GABRIEL FELL SILENT, staring at the silver she’d scribed on his skin. He heard the cry of a lovelorn wolf; a solitary howl out in that long and lonely dark.
He held his empty wineglass in numb fingers, feeling the liquor rushing bloodwarm in his veins. If he tried hard enough, he could reach out and touch her now. He had but to open the window to his mind’s eye and find her there, waiting, smiling, untouched by the teeth of time. Long black hair and deep black eyes and a shadow that weighed a ton.
“You served San Michon five more years,” Jean-François said, drawing long, smooth lines in his accursed book. “Five years in which your name became legend. You led the attack on Báih Sìde and liberated the Dyvok slaughterfarms at Triúrbaile when you were only nineteen. You freed Qadir and broke the siege at Tuuve at twenty. You slew elders of the Dyvok in Ossway, Chastain in the Sūdhaem, burned out a nest of ancien Ilon that threatened the Crown itself. The Black Lion, they called you. Your name was a clarion call. A hymn in the houses of the holy, and a curse in the Courts of the Blood.”
The vampire stopped drawing long enough to meet Gabriel’s eyes.
“How did it all come undone?”
“Patience, coldblood,” Gabriel replied.
Anger flashed in the vampire’s gaze, swift and black. “No, Silversaint. I have shown the patience of angels eternal. You will finish this chapter now. How did it end?”
Gabriel met the monster’s eyes, lifted his tattooed hands into the light.
“Patience.”
Jean-François blinked at the name across the silversaint’s fingers.
“Your daughter.”
Gabriel reached to the bottle, spilling the wine into his goblet, deep and red. He pressed the glass to his lips and drank deep. The wolf sang again out in the dark, alone and heartsick. It was an age before the silversaint conjured voice enough to speak.
“We didn’t plan it. Astrid and I. We never imagined it. She swore to the Silver Sorority, became Mistress of the Aegis in San Michon. I, the young paragon of the Ordo Argent. We lived as she prophesied, stealing our moments in the dark when duty allowed. Fucking like thieves. But it was enough. She was enough.
“We were careful. So careful that when she told me, hand to belly, I wondered if it was a sign from God. For one foolish moment, I thought it might not matter. My accolades were too many to count by then. Someone told me there were more babes named Gabriel that last year I served in San Michon than were gifted the name of the Emperor himself.”
The Last Silversaint shook his head.
“But of course, it changed everything. I had enemies aplenty by then. Outside San Michon, and within. The vanity Greyhand had warned me about was ever my weakness. I wasn’t a lamb, I was a fucking lion, and I walked the earth like one. But the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And the poppy that grows too tall gets cut down to size. Oathbreaker, they called me. Blasphemer. There’s a great deal you can get away with if your name grows large enough, coldblood. But this wasn’t some pretty painted courtesan who’d welcomed me into her bed. This was a sister of the Silver Sorority. And no matter how many hymns they sing for you, no matter how many babes are named for you, it’s a forgiving priest indeed who pardons the man who makes a cuckold of God.
“The brethren demanded I set Astrid aside. Even Greyhand. And I told them where they could shove their fucking demands. So, she and I were excommunicated. They let me keep my aegis at least—probably for fear of losing their hands. But all those years of service, all those lives I’d saved, and no one in San Michon was even allowed to come wish us farewell. Finch, Theo, the Phils, Sév, Chloe—nobody. We climbed onto Justice, Astrid’s arms about my waist, and alone, friendless, we rode into the dark.”
Gabriel’s smile was like the sun rising.
“But we weren’t alone for long. And never again. God still gave us one more blessing. A tiny, beautiful blessing, with her mama’s smile and her papa’s eyes, and no hint of the curse that flowed in his paleblood veins.”
Gabriel shook his head, voice soft with wonder.
“The first time I held her in my arms, I cried more than she did. I used to watch her while she slept as a babe. Just stand above her crib for hours and wonder how the hell someone like me had made something so beautiful. And as she grew, I realized she was the reason I’d been put on this earth. Not to lead armies or defend cities or save an empire. Looking into her eyes, I knew it, like I knew the taste of my wife’s lips or the song of the blood. Goodness could come of sin, and she was proof. She was perfect. Great Redeemer, she was everything. Our Patience.”
Gabriel stretched out his legs before him, ankles crossed, leathers whispering. Tipping his head back, he finished off his wine, a droplet running down his chin. Reaching for the Monét, he found it empty, cursing under his breath.
“Hearts only bruise,” the vampire murmured. “They never break.”
Gabriel nodded. “So Astrid would often tell me.”
“A pretty sentiment.”
“A fucking lie.”
“Where did the three of you go?”
Gabriel’s eyes were fixed on the goblet in his hand. The reflections of the lantern’s flame playing like fireflies on the blood-dark drop in the bottom. Thumb tracing the arc of the teardrop scars down his cheek, he looked to that pale moth still beating its wings in vain upon the lantern’s chimney, heedless and hopeless.
“De León?”
“Your voice will never feel so tiny as when you’re screaming at God,” he whispered.
“… What?”
Gabriel blinked, his eyes coming into focus. He looked up at the historian and slowly shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about them anymore.”
“Must we do this again? My Empress demands her tale.”
“And she’ll have it.” Gabriel’s grip tightened on his empty glass, knuckles white. “But I don’t feel like talking about ma famille right now.”
“You are a prisoner here. Completely within our power. For all intents and purposes, Chevalier, you are my slave. So apologies,” the vampire said, leaning forward, “but has it somehow been conveyed to you that it makes any difference at all how you feel?”
The wineglass shattered in Gabriel’s hand. A hundred glittering shards splintering in his fist and falling to the stone. The silversaint winced and opened his fingers, looking at the blood dripping, dark and sweet and thick.
Jean-François was suddenly standing. Though he barely seemed to move at all, the historian was across the other side of the room, bristling with threat. A black hunger filled his eyes as he watched the red drip, drip, drip.
“Are you insane?”
Gabriel smiled, held out his wounded hand. “Frightened of a little blood, vampire?”
Jean-François hissed, pearl-white fangs bared, “If I fear anything, de León, it is what I would do to you if I let my hunger have its head.”
“And what do you think you’d do to me, coldblood?” Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “Before your Empress has the whole of her tale?”
The Last Silversaint rose from his chair and stepped forward, bleeding hand outstretched. Jean-François took another step back.
“Seems we’re all someone’s slave.”
“Meline!” Jean-François bellowed.
The door flew open in a heartbeat, the thrall woman on the threshold in her long, black gown. Her eyes were wide. One hand beneath her bodice. “Master?”
The vampire blinked, the dark shadow that had filled his eyes dimming. He smoothed down his frockcoat and plucked at the ruffled hems of his sleeves.
“Our guest has cut himself.”
The woman released the weapon she had hidden in her bodice. A dagger, mostlike, though it was difficult for Gabriel to tell. She dropped into a curtsey, made her way to the silversaint’s side, taking his hand. Gentle as she was, Gabriel could still feel the terrible strength in her grip; the power gifted from nightly sups at her master’s wrist. The silversaint’s eyes were still fixed on the vampire’s, his lips curling into a grim smile as he saw that, despite regaining his composure, the creature still refused to move closer.
“It is deep, Master,” Meline reported. “It will heal in time, but it’s best I—”
“Swiftly, then.”
The thrall curtseyed once more, rushing from the room.
“And bring another fucking bottle!” Gabriel shouted.
The woman fled down the stairs in a flurry of black damask. Again, she left the door unlocked behind. Gabriel listened to her descend, forty stairs, seventy, his senses still sharp as razors. He heard iron keys. A heavy lock. Door slamming.
He turned pale grey eyes back to the historian. Jean-François still lurked on the other side of the prison cell. The historie had fallen on the floor, open to a sketch of Dior back in the Perfect Husband, wrapped in her ridiculous frockcoat. The silversaint picked it up, marveling once again at the vampire’s artistry.
“It’s a fine likeness.” He smiled, heart aching. “The little bitch would be flattered.”
“Put that down. You’ll get blood on it.”
Gabriel dropped the book onto the vampire’s chair. “Heaven forbid.”
The historian dragged a long golden curl from his eyes and whispered, soft with menace. “I shall see you punished for this, de León. I shall have you on your knees.”
“I’m sure you can taste me already. But you know this is all a waste of time, don’t you?”
“Time is something my Empress has in abundance.”
Gabriel shook his head, smearing crimson across his chin as he stroked his stubble. “If that were so, I’d already be dead, vampire. Your Empress needs the secret of the Grail. But you said it yourself. The cup was broken. The Grail is gone. This is your world, leech. Your here and your now and your forever. And when the monsters you’ve birthed drain every last drop from it, you’ll have none but yourselves to blame.”
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder.
“That was quick.”
The thrall woman stood on the threshold again. “Master?”
Gabriel met Jean-François’s eyes again. “I don’t want to speak of ma famille anymore, vampire. So, you can sit and watch me get quietly shitfaced, or I can stop wasting our time and return to the story I’m actually here to tell.”
A moment passed, long and silent, before the vampire spoke again.
“… As you like it, Chevalier.”
The silversaint returned to his chair, dripping blood. As he sat with a wince, the thrall knelt beside him. He saw a bowl of steaming water, bandages, smelled the antiseptic perfume of witchhazel and fools’ honey. And beside the bowl …
“Merci, Mlle Meline,” he said, reaching for the new bottle of Monét. “When they usher me into hell, I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you.”
Jean-François returned slowly to his seat, eyes on the silversaint’s bleeding hand as he picked up his historie. The vampire straightened his beautiful coat, took the span of three breaths to regain his composure, then spoke.
“So. Your gambit at San Guillaume had turned into a massacre, Silversaint. Sister Chloe, Père Rafa, Saoirse, Bellamy, Phoebe—the entire Company of the Grail. All butchered by the Beast of Vellene. The only ones to survive Danton’s wrath were you and Dior.”
Jean-François’s lips twisted into the faintest of smiles.
“And he had turned out to be a she.”
Gabriel winced as Meline fished a long splinter of glass from his palm. He stared at the sevenstar etched there, silver ink glinting in the lantern’s golden light.
“I don’t suppose I could have another smoke?”
The historian lifted his quill and simply glowered.
Gabriel shrugged. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”
He lifted the Monét to his lips and took a long, slow swallow right from the neck.
“So. The end. The beginning. The Grail.”