There was a rustle of fabric. “Please let me go back to my family,” Bogdana said.
My mouth worked. I swallowed. My stomach twisted with hunger while my veins seemed to heat as if hot oil were running through them. Still, I remained in control. I could do this. I was strong.
Bogdana took a step closer. I heard the exact moment her naked foot brushed the stone floor. “Please, Bianca,” she said in a helpless voice.
Exquisite pain seared through me, surging directly into my heart. I threw my head back, the pain in my gums and fingertips unbearable. Faster than my foggy mind could discern, I whirled just as Bogdana took another step, her trembling hands outstretched, reaching for me as if in supplication. Her sweet scent pierced through me like a hot spear. I bared my teeth and lunged forward.
Grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking her backward, I sank my teeth into the warm, delicious life that pulsed at her throat.
CHAPTER 19
I sat at a table in the library, in front of the large stained glass window, the different colors and designs capturing my attention. The darkness falling over the sun, the hag and her cauldron, the wolves, and the girl trying to escape the trees. All such disjointed images that didn’t seem to belong together.
Yet, my mind was elsewhere.
Again, I was trying to forget, pushing all thoughts aside while I focused on my breathing.
A cry of pain echoed around me. I blinked and glanced around, searching for its source, but I was alone, surrounded only by books and empty tables. Bogdana’s death haunted me. Her pleas, her whimpers, rang in my ears as I tried to sleep each night. She’d been a wife, and I’d killed her. she’d been a mother, and I drained all her blood.
I placed three fingers on each temple and, pressing hard, massaged them in circles. A headache pounded behind my right eye.
The ledger before me was an excuse to make it appear as if I were researching possible leads on a Trove. But in reality, the library had become my refuge. No one visited it, and only Loretta walked the aisles as she rearranged books for no apparent reason.
It had been four days since my second feeding. Guilt lashed at me every second of the day, tearing at my skin and leaving me raw.
More than once, I’d thought of taking my life, but some misguided instinct of preservation kept me from harming myself. I told myself Bogdana hadn’t died in vain, that every step I took—no matter how cruel and monstrous—brought me closer to destroying the sick way of life imposed on our city.
I glanced at the ledger, skimming the names of captured Troves.
Time passed. There was a clock on the wall that ticked and ticked and ticked. The sound of steps pulled me back to the surface. Almost an hour had passed, and I had barely moved. Had I breathed? Had my heart beaten? Ever since Bogdana, I’d started to imagine my insides slowly turning to rock.
Loretta walked next to me, carrying a few tomes in her arms. She nodded in greeting and began sliding the books into a shelf in the far corner. I watched her for a distraction. Her hands moved confidently, the way they did in the infirmary when she tended her patients. Her back was straight, her posture that of someone who carried herself with dignity.
She slid the last book into position but didn’t push it all the way in. Its spine didn’t line up with the others. Tenderly, she caressed the book, then disappeared through a side door without a backward glance.
Something drove me out of my stupor and, before I realized it, I was standing in front of the book, peering up at it. The spine was familiar. Eagerly, I pulled the book down from the shelf and leafed through it until I found it.
Florea’s story.
This was one of the books Loretta had given me to read after I injured my leg during my challenge against Skender. The girl’s story had captured my imagination, but it had been incomplete and left me wanting more.
Slowly, I set the book on the nearest table and sat. I skipped forward several pages, remembering how Florea hated being locked in her bedroom every night while her parents worked late hours tending their inn, and how she yearned to know why some nights their world turned as silent as a graveyard. What secret were her parents keeping from her? I’d been left as curious as Florea herself.
Now, as I turned the last few pages I’d read nearly four months ago, I had a distinct suspicion that, this time, they wouldn’t be missing. Somehow I knew they would be there, waiting for me to read them as if they’d been left out on purpose. And, indeed, I was right.
Loretta had brought me the rest of the story.
CHAPTER 20
After weeks of begging her parents to let her help them during the night shift, Florea decided to take matters into her own hands.
She was tired of being kept in the dark by her parents. If they didn’t want to tell her what caused the silence on those random, eerie nights, she was ready to figure out a way to escape from her room and find out the truth.
Her bedroom didn’t have a window. This had never bothered her but, now that she was trying to escape, she guessed the lack of window wasn’t coincidental. Her only way out was the door, the same one Mother locked from the outside after tucking Florea and her two sisters in and kissing them good night.
Mother always wore the key around her neck, hanging from a string. For days, Florea searched for opportunities to steal it and have a copy made, but Mother never parted from it.
She thought of faking an illness, but she’d been sick enough nights to know that Mother would still keep her locked in, bringing whatever was needed to Florea’s bedside, rather than let her go to another room where she wouldn’t disturb her sisters.
There was only one way. She had to teach herself how to pick the lock.
Florea had no idea how to do that, and she didn’t dare ask anyone, so it took her several weeks to figure it out. With two thin spikes she’d found in the smith’s scrap pile, she poked and poked at the keyhole until, one day, it gave.
The first time she managed it, she almost died in a panic. It hadn’t occurred to her that the door would have to be relocked again, lest her parents discovered her trespass. So after the lock gave, she spent another hour setting it right.
For the next few nights, she practiced locking and unlocking the door until she was able to accomplish it in a matter of minutes. Then she was ready.
Finally, one hot, summer night, Florea gently closed the bedroom door behind her and climbed the back steps to the second story where the inn’s guest rooms were located. There, she lay on her stomach and watched the tavern below from the loft.
The scene was nothing she hadn’t seen before. A few of the regulars sat nursing tankards and grumbling at each other in gruff tones. From her vantage point, she could see the top of Mother and Father’s head. They sat on tall stools, drooping behind the counter, exhausted and in desperate need of rest.
An hour later, after the excitement of her escape wore off, Florea found herself getting bored and, feeling exhausted, went back to bed.
Over the following week, she sneaked out of her room every night to be met with the same dull and uneventful sight. She was disappointed, to say the least, and all she managed to do was feel worse for her parents’ situation. They needed help, badly. But, no matter how eloquently she tried to convince them to let her help, they wouldn’t agree.
Then the silence came.
Florea was drifting off to sleep, her little sisters lightly snoring by her side, when her eyes sprang open. She was alert immediately as if, instead of having gone utterly still, the night had erupted in a riot of sound.
Hands trembling, Florea picked the lock, sneaked out of her room, and went to the loft to spy. Even before she peeked out, she was surprised by the amount of light coming from the tavern below. Every candle was lit, and the fireplace had been stoked despite the heat. Father stood in front of the barred door, an ax in his hand. Mother was behind the counter, hands pressed to her chest. Of the five male patrons, three were huddled at the furthest table from the door while two s
tood by the window, which shutters were drawn—an unusual occurrence.
Florea’s heart hammered in her chest as she watched the seven still figures below. No one dared move a finger. No one even seemed to breathe. She held her own breath and waited and waited and waited.
Nothing happened.
At dawn, she locked herself back in her room, feeling weary and more intrigued than ever.
She waited an entire month for the silence to visit her town again. Like before, she watched from the loft as her father guarded the door, ax in hand, and everyone else hung back, immobile as the East Fog Mountains.
Her entire body itched with the strong desire to know and—as she imagined going back to bed at dawn, none-the-wiser—she made a decision that would condemn her soul forever.
Going back downstairs on her tiptoes, she climbed the kitchen table, opened a small window and squeezed out into the eerie night.
THE NIGHT EMBRACED Florea like a lover.
She had never been outside past twilight. Never. Not even once.
The sky was velvet with tiny diamonds strewn all about. And the moon! It was huge and brilliant.
In her flimsy gown, she spread out her arms and whirled, her face turned to the stars, her mind reeling from the beauty of it all.
How dare they have kept her from this? This beauty could have been hers all along, and she had been denied it.
Her naked feet padded over fallen pine straw as she inhaled the warm air and marveled at how loud the crickets sounded. By the time she reached the patch of woods that stood behind her house, Florea had a smile stretching from ear to ear. She was still angry at her parents for making her a prisoner and keeping her from this nighttime paradise, but her awe and joy couldn’t be dampened by anything.
She had walked the woods behind her house many times, but everything looked different now. She placed a hand on a tree trunk and touched the rough bark to make sure it felt the same as it did during the day time. It did—even if it appeared different, flatter, somehow, and less textured.
Further down, past the trees, the creek gurgled as it always did. She veered slightly right to find the path that led to it, then stopped.
A dark figure stood before her.
Florea pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry that rose from her throat. She took a step back and glanced over her shoulder. She could see the dark outline of the inn past the trees.
“Hello,” a slick, deep voice greeted her.
The hairs on her neck stood on end and something stirred in her belly, something she’d only felt once when the seamstress’ son had surreptitiously run a finger over the palm of her hand.
“He-hello,” she responded. The man sounded friendly enough. She didn’t want to be rude and make him angry.
He walked closer. Florea retreated a few more steps.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said as a moonbeam illuminated his face, revealing the most handsome man she had ever seen.
He was tall with smooth skin and a high forehead. There was a dimple in his chin and, even in the poor light, she could see that his lips were full and inviting.
“I must go back. Father is waiting for me.” She liked this man, a lot, which made her realize how inappropriate this unexpected meeting was.
He inclined his head and offered her his arm like a proper gentleman. “I shall accompany you. A pretty girl like you should not be alone at this hour.” He leaned in closer, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled. “What is that smell?” he asked, his voice going deeper, savage.
“I don’t sm—” Florea began, but she couldn’t finish because the man swept her off her feet and took her far, far away from home.
I LIFTED MY HEAD FROM the book, my heart pounding.
What had I just read?!
The story mentioned the East Fog Mountains, the very ones that stood outside Acedrex’s walls. Did that mean the story was real and Florea had existed? Her name was common enough. The lake to the south of the White Palace was called Floarea Lake. It was a different spelling, but with the same pronunciation.
Was it named after her?
And that man that had taken her... I knew well what he had been.
But what did it all mean?
I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. I had to talk to Loretta. I had no doubt she’d meant for me to read this story, but why?
My mind swirled with questions.
I knocked on the door through which she’d disappeared. There was no response. I called her name. Nothing. I tried the knob. Locked.
Restless, I waited and roamed the library for almost an hour, hoping she would appear again. She didn’t. Finally, I left, realizing I wouldn’t be able to find her until she wanted to be found. She was hiding from me.
CHAPTER 21
Three days passed, and I didn’t see Loretta, no matter at what time I visited the library or the infirmary. Like before, the story had left me restless. What I’d read hadn’t been the end of it by any means—even if the pages had appeared complete this time. There was more to it, and I knew Loretta would be able to tell me what Florea’s fate had been.
The duties of my new post kept me training with the Knights and Pawns, confined me to the library to research ledgers and genealogical trees, and sent me out to the streets where I pretended to search for Lovina’s next Trove.
Just yesterday, the White Queen had issued another threat, a vivid reminder of the pit. Daciana had looked terrified, which only helped increase my own fear. She left the palace early each morning and didn’t come back until well into the night. I knew she was searching every White Square like a hungry hound. I’d seen her on her horse, riding from one place to another, a desperate expression on her face.
“Time is running out, Rook Flagfall,” she told me one night as she came into our quarters, looking exhausted and defeated. “I hope that for both our sakes, one of us finds a Trove. Soon.”
The next day, I’d started watching Oakes Apothecary, the idea that Nyro had given me stuck like a splinter in my mind.
Mr. Oakes sells bloodshade to Troves, as you know, and some of them aren’t necessarily the best people in the city. I would rather you be safe than them.
If I could find such a person, would my actions be justified? I didn’t know, but I was scared enough to consider it. There was no way I could make an innocent a slave, but someone who prowled on Acedrex’s citizens...
Entering the stables, I approached Horse’s stall. She pulled away from me, snorting discontentedly. The mare had started doing that since my first tasting, though I was always able to calm her down.
Now, the lump of sugar I offered her eased her qualms. As she savored her treat, I caressed her muzzle and pressed my face to her neck.
“How do you like the name Florea?” I asked.
Her ears twitched, and she bobbed her head up and down. I’d gone long enough without bothering to name her and, for some reason, the name of the innocent girl in the story seemed appropriate.
After saddling her, I rode Florea toward Flagfall House, following a round-about way. I didn’t think anyone was following me, but I’d learned my lesson to be more cautious after what had happened with Rook Neculai.
Leaving my mare in the care of a stablehand at a nearby inn, I walked the rest of the way and slipped into the abandoned house through the back door.
Nyro was already there. As I entered, he rose from his seat at the kitchen table and gave me a relieved smile.
We stood in silence, peering into each other’s eyes. After a long moment, we started walking toward each other and stopped when barely inches remained between us.
My lips parted, and my tongue darted out to lick the corner of my mouth. It was all Nyro needed as an invitation.
His solid body crashed into mine. His arms wrapped around me, and his mouth captured mine in a kiss so wild that I felt as if I’d been stripped bare to my basic instincts.
Pushing me against the wall, he hooked his hands under my legs and lifted me off
the floor. He pinned me to the spot as if I weighed nothing and, to my utter astonishment, trailed a path of hot kisses down my neck.
I gasped, taken aback by his daring move. Immediately, he pulled back, his eyes hooded, his breaths ragged.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
At once, I realized that I wasn’t sorry.
Placing a hand at the nape of his neck, I pulled him down. A growl rumbled in his throat, and his lips and tongue slid up my throat and up to my jawline.
A thrill ran through my body, delicious and forbidden.
In my previous life, this would have been disreputable, but it didn’t matter anymore. I wasn’t saving myself for anyone. I didn’t have to be pure for a husband I would never have.
“Nyro,” I gasped in a hot whisper as he thrust his hips forward, and I felt the magnitude of his desire.
He searched for my lips but, as a wave of shame rose from some deeply ingrained morality, I turned my face to the side.
Nyro set me down, burying his face in my hair. “I want you, Bianca.” He inhaled deeply. His body trembled against mine as if he were a vulnerable child and not a powerful man.
“I... want you, too, but...”
“I know. I know. Forgive me, please.” He pulled away, turning his back on me. “You are a lady, and I shouldn’t take such liberties. I should respect you.”
“A lady?” I almost laughed. Did he still see me that way? The reason for his guilt was endearing and warmed my heart, but was it really necessary?
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he said. “I feel so cold and, yet, when I’m with you, fire runs in my veins. You make me feel fully alive, but that’s no excuse. I should—”
I grabbed his arm and forced him to face me. “It’s fine, Nyro.” I touched a hand to his cheek. He leaned into it and closed his eyes. “I feel just as you do.”
His eyes sprang open. He appeared surprised at my admission. I was taken aback too, but for some reason, I had a sense that I didn’t have much time left, that if I wanted to live, to feel, I had to do it now.
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