“I brought you tea, Miss. You had a close call,” Elise says as she enters the drawing room.
My eyes snap open. I must have fallen asleep. With some effort, I manage to sit upright.
I watch Elise pour the tea then add a single lump of sugar and a splash of cream. My muscles ache in this position, so I stand, feeling the need to test my body to see if there are any serious injuries.
Moving around doesn’t feel as bad as I feared it would.
“Drink up, Miss,” she says, holding the cup out to me.
The tea's herbal scent is overpowering, and I honestly don’t think I can stomach much at the moment. However, I take a sip to be polite. I know Elise went to some effort, no matter how small, making it for me. Hitting my head must have affected me more than I realized because even the tea seems off. I go to set it down, but she frowns.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Drink more, Miss. It will help you feel better, I promise. It’s Mrs. Westfield’s special blend,” she says sweetly. She flits around the room, straightening pillows on the chaise lounge and other menial tasks.
I take a few more sips until I cannot stomach another drop.
Elise watches me curiously. It makes me wonder how awful I must look right now. “You should finish—”
“I’m sorry, I can’t right now… please give me a few moments.” I walk over to the large window and push aside the thick, heavy material of the curtain to rest my forehead against the cold glass panes and gaze out into the night.
A wave of unsettling vertigo washes over me. My fingers curl into the thick velvet as I wait for the feeling to pass.
Turning back to the room's interior, my vision wavers, and I press a clammy hand to my forehead. I blink several times, trying to clear the blur from my eyes. I’m feeling worse by the second, and it makes me glad I have nothing else in my stomach to purge.
When the world manages to right itself once more. Elise remains standing in the same spot as before, her arms now crossed over her chest, and she’s watching with a strange intensity.
“I promise, I will be fine,” I say, dismissing her, even though I don’t know if that’s true.
“It would have been better if you’d finished your tea,” she says quietly.
My head is swimming. Her face goes in and out of focus.
“I think I need to sit down,” I murmur. Making my way back across the room, using the wall to steady me. “I’m not feeling well.” For the first time in so long, I feel entirely helpless. I’m desperate for some sense of safety and comfort. I wish—
The thought is cut off, and my blood turns to ice as I watch the cold smile spread across her lips.
Elise reaches toward the fireplace mantle. She grabs something and drags it along the top, making a horrible scratching sound against the wood.
Firelight gleams off the night-forged silver blade. I swallow hard as my mouth goes dry.
“What are you doing?” I rasp.
She waves the dagger back and forth in her hand, testing the weight of it. “At first I thought you might be good for the Master. He has never taken part in the claiming, but when he arrived with you, I thought that maybe it would be easier for him, to have a meal on hand rather than having to deal with those annoying girls who want him for the status a mark brings.”
She presses the tip of her first finger to the point of the blade, then lets out a soft hiss and sucks on the wound.
I try to stand, but my muscles are sluggish and respond clumsily. I only make it halfway up before my legs give out on me, and I drop back down.
“This is sharp,” she says almost absentmindedly before continuing. “But then,” Elise says, pacing before me, entirely unconcerned with my efforts. “The Master never marked you. He gave you everything and look at how you repay him.” She whirls to face me, pointing the dagger at my chest. “You try to kill him, and with Rosalie’s dagger at that.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grind out through clenched teeth.
It all rushes back to me in a tidal wave. The looks she gave me, how she defended Alaric when I first arrived, her outbursts, and countless other instances that had seemed benign at the time.
“I know he did everything for you, and you are ungrateful. Do you know how many women would die to be in your shoes? He deserves a loyal human, someone who will love him.”
“It’s not what you think. He is not my enemy,” I say, trying to talk her from her plan to kill me. “We are friends.” I’m not sure how true that is, but it’s close enough.
“Shut up!” she snaps, her cool demeanor slipping. “You don’t deserve to be claimed by him.”
“And I suppose you do?” I say derisively. She’s no better than the other girls she looks down on—the ones who see the mark of a vampire as a symbol of status.
“I have been serving him all my life. Since I was old enough to walk, my mother trained me to be his. I deserve to be claimed.”
I don’t know a lot about injuries, but my gut is screaming that something is wrong. I should be feeling better by now, not progressively worse. My limbs tingle, becoming harder and harder to move, and my eyelids are heavy. I look from her to the half-drunk tea. Understanding dawns.
“You drugged my tea,” I say. My words slur slightly.
Breathe… breathe and focus.
“Yes,” she says without the slightest hint of emotion, then goes back to playing with the dagger. It’s more than clear by now that she means to kill me. I have to keep her talking until whatever she gave me wears off.
I close my eyes for a moment and will my body to regain control.
“I have seen you,” she says. “Practicing with this.” She waves the dagger as if I wasn’t aware of what she meant. “While you lack technical ability, you do have more training than I do. I needed something to slow you down, so I can finally be rid of you.”
One word sticks out. “Finally?”
“Yes,” she sighs dramatically and collapses in the chair across from me. “I had hoped that when you cut yourself, he would have fed on you until you were nothing but a dried-up corpse.”
“And the atrium,” I say. I wriggle my fingers and toes as feeling starts to return to my muscles, small movements to avoid drawing her attention.
“Yes, it was easy enough to borrow a tool from Mr. Steward. Though it was a gamble, you would even climb the stairs at all. Though I had hoped you’d climb to the top before falling.” Elise stands and stretches.
“What have I done to you to make you want to kill me?” I ask, trying to sound as wounded as possible.
I can feel my anger starting to boil over, but rather than spit out the venomous words on the tip of my tongue, I use them to burn away at the poison and clear my head.
She lifts her chin and dons a haughty air. “You tried to kill the Master.”
“I—”
“You tried to kill him,” she says again, but this time there’s something wild and unpredictable about her. “And instead of getting rid of you like the trash you are, he gives you more special treatment.” Her voice cracks as her large blue eyes fill with tears. “I love him—you should have loved him, but you are ungrateful and undeserving.”
In another life, another world… another situation, I could almost feel pity for her and the unrequited love she feels for Alaric. But not now, not when she is too cowardly to admit her feelings to him, to do anything she could have and instead take it out on someone who has no bearing on whom he loves.
It’s the moment the first tear slides down her pale cheek that I know my time is up.
“Why won’t you die already?” she practically screams the words at me.
I take a deep breath and prepare myself.
Her face adopts a wholly blank expression, and then she lunges for me.