Page 142
Still failing to move.
Something had rooted the Ashen Blade to the stone beneath their feet, and Lucan had the wretched feeling that he was the one who bound her there.
Lucan’s pulse quickened despite every century spent mastering his body. The instinct to glance toward her clawed at him with almost painful insistence, but he strangled it before it could betray them both. One careless flicker of his eyes was all Vaelor would require.
So, he smiled.
Inside, every nerve screamed.
Then—
Moonlight shone brightly in the ruined alcove.
Elarian erupted from the shadows with all the terrible grace of a falling star. For one glorious heartbeat, Lucan believed she had recovered.
Black silk whispered through the air. Silver hair streamed behind her like a banner of moonlight. The poisoned dagger traced a perfect line toward Vaelor’s heart, every movement so precise, it bordered upon divinity.
She looked at him.
Barely the span of a single heartbeat, but long enough to search his face.
Long enough to remember that morning.
Long enough to wonder whether she truly deserved the trust he had placed in her.
It was the smallest hesitation Lucan had ever witnessed. Another vampire would never have seen it—would have blissfully continued talking, unaware that a mere step behind them, an assassin stood with their dagger raised, fighting the hardest battle of their life inside their mind.
Yet, Lord Vaelor Thane had survived six centuries in Aurelion’s court; and if there was one thing the vampire dressed in white understood, it was hesitation.
Vaelor moved before the blade reached him.
There was no panic. No cry of alarm. Only the impossible calmness of someone who had spent centuries surviving assassins far deadlier than ordinary soldiers. Vaelor’s body turned with infuriating grace, silk sweeping through the ruined sanctuary as the poisoned dagger scraped harmlessly across the embroidered sleeve of his white coat.
Lucan’s heart sank to his feet as Vaelor’s hand closed around Elarian’s wrist with startling force. He stilled her movement in an instant, holding her there as if he’d just caught a child trying to run from punishment.
“Well,” he murmured, almost pleasantly. “Here you are at last.”
Elarian twisted in his grasp, easily switching the blade to her free hand. Her elbow slammed toward Vaelor’s throat while the dagger reversed in her hand, seeking the vulnerable hollow beneath his jaw. He easily caught her wrist again, squeezing until the blade fell from her hand and skittered over the marble floor.
“The Ashen Blade herself,” Vaelor observed quietly, his crimson eyes drinking in every line of her face. “How fascinating.”
His fingers tightened. Bone protested beneath his grip as a sharp cry of pain slipped from her lips. Elarian’s expression never changed, but Lucan watched her shoulder tense as she prepared to sacrifice the joint rather than remain captured. She would happily dislocate her own arm if it bought her another opportunity to strike.
She never received it.
Vaelor’s free hand blurred.
A narrow blade, scarcely longer than a man’s palm, flashed from somewhere inside his sleeve and kissed her ribs.
Steel entering flesh was never the wet, theatrical thing poets imagined. It was quieter than that. A soft resistance giving way. Silk tearing. A breath stolen before it could become a scream. The scent of copper before the bloom of red.
Elarian jerked. Scarlet blossomed through the black silk gathered beneath her ribs, spreading in slow, dreadful petals.
Lucan forgot to breathe.
For one impossible heartbeat, he was no longer the Blooded Prince. No longer Aurelion’s dutiful son. No longer the monster who had survived five centuries by calculating exactly how much another life was worth.
He saw only blood.
