by Heaton, F E
Vivek had stopped by the ballroom on their way down through the house. The servants were setting it up again for tonight’s masquerade, but Sophis wasn’t sure the peace would last that long. The sun was bright today, the sky cloudless. If the vampire hunters were going to attack, it would happen before sunset. They wouldn’t lose this chance. They would risk the werewolves and attack while she and her kin were vulnerable.
Tynan sighed and set his paperwork down on his knees. He leaned back into his armchair and Sophis zoned out as he started to talk to Vivek. It was all tactics. She could never focus when people were talking tactics. It bored her. She had tried to learn strategies and such things from Vivek when he had been training her but it had gone in one ear and out the other.
Vivek toyed with the dagger as he talked and she watched him, studying his quick movements and how precise they were. The dagger was sharp, gleaming under the strip lights, but his reactions were sharper. He twirled the blade around effortlessly, not even looking at it, his attention seemingly fixed completely on Tynan and their conversation.
“The hunters will be stronger this time if there is a second attack,” Tynan said, catching her attention, and she shifted her focus to him. The three other guards in the room were all younger than she was, two female and one male, and they stood at the same time, murmuring to each other, and left as one. She could understand why they didn’t want to be around to hear what Tynan was going to say, but they couldn’t deny the truth in it no matter how much they wanted to hide from it.
Vivek spun Aleksis’s dagger in his hand and frowned. “It won’t be the uninitiated like it was last night. They will send the hunters we saw in the city, and they all looked experienced. I only hope that Aleksis and Izabella show their faces this time.”
Tynan smiled. “They will, and we will be prepared for them.”
“They were scouting us last night, but they didn’t see all of our numbers before Lady Prophecy drove them back, and they might not know that we have more Watchmen here now. We have that advantage at least,” Sophis said and both men nodded in agreement.
“We will defeat them.” Vivek looked at her and she nodded, trying to push out the fear sneaking into her heart.
“You two seem very friendly with each other today,” Tynan said and neither of them responded. He turned his attention back to his reports, shifting the one on the top to the bottom, and his eyes didn’t leave the page when he spoke again. “Word reached me that you slept together... at the ball.”
Sophis went rigid and Vivek tensed beside her.
“Relax.” Tynan moved another page to the bottom of the pile. “I don’t intend to punish you. My informant gave me the intelligence on the basis that I would not.”
His informant?
Who had told him?
“You do not want to ask that question I can feel in your stare?” Tynan glanced across at her. “It must be burning on the tip of your tongue.”
“Commander Winter.” It could only be him. He was old enough to recognise both her and Vivek from signature alone. It didn’t feel right though. Why would he tell her commander about what he had witnessed when she could have revenge by telling the Law Keepers she had seen his affection towards a female werewolf?
Tynan shook his head, his Russian accent laced with amusement. “Close, but, as they say, no cigar.”
“Who then?” Vivek said and she sensed his concern.
Someone else had seen them. Someone from their bloodline? Ella sprang to mind. She had been in the grounds with the rest of the guard. It was possible she had seen them together in the maze, but they had been masked and everyone in the guard had been told they were patrolling the house. It couldn’t have been Ella.
Someone close to Commander Winter. The werewolf? No, she wouldn’t risk Sophis having revenge by informing the Law Keepers. Who else was close to the Validus Watchman?
“Lord Hyperion,” Vivek said and Sophis couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of him earlier. He had said at the meeting that he had been out in the mansion grounds at the time of the attack.
She buried her head in her knees and groaned. She hoped to the Devil that he hadn’t seen them in the maze and had only seen them exiting it close after each other when the attack had started. Just as Hyperion had recognised her at the meeting, he must have recognised Vivek from his scent too, or perhaps the smell of her all over him. Hyperion was old enough to smell that through all the blood that had been on Vivek.
Sophis recalled what Lord Hyperion had said to her at the ball and groaned again. He had known that she was in love with someone. Had he seen Vivek watching her and her looking for him?
“Lord Hyperion told me about what happened on the proviso you weren’t punished for what you had done. He quite eloquently told me that duty shouldn’t stand in the way of love, and that he had wanted to tell me so I didn’t hear it from a more malicious source, and was tempted to punish you. I won’t mention what he said he would do if I punished you for being in love. So how long have you been in love with each other?” The amusement in Tynan’s tone and expression sent Sophis into hiding again.
Vivek’s arm settling around her shoulders sent a jolt of surprise through her and she looked up at him. He smiled.
“Longer than I realised,” he said and she couldn’t contain her smile.
“Devil, I didn’t think he would actually be right about you two,” Tynan chuckled and shook his head. “I should punish you, you both know that don’t you?”
They nodded in unison.
“I accept any punishment you see fit. I ignored my duties and encouraged Vivek to do the same. I placed the masquerade guests in danger. I take full responsibility for it,” she said and Tynan raised a dark eyebrow at her.
“I take responsibility for my actions.” Vivek squeezed her shoulders. “I will face any punishment with Sophis.”
“Very diplomatic of you both, but I thought I made it clear I wasn’t going to punish you. I might give you both a hard time and some unsavoury duties that will annoy you, but it will go no further than that. You have learned your lesson and I don’t think you’ll do it again... well... I am horribly certain you will do that again but hopefully it won’t be at a ball when you were entrusted with guarding the lords and ladies.” Tynan drew a long breath and sighed as he leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. “You were there at the fight and that was all that mattered. The ball was safe and you wouldn’t have been able to stop the lords and ladies from flooding out into the fray and participating, just like you or anyone else won’t be able to talk sense into them if the hunters attack again... and it is not a bad thing. They are the most powerful of our kind and we need their help if we are to win.”
Tynan stood and cast a glance over them both.
“I think I have sufficiently embarrassed you both. Lord Hyperion would be proud of me.” He grinned and Sophis tracked him with her eyes as he walked out of the room humming to himself.
She really never wanted to see Lord Hyperion again. The Vehemens Law Keeper’s observation about him was right. Hyperion had developed a strange sense of humour over his long years of life. If she saw him again, he would probably say something that would embarrass her in front of everyone and some chilling sense of awareness was telling her that he might have seen more than just her and Vivek leaving the maze close together.
“Are you thinking what I am?” she whispered and leaned her head against Vivek’s chest.
“We weren’t alone in the maze.”
Sophis cringed and closed her eyes. She sat there with Vivek’s arm around her, trying to shake her desire to remain in the basement and hide until the other bloodlines had left. Vivek stroked her upper arm through her black uniform jacket.
“At least we are not being punished.”
They weren’t? It felt as though they were. How much had Lord Hyperion seen and how much had he told Tynan? She wanted to die at that thought, wished the couch would swallow her. She was never going to be a
ble to look him in the eye again.
She sat there in silence for long minutes, slowly coming to terms with Hyperion knowing what they had done. It could have been worse. Someone else might have seen them and reported it to their lord rather than their commander. She didn’t know what would have happened if Ella or Seth had been the one to witness their moment in the maze. Ella might have reported them out of jealousy.
Sophis looked up at Vivek. “When I found you in the room with Ella the other night...”
Vivek smiled down at her. “Nothing has or would have happened between us. Ella came to me and sat on my lap bare seconds before you arrived and before I could remove her, you were storming into the room like a wild thing.”
He brushed his knuckles across her cheek, affection warming his striking hazel eyes.
“I have not been with another woman since that night over a decade ago when part of me realised how much I needed you... even before then... I did not realise it, but I have been in love with you for a long time and falling for you for longer than that.” He opened his hand and cupped her face, his fingers against the line of her jaw. He slowly tipped her head up and she parted her lips, inviting him in for a kiss. The touch of his lips on hers was soft this time, full of warmth and love that soothed away some of her fear.
When he ended the kiss, Sophis drew back and frowned. “In the maze, you told me not to leave you. I have dreams... nightmares... about the night—”
“So do I,” he whispered and smoothed his hand across her cheek to her throat, softly caressing it. The pain in his eyes said that he was telling the truth. That night haunted him too.
Sophis placed her hand over his, holding it to her throat, not wanting it to fall lower and come to rest on the scar on her burning side. It was hard enough to talk about this without him making her more aware of the pain she still carried because of that night.
“When I was—when you’re holding me in my nightmares, you tell me not to let go... you tell me not to leave you.” Her eyes searched his, her heart tight with anticipation of finally knowing whether that part was only real in her dreams or whether it had actually happened.
“And I meant it with all of my heart, Sophis,” he said and she warmed inside, glad that she hadn’t imagined that part and she had been right to believe in it and hope that things could change for the better between them. Vivek frowned and brushed his fingers over her throat, pain surfacing in his eyes as he stared into hers. “Holding you... seeing you like that... it killed me. It killed me that I had failed to protect you... that I had failed to realise my need for you and that I might never have the chance to tell you things that were so hard for me to say. I denied my feelings for you after that night because I wasn’t sure what to do. I turned them into some strange need to have you thrown out of the guard, covered them up and ran from them. I was so afraid that it would happen again if you continued as a guard... that I would be forced to watch you die and be unable to do anything to stop it. I am sorry... I do not deserve a second chance with you.”
Sophis caressed his cheek and smiled at him, hoping to soothe the increasingly turbulent feelings that she could sense in him.
“You already apologised once, Vivek. You don’t need to keep apologising. I just want to put everything behind us and move forwards instead. I can’t pretend the past decade never happened, but I can forgive you and let it go. I’m sure I can find a way for you to make it up to me.” Sophis leaned closer to him and captured his lips with a soft kiss, savouring how they felt against hers, so tender and gentle, and full of affection. She wasn’t saying that there wouldn’t be times when she lost her temper because of something he did and she dragged up his past behaviour and threw it in his face, she was a woman after all, but she was willing to focus on her future instead.
Their future.
That both excited and frightened her. She had wanted someone to love her, and Vivek was that man, the one who could make her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world with only a glance and a smile in her direction.
“Come, let’s try to get some rest before the hunters come and before Tynan returns to taunt us some more. I have a feeling he may grow to enjoy subtly punishing us,” Vivek said and rose from the sofa. He extended his hand to her and she took it. He pulled her onto her feet, clipped her sword to her belt and then dealt with his own before slipping the dagger into a sheath on his other hip. She turned towards the door and Vivek stopped her by tugging her into his arms. He settled them around her and dipped his head. Sophis welcomed the brief kiss, drawing comfort from the fact that she wasn’t alone in her embarrassment.
She wasn’t alone.
It felt good.
It felt even better when Vivek took hold of her hand, linking their fingers, and held it as they walked through the dim basement corridors towards the stairs to the ground floor. She stared down at their joined hands, marvelling at the way Vivek’s engulfed hers and how firm his grip on her was, and how reassuring it felt. He was there with her, by her side. She almost laughed at the contrast between how they had acted around each other just yesterday and how they were today. Her eyes drifted up Vivek’s arm to his shoulder and then his profile, and she smiled to herself. It was still difficult for her to accept that he actually loved her, and that she loved him. It seemed ridiculous that she had felt such a way about him all these years, had remained in love with him regardless of his behaviour towards her. She was sure he would make up for that. She was already coming up with some interesting ways that he could once the masquerade was over, the hunters were dealt with, and the bloodlines had gone home.
Starting with letting her bite him again.
CHAPTER 19
The afternoon sun still caught the front of the mansion, shining in through the windows and casting her shadow out long across the marble floor. Sophis didn’t like the warm feel of it on her skin even though she knew it couldn’t hurt her. She wanted to run across the room, seeking the safety of the first floor, but Vivek’s tight grip on her hand soothed her enough that she didn’t succumb to that urge. She was thankful for it when she lifted her head and saw Lady Prophecy standing in the middle of the double height pale room.
The ruler of the Caelestis bloodline stood in front of the windows, her eyes closed and face raised towards the sun, expression serene as though she was enjoying the feel of it on her skin and soaking into the black corseted dress she wore. It shone on her red hair, turning it radiant and as bright as fire. She lowered her head, turned her face towards Sophis, and opened her eyes.
The words that left her lips chilled Sophis to her marrow.
“They are here.”
A huge explosion rocked the ground and Vivek pulled Sophis against him. The light in the room brightened until it became dazzling and scarlet sparks leapt across Lady Prophecy’s skin.
“Magic,” she said on a low snarl as though that word was a curse.
She collapsed to her knees and Sophis broke out of Vivek’s grip and ran to her. She reached out to touch Prophecy’s shoulders. Red jagged bolts like lightning sparked between her and Prophecy before she could make contact. Sophis screamed as they burrowed into her flesh and pain ripped through her. Vivek pulled her away, gathering her into his arms.
“Are you alright?” he said close to her ear and she nodded. Her hands tingled, numb from whatever had just happened.
She was alright but Lady Prophecy wasn’t. The young woman knelt in the middle of the entrance hall, snarling and clutching at herself. Sophis wasn’t sure how to help her or even what was wrong with her. The brightness from the explosion wasn’t dimming. If anything, it was getting worse, hurting her eyes and her skin, as though the sun itself had increased in strength and the glass could no longer filter out the harmful UV in its rays.
Lady Prophecy growled and pushed herself onto her feet with monumental effort. She rose slowly, her breathing hard. Sweat broke out across her brow. Sophis stared at her. Vampires couldn’t sweat. The only time she had heard of it ha
ppening was when they were infected by Nox Noctis or poisoned. Prophecy raised her head, swallowing constantly, her eyes ablaze with pain, and then lifted her hands. Her chest heaved against her long black dress as she closed her eyes and the room dimmed, the shadows growing long and dark around them. Sophis’s finer hairs stood on end, skin prickling as though static electricity filled the air, and she kept still, afraid that moving would somehow endanger her.
Prophecy drew a single deep breath and roared as she pushed forwards with her hands, leaning into the air. Darkness swept outwards, the dazzling light outside fading, and Sophis held her breath. Was she using her magic to fight whatever the hunters had done? Was that magic too? Clouds gathered, blotting out the sun.
If it were cloudy enough they would be able to fight the hunters in the open.
Could Lady Prophecy control the weather and give them the cover they needed to fight?
Sophis marvelled at that.
The sun broke through a chink in the clouds at first and then a hole, and then spread rapidly outwards, filling the sky and evaporating the clouds.
“Witch.” Prophecy collapsed to her knees again as bright light filled the room. “They have a powerful witch.”
Sophis growled as the light touched her and burned her skin. She flinched away from it, desperately covering her hands with the sleeves of her black uniform jacket, afraid that it would kill her.
“Prophecy!” Lord Valentine vaulted over the banister of the balcony above them and landed behind his mate.
Another explosion shattered some of the windows, sending glass flying inwards and Sophis shrieked, curling into a ball on instinct. Vivek crouched with her and launched them backwards, pulling her into the safety of the stairs down to the basement. Someone roared. She opened her eyes and they shot wide when she saw Valentine in the middle of the entrance hall, his body curled protectively around Prophecy, bearing the brunt of the sunlight for her. He growled in agony, ribbons of smoke curling from his back through his dark red jacket. Prophecy stirred in his arms, her face a picture of horror as she realised what was happening to her mate and felt his pain in her own blood.