Like the room, she was covered in blood.
“I opened his door,” Marsilia said. “And then he killed everyone but me.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, and then saw the figure crouched at her feet, dirty hands wound around the bottom of her dress. He did not look like anything so much as an animated skeleton.
Seeing me, he came to alertness with a hiss and flash of blue eyes—the only part of Wulfe that was recognizable at all. I stopped and waited for him to decide what to do about me.
The bloody remains were Marsilia’s escorts. I recognized the shape of one man’s shoe. They had been vampires and alert—and it had done them no good at all.
“Are you sure it’s—” I asked, not because I doubted, but because I didn’t want to believe.
“Yes,” my lady said.
Wulfe, our clever and flighty friend, had been down here for centuries in Bonarata’s loving care, and we had not known it. A chance remark in the bitter fight Marsilia had with Bonarata over the werewolf bitch he’d taken to his bed had sent me hunting. After a dozen false starts, I’d followed some drudge from the kitchens to this secret space.
When this place had belonged to Wulfe, he’d kept his treasures in these rooms—musical instruments, tapestries, a poorly woven basket a child had given to him in exchange for his healing of her mother. Wulfe had been as likely to hoard dried flowers as exquisite jewelry.
I’d gotten only close enough to these rooms to sense him. It had been Marsilia who brought me over, after Wulfe disappeared, but my ties to him were still strong enough for me to feel him when I got close enough.
I was not such a fool as to think I could break him out and escape with him on my own. I’d gone to my lady.
For Wulfe’s sake, she’d confronted our dangerous lord, because we both knew that it had to be him banishing us. If it was our idea to leave, he would hunt us to the ends of the earth.
At the sound of my voice, the thing that used to be Wulfe scuttled across the floor on all fours, but no less agile for that. As he approached, the smell of him was indescribably bad. I tried not to look at the most awful parts of his mutilated body. Bodies could be healed with enough time and food. It was his mind, quick and unconventional, that would be harder to restore.
He fastened his fangs in my calf, but only took a taste. He sat at my feet, considering—then scuttled back to Marsilia.
“I expected to find you here,” said a familiar voice behind me.
Wulfe disappeared behind Marsilia’s skirts with a sound of panic.
Cursing silently because I’d let myself be distracted, I turned and raised my sword in the same movement.
Iacopo Bonarata gave my blade an amused look. “You’ll want these,” he said with a charming smile and feral eyes. In a careless movement, he tossed my abandoned bags at my feet.
He looked at Marsilia and, for an instant, all expression fell away from his face, and he did not look charming at all. “So it was never the wolf. Or rather it was a different Wulfe.” His mask reappeared. “My beautiful, deadly flower, my Bright Dagger, you dare more than I can allow. I will die of sorrow and boredom without you, but it must be done. There are servants above with a carriage that will take you to an estate in France where you will stay.” He glanced at Wulfe and then me before turning his face back to Marsilia. “Do not make yourself a threat to me.”
“It was the wolf,” she said, and unlike Bonarata’s, her sorrow was real. “Both of the wolves. All of the self-indulgences and the petty cruelties. But it was when I found out about this, about what you had done to him, then I knew that the man I loved was no longer inside your skin. Iacopo Bonarata, prince of my heart, would never be capable of this.”
I thought she was wrong. Bonarata had been a charming, ruthless, self-involved bastard from the first time I’d met him, and becoming a vampire had not improved matters.
Bonarata’s face did not change.
“You can take that,” he said with a nod toward Wulfe. “And”—he produced a wadded-up mass of embroidered cloth of gold—“you can keep this, too.” He looked down at what was left of the angelic, gifted scholar Wulfe had been. “It seemed to be particularly attached. I left it in the cell for the first year or two.” He smiled. “A kindness.”
Here, I thought, look at him, Marsilia. Here is the real Bonarata.
He dropped what he held on top of my bags, and I saw it was the girdle he’d given Marsilia, his mistress, when we all had been human. I think he’d been a monster even then.
Marsilia said, “You tell me this was vengeance? For something he never did, centuries ago? I gave him the girdle.”
“I did this for you, my Bright Blade,” Bonarata said. “A gift of memory. When you betray me, remember it will never be you who suffers.” He turned to leave.
“You didn’t do this for vengeance,” I told him. “Not just for vengeance.”
He froze and turned to me, an incredulous look on his face, as if one of his horses had decided to speak. It was my habit to let him think the less of me, to treat me as her servant—which I was. And if he forgot I was dangerous, that was a good thing. But I wasn’t going to let her live believing what had been done to Wulfe was her fault.
“You were afraid of him,” I said, meeting his eyes.
We stared at each other in that filthy dungeon. But it was Bonarata who turned and walked away.
This time when I woke up, the sky was starting to lighten, and Adam was showering. I got out of bed, went to the closet, and opened the safe where I’d put the belt—the girdle—Wulfe had left on the bed.
I hadn’t really needed to check, because I’d known even while I was dreaming Stefan’s memories that the belt Wulfe had worn when Stefan met him for the first time, the belt Bonarata had tossed on top of Stefan’s bags, and the belt hanging in my safe were all the same one.
“Morning,” Adam called. “I’ll make breakfast.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
I showered, thinking about Wulfe, about gifts that were not gifts at all. About vengeance and sacrifices.
I dressed in my usual work clothes—jeans and a T-shirt. Braided my hair and stared at the thin white scar on my cheek that I’d gotten the last time I’d gone up against a god. I came down the stairs in time to spot Tad and Jesse headed out the door.
“This is early for you,” I said. On Thursdays their classes didn’t usually start until eleven.
“Study group meeting at seven thirty,” Jesse said, rolling her eyes.
I couldn’t tell if she was rolling her eyes at the hour, the study group, or Tad opening the door for her. It could have been any or all of them.
“Good luck,” I said.
Jesse stopped and looked at me. “Don’t die,” she told me. “Don’t let him die.” She poked a finger toward the kitchen.
“Don’t die,” I returned. “Don’t let him die.” I poked a finger toward Tad, who laughed.
Jesse contemplated him, sighed, and said, “Sometimes sacrifices need to be made.” Then she stomped out the door.
“Is the sacrifice that you keep me from dying?” I could hear Tad ask her on the other side of the door in a cheerful voice. “Or am I the sacrifice to be made for others’ safety?”
“Get in the car, Tad,” she said. “I hope you and Izzy make up soon. I don’t know if I can stand being around just you for long.”
The car doors shut and Jesse’s car drove off.
Sometimes sacrifices need to be made.
“Hey, you,” I said to Adam as I entered the kitchen.