A Violet Fire (Vampires in Avignon Book 1)

by Kelsey Quick

  Madam Ceti is here, and she stares at me with serious and stark white gems. Next to her is Glera, who offers me a slight, though hesitant nod. She stands tall with her hands behind her back. And then there’s the boy. The boy with ash-blond hair, dressed in gold robes complete with the veil. Marina’s supply unit. The one from the Basilica. I swallow hard.

  Am I dreaming?

  My eyes shoot from person to person, unsure of my purpose here. Unsure if I’m among friends or foes.

  “Please, just a little farther,” the masked soldier requests of me. I move inward so he can close and lock the door. I note the change in his voice—from bold to timorous.

  Blond-boy is sitting upon two crates in the corner, troubled, I determine by his eyes. We keep eye contact and the tension roils.

  “Don’t be alarmed, Wavorly.” Ceti breaks the silence, glancing at him while speaking to me. “We aren’t here to bring you harm.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask her and Glera specifically. “And who are they?”

  “The other members of the Sunset Squadron,” she states simply—like I know what that means or something. She raises her hands a little for emphasis. “This might be a bit difficult for you to accept at first, but all I ask is you remain calm and let us explain.”

  My senses switch to high alert. Something is definitely wrong.

  Glera outstretches her hand to a nearby crate, inviting me to sit. I do so cautiously, and she turns her attention to Blond-boy. I follow her gaze to see him removing his veil, letting it fall—showing his face.

  One look, one moment.

  That’s all it takes.

  Instantly, my limbs are dead weight.

  My lungs expel air and won’t refill.

  The weight of the entire world threatens to take me down into a bottomless shadow—a pit of spiraling oblivion. Everything crumbles as he smiles with relief.

  “It’s been a while, Wavorly,” he says softly.

  The atmosphere dries. Everyone stares at me. I fight to find my voice while my heart threatens to give out beneath the immense pressure that is an entire, lost world sitting across from me.

  “C-Castrel?” My teeth chatter as I say it, my voice illustrating the thudding of my heart.

  A light smile passes over his lips but quickly vanishes. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me that fast,” he says to me in French.

  At the first word of his sentence, tears stream down my face. My fingers fly to my lips, barely concealing the gaping shock while my entire body falls victim to the existence of the boy, who I thought long dead; the only one I could call a friend back in Avignon—the son of our head guard: Castrel Lavarn.

  Wails fly from my lips like breaths.

  Ceti shuffles over to me. “Shh, you must remain calm. Your reactions have the potential to attract unwanted visitors.”

  The will to calm my physical state engages and I force myself to stop crying, halting the adrenaline, forcing down my reaction. Castrel smiles.

  “Essence Dissonance... I’m proud of you. You finally learned how to do it.” Once again, he speaks to me in French and I fight back the tears of disbelief as my mouth distorts. He studies me sadly before averting eye contact, linking and unlinking his fingers. But he’s here. He’s alive, and the sudden need to smile overwhelms my face for a second; the need to take him into my arms ravages me for a moment. But his very existence right here, right now... instills immense dread within me. Because that means Zein…

  Everything is quiet, the room patient as I try to pull myself together.

  “Zein…,” I direct my shaking words to Castrel, “...said you were dead. That no one survived.”

  Castrel licks his lips and nods in a strange fashion before meeting my gaze. “You shouldn’t listen to everything that bastard says.”

  I fidget with my robes, troubled by the burst of fury that accompanied his response.

  “Castrel,” Ceti condemns him.

  Her presence here is probably the second strangest. Zein’s advisor, a fellow supply unit, a castle soldier, and Castrel—the only other survivor from that fatal night in Avignon—are gathered here, together.

  “Why are all of you here?” I ask anyone willing to answer.

  “To bring you back to us. Back to the Mortal Mezzanine,” Glera says, leaning against the wall in a powerful stance so very much unlike the Glera I’ve known up to this point.

  “She doesn’t know what that is,” Castrel says before I can ask. “Her parents had insisted that she was better off not knowing until she was older.”

  “What?” I lean forward, my pulse spiking. “My parents?”

  “Wavorly, please,” Ceti says and I try to bring it back down.

  “What about my parents?” My eyes plead with Castrel’s. He glances the room, obtaining permission from the others.

  “The city of Avignon wasn’t just a town,” he says, “It was a hub of specialized forces, meant to protect… you.”

  I would laugh if not for the creeping dread. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. The heir apparent,” Glera says.

  I lean back against the wall as I process these words, nothing adding up, everything feeling like a hoax. Heir apparent?

  Wait. From that inscription behind the violet wall.

  My face alights with recognition and Ceti notices.

  “You remember,” she states, smiling down at me.

  I swivel my head in her direction. “What are you talking about?”

  “From beyond the lavender gate. You found the translation.”

  Another piece of my perfectly crafted world cracks.

  “What?”

  “What you saw behind the gate was only a memory, but very much real.” Ceti clarifies.

  “You…,” I mutter, “You erected that wall?”

  She nods, but then points to the soldier. “But it was Thelor’s memory.”

  The soldier removes the demonic mask, revealing his face which is covered in a thin layer of gray dust. He’s a tad thinner than the usual vampire and his countenance, softer. His skin is taut with a handful of scars trailing along his scalp, cheeks, and neck. Narrow, serious eyes—one a bright bronze, and one a deep brown, analyze mine.

  “An honor to finally meet the Wavorly Sterling. I am Thelor. I believe you saw me from the chariot on the way into Isshar?”

  “That was you?” I ask with disbelief.

  He nods. “I am the only one with eyes outside of the seraglio holdings. Keeping an eye open at all times is necessary.”

  “And at the Basilica?”

  “Yes.” He smiles slightly before shifting gears. “The place that you interacted with beyond Ceti’s lavender gate was a room that I was stationed to for decades, it seemed. I knew every book, cover to cover. The Avignon artifacts, however, came much later, only about one decade ago.”

  “Avignon artifacts?” I breathe in and out slowly, trying to keep control over myself. Thelor nods.

  “Do you remember the second memory behind the gate, Wavorly?” Ceti interrupts my thoughts. “The one that was your own?”

  Castrel and Glera straighten uneasily, as if waiting for a bomb to go off. My sight focuses on Castrel as I murmur, “The cathedral…”

  He smiles sadly, and the revelation strikes.

  ‘“Did you have a nightmare?” my mother asks, pinning the right side of her cloak, connecting it to her left.’

  I force my memory to her figure standing in the mirror. To every part of her. To the left of her chest where...

  ...she is pinning it, the blue-gold brooch. The same one from behind the glass case in that room.

  I lean into my elbows, mouth open as I turn my head to Thelor while nausea warps every other feeling. “Where... was that room?”

  He frowns knowingly. “In a stronghold in Cain, meant to protect all known clues to the prophecy of the Setting Sun.”

  The Setting Sun…

  “That poem,” I mutter. “In Cain,” I repeat, not wanting to acknowledge what that
means.

  “The poem you read is a cyclical prophecy,” Ceti says, “Either started or broken by that century’s heir.”

  The heir apparent...

  Ceti continues. “All that is known about the prophecy is that the heir is always human, so as to offset the strong from the weak. If the heir dies of old age, the cycle is broken for five-hundred years; if the heir dies an unnatural death, another heir is immediately reborn.”

  “And,” Glera adds, “we also know that if the heir arrives at, and commits to the temple of Jerusalem as a plea for humanity, all but a tenth of the vampire race will be cast from this world.”

  Ceti glares at her and Glera shrugs.

  Jerusalem. Temple. I remember those words from the transcription. This can’t be real.

  Castrel leans in, sensing my disbelief. “We will explain everything fully once we are out of here, but we need to get back to the task at hand. Getting you out.”

  My thoughts are spent. Pulsing sunspots are all that I can see. I can’t possibly be this heir that they are talking about. I can’t be. And Zein…

  I swallow hard, looking up at Castrel as I delicately ask, “What attacked Avignon that night?”

  He sighs heavily, and my heart instantly sinks. “A sentry of Cain’s.”

  Everything around me shatters and I lose control of my senses.

  I shake my head over, and over. “No, they were rogues… lowest of the low. Zein saved me from them.” It dawns on me suddenly how bad this sounds. I am using Zein’s word to denounce Castrel—a human, an old friend, and a survivor from that night. His existence proves that Zein lied. Zein is a liar.

  Castrel shakes his head, clenching his knuckles.

  “Zein’s infantry slaughtered Avignon, Wavorly,” Glera says, garnering inauspicious stares from the rest of them.

  “Glera,” Ceti murmurs, but the noise fades to a low buzz and my consciousness zooms in and out; despair and confusion filling my head.

  “She needs to know.” Glera stands shoulder to shoulder with Ceti before turning her attention back to me. “Ask any vampire in Cain. He’s a certified hero for it. Most think he killed you, too. The survival or death of the heir is a hot political topic in Cain. Not everyone wants to take the chance at an heir finding their power for the sake of five centuries without one.”

  Zein’s infantry destroyed Avignon...

  Thoughts keep slipping away, none of them fastening.

  “He saved me from a vampire. He made sure to keep me safe all these years,” I say low, and listless, trying to find footing in the muddy illogical rather than accept Glera’s dreadful claim. “He treats me like I’m not—”

  Castrel cringes at my words. “He made you believe all those things so you wouldn’t try to leave Cain! So you could sit in his castle and die of old age to end the prophecy. So that humans would lose the last hope to reclaim their lives!”

  Tears drip and fall from my jaw once more, and Castrel eases the building tension in his posture.

  “I’m... sorry,” he says.

  Ceti walks over and places a hand on my shoulder. “Think about it, Wavorly.” But before she says anything, I already know. “Why would Zein consistently forgive your trespasses, when you have done everything to not deserve it?”

  I know.

  “And Giomar… he was opposed to the Elders’ proposed plan of securing a five-century break in heirs,” Ceti continues despite my fatigue. “No one aside from a few officials close to Zein, and the surviving mortals from that night, know of the heir’s continued existence. But it is my suspicion that Giomar realized it and informed Seriesa. Which is why—”

  I stop listening.

  Why...

  A stabbing pain blasts through my chest. I’m an idiot. There’s no other reasonable way to see it. No other logical way to explain it. Zein, if nothing else, destroyed Avignon and took me with him as some sort of political plan; a plan to raise up the vampire race even more. He lied to me. He had to have lied to me. He murdered—

  My whole body goes numb when the obvious finally surfaces.

  “He murdered my family…,” I mutter, disbelief holding fast to my words.

  “Wavorly,” Castrel says, standing, only to drop to a kneel before me. He lightly takes my hands in his, but I recoil away from his touch.

  “Stop, please,” I say, the words muffling.

  The pictures that develop within my mind no longer depict Zein ripping apart Duke Amaorin. No, now they illustrate what I remember of my mother; her fragile, porcelain skin stained red—from the fangs of Zein’s brigade. Her countenance turning sickly and unsustainable. My brother and father, too. Castrel’s parents, the servants, the town. All slaughtered by him—by Zein’s command. By the one that I let fool me into admiring him, into serving him, into trusting him. My mind threatens to shut down the more I indulge the horror.

  It compresses until all there is left is hatred. Boiling hatred. The nightly summonings, passionate moments, and tender words.

  “Could you even believe me then, if I told you the truth? That I saved you that night out of senseless compassion?”

  You liar.

  “Can you accept it? That such an unexplainable regard for your life has, at some point throughout your stay here, developed into an equally unexplainable desire for your heart?”

  You. Liar.

  “I will take care of you for the rest of your life.”

  “You murdered my family!” I scream out, uncaring who or what hears as I weep uncontrollably into my palms. “How could I have been so...!”

  “Wavorly, please…,” I barely comprehend Castrel’s voice as I’m met with an onslaught of body heat. It’s Glera’s arms that embrace me.

  “I’m sorry, it makes me so angry. I wish I could have told you sooner,” she says, gritting her teeth. “But we are here now to get you out. You will be able to have your freedom, and one day—your revenge. I promise you that.”

  I shudder with cold, despite the warmth. I don’t want anything, except for the horrible truths to be lies. This is real. My whole world has shriveled and crumbled into nothing.

  I am nothing.

  chapter 20

  Restless. Helpless. I don’t even bother trying to sleep. There is so much more I would rather do anyway. Like driving a knife straight through Zein’s heart, or even my own. Suicide plagues my thoughts in the most imaginative of ways, enough to scare myself. The colorless faces of my family churn through my mind more than they ever have, chilling me to the bone, and making me want to join them in sweet death.

  It wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it? If I killed myself, I would be pulling one over on Zein. I could make all his efforts with this ‘heir apparent’ thing null by taking my own life. But then again, if I were to go that route I wouldn’t be able to witness his anger and defeat when I set myself free of him. When I eventually kill him. That wondrous daydream of vengeance must be what keeps me from clawing out my own throat—that, and Glera intensely monitoring me since our return from the janitorial closet.

  She keeps her dark eyes focused on me even though her head is glued to the pillow. Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t bother me with chatter. Apparently, her years of studying my personality and behavior at Nightingale has left her with a correct assumption: I prefer to suffer in silence.

  I stare at the blacked-out ceiling above, numbly trying to find calm in the light snores that ricochet across the supply holdings, which doesn’t work in the slightest. I roll my head toward Glera.

  “How did you manage to come from the Mortal Mezzanine if you were born in the breeding houses?” I ask tonelessly, needing more and more answers to keep myself convinced of this new reality.

  “I’m not from the breeding houses,” she whispers. “Castrel and I were ‘gifts’ to both Zein and Marina from two of the Mezzanine’s elite vampire benefactors.”

  “So, there are supporters of the human cause that far up on the vampire side?”

  “You would be surprised.” She
smiles. “The benefactors usually attend these gatherings, too.”

  “I suppose that’s why Zein brought you here, then?”

  “Yes, it’s courtesy to bring gifted supply units to banquets where the endower will be present,” she hesitates a moment before adding on, “That’s also why Castrel is here.”

  My mind swirls for a moment recalling Castrel and our brutal history, but I force his image down to focus on getting answers. “You were assigned to your station pretty young…”

  “I had an easy job.”

  She knows I’m testing her, but I don’t care. Right now, I don’t have an easy mind to trust anyone.

  “To watch me?”

  “Yes, and to make sure you didn’t do anything to ruin the long-term plan.”

  “Well, I nearly escaped,” I scoff, thinking about the day before Distribution, when I scaled the wall.

  “Yes, I know. The ‘nearly’ was my fault. I followed you out of the boarding houses that morning,” she admits. “I was the one who had informed the guards once I saw you climbing the Eastern Rim.”

  I bite down on my cheek as anger envelops my reasoning.

  “How did you follow me? I self-checked several times...”

  She nods. “From the time I was a toddler until I was admitted to Nightingale at age eleven, I was trained by the Mezzanine in stealth. You were very well calculated; the game just wasn’t fair for you.”

  “Oh,” I mutter, stifling the urge to scream. If only she had let me go, I could have saved myself from all of this. From the heartache, from the truth. Everything. “Why couldn’t you have let me go?”

  “If I had and you would have died on the other side of those walls, then my family would be at risk for slaughter every single day for the rest of their lives.” She exhales. “I have several brothers and sisters back at the Mezzanine. Many who are still young, with so much potential. Plus, I’ve always wanted children of my own.” Her face lights up like a firefly for a split second before it extinguishes. “But I refuse to bring them up in a world unrefreshed.”