Gabriel pressed his shaking hands together as the vampire snapped his fingers. The iron-clad door opened, that thrall woman ever lurking on the threshold. The bite at her wrist was only two faint scratches now, the blood she’d supped from her master’s veins healing the wound almost as if it had never been. But Gabriel could still smell the perfume of her blood, turning his head so he didn’t have to meet her eyes.
He felt he’d been in this room all his life.
‘More wine, my love,’ Jean-Fran?ois said. ‘And a fresh glass for our guest.’
The woman curtseyed. ‘I am your servant, Master.’
Gabriel’s foot tapped a rapid, broken beat upon the floor. His stomach was slowly twisting into an ice-hard knot. That ghost-pale moth had returned, beating in vain upon the lantern’s glass chimney once more. Leaning forward, tracing those teardrop scars down his right cheek with one fingertip, Gabriel peered at the tome in Jean-Fran?ois’s lap. The vampire was finishing a picture of Astrid as she’d been that night in the Library: framed by burning candles and windows of stained glass. Forever young. Forever beautiful. The likeness was so near, it made his chest hurt.
‘So,’ the vampire murmured. ‘An elder of the Ironhearts, roaming the Nordlund.’
‘Oui,’ Gabriel replied.
‘Rather clumsy for an ancien? To have left a trail for you to follow?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Even elders need to feed. And for all their power, the Voss had no way to travel the empire other than means mundane. If the Forever King had a way to speak to beasts of the sky direct, this whole tale might’ve been a different one. But you Chastains were still cowering in the shadows back then.’
‘Do not mistake patience for cowardice, de León.’
‘A song sung by every bottom feeder I’ve ever met.’
The vampire raised one blonde eyebrow. ‘’Tis not a Forever King who shall rule this empire in the end, halfbreed. ’Tis an Empress of Wolves and Men. And you are hardly one to make mock of carrion eaters, given the bloodline you are descended from.’
‘I was wondering when you’d circle back to that.’
Rubbing his stubbled chin, Gabriel met the monster’s eyes.
‘Forty,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps fifty.’
Jean-Fran?ois blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You asked what I thought your age was earlier.’ Gabriel shrugged. ‘Now we’ve spent a little time together, I can hazard a guess. You carry yourself like ancien, Historian, but you’re no elder. In fact, I’d put you not much older than I.’
‘Indeed? And what makes you say so, de León?’
‘You’re not frightened enough.’ Gabriel tilted his head. ‘Tell me, when your dark mother and pale mistress, Margot Chastain, First and Last of Her Name, set you this task, did you think she was locking me in here with you, or you in here with me?’
‘I have nothing to fear from you, de León,’ the vampire sneered. ‘You are a drunken wretch, descended from a house of dogs, who allowed the last hope for his species to slip through his fingers and shatter like glass upon the stone.’
‘The Grail.’ Gabriel nodded. ‘I was wondering when you’d circle back to that too.’
‘I circle nowhere, Silversaint.’
‘If only you knew how true that is, you fucking parasite.’
The door opened, and the thrall stood at the threshold, golden tray poised upon one hand. She sensed the tension in the room, eyes upon the historian.
‘Is all well, Master?’
The vampire brushed one golden curl from his eyes. ‘Quite well, Meline. Though it seems our guest’s temper frays when his tongue is parched. See to it, merci.’
The woman drifted into the room, placed a fresh glass of wine on the table, the bottle beside it. Gabriel kept his eyes forward, locked on the illustration in the vampire’s book. The memories of Astrid were fresh now. The wound reopened. The longer he told their story, the sooner he must come to the end of it, and he knew he’d not drunk anywhere near enough for that. And so, he turned his stare to the monster opposite. This horror in silken brocade and sable feathers and gleaming pearl.
‘I can talk more about the Company of the Grail,’ he offered. ‘Chloe. Dior. Father Rafa and the others. If you like.’
‘I do not like,’ the vampire protested, perhaps a touch too strongly. ‘You cannot bounce around the telling of this tale like a rabbit in heat, Silversaint.’
‘I think you’ll find I can do whatever the fuck I please, vampire. At least until your Empress has what she wants.’ He studied his black and broken fingernails, the dried blood and ashes and silvered ink upon his hands. ‘And what she wants is the story of the Grail. What became of it. How I lost it. So what say you we drop the pretence for a spell? At least until I’m drunk enough to return to San Michon.’
The vampire kept his face unchanging. But Gabriel knew well enough to recognize the spark glittering in those chocolat eyes. He could feel it, floating like smoke between them. Smell it, entwined with the wine and blood.
Want.
‘As you like it,’ Jean-Fran?ois said, keeping his voice flat.
‘Are you certain? As you said, you’ve no use for children’s tales.’
‘I am commanded by my pale mistress to record all of your story, de León. Personally, I care not either way.’
‘Dead tongues heeded are Dead tongues tasted.’
‘Is that what you want, Silversaint?’ the vampire asked, dark eyes searching pale grey. ‘A taste of me? I had heard you’d developed an appetite for us.’
Gabriel picked up his fresh glass of wine, took a long swallow.
‘You’re not my type, Chastain.’
Jean-Fran?ois smiled at the stink of the lie, dipping his quill. ‘So. Chloe Sauvage and her tattered company. A girl you knew as a sisternovice in San Michon. A girl who’d claimed your first meeting was ordained by the Heavenly Father himself. Discovering you in Sūdhaem seventeen years later must have done little to dissuade her insane notions.’
‘Far from it. Chloe was a believer, like I said.’
‘You had evaded Danton, the Beast of Vellene and youngest son of the Forever King, who seemed intent upon the boy Dior. You had rescued Chloe’s company from a band of wretched, seen off yet another mysterious highblood who also harried young Dior’s footsteps. And this boychild claimed to know the location of the Grail. The lost chalice of San Michon, that caught the blood of the Redeemer as he died upon his wheel.’
‘It’s almost as if you’ve been paying attention.’
‘But why agree to accompany Chloe to the River Volta?’ Jean-Fran?ois nodded to the P A T I E N C E inked across the silversaint’s fingers. ‘Your wife and daughter awaited you at home. And you clearly didn’t believe this Dior knew the chalice’s location.’
‘No. I had the boy picked for a fucking liar, and Chloe for a fucking fool. But Danton Voss clearly thought Dior was worth chasing, even if I didn’t. I had business with the famille of the Forever King. Unfinished, and every shade of bloody. Liars and fools they might’ve been, but Chloe’s company could serve me in one respect at least.’