Page 41 of Tempted By the Vampire Prince

I did not move from the window for a long time. When I finally did, I headed to my balcony to sit and wait for Severin’s return. I found my astronomy journal on the side table where I had left it, open to a blank page.

I sat and picked up the pen.

I had written Emmaline elegies in these margins for eight years. Small, private words, never meant to be read. It was the only way I had ever known how to hold grief that had nowhere else to go.

I wrote one line and read it back.

It wasn’t about the stars. The sea. Or Emmaline.

Stay. Or Leave. I am lost either way.

Chapter 15

Déchirée

CORA

Asnake had wrapped itself around my ribs and was squeezing, squeezing so hard that I couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t do anything but claw at its scaly body. Searching for a way to free myself from it, I found a seam that ran the length of the snake’s belly.

I knew if I could tear it open, I could breathe again.

I hooked my fingers beneath the seam and pulled.

The snake squeezed tighter. I pulled harder, and harder, until the snake disappeared and there was nothing. Just blackness. Cold, wet, utter blackness.

I opened my eyes with a gasp. Cold mud squished between my toes. Wet grass tickled my ankles. Where had the snake gone? I searched the grass, but I couldn’t find it. There was just the pond, flat and black as a scrying mirror. The lily pads perfectly still. I was outside, at the water’s edge, with no memory of leaving my bed.

But my fingers were throbbing.

I lifted my hands toward the moonlight and found two of my nails had been torn past the quick, leaving dark smears of blood across my fingers. “How…?” The question fell apart in my mouth when I felt a buzzing sensation against my feet.

Sitting on the ground before me was a heap of dark fabric.

My bodice.

I reached down to pick it up with shaking hands. There must be some explanation for why I was out here with it. And an even better one for why my fingernails were broken. I must have gone to check on the relics, half asleep. Perhaps I decided I needed fresh air, and I tripped over a loose stone. That was all, I reassured myself.

But a nagging suspicion told me I was wrong. Very wrong. Examining the pocket where the relics were more closely, I noticed the stitches had been stretched. When I ran my finger along the magickally sealed seam, it came away bloody.

The breath stuttered out of me. “No, I couldn’t have…”

But I knew I had.

There had never been a snake. There had only been me, trying to rip three demonic relics free with my bare hands.

Disgust and shock and guilt welled inside me, and I couldn’t decide whether I should burn the bodice with the relics inside or put it back on.

“What is happening?” I whispered.

I willed myself to return to the cottage, knowing I needed to clean my hands and put salve on the wounds. One reluctant step, then another. It was only when I reached the door that I realized Della hadn’t stirred.

My familiar woke if I so much as turned over wrong. She’d bitten my ear for lesser offenses than leaving a room without her in a strange place. And she had slept while I rose, crept through the sitting room, found the thing she’d hidden from me, and walked outside.

Whatever had moved my feet had known to step quietly.

There could be only one responsible for this: Dominique, the Demon of Dominion—the one who’d wanted me to summon her.

I didn’t dare say her name aloud, fearful of what might happen.