Dinner With a Vampire (The Dark Heroine #1)(98)
Author: Abigail Gibbs

‘That letter is one of a pair,’ he had said, resting against the stone atop Varns’ Point, the morning after I slept with Violet. ‘It is time for you to read the other.’ And then he told me. Everything. Why we couldn’t touch. Why he was sending me to Romania.

I ran the whole way back, taking the stairs two at a time, bursting into my room, maids bowing and making hurried excuses as they dropped the dust sheets from their hands, fleeing from my snarls as I flung the white coverings away, pulling drawers from their runners until I found the second letter. Flinging my mother’s letter to me onto the unmade bed, untouched since she had slept in it. Reading it. Hearing Violet’s heartbeat as she slept next door, collapsed and stunned, not peacefully as she does now.

That letter changed everything. Even as I realized that Violet was no longer just a prize won and thrown away, but one to be treasured and revered – she wasn’t just another notch on the bedpost. That letter changed everything.

I took the second, hidden part of the letter with me to Romania, along with her last letter to Beryl. Drinking myself delirious. Drowning my sorrows. Selfishly hoping she would return my feelings but knowing it would be so much better for her if she didn’t.

Returning, desperate to see her before the ball but distracted and swept up by the politics as the news that sealed so many fates fell upon our ill-prepared ears.

They found her. The first girl. The Sagean Heroine.

Athenea closed their borders and refused to give news. But the ball went on. I’ll never forget her face, as my father sunk his fangs into her neck. Never.

The locket should have been farewell. I should have let her go, but I couldn’t. Not when Father announced her feelings for me.

I can’t let her go and I can’t break her heart.

After a while I realized I couldn’t sit there and listen to her sleeping. So I got up, crushed both letters into a ball in my pocket and walked away, leaving the questions of the others unanswered as they called after me.

FIFTY-SIX

Violet

The forest brims with life this night, he thought. Not that life is quite the right word.

Gone were the rogues and the slayers, driven away by Varnley’s guards in anticipation of Ad Infinitum. Forgotten by the council too, for a few days at least, was Michael Lee’s plan to rescue his daughter. To replace it had arrived lore and legend: the Prophecy.

He sighed. Leading a double life had left him weary. It was a relief simply to walk in the forest as his true self, and not the cloaked figure the forest had learned to fear.

The persona he had taken on in his younger years was gone. He’d taken to this life to become as much of a rogue as he could – a rebellion, perhaps, against authority – but it had backfired and the ultimate irony was he had become exactly what he had been trying to escape: a man, not a boy, ready to shoulder that authority.

A rabbit scampered by his feet, but he ignored it, not thirsty after drinking from the doe earlier.

He vowed, silently to himself, that the days where he would prowl the catacombs and the marshes would be only memories now. He had exacted enough revenge on the slayers and hunters of the forest.

His mind reeled. He was sure it wouldn’t be long now before Michael Lee came for his daughter. It had been months and he was a man of strategy – this was the perfect opportunity to attack, whilst the Kingdom’s back was turned to face the Heroines. Violet Lee would not be forgotten, as she had forgotten them.

Home was the best place for her.

But she would never move on; never let go. How could she? A whole world-within-a-world, so near to her grasp: one she almost joined.

But Varnley will be a worse place for her.

The old part of the forest gradually became new as the cloaked figure – no longer cloaked – began to slow as he approached the clearing. And knowing she would hear him, he spoke in his mind, his voice more than familiar to her.

Forgive me, Girly, please.

Forgive me, Girly, please.

I sat bolt upright. The air left my lungs in one breath, suddenly leaving my chest painfully empty. My eyes flew open and reluctantly the light flooded in, revealing the scene before me.

Kaspar. It’s Kaspar.

Ten pairs of concerned eyes drank me in and I immediately became aware of one set: emerald and belonging to a figure strolling back into the circle.

He can’t be. How can he be?

Kaspar, uncloaked, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his black jacket, the collar still upturned, slipped past the fire, almost unnoticed by everyone but me. Their attention had returned to their work as they doused the fire and gathered empty beer cans … everyone’s attention but one: Autumn’s gaze still burnt into my back.

Kaspar cannot be the cloaked figure. It just isn’t possible.

My mind reeled. But my heart tugged. I knew the voice that had rung in my head just seconds before. It had called me ‘Girly’.

Nobody else calls me that.

But the rational side of me spoke the loudest. I believed in my eyes and my eyes had seen Kaspar and a cloaked rogue in the very same room just before we set off for London, a couple of weeks before. It didn’t make sense.

My eyes bore into him as he rounded the remains of the fire. I scrabbled up.

‘Don’t stare, Girly, it’s not very polite.’

I knew my gaze was one of an accuser, but I hoped I would see confusion in his face, or at least some sort of recognition at my anger; even the pleading eyes of a man who had just begged for my forgiveness. But there was nothing. His smirk faded and he shrugged his shoulders, setting off after Alex and Charlie who were already carving a path away from the brook.

I watched him go, the outline of a figure swathed in a black cloak pursuing him towards the hill. In the figure’s arms was the limp form of a half-naked girl, neck pierced and dripping blood.

Faintly, I saw a golden blur pass and I shook the image away, my eyes focusing to see Autumn Rose, flinging a cloak about her shoulders and hurrying to catch the others. Taking a deep breath I pushed the dead girl’s name from my mind and followed.

Please God, don’t let it be Kaspar.

* * *

With one last painful step I broke from the trees into the clearing that was Varns’ Point, which continued to grow to a shallow mound of earth topped with an enormous boulder. The ground was covered in heath and was damp with an early morning frost. It crunched beneath my feet, gradually retreating from the light as the sun rose. That light slid along the boulder, twice as high as it was wide, casting a long shadow. Grooves were chiselled along its side – just large enough to be hand or footholds.