossible… until Alaric.
But being friends with their kind hasn’t turned out well at all. For immortal beings, they are more temporary than one would expect.
My mood sours further, but instead of stoking my anger, it’s doused like a bucket of ice-cold water over a candle, and all I can feel is the ache in my hollow chest.
“You’re getting steadily quicker. I didn’t expect you to improve so quickly,” Cassius says. Perhaps he recognizes that his friend tactic isn’t going to work. “Imagine what getting a decent night’s sleep will do to help you along.”
I snort.
He still crouches over me, keeping me from moving. Sitting here is only allowing me to dwell on Alaric and the questions that have no answers. Frustration builds. I need to let it out, or it will consume me.
I lift my hands and place them on Cassius’s shoulders, shoving as hard as I can. He topples back, and I pull my legs up. He hits the ground, and I scramble, grinning as I get to my feet at the same time he leaps to his.
He doesn’t waste a moment starting up the carefully choreographed sparring sequence we’ve developed. Seamlessly, we switch as I stop blocking and strike out with my own punches and kicks. He adapts without the slightest effort.
The moves feel awkward, but I’ve watched him enough to have a basic understanding of what to do. He leaves an opening to his face. I strike, and he blocks. Again and again, I don’t land a single hit. Sweat drips down the dip of my spine and the sides of my face. Loose wisps of hair stick to my skin.
I let out a growl of frustration and kick.
I miss. The lack of contact sends me off balance.
Cassius reaches out and grabs me by the waist, keeping me from falling. He holds me in mid-air, grinning. “You need to learn to fine tune your movements, but I’m pleasantly surprised by how much you’ve picked up. We can call it a day and work on your technique tomorrow.”
“No,” I snap, maneuvering out of his hold and straightening. I don’t need him to placate me.
I swing my fist, missing.
Every time I fail to land a hit, it fuels my determination to keep going, to put every ounce of frustration into each movement.
I tell myself that if I can land a hit, then Alaric will let me in on his plan. I know things don’t work like that, but if I can do the impossible, then—
Cassius steps inside my circle of space and aims a fist for my face. I tilt my head and strike. My fist connects with him just below the ribs. His eyes widen, and I drop, sweeping my leg and connecting with his. He falls hard.
I stand above him, panting, my fists balled at my sides, and I glare down at him, furious.
“You let me land those hits,” I accuse. Cassius remains on his back, returning my look with a neutral one. I crouch next to him and offer a hand. “I don’t need you to go easy to make me feel better.”
He sits up.
When he doesn’t take my hand, I start to rise, but he grabs hold of my arm in a lightning-quick move and pulls me back down to his level.
Cassius stares at me, lips parted. The way he’s looking at me makes me feel self-conscious.
“Get up, or let go,” I say.
“I didn’t let you land your hits out of pity.”
“Then what was it—trying to get on my good side or trying to make me feel better?”
“When have I ever given a shit about your feelings, l
ittle bird?” He raises a brow. “That was your own doing. As I said earlier, you are getting faster.”
He stops talking, but there’s a heavy weight to the air around us, and I have the feeling that, as usual, there is more that remains unsaid.
I tug on my arm when he refuses to let go. His hand cups the back of my neck and drags my head closer.
“I’ve never noticed the gold flecks in your eyes before.”
I groan at the terrible line. It’s close to the things boys back in Littlemire would say when they wanted to flatter the girls they wanted to court. Cassius is an idiot if he thinks terrible flirting will work on me.
His gaze flicks to my mouth then back up. My heart stutters.
“They are the same as they’ve always been.” I roll my eyes and squeeze his wrist, prying it from my neck. When he releases me, I stand and retreat several paces.
Watching him sit on the floor with that childlike expression unnerves me. I brush off invisible dust from my clothes in an attempt to busy my hands.
“I’m hungry,” I say even though I’m the furthest thing from it right now.
“You are getting better, markedly so over the past week,” he says again.
I round on him, a little surprised to find him standing so close.
“Stop that.” I jab a finger into his cheek. “I know you hate him, but you don’t need to point out that he hasn’t wanted anything to do with me for at least as long. I don’t need your reminders.”
Cassius walks over to the poles, still leaning against the wall from the beginning of our session.
“You should stay with me,” he offers as he moves about, putting the room back the way it was.
I press my hand to my forehead, thrown off by his constant subject changes. “Why would I? In case you forgot, I’m already claimed.”
Cassius is back in front of me in a blink, a gust of air sipping around us from his lightning-fast movements. “Has he forgotten? Because it seems as though he’s finally accepted his roll as the queen’s consort and doesn’t give two demon shits about what becomes of you. You need to stop dwelling and move on.”