Page 55 of Claimed
Maybe we should—
Summon her.
Valentin’s eyes snap open one microsecond before power slams outward from him so violently the lamps gutter and the fire bends sideways. Every vampire in the room recoils. Malachi drops to one knee. A bloody tear appears on Bastien’s jacket one second before he gasps and clutches at open flesh.
I may not have heard this particular Twelve speak yet but I sense he was the most vocal.
Do. Not. Test. Me.
The savage threat rips through the air and my skull at once.
His body remains motionless beneath me, but the force of him is everywhere, savage and sovereign and terrifying.
I press both hands to his face. ‘Valentin.’ His blood-soaked gaze drags to mine. ‘Enough,’ I whisper. ‘You’re terrorising your own blood. Who mean you well.’
His eyes burn. ‘They should be terrorised.’
‘Yes, congratulations, you remain terrifying. Very impressive. Now stop trying to murder everyone with your indoor voice.’
For one long, dreadful second, I think he will not hear me. Then the pressure eases. The fire steadies and the Twelve breathe again.
Valentin’s hand lifts with visible effort and closes around my wrist to anchor me. And his voice, when it comes, is rough and ancient and threaded through with impossible command.
Valentin!
Do not fret, he says, eyes fixed on mine as darkness drags him under again. I yet endure.
Then Valentin Moretti falls into the deepest sleep I have ever seen.
And every vampire in the room looks at me like I’m either the miracle keeping him alive or the weapon that will finally kill him.
9
VALENTIN
The fall begins without mercy.
One moment Eira’s hands are on my face, her voice cutting through the violence inside me with impossible steadiness. The next, the Tower is gone, the bed is gone, the scent of her skin is ripped from my lungs, and I am dragged downward through a dark so old it has teeth.
I try to open my eyes but I have none.
My hands… feet… chest are lighter than air… because they do not exist.
There is shadow and obsidian descent. Pressure. The sensation of a body being remembered by something that hates me and has waited centuries for the opportunity to mispronounce my name in blood.
Then the dark breaks.
Netheris receives me with fireless cold.
The underworld is no pit of mortal sermons, no crude theatre of pitchforks and shrieking souls. It is older, vaster, and infinitely more patient. A dead kingdom beneath all kingdoms, built from black rivers, bone-white shores and citadels carved from the ribs of forgotten Gods. Its sky has no stars, only slow-moving wounds of red light that open and close above a landscape where ash falls upward and the wind carries the voices of everyone who ever begged death to bargain fairly.
The ground beneath me is glass made from cooled blood.
It remembers every step I take.
Far across the plain, towers rise in crooked silhouettes, their windows filled with candlelight that is almost certainly eyes.
Between them flows the River Veyr, black as opened veins, wide enough to swallow nations. Shapes move beneath its surface. Some are human. Some were human. Some were never granted the mercy of shape at all.
