by Sofia Daniel
“What will Lady Mantis do when she discovers Miss Stephens killed her daughter?”
My stomach dropped. “But I didn’t—”
“Don’t play coy with me, my dear. As the headmaster, I control all the knockers. The stories they share about the residents of this castle are fascinating.”
My heart spasmed painfully, and cold sweat trickled down my brow. I hadn’t needed to worry about Zarah. Not when someone more powerful and infinitely more plausible knew my terrible secret. The only thing keeping me upright was the hope that Captain Tanar had a use for me and probably wouldn’t inform Lady Mantis… yet.
“You told everyone the hunters took Micalla,” Dante said, even though he probably knew it was futile.
“It doesn’t matter,” replied Captain Tanar. “My knockers went through all your things. They have the baggie of ashes, which I assume belong to the missing Preta Twin, Miss Stephens’ ash-strewn clothes, and the mobile phone containing the recording of our favorite little frumosi plunging a stake into the heart of Miss Mantis.”
“No such items exist,” said Nero.
The room spun. My legs turned to jelly, and I clutched at Raphael’s strong arm. If the knockers were working for Captain Tanar, they would have removed all the incriminating evidence from the trunk before Nero gave the order for it to be burned.
The captain drew back and patted his lap. “Would you like a seat, my dear? You’re looking rather pale.”
Ignoring him, I gulped mouthfuls of air. The walls of the room seemed to close in on me. Amber filled Captain Tanar’s eyes, his pupils narrowing into slits. This was dire. I didn’t want to live if it meant ending up a blood whore, used to slake an old vampire’s thirsts and lusts.
“What do you want?” Dante snarled.
Captain Tanar turned to me. “Your innate magical talent is everything I’ve desired in a mate.”
“A mate?” I blurted. This was sounding suspiciously like the legend of Dracula’s three grandsons.
“We would be equals.” As the captain stood, Dante and Nero scrambled to their feet. “It would only take one exchange of our blood and vows to cement our union. After that, I would give you the world, and you would rule at my side.”
My heart thudded. Deep down, I had suspected we would need to exchange blood to form the mating bonds, but the thought had sickened me so much, I’d cast it aside and tried to use my magic.
Captain Tanar walked around the desk. Dante and Nero blocked his path, while Raphael pushed me behind his broad body. Every fiber in my being told me to run. Let the boys deal with him while I saved myself, but I couldn’t move. Not when the captain held the key to making us the most powerful quartet since the three brothers and their frumosi mate.
“Stay away from Alicia,” said Dante. “She wants to remain with us.”
“Vampires have consorts and concubines, not mates,” said Nero.
Nero was lying, of course, saying anything necessary to dissuade Captain Tanar from coming after me and to get the older vampire to reveal what he knew.
The older vampire tried stepping around the boys, but they wouldn’t let him through to my side. Instead, he turned to me and said. “I won’t force you, Miss Stephens, but think about your future. Would you like to remain with three boys whose father didn’t value them enough to keep them behind the impenetrable stronghold of his kingdom, or Lord Dracula’s finest and most valued warrior?”
I shook my head. “I’m happy where I am.”
“I can make you happier,” he growled.
The lining of my stomach trembled with the kind of nausea I used to get from overly long rollercoaster rides. Taking in deep, steadying breaths, I asked, “Why would you want me when you have Miss Margolyes?”
He snorted. “She holds no value to me, and neither do any of the frumosi in this castle. You, on the other hand, have the power of a hunter but without the thirst. Do you know what would happen if we combined our innate magic?”
He had already told me he would offer me the world. It could only mean that he intended to use our combined power to usurp Dracula and lead the vampires.
“Sorry,” I whispered. It was time to call his bluff. “But I won’t be able to love you like I love the Stryx brothers. If you’re going to throw me to Lady Mantis, I might as well die right here.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Then you will give me the next best thing.”
“And what is that?”
“Get out from under there,” he said in the direction of his desk.
Miss Margolyes crawled out at his end of the desk and stumbled to her feet. Her hands covered her bare breasts, but the transparent loincloth covered the rest of her nudity.
Captain Tanar shoved her face down on the desk. “Teach this worthless slut how to connect to her frumosi magic. If she succeeds and can form a mating bond, I’ll let her live.”
She raised her head and turned pleading eyes to me, making my heart twist with sympathy. I rubbed my brow and sighed. This was Zarah, all over again. Except there was now a plot to overthrow Dracula in the mix.
“What will you give us in return?” asked Dante.
Captain Tanar rocked back on his heels and grinned. “My silence and the silence of my knockers.”
Dante nodded. “Will you secure this promise in blood?”
“Of course.”
“The oath won’t be dependent on Alicia’s success or failure,” added Nero.
“Indeed not.” The Captain slapped Miss Margolyes on the ass. “Any woman stupid enough to train others to become useless consorts likely isn’t worth the effort to turn into a mate. However, I would like to learn the process for training frumosi if such a thing exists.”
Raphael turned to me. “What do you think?”
My gaze returned to Miss Margolyes, who kept mouthing ‘please’ over and over again. The woman hadn’t helped Gates or me during our first weeks as captives at the academy. Neither had she spoken up for me that first time Captain Tanar cornered me in the stairwell. The vengeance singing in my blood urged me to leave her to a painful and humiliating fate.
But I couldn’t. Even as a teacher, she had been a prisoner, just like me. Now, my heart ached for the cowed woman she had become. If making Captain Tanar think she was good for something other than brutalizing, I had to help.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
While Dante and the boys made blood oaths with Captain Tanar, I continued staring at Miss Margolyes, who trembled and cried out her relief. I averted my gaze to a knot on the polished table, hoping that my agreement to teach her frumosi magic wouldn’t backfire on the boys and me.
On Monday, Captain Tanar set aside an hour for me to teach Miss Margolyes under his supervision. Dante, Nero, and Raphael accompanied me to the lesson, mostly as bodyguards, but Nero had expressed an interest in learning about frumosi magic.
We met in Professor Proust’s former quarters, a reception room about the same size as the boys’ but lined with shelves filled with leather-bound tomes. Silk-embroidered armchairs and sofas with ornately carved, golden legs and armrests occupied the rest of the space, making the room look like something out of the court of Louis XIV.
Miss Margolyes perched on a sofa in front of a low table, wearing one of her usual summer dresses with a thin cashmere cardigan on top to cover her arms and neck. She tucked her legs to the side, watching a pair of female knockers serve steaming tea from bone china cups and saucers.
A door opened, and the captain stepped out, dressed in his usual black armor. “Miss Stephens, welcome to our humble abode. Please be seated next to Margolyes.”
While I lowered myself into the sofa next to the Basic Protection teacher, the boys took their seats at different points around the room. Only Nero pulled out a notebook.
One of the female frumosi held a cup and saucer full of tea. Instead of placing it on the table, she held it within arm’s reach. I leaned forward to take the drink by the saucer and met the lifeless eyes of the onion woman.
Miss Margolyes cleared her throat. “How do I learn frumosi magic, Miss Stephens?”
“Well…” I lifted the cup to my lips and scalded my tongue on the hot tea. “It was mostly an accident. I used to go to the library and look into ways to develop my magical powers that Professor Proust said was innate in all our kind.”
“Enough background,” growled the captain from where he stood at the wall. “Tell Margolyes how to become magical like you.”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
We went through a meditation exercise that I knew wouldn’t work. At least not right away. The onion woman had made me peel hundreds of garlic bulbs, presumably for the innate magic of the allium cepa magicis to soak into my skin.
I pointed at the crown of my head. “Imagine a violet ball of energy at the top of your head. That’s the crown chakra. The next one between your eyes is indigo, and it’s the third eye chakra.” I explained the throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral and root chakras before saying, “See if you can picture them in your mind’s eyes.”
With a sharp nod, Miss Margolyes closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, but then she opened them and frowned. “Could you remind me of the color of the crown chakra?”
“Violet,” Captain Tanar bellowed. “Don’t you understand anything?”
Miss Margolyes flinched, and I clapped my hand to my chest.
The captain smoothed out his expression and gave me a tight smile. “Miss Stephens, please accept my apologies for interrupting your lesson,” he said in what he probably thought was a soothing voice. Perhaps he still had plans to snag me for himself. I didn’t remember the blood oaths he had made protecting me from being poached. “Please go ahead.”
Nero reached into his bag and pulled out a thick pen with several colored clickers. “Perhaps Miss Margolyes would learn better if she took notes.”
“Do it,” growled the captain.
The rest of the hour continued along the same vein. I would try to explain something to Miss Margolyes, and she would be slow to understand, then Captain Tanar would scare us both with his barking reprimands and send me an oily apology.
The onion woman stood in the corner, her eyes staring into the distance, but every fiber of my being knew she paid attention to what I taught Miss Margolyes.
As soon as the gong sounded, I stood and turned to Miss Margolyes, who cowered on the sofa. “If you can memorize the chakras, their colors, and positions, we can go deeper into the meditation next week.”
“Tomorrow,” growled the captain from where he stood opposite.
My mouth fell open. He had wanted us to meet once a week.
Dante, who sat on our right, rushed to his feet. “That’s not what we agreed.”
“That’s because we didn’t agree on a schedule.” Captain Tanar folded his arms across his chest and smirked. “If you need more time to dip your pricks in a frumosi, take mine. Bite her, bugger her, bleed her if you wish, but she needs to learn how to express her magic.”
Miss Margolyes dipped her head, and her shoulders shook with sobs.
I clenched my teeth. “That won’t be necessary, sir. The Stryx brothers don’t need any additional compensation.”
His amber eyes twinkled with amusement. “Possessive?”
“Once I form a bond, I stick to it.”
“Is that right?” He pushed himself off the wall and stalked toward me, his amber eyes glimmering with dark amusement.
Nero and Raphael stepped between us, and Dante offered me his arm. I clung to Dante and strode out of the room to the captain’s raucous laughter. What the hell was wrong with that vampire? He was either planning on murdering the boys to steal me as his mate or hatching something even more nefarious.
“Are you alright?” Dante whispered as we left the room.
“Sort of.”
I tried not to think about Miss Margolyes stuck in a room with that maniac. Instead, I clung onto the thready hope that our Basic Protection teacher knew more self-preservation techniques than she had taught us in class.
We walked in silence through the hallways and through the crowds of students moving from class to class. None of us dared to speak in case the captain or one of his enchanted-to-be-loyal knockers overheard our conversation. I clutched my school bag to my chest and seethed.
Later that night, Miss Margolyes wasn’t at dinner, and neither was Dr. Grannus. Hopefully, that was a coincidence, and the teacher hadn’t been punished. Captain Tanar stared at our table throughout the meal, making my flesh crawl. I tried to focus on my spaghetti and meatballs, but his amber eyes burned the side of my face.
I had to speak to the onion woman. If she knew to gatecrash the lesson, that meant she was also in communication with the knockers. Term ended in less than a week, and I feared for our safety. If the boys didn’t take me home, the captain might get frustrated with Miss Margolyes’ lack of progress and mesmerize me into spilling all my secrets, including the existence of the onion woman.
Raphael frowned at my untouched plate. “You haven’t eaten.”
“What happens if you skip a meal?” asked Nero.
I frowned. “We just get a bit hungry a few hours later, but apart from that, nothing much.”
Juno turned around and narrowed her blue eyes. I scowled back at her until she turned back and whispered something to Ponytail. The other girl shook her head and raised her goblet to her lips.
I speared a meatball with my fork and cut it in half. Something was going on between those two vampires, and it didn’t look good.
After dinner, we retired to the boys’ suite and sat around the low table with a pile of books. This was the first time we’d had a chance to speak in private since the meeting with Captain Tanar.
Nero turned to me. “Margo is never going to express her magic.”
“Never.” Dante ran a hand through his blonde locks.
“I thought the same, too,” said Raphael.
My throat dried. “Do we want Miss Margolyes to succeed?”
“It would be dangerous,” said Nero. “What do you think of Margo? Would she temper his ambition if she gained power?”
I shook my head. “Miss Margolyes didn’t do much to protect the frumosi when she was Professor Proust’s consort. She’d probably go along with whatever Captain Tanar wanted to do.”
“Would Tanar be a worse leader than Dracula?” asked Raphael.
“He’d make sure no hunter was left alive,” said Dante. “But who knows the extent of his ambition?”
Nero pulled me onto his lap and brushed strands of mahogany hair off my face. I stared into his serious, ebony eyes, wondering whether he needed a kiss.
He brushed a thumb over my cheekbone and said, “The best way to protect you is to form a mating bond. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can transfer our power to you.”
My stomach sank. “You want to exchange blood.”
“If you’re scared of being bitten—”
“It’s not that,” I said. Actually, the thought of someone biting through my flesh made my skin crawl. Even worse was the notion of me enjoying it to the point that I wanted them to do it again.
“You could cut yourself with a knife if you don’t like fangs,” said Raphael.
Tiny beads of sweat broke out across my brow, and my breaths quickened at the thought of drinking vampire blood. A shudder skittered down my back at the notion of a vampire’s will overtaking my own and moving my limbs without my volition. Just like when Nero had commanded me to kill Micalla. If I exchanged blood with the boys, it would be three times worse.
Nero wrapped his arms around my middle, pulling me to his hard chest and encasing me in his masculine scent. “
Tell us what’s wrong.”
“If I took your blood—”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Who is it now?” snarled Nero.
“I’ll go.” Dante crossed the room and flung the door open.
Ponytail walked into the room, clutching a suspicious-looking mace. She held her head high and fixed her gaze on me. “I had the knockers check everyone’s room for signs of Zarah.”
“Oh?” Dante glared at her back.
I twisted around on Nero’s lap and scowled at the female vampire. Since when did she care about Zarah?
“It’s strange that you’re not asking about the results of my investigation,” she snapped.
Dante closed the door behind Ponytail and towered over the smaller vampire. “Perhaps Alicia isn’t interested in your theatrics.”
Ignoring him, she turned to me. “Juno says the money Zarah earned from whoring herself is gone.”
My brows drew together, and I slipped off Nero’s lap. If a fight kicked off, I wanted all the boys unrestricted. “Was Juno pimping her?”
“Let me guess.” Nero strode across the room and stood between her and me. “A first or second year got overexcited and drank Zarah to death.”
“The knockers didn’t find her or her body anywhere in the castle,” replied Ponytail.
“How about the grounds?” asked Dante. “There’s plenty of space for a scared young vampire to hide the results of their overfeeding.”
“What’s this got to do with us, anyway?” snarled Nero. “Complain to the girl who put Zarah in harm’s way, not to the one who tried to save her.”
Dante opened the door. “That was an interesting conversation, next time you feel the urge to drop by and bore us with minutiae, try walking in the sun.”
As Nero nudged her out of the room, she turned around and asked, “Did you help Zarah escape?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Don’t you think I’d have gone with her if I knew how to leave the castle?”
She stepped into the hallway. “Lady Mantis will arrive tomorrow to check on Captain Tanar’s progress at the academy, and I’m sure she’ll be fascinated to discover what happened to my sister.”