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Koen and I returned to the Main to finish our now-cold meal. Tess and Em were dying to discuss everything that happened since they were shooed out of the drop-off cave, but Sloan’s sharp warning glare kept their mouths shut while the adults were still there.
When they deemed the meal over, the three of us bolted like kids with a secret waiting to burst out of our chests to one of the lounge caves, where we sat in a circle on the floor, the thick rug absorbing the cold of the stone.
Before the girls could bombard me with questions, I gaped at Tess. “You let him hug you!”
Tess’s eyes widened and her heart lurched in guilt. “Yes. So?”
“You never show physical affection to anyone except family.”
“Bas,” Em hissed, “don’t be creepy.”
I realized it did sound weird, but I couldn’t help but mumble my insecurities, “It just looked more than just familial.”
Tess puffed up in defensiveness. “If you’re jealous, don’t get all dominant. It’s not like we’re a couple. I would have told you if we were.”
Several emotions tangled in my chest. I cleared my throat in embarrassment. “Right, sorry.”
“We don’t have a history,” she added as if really drilling it in, “except for growing up together.”
“He definitely doesn’t think that.”
Tess’s look turned razor-sharp, defensiveness radiating off her like a heatwave. “What makes you say that?”
I didn’t let her get me riled up, too, but Em glared at me to stop pressuring Tess. “I could just tell. He looked at you differently than everyone else.”
Suddenly, Tess deflated, looking at Em with a question burning in her gaze. As if Em knew exactly what the question was, she shrugged as if to say, Go for it if you want.
Tess nodded, then turned back to me, calm now. “Okay,” she relented, “Denarius and I have some history. After you left, we became close friends, but nothing more than that. Two years ago, he started hinting that he liked me. I kind of felt the same. Then we...” Tess flushed, glancing away, and her voice dropped to a mutter. “We kissed once.”
I blinked in surprise, not upset in any capacity. Okay, maybe a little miffed. I couldn’t imagine Tess being interested in brutish, inelegant Denarius at all. I glanced at Em, who shrugged indifferently. What was her opinion of Denarius?
“But I wasn’t interested in a relationship with him,” Tess continued. “It’s likely he still thinks I’m leading him on. We didn’t end on very good terms before he left.” She pointed an accusing finger at me. “You shouldn’t have tried to punch him. The whole mouse thing was dumb. You were six years old, and he was seven. We’re already at war with vampires. We don’t need internal conflict.”
“I didn’t try to punch him because of the mouse thing,” I said, letting my mind replay the hilarious-at-the-time memory just so the other one didn’t get the chance. “It was because he tried to drown me for it.”
The girls’ jaws dropped open, and then sparks of anger flashed in their eyes. Forever on the same wavelength, they asked together, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because it would have created a lot of unnecessary trouble,” I said with a shrug.
“Who else knows?”
“Koen and Vidar because I just told them.”
Tess leaned forward intently. “Was he actually trying to drown you?”
“Uh, yes. Definitely.”
The girls exchanged worried glances. “Over the mouse? How did you get him to stop?”
I twiddled my thumbs, mulling over telling them another truth. I met Tess’s unflinching blue gaze, dark in the dimly-lit cave. She was hard to look away from. Then I took a plunge and admitted, “It was partially over the dumb mouse, but it was also because he was making fun of you, and when I stood up to him, he dragged me to the River Jehona, pushed me in, and held my head under until I transfigured a stone into a knife and slashed at his knees. He let go, and I got out. I told him if he ever made fun of any of my friends again, I’d use the super rare spell that makes your teeth fall out. And he believed me, so he ran out and never bothered me again. I don’t think he was very bright back then.”
“Isn’t very bright nowadays,” Em muttered under her breath, though not quietly enough for Tess not to hear.
She lightly smacked her sister’s arm in a scold and said, “Den is a talented hunter and loyal to the Kairos. He knows strategy. And he was a good friend.”
I perked. “Was?”
“Yes,” said Tess, getting to her feet. “I’m going to set boundaries.”
Before I could protest, Rhetta leaned in. “There you three are! We’re meeting early with Leysa.” She sensed the faint tension, and her smile faded a little. “What’s wrong?”
“Will Denarius be there?” asked Tess.
Rhetta nodded. “He’s the reason the meeting has been moved up. Why?”
Tess helped Em up. “I just might yell at him.”
“We are at war with vampires,” Rhetta said with a sudden, uncharacteristically stern tone, her gaze raking over all three of us. “There is no need for internal fighting.” Then her voice softened. “You’re not the kind of witch to confront others, Tessia, especially friends. I know Denarius can be...high-strung...but what could he have done?”
“Koen didn’t tell you?” I asked in surprise, getting to my feet as well.
“Rhetta has a hidden side,” Em said wryly. “She might beat him up if she knew.”
To ease Rhetta’s worry, I gave her the rundown of what happened ten years ago. I had no idea why it was such a big deal, as if it changed the fate of the world or something.
Rhetta immediately swelled with disbelief, her normally soft, sweet disposition giving way to indignation. “Maybe I will, Emalyn.”
“I’m sure Vidar’s already taken care of it,” I stepped in quickly. “As much as I’d love to see you three beat the fangs out of him, we don’t need to add more tension to the situation. Let’s just go to the meeting and pretend it never happened.”
The women exchanged looks, and then their metaphorical prickled fur lay flat. They agreed with deflated enthusiasm and headed out of the cave with me trailing at the back.
A part of me felt smug pride at the women who were so quick to defend me when I was picked on. It was a testament to how much they cared about me. Another part was a bit annoyed that they were making such a big deal of it all, but the biggest part was humiliation. They didn’t need to be so upset in the first place. It was great that they cared, but they needed to let it go. With everything else going on, what did it matter?
I started out of my thoughts when Tess fell in step with me. “Thank you for defending me back then, Bastian.”
“It was the right thing to do,” I said with a casual shrug to disguise my awe at a rare comment from Tessia Akeso.
“He was making fun of my ‘rabbit cheeks,’ wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” I admitted, remembering the snide comment I overheard Denarius make to his friends.
Tess kept her eyes ahead, and her chin lifted high. I was stunned to see the faint smugness on her lips. I knew her just well enough to have the sense that she was plotting something.
“Tess,” I started to warn, but we arrived at the meeting cave.
Denarius was already sitting between Leysa and Vidar, looking sulky. When he saw Tess, he perked up and opened his mouth to greet her, but his uncle noticed and hissed, “Don’t even think about speaking out of turn.”
Like before, Tess, Em, and I squeezed between our respective adults and looked to Leysa to begin. But she gestured to Koen first. “Blackwood has a suggestion I would like to hear.”
Koen nodded respectfully and said, after meeting everyone’s gaze, “I pitch the idea we travel to Aspen at the White Tree.”
Leysa’s brow rose in a mild show of surprise, while Vidar’s face was pondering as if he hadn’t considered that idea. Sloan and Em had more reactive responses, with wide eyes and the same gasp of excitement. I glanced at Tess and was glad to see her as confused as I felt.
“Can we go, please?” Em begged Leysa at the same time I asked, “Who and what is that?”
“The old friend I mentioned,” Koen said. “The White Tree is his library.”
“Aspen travels everywhere, gathering knowledge,” Em explained. “Books, journals, artifacts, you name it. He has a wonderful personality on top of the journeys he goes on.”
Tess quirked a grin at her sister’s eagerness. “Are you interested in what he does or him?”
Em stuck her tongue out. “I like him, not like him.”
There was a big difference for Emalyn. The only relationship she was interested in was her duty to the Kairos.
“It’s hard not to like Aspen,” Sloan said with an amused wistfulness, which the other adults agreed to with a nod.
Before Tess or I could ask why Em got to meet Aspen while we didn’t, Em said, “It was two years ago. You were on that one mission to Rosepost. Remember, Tess? They wouldn’t let me tell you because Aspen likes to be kept low to protect him and the library.”
“But we see reason to travel there,” Koen said. “If anyone will have information on what the vampire community might be planning, it’s Aspen. Maybe something will allude to the eclipse and experiments you mentioned, Bas.”
Back at the Balmoral complex where the Redfang coven made their home, I had eavesdropped on their leader, Thana, speaking to two other vampires.
“She killed every last one of our kind except for five who surrendered,” a male, Illias, had noted about Amate, who apparently wiped out an entire village. “They now bear the Moros sigil.”
“Monster,” a female, Rish, had scoffed, “more than any of us. Her army moves from one town to another faster than covens can flee. Every month, she becomes stronger.”
Illias argued, “Which is why we need to proceed with the experiments—”
“No, the focus should first be on the eclipse,” Rish had fired back. “It is our key to rekindling the cattle system. It has been too long that our kind has been stretched thin, scraping by without enough Bleeders to go around.”
A little bit later, Piroska Niran made herself known and added, “Half-vampire, half-witch, just as you said, Thana. He would be the perfect experiment. His blood is special.”
My teeth clenched at the thought of the ancient, conniving, pureblood vampire. I could never tell whose side she was on, no matter how many times I was promised she was a valuable asset to the Kairos. She was an infuriating enigma. “Have we asked Piroska anything?”
Leysa wrinkled her nose. Clearly, the Kairos leader wasn’t a fan of her, either. “That vagabond refuses to meet with anyone here. She appears and disappears wherever and whenever she pleases. The last I heard from her was a letter on my floor asking how the weather was.” Leysa bared her fangs as if Piroska could see her displeasure. “Never mind any information she gleaned that she swore she would relay to us months ago.”
“She’s difficult to work with,” Vidar admitted.
“We’ve never met her,” noted Koen, glancing at Sloan, Rhetta, and Wren.
I matched Leysa’s scowl. “You don’t really want to unless you want to be really confused by everything she says and does.”
Tess and Em nodded empathetically.
Leysa inhaled deeply. “I will send her correspondence. In the meantime, we will visit Aspen. I admit I miss the misfit,” she added with a gleam in her auburn eyes. It vanished when she turned to Denarius. “You are coming. Tell everyone what you discovered.”
Unexpectedly all-business, Denarius met everyone’s gazes disinterestedly before reporting, “My mission was to investigate a town with disappearing humans, leading us to quickly uncover a growing cattle farm. Many children were taken. But this wasn’t like other farms we freed. Instead of using the humans as simple Bleeders, the pure bloods were Turning them and then chaining them up, starving them of blood. They only let them drink if they pledged allegiance to ‘the overtaking.’”
Dread sluiced through my veins. “Well, if that isn’t the promise of a war, I don’t know what else is.”
