“Dreaming of Wulfe,” I told him, still uneasy in my own skin.
“Oh?” His voice was a low growl that seeped into my bones. “Think I should do something about that?”
I didn’t get back to sleep for a while. When I did, sated and limp with pleasure, I dreamed—
—of Wulfe.
* * *
—
“Stefan, Stefan!”
The locks on my door rattled with her urgency.
“Marsilia?” I had feared her dead, hoped that she had fled. I stood up, ready to do whatever she needed of me.
She got the door open, and I saw she stood with a guard to either side of her. I wobbled a little as if weakened by my long confinement—which was true enough, so far as it went. I saw them relax as if that weakness meant I was not a threat, which was not true. I was always a threat. I had been a threat when I had been merely human. I had been a threat in the centuries I had served as my lady’s daytime servant, caught in the twilight world of fledgling so long as I had been useful there. It would take more than a little starvation to make me less dangerous.
“Get to your rooms,” she ordered me urgently. “Get a bag and pack. Do not take time. He has said I may go. I may take you and Andre. We are to be exiled.”
It was almost enough to make me thank the God I had long ago abandoned. Then the torchlight fell upon her and I understood the price our lord and master had extracted, and I took my thankfulness back. If we made it out of here, I would be thankful, properly, to my lady, who had made it possible. If we did not, I would spend the rest of my life—likely not that long—exacting what vengeance I could.
In the weeks since I had seen her, my lady had gone from rounded health to cadaver thinness. Her hair was limp and dirty, and a red mark ran along the edge of her hairline as if he’d threatened to scalp her. Her face—I did not flinch. I would not flinch.
He liked to damage his playthings, did our lord and master. Her nose was destroyed. In the uncertain light, and beneath the dried gore, I could not tell if he’d just beaten her or actually cut it off. He had written sonnets about her loveliness, this woman he loved. The nose was recent damage, perhaps even a few hours ago. Her eye looked as though the damage was weeks old.
“It is no matter,” Marsilia said impatiently, glaring at me through her one good eye. “Stefan, go. Meet me—” She stopped, glancing at her escorts. “You know where he keeps my treasure. Meet me there as quickly as you can. I think I can take that treasure with us.”
She didn’t say, because there were witnesses, as long as we leave before he changes his mind, but I knew our master as well as she did.
My instincts were to abandon my things and accompany her. Where she was going, where her treasure was, was not safe. But she was as dangerous as I, even wounded, and better—those escorting her would never think her so. And I had money and jewels in my rooms, useful for life in exile.
* * *
—
I heard the screams before I got to the level where the secret dungeons were. There was only one prisoner here, in the secret depths of the palazzo, and he did not scream anymore. Something was wrong.
I dropped my bags and drew the sword that had still been hanging in its proper place in my rooms, as had all my belongings. I hadn’t been able to decide if the Lord of Night thought I would just resume my place at his side, or if I was too negligible to draw his attention. Knowing him, it could be both.
I was weakened, but not so weak as a mortal would be, and more skilled than any of the vampires who would have worked down here. As long as the fight was short, I did not doubt that I could prevail once I got there.
The door at the top of the stairs had been ripped off its hinges, but there was a turn at the bottom so I could not see what was going on. It had grown, suddenly, very, very quiet.
“Stefan,” said Marsilia, her voice quite calm.
“Yes?”
“Move with care,” she said.
I took the stairs in two leaps, but obedient to her wishes, I slowed as I turned the corner. The area was dimly lit by a single flickering torch. Even with my ability to see in the dark, it was hard at first to understand what had happened. There was blood everywhere—both fresh and rotting—but that was to be expected in a torture chamber.
The bodies were less expected—my lord liked to keep his workspaces clear of corpses. Marsilia stood very still next to one of the cages, whose crude wooden door was open.
Like the room, she was covered in blood.
“I opened his door,” Marsilia said. “And then he killed everyone but me.”