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Chapter 71: The Painter's Archive

Mary Sampson
last update Veröffentlichungsdatum: 27.10.2026 22:10:27

It took Adrian two days to read the signature.

He did it with a jeweller's glass, at his desk, by the window, with the canvas's corner copied out on a sheet of paper as faithfully as his bad shoulder allowed. The brown ink had faded to the colour of weak tea. The first letter might have been a T. The second might have been an E. He sat there for most of an afternoon, turning the glass this way and that, until his eyes ached and the words finally came together in his head like a face in a crowd.
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  • The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat    Chapter 87: Rumors Reach Cassian

    Cassian had a weakness for the kitchens, and he'd never pretended otherwise.It wasn't the food, or not only. The kitchens were the one place in the castle where nobody stood up when he came in, or if they did, they did it with a spoon in one hand and flour to the elbow, and went on arguing with each other. He'd learned more down here, at ten years old, hiding under a table with a stolen pastry, than in any lesson his tutors ever gave him.Old habits. He was twenty-six, and he still came down at the hour when the cooks were busiest, and went in by the back passage so no one would make a fuss.This morning he was after figs. The candied ones, from the blue jar on the third shelf of the cold pantry. The Princess had liked them. She'd pretended she didn't, the way she pretended most things, and he'd decided, in a purely brotherly spirit, to make her admit it.The pantry door stood a hand's width open. He was reaching for the shelf when he heard the voices.---"...told you, it's burning.

  • The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat    Chapter 86: The Daughter, Adrian's Vow

    I didn't sleep. I'd stopped expecting to.I lay on top of the covers in my clean nightdress, with the lamp turned low, and went over it the way I'd go over a column that wouldn't balance. Bit by bit. Each figure, each line. *The daughter.* *The last daughter.* A scraped leaf at the bottom of a tree. A sentence in a margin I hadn't told Adrian about, because it had slipped my mind in the middle of everything else.*They answer to the daughter's blood.*I sat up.I'd read it in the room under the stair, at the bottom of a page of wards, and told myself *later.* It hadn't been later until now.The wards in that corridor had lit for me. All the way down the stairs, one by one, as I went. Lucien had said so himself, at noon, with that mild interested face. *They simply lit.* No alarm. No flare. They'd done it the way you leave a lamp in a window for someone coming home.I pressed my hands flat against my knees.*Don't,* I thought. *You don't know that. You're tired, and you're frightened,

  • The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat    Chapter 85: Legend of the Blood Throne

    Adrian came back at dusk.He knocked, which he never did, and when I opened the door he looked past me into the room, at the window, at the wardrobe, at the cream-coloured door beside it. Then he stepped in and shut us both away from the corridor."You saw my father," he said."How did you know?""The guards told me you'd been sent for. I've been looking for you since." His voice was very level. "What did he say?"I told him. The wards in the old wing that hadn't flared or sounded, only lit. The way Lucien had turned his glass, and the way he'd waited. I told him I'd lied, and how, and that my hands had stayed still.I didn't tell him about the way the King had looked at my collar. I couldn't have said why. I only knew I didn't want to say it aloud in that room, as though speaking it would make it true.Adrian listened with his jaw tight."He didn't press you.""No. He said I'd come to him if I saw anything strange.""That's what he does." He crossed to the fire and stood with his goo

  • The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat    Chapter 84: Lily Lies to the King

    The summons came at noon, carried by a page who wouldn't meet my eye.*His Majesty requests the Princess's company.* That was all. No reason, no hour. The word "requests" had been chosen by someone who knew it wasn't one.I'd had two hours' sleep, if I'd had any. I'd put on the high-collared grey, the one that hid my throat, and scrubbed my hands until the skin was raw. Adrian was somewhere in the castle, still looking at what I'd left behind, and I had no way to ask what he'd found. I had no one else to tell, and I'd promised not to.So I went alone, with two blue-sashed guards behind me. Every servant we passed found something interesting on the floor. I thought about Mum.She'd kept things from me for most of my life, and smiled while she did it. I couldn't say whether it had been easy. I'd have liked to ask.---It was a small room off the long gallery, panelled in dark wood, with a fire, two chairs set either side of a small table, and a window onto the courtyard. No dais. No Cou

  • The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat    Chapter 83: Only Ash

    Adrian went down alone.He'd told Lily to stay in her rooms, to eat something, to sleep if she could and say nothing to anyone if she couldn't. She'd argued. He'd let her, and then he'd said *please,* which he rarely used, and she'd stopped.The page was inside his coat, against his ribs. He could feel the corner of it with every step.He didn't take the guards. He went out by the servants' door beside her wardrobe, with a lamp in his good hand and the other arm bound to his chest, and she had been right about the way. A narrow passage. A stair. A low flagged corridor with a boarded door on one side. He'd lived in this castle for twenty-nine years and never once set foot in it.The silver lines glowed at ankle height as he came through the arch. They brightened a little for him. He'd have liked that to mean something. He suspected it only meant he was in the way.---The tapestry hung in its alcove, huge and grey, a city of pale towers going slowly to rot.Lily had said the symbols al

  • The Vampire Prince's Human Bride Has No Heartbeat    Chapter 82: Lily Tells Adrian

    I sent for him at first light.I told the guard at my door that I needed the Prince, that it was important, and that I'd be obliged if he came alone. The guard looked at me for a moment, at my wet hair, at my face, and said nothing. Then he went. I'd have liked to know what he thought. I'd have liked, even more, not to care.Adrian came within the hour.He had his coat on over the sling and hadn't done up the collar. He stopped just inside the door, and I saw his face change. It was a small thing, a tightening at the corner of the mouth, but I'd learned to read him by now."You've been burning something," he said."Close the door."He closed it. He stood with his good hand still on the handle, looking at me, and I understood that he could smell it, even now. I'd rinsed my hair in the basin twice. It wasn't enough."Lily.""I went down last night," I said. "I found it. I'm sorry. I should have woken you, and I didn't, and I'd rather you shouted at me now than later."For a moment he di

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