Page 68 of Red Masquerade

He was gone.

Off to war.

Lucas gripped my arm, pulling me from the booth. I stumbled to my feet, but he didn’t care.

“Sir—” Themaitre d’stood in the doorway. He must have seen Adam leave.

“Shut those doors,” Lucas demanded.

The man’s eyes widened when he saw the state I was in, but he nodded once, and shut the doors behind him as he exited.

Lucas pushed me further into the room. “You’re lucky there’s a rear entrance,” he seethed. There was a door against the back wall of this dining room, and suddenly he was pulling me down a dark hall, servers glancing at us nervously, an opening to a bright kitchen with clattering sounds, and then I was outside, and a car was waiting, idling a few steps away. Lucas shoved me in, then shouted something at the driver.

I felt his glare like a dagger, like the gun against my head, lethal and on the cusp of the point of no return. My heart had yet to calm, my fingers numb, every touch like electricity running through my limbs.

He said nothing else, but he showed me just how displeased he was when we returned home.

He told Mother nothing, sequestered me upstairs, and after he struck me enough to satisfy his anger, I was locked in my room for three days.

I ate nothing. Sleep evaded me. And when the door was unlocked, Adam was fighting a war he didn’t care for, all because I was foolish enough to think I could have something for myself.

I never saw him again.

Four months later, Adam Vering’s name was listed in the paper’s obituary, with only the date of his death, nothing else.

Nothing else for the poor printer’s apprentice sent off to war.

Twenty-Three

Ilay in bed, my duvet pulled up to my chin.

My tears had long run out, my throat aching with the passion of my hatred for Lucas. For my family. For my situation.

It was decided, then. My mother, my brother—they had made the decision. And I was to comply.

I could not sleep, could not rest, knowing what was in store for me. Knowing what I would soon have to do. Let a manhaveme. Rule me. Let a man that I knew nothing about claim ownership over me, force me to have his children,stifleme, if Lucas’s treatment of Lucille was any indication.

I loathed him. I loathed this world I was in.

I wanted to burn it. I wanted the Rapture to come down upon us and take us all away so that I did not have to endure this any longer. But perhaps oblivion was too sweet a gift for my brother. No, he deserved hellfire.

I felt an inkling of shame at thinking those words. At wishing such destruction upon my blood. But I knew that he would not care so much for me, or feel shame at wishing for my own demise. Rather, he was activelydoingit andrelishingin it.

What had I done in childhood to push him away from me? What could I have done to keep our friendship? To prevent him from turning into amonster?

A sharp, singular tap came from the glass panes of my window. I lay still, thinking my movement against the sheets of my bed would be too loud and muffle the sound should it come again.

And it did.

My eyes darted to the glass.

Another tap, though this time I thought that I had seen something moving in the darkness, something hitting my window and falling toward the ground.

I threw the sheets off of me. My room was on the second floor; I could think only of a mistaken bird perhaps trying to get in. A bat, maybe.

But as I looked down into the garden below, a familiar face grinned up at me, skin shining pallid in the moonlight. I gasped and threw open the window.

“Adam?”