Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
A rapid flutter of lashes, a kick to the pulse in her neck. “I’m sure I can locate one for you—I patronize many jewelers who save special stones for me. Unfortunately, I gifted mine to a lover who was most ungrateful for it.” Pinched lips before she smoothed them out into a soft smile. “Alas, I do not know what he did with it.”
That she’d called Marco a “lover” when he’d refused all her overtures said even more about her personality and ethics. “He must’ve been a dazzling being indeed,” Aodhan murmured, “to be worth such a stone. Anyone I know? Perhaps I can persuade him to release it to me.”
A flick of her hand. “Oh, he died in the war.”
“Our sympathies,” Illium said, flowing into the conversation. “We lost so many good people. And then there were the countless injured to the point of near death.” He casually mentioned several names. “Talking of which”—he turned to Aodhan—“I forgot to tell you Navarro is back in the city. Figured you wouldn’t want to be surprised.”
Seeing Vixen go motionless, Aodhan said, “A pity that we could not choose who lived and who died.” His ambiguous words paired with Illium’s familiar conversational tone had the desired effect.
Vixen took it for a sign of intimacy. “Navarro steals things from the vampires under Contract to him,” she shared in a hesitant tone, as if afraid of their reaction. “Can you imagine? He just appropriates their gifts. I find that repugnant.”
Aodhan tilted his head. “How do you know this?”
“My lover was, unfortunately, tied to him. Navarro not only took from him the tokens of my affection, but had the gall to wear the items in public.”
It was enough to solidify his certainty to stone, but Aodhan wanted her to admit it, wanted her to show the blood on her hands. Gripping her throat with one hand, he smiled.
Vixen’s pulse skittered, but not in fear.
That came when he lifted her off the floor with that same hand, his grip firm. “This is tiresome,” he said, using words and a tone that would penetrate her self-absorption. “Tell me to whom you gave the gem. I do not play games when I want something.”
Her legs kicked as he began to cut off her air.
“A vampire!” she rasped out. “I tell the truth! Just a vampire under Contract I was foolish enough to fall in love with. He died in the war. In a fire. Navarro may have the jewel!”
“The name of the vampire?”
“Marco Corvino.” Her fingernails dug at his hand in a futile gesture. “If you don’t find the diamond with Navarro, then perhaps Marco gave it to the whore with whom he thought to betray me.” A slow spread of red in her irises, fine blood vessels beginning to burst. “He asked her to marry him! He could’ve had me, and instead he asked her to marry him.”
There we go, Illium murmured. The trigger for Marco’s murder.
“That a vampire yet under Contract, scrawny and young, threw you aside,” Aodhan said, squeezing harder, “makes me believe we’ve made a mistake in thinking you suitable for Raphael’s court.” Raphael had no court, had never had a court as such. His Tower was filled only with people who played a useful role and had no time for petty intrigues. “You are weak, pathetic.”
“No, I’m strong!” Vixen coughed, her face bulging—and he thought it fitting that her outside now matched her inside.
“I can prove it.” An attempt at a shout that came out barely audible.
Aodhan released his grip the slightest amount, enough that she could speak.
“I showed Marco that he couldn’t betray me without consequences. I burned him alive,” she hissed. “But first, I made him watch as I cut the throat of his whore.” Her eyes glittered. “I am worthy of the Tower. Worthy of you.”
Aodhan’s fingers threatened to spasm to crushing tightness. The part of him that had once been Marco, hunted and abused, wanted to watch as she scrabbled at his hand, her feet kicking helplessly and her wings fluttering…but that would be a step into the abyss he’d fought so long to avoid.
So he smiled and put her feet back on the floor. “You are who we believed you to be,” he said, while she gasped and choked. “You will accompany us to the Tower.”
Her expression was dazzled.
28
Raphael felt nothing but a cold anger at the sniveling creature in front of him.
With her own confession to hang her—which she’d admitted to again in front of Raphael, this time driven by terror of an archangel’s violent power—there really wasn’t much more to it.
Vixen’s ending was a quick, brutal thing that came the next eve, held in a clearing deep in the Catskills with a somber group of witnesses: Illium and Aodhan, Navarro, Elena, Honor and Dmitri, and one steel-spined mortal. Tanika’s parents had declined to attend, but Giulia had turned up, her face stone.