CHAPTER 3

ELENA'S POV

Two blocks. That was how far I got before I had to stop.

Not because of the vampires. I pressed myself into a doorway and let the rain come down on me and tried to breathe.

The severance envelope was soaking through in my bag.

One month's pay. Two years of my life reduced to an envelope going soft in the rain.

I'm done begging.

I had thought that in the council chamber and it had felt true. Standing in a doorway in the rain with my hand pressed over my stomach and nowhere to go, it still felt true. He had felt something when I said I was pregnant. I had seen it in his face for three seconds before he looked away.

He had looked away anyway.

I told myself that was the last time I was going to think about it tonight.

Then I heard them.

Not behind me. To my left. Three figures stepped out of the alley mouth, and something in my chest went tight before I fully understood why. The street was dark. The rain was loud. There was no reason to know they were dangerous.

But I knew.

The awareness arrived before the sight, sharp and certain, bypassing thought entirely, the way you pulled your hand from a flame before you consciously registered heat. I could smell something. Iron and cold and something older underneath, the way ancient buildings smelled different from new ones.

I had never been able to smell things like that before.

Their eyes caught the light from the street. Red, like fresh blood.

I ran.

My lungs burned before the first block was done.

Two months pregnant, underfed, exhausted from two years of not enough sleep in a too-small room. My stomach tightened with every stride, not a contraction, just my body registering what I was asking of it and lodging a formal complaint.

I kept running anyway.

Behind me, laughter.

"Run, little Nightshade."

I turned a corner and nearly went down on the wet pavement. Caught myself on a lamp post. The street was empty. Past two in the morning, even New York had given up on this block.

I ducked into an alley and pressed against the wall and tried to breathe quietly.

Silence.

Maybe—

A hand closed around my throat.

The sound I made died before it became a scream.

The vampire holding me was a woman with short red hair and eyes the color of fresh blood, and she held me against the wall with the effortless ease of something that had done this before and found it unremarkable.

The other two came out of the dark. One thin, one broad. Moving slowly. In no hurry.

One drifted behind me. One watched the rooftop line above. The woman held me and smiled.

Predators didn't rush when there was nowhere for the prey to go.

"Did you really think you could outrun us?" Her fangs caught the dim light.

"Please," I choked. "I don't have anything. Let me go."

"You have exactly what we came for." She inhaled slowly, her eyes half-closing. "Something old. Something is waking up." Her hand moved toward my stomach and terror went through me so completely it bypassed thought.

"Don't touch her," I gasped.

"Her?" A slow smile. "Already attached." She glanced at the thin one. "Council gold spends well."

"We're scouts," he said, bored. "The real hunters are already moving. Her awakened blood burns like a beacon. Anyone with the ability to sense it started moving the moment Konstantin named her."

The woman raised her free hand, nails lengthening.

I closed my eyes and pressed my palm flat against my stomach.

I'm sorry—

"Enough."

A single word from the alley's entrance. No volume. Just weight.

The woman spun, pulling me with her. The other two dropped into fighting stances.

A figure stood in the rain. Tall, cloaked, face in shadow. Nothing about her posture suggested urgency.

"Release her," the figure said.

"Three against one," the thin one said. "Walk away."

"One opportunity," the figure said. "That's all."

The woman looked at the other two. "Kill her."

They moved.

The figure moved once, a single unhurried motion, and the thin vampire was simply no longer in the fight. A sound I didn't want to identify. Then ash.

The broad one skidded to a stop, eyes wide.

The figure threw a dagger. Silver, catching the streetlight. It buried itself in the broad one's chest and he stumbled backward, fingers scrabbling at the hilt, skin smoking where the silver touched.

She crossed to him and drove it through to his heart. He came apart.

The female vampire holding me was shaking now. Her grip had loosened enough that I could breathe.

The figure pulled back her hood.

Pale. Sharp-featured. Silver-white hair. Eyes that glowed gold in the dark.

But I could see the careful way she held her left arm. Something had cost her in that fight even if it had lasted ten seconds.

"I am Seraphine, a nightshade guard," she said. "Let her go."

"The Nightshade guards are dead," the woman said. The certainty had gone out of her voice. "They all—"

"Almost all," Seraphine said.

She moved. The vampire released me to defend herself. I dropped, hit the ground hard, scrambled sideways. The fight above me lasted four seconds.

The woman drove a claw across Seraphine's ribs before the end of it, a hit that landed, that made Seraphine exhale sharply, and then Seraphine finished it.

Silence.

I sat on the wet pavement with my back against the wall. My hands were shaking. My scraped palm had been bleeding from when I caught myself on the lamp post, and somewhere between the running and the alley floor I had stopped noticing it. Now I looked down at it.

The bleeding had slowed.

More than it should have for this fast.

I stared at it.

"More are coming," Seraphine said from the alley mouth. She was looking out into the street and compensating carefully for her ribs. "We need to move."

"Stay away from me," I said.

She stopped. Turned. Raised both hands.

"How did they find me so fast?" I said. "I only left the tower twenty minutes ago."

"Your blood," she said. "Konstantin naming you in that chamber woke something up. An awakening broadcasts. Anything capable of sensing it within a certain radius has already started moving." She held my gaze. "By morning that radius will be much larger."

"And you felt it too," I said.

"I've been outside Aion Tower for three weeks. Waiting to feel exactly that." A pause. "I couldn't come inside. Aion wards his building against supernatural intrusion. I had to wait until you were in the open air."

I looked at her. At the gold eyes. At the careful way she held herself against the pain in her ribs.

"I'm not going anywhere I can't leave," I said.

"Fair," she said.

I made it two blocks before my body presented its bill.

Dizziness hit without warning, the sudden tilting kind that had nothing to do with fear, and I put my hand on a wall and bent forward and breathed through it while my stomach turned over once and settled.

Seraphine stopped beside me without comment.

"The pregnancy," I said. Not a question.

"Your body has limits," she said. "It's been past them for an hour."

I straightened. Started moving again. She matched my pace without being asked.

The safe house was a brownstone tucked between two buildings that leaned toward it like they'd forgotten how to stand alone.

Inside smelled like old paper and something metallic underneath, the smell of things kept in a space for a very long time. Bookshelves covered every wall, packed so densely the shelves bowed. Maps with handwritten notations. Weapons mounted beside the door, silver-edged blades and things I didn't have names for.

On the mantelpiece, a stone crest. Old. Two intertwined lines ending in something between flames and wings, and I couldn't explain why looking at it made something in my chest ache.

I looked away before I could think about it too much.

Seraphine locked four bolts and pressed her palm to the doorframe. Symbols flared briefly in the wood and went dark.

She sat down at the kitchen table and pressed her hand carefully against her left side, jaw tight.

"You're hurt," I said.

"Manageable."

"She caught you in the ribs."

"I said it was manageable." She looked at me. "I'm not accustomed to having someone inventory my injuries."

"Get accustomed," I said.

I found a dish towel in the counter drawer and brought it to her. She looked at it. Then at me. She took it with a quiet nod.

I filled a glass of water and set it in front of her. She was struggling slightly with the buckle of her tactical belt one-handed, the ribs making the angle wrong, and I reached over and undid it for her without asking.

She went still for a moment.

Then she said, "Thank you," in the voice of someone who hadn't said those two words to anyone in a long time and was relearning the shape of them.

I sat down across from her.

"You knew I was pregnant," I said. "Before I told you."

"Two heartbeats," she said. "The child is driving your awakening faster than it would have gone alone. The pregnancy and the blood are accelerating each other."

“What are you talking about? What awakening?” I asked curiously

Silence.

"The hunters mentioned a buyer," I said. "Who?"

"Multiple possibilities," she said. "Council factions who want you controlled. People outside the council with reasons to want leverage against Lucian Aion. And others who simply want what your blood represents." She looked at the glass in her hands.

"The scouts tonight were low-level. Hired help. The people who hired them are another matter."

"And Nightshade," I said. "What is it?"

She set down the glass.

"Tonight," she said, "you know that you are not entirely human. That something old runs in your blood. That people with resources are already moving because of it." She looked at me directly.

"That is enough for tonight. The rest tomorrow, with your questions in order, when both of us have slept."

"I want the full version tomorrow," I said. "Not the version you decide I can handle."

"What I can tell you," she said. "In full. Tomorrow."

I looked at her.

At the worn quality underneath the certainty. At the stone crest on the mantelpiece that made my chest ache for reasons I couldn't name. At the room full of hundreds of years of whatever she'd been doing while she waited for something she'd spent centuries looking for.

"Fine," I said.

She nodded. "First door on the right."

I pushed back from the table and my legs reminded me of everything they'd done tonight. I went upstairs anyway.

Halfway up, my phone buzzed.

The cheap prepaid I'd kept hidden in my coat lining for two years. Unknown number.

“I know what you are. I know what you're carrying. Lucian made a mistake rejecting you. But I won't. Meet me tomorrow at midnight. Central Park, Bethesda Fountain. Come alone, or your secret dies with you.”

I stared at it.

Viviana.

I didn't know how she had this number. I didn't know what she wanted. I didn't know whether walking into Central Park at midnight was walking into a trap or walking toward information I needed.

The phone buzzed again before I could put it away.

Different numbers. Unknown. Four words.

‘Don't trust the messenger.’

The screen went dark.

I stood on the stairs with two messages that contradicted each other and a woman downstairs who was only telling me half of what she knew and a baby whose heartbeat I could feel against my palm.

I was going to meet Viviana.

I had decided that before I read the second message.

The second message just meant I was going to walk in with my eyes open instead of my hope.

I put the phone away.

For the first time since leaving Aion Tower, I wasn't running anymore.

Tomorrow I will choose where to go.