The Storm Tide

The first lie in Victor's 900 years of existence fell into the icy air of the laboratory, struck the granite walls, and echoed back like a heretic's sentence.

He looked deep into her pale gray eyes, his hand in the pocket of his brocade robe clenched so tight his nails pierced the flesh and red blood seeped out, soaking his palm. He waited. He waited for suspicion, for fury, or for a silver blade drawn from her belt. He had braced himself to have this cruel lie ripped open by her.

But Vanya didn't call him out.

She stood straight in front of the vampire slumped on the floor. Her pale gray eyes—the flat color of a winter sky before a storm—only blinked once, gently. Through the thread of the Blood Bond, weakening and dissolving by the hour, she had read the whole truth. She knew he was lying. She knew her body, carrying antibodies from 18 years ago, could survive the breaking of the pact just fine.

And she could also read the reason behind that selfish lie: he was afraid. This arrogant 900-year-old vampire was trembling with fear that she would slice her wrist, turn her back and walk away forever, and throw herself into a fight to the death alone.

Vanya's lip didn't curl in exposure. She slowly raised her warm mortal hand and gently touched his stiff, short black hair, accepting the lie with her own hands like a silent, unspoken pact.

"All right," she said softly, her voice flat but carrying the steel of someone who had already chosen her path. "Then I won't cut it."

She turned and walked out of the laboratory, leaving Victor sitting there dazed in the cold fluorescent light.

She didn't go back to her room. She went up to the top of the east tower instead and stood in the cold with her hands on the stone parapet, looking out over the dark valley.

He had lied to her. She had felt it go through the thread like a crack running through ice, faint and unmistakable. And she had felt the reason come right behind it, so raw and so frightened that for a moment she had not been able to breathe.

She could cut the bond tomorrow and walk away. She knew that now. She stood on the tower until her fingers went numb, and she did not make any plans to do it.

Two days later, the sky over the Blackwood valley came crashing down...

The sky over the mountain peaks of the Blackwood valley that night was as black as a pool of thick ink. The air was freezing, clawing at the skin with blizzard winds that surged and roared through the ancient stone towers. Blackwood Castle — the fortress that had stood firm for nine centuries — now sank into a stillness on the edge of collapse.

Tonight, Dumont would strike. Victor and Vanya both understood the rule of this war: Seraphine Dumont would never wait patiently for the Council of Five Houses to call its next session. The coffins of 12 families had already been prepared, and whoever struck first would be the one who survived.

Emergency defensive lines were set up all through the castle. The magical fog that usually wrapped the valley was pulled in tighter, condensing into barriers strewn with silver shards and violet phosphorus poison at every entrance pass. Victor's vampire retainers patrolled the narrow stone walkways in silence, their carefully honed weapons ready in their hands.

Right before the alarm bell rang, the roar of an engine tore through the night. An armored off-road vehicle with no lights charged straight through the gorge and slammed to a stop right in front of the castle's massive iron gate.

The one who climbed out of the driver's seat was Jonah.

The young man wore a quilted jacket caked with melting snow, his face pale with exhaustion and stress. In his hand was a heavy metal suitcase covered in black leather.

Vanya stood on the highest step of the watchtower, gripping her silver-round rifle, her cold gray eyes shining down on the closest thing she had to a little brother at Aegis.

The gate guards pulled back at Victor's signal. Jonah ran up the winding stone stairs, his breath coming out in white puffs. He stood facing Vanya under the stone vault, panting, and set the suitcase down on the jagged floor.

"I had to get here before Seraphine flattened this place," Jonah said, his voice hoarse. He unlocked the suitcase and flipped the lid open. Inside there were no weapons, only original archive files and a stack of brand-new identity papers.

Jonah looked deep into Vanya's eyes and spoke urgently:

"Two months ago, I deleted every medical record, every biological log, and your name from Aegis's master database. All the information on Specimen No. 47 has been overwritten as a death in the lab. You don't exist on their system anymore, Vanya.

"Here's a passport, a new identity, and a beneficiary bank account in Switzerland. As soon as this fight is over... you can walk away. You're not an Aegis assassin anymore, and you're not Volkov's pawn either."

Vanya looked down at the stack of papers bearing a stranger's name. A clean identity, a free life with no blood on it and no one controlling her. But instead of relief, an icy ripple rose in her chest. She raised her head and looked toward Victor's long, dark silhouette standing by the stained-glass window, where he was silently watching the whole valley.

"Thank you, Jonah," Vanya said softly, closing the suitcase. "But tonight, none of us is sure we'll make it out of here alive."

Jonah followed her eyes to the tall, dark figure at the window across the landing, and went a shade paler than the snow.

"So you're the guy," Jonah said faintly.

"I'm the guy," Victor said, without turning around.

Jonah looked at him for a long moment, then at Vanya, then back. "Okay. Just so you know, if you hurt her, I'll ruin your credit score so badly your great-great-grandchildren will feel it."

Something moved at the corner of Victor's mouth. "I don't have any great-great-grandchildren."

"Then I'll invent some," Jonah said, "and ruin theirs."

The shadow of death hung over Victor's private bedroom at the top of the tower. The air was thick with despair, urgency, and bitterness. They both knew the line between life and death tonight was as thin as a hair.

They came together with no romance and no soft whispers. It was a gale of two survival instincts, tormented and ruthless, each longing to burn the other up before the hour of execution. Victor's broad, ice-cold shoulders pressed Vanya down into the dark gray sheets and swept them both into a wild frenzy.

The collision was urgent and fierce. Victor's hands gripped her hips, leaving deep red marks on her pale skin. She didn't pull back, didn't tremble. Vanya clung to the hard shoulders of the 900-year-old vampire, her nails digging deep into his thick skin, holding him tight as if she wanted to fuse two fates into one. The pain of touch rose from her callused nerve endings like thousands of needle pricks, but tonight she welcomed that pain as the only proof that she was still alive, still here, with him.

Ragged breathing mixed with the rough clash of metal. The frenzied heartbeats of two beings — a mortal carrying poisoned blood and a vampire — pounded against each other in the dim, slanting light of a candle about to burn out.

At the most desperate peak, when Victor pressed his face against her neck, his chest twisting with a burning hunger, Vanya raised a trembling hand and cupped the back of his neck. She brought her lips close to his ear and whispered, her voice breaking:

"Say it... Victor. Just once."

She wanted to hear him say one true word. One real admission of feeling from the mouth of the vampire who had ruled through manipulation and lies for 900 years.

Victor froze. His blazing red eyes went wide, full of torment, bitterness, and helplessness. He opened his mouth, and his lips trembled... but not a single sound could make it out of his throat.

The magical thread of the Blood Bond between them had weakened to its very limit and no longer had enough magic to force the truth out of him. And Victor's cruelest tragedy was laid bare in that moment: after 900 years of getting everything by bending the wills of others and lying to their minds, he had forgotten how to use his own free will to speak one true word. He wanted to tell her he loved her, that he would rather die than lose her... but his vampire vocal cords were mute, suffocated by a thousand years of the habit of pretending.

Vanya looked straight into his blazing red eyes, so tormented they seemed ready to weep blood. She understood. A bitter smile crossed the corner of her mouth. She held his neck tight and buried her face in his cold chest as the storm tide broke.

BOOM!