‘De Coste looked the big lad up and down, but didn’t seem keen to press. Instead, he lay back on his pillow, muttering beneath his breath. “Softcock …”
‘Theo scoffed, put his boots up on the bed. “Your sister sings a different tune.”
‘I chuckled softly, marking the ledger in my head.
‘“What the hell are you laughing at, Kitten?” Aaron snarled.
‘I shot a poisoned glance at de Coste, but the matter seemed settled for now. I met Theo’s eyes, nodding silent thanks, but the big boy simply shrugged in return – I guessed the quarrel was less about Theo defending me, and more about his dislike of de Coste. And so, silent and bruised and still friendless, I returned to cleaning my boots, trying not to think too much about my failure in the Gauntlet. I had no line and no gifts to call my own, save that which we all shared. I’d learned nothing of my father. But despite all Aaron said, despite the Trial, I still felt I was fated to be there. God did want me in San Michon. Frailblood or no.’
Gabriel paused a moment, lacing his fingers as he stared down at his hands.
‘But you want to know the awful thing, coldblood?’
‘Tell me the awful thing, Silversaint,’ Jean-Fran?ois replied.
‘I lay in bed later that night, my wounds nothing but a memory, and I thought on what de Coste had told me about his brother in the army. About the restoration of this monastery being only an empress’s whim. And my first thought wasn’t for the people who might be spared if the Forever King was crushed by the Golden Host. It wasn’t of the soldiers who might die defeating him, or the horror that this conflict had come at all. My first thought was to pray that the war wouldn’t be over by the time I got there.’
Gabriel sighed, and met the historian’s eyes.
‘Can you believe that? I was actually afraid I was going to miss out.’
‘Is such not the desire of all young men with swords? Win glory, or glorious death?’
‘Glory,’ Gabriel scoffed. ‘Tell me something, vampire. If death is so glorious, how is it meted so cheaply and so often by the most worthless of men?’
The Last Silversaint shook his head.
‘I’d no idea what was coming. No clue what they were going to make of me. But I did know this was my life now. And so, I vowed again to make the best of it. Whatever Aaron said, I felt in my bones that San Michon would be the salvation of the empire. I truly believed that I’d been chosen, that all this – my sister’s murder, what I’d done to Ilsa, the cursed and bastard blood in my veins – all of it was part of God’s plan. And if I trusted in him, if I said my prayers and praised his name and followed his word, all would be well.’
Gabriel scoffed, staring down at the sevenstar on his palm.
‘What a fucking fool I was.’
‘Take heart, de León.’ The coldblood’s voice was soft as the scratching of his pen. ‘You were not alone in your hopes. But none can best a foe that cannot die.’
‘The snows at Augustin weren’t soaked red with mortal blood alone. You died in droves that night, coldblood.’
A slender shrug. ‘Our dead stay dead, Silversaint. Yours rise against you.’
‘And you believe that a good thing? Tell me, do you never wonder where all this ends? After the monsters you’ve birthed drain these lands dry of every man, woman, and child, all of you will starve. Wretched and highblood alike.’
‘Hence the need for a firm rule.’ Pale fingers brushed the embroidered wolves on the vampire’s frockcoat. ‘An Empress with the foresight to build, rather than destroy. Fabién Voss was wise to harness the foulbloods as a weapon. But their time is at an end.’
‘The wretched outnumber you fifty to one. There are four major kith bloodlines, and all have corpse armies in thrall. You think those vipers are going to give up their legions without a struggle?’
‘They may struggle all they wish. They shall fail.’
Gabriel looked to the monster then, cold calculation in his eyes. The bloodhymn still thrummed in his veins, sharpening his mind as well as his senses. The coldblood’s face was stone, his eyes, liquid darkness. But even the barest rock can tell a story to those with the teaching to see it. Despite it all – the carnage, the betrayal, the failure – Gabriel de León was a hunter who knew his quarry. And in a blinking, he saw the answer, as clear and crisp as if the monster had written the words in that damnable book.
‘That’s why you seek the Grail,’ he breathed. ‘You think the cup can bring you victory against the other bloodlines.’
‘Children’s stories hold no interest for my Empress, Silversaint. But your story does.’ The monster tapped the book in his lap. ‘So return to it, if you’d be so kind. You were a fifteen-year-old boy. The halfbreed bastard of a vampire father, dragged from provincial squalor to the impregnable walls of San Michon. You grew to be a paragon of the Order, just as you vowed. They sang songs about you, de León. The Black Lion. Wielder of the Ashdrinker. Slayer of the Forever King. How does one rise from beginnings so low to become legend?’ The monster’s lip curled. ‘And then, fall so very far?’
Gabriel looked to the lantern flame, his mouth pressed thin. The bloodsmoke roiled inside him, sharpening not only his mind, but his memory. He ran one thumb across his tattooed fingers, the word P A T I E N C E etched below his knuckles.
The years at his back seemed mere moments, and those moments were clear as crystal. He could smell silverbell on the air, see candleflame reflected in his mind’s eye. He could feel smooth hips swaying beneath his hands. Eyes dark with want, lips red as cherries open against his, fingernails clawing his naked back. He heard a whisper then, hot and desperate, and he echoed it without thinking, the words slipping over his lips in a sigh.
‘We cannot do this.’
Jean-Fran?ois’s head tilted. ‘No?’
Gabriel blinked, found himself back in that cold tower with that dead thing. He could taste ashes. Hear the screams of monsters that had denied death for centuries, delivered at last by his hand. And he met the coldblood’s gaze, his voice tinged with shadow and flame.
‘No,’ he said.
‘De León—’
‘No. I’ve no more wish to speak of San Michon just now, if it please you.’
‘It does not please me.’ A thin frown marred Jean-Fran?ois’s flawless brow. ‘I wish to hear of your years in the paleblood monastery. Your apprenticeship. Your ascendance.’
‘And you’ll hear about all of it in time,’ Gabriel growled. ‘We have all night, you and I. And all the nights we’ll need thereafter, I’d wager. But if you seek knowledge of the Grail, then we should return to the day I found it.’
‘That is not the way stories work, Silversaint.’
‘This is my story, coldblood. And if I have the right of it, these will be the last words I’ll ever speak upon this earth. So if this is to be my last confession, and you my priest, trust that I know how best to impart the tally of my own fucking sins. By the time the telling is done, we’ll have returned to Lorson. The Charbourg. The red snows of Augustin. And oui, even San Michon. But for now, I’ll speak of the Grail. How it came to me. How I lost it. And all between. Believe me when I say your Empress will have her answers by the end.’