Chapter 19

I was sent back to my dungeon after the attack, with two guards escorting me as if I were the prisoner who had caused all the trouble.

Neither of them spoke to me. They only exchanged a few words when we reached the lower level, then one of them unlocked my cell and ordered me inside.

“Stay where you belong this time.”

I gave him a look but said nothing. There was no point arguing with someone who could probably snap my neck before I finished my first sentence.

The door slammed shut behind me, and I was alone again.I had started getting used to the stench in my little space. It still turned my stomach sometimes, especially when the rats came too close, but I no longer spent every minute wishing I could escape it. The darkness had become familiar, and I knew which parts of the floor were damp and where I could sit without feeling something crawling beneath me.

It was a horrible place to live, but at least nobody bothered me here.

And that gave me time to think.

Thinking was all I could do at the moment.I had no weapons worth mentioning, no idea how to get out of the castle, and no way of knowing whether Emma was safe. Every day I spent here was another day away from her. I couldn’t afford to waste time, but running blindly through the castle would only get me killed.

I needed answers before I could make another move.

The intruder’s face came back to me. His red eyes. The blood running down the side of his face. The way he had looked at me when Vladimir dragged him away.

Night…

He had said my name as though he knew exactly who I was.

Then there were the guards I’d overheard talking about my family name and the vampire hunters. They had wondered whether my bloodline still existed and whether that was the reason Vladimir had kept me alive.

But there were so many people in the world with the surname Night. How could they be so sure it meant anything?

My parents had never told me we belonged to some ancient family of vampire hunters. My father had been an ordinary man, as far as I knew. He had never spoken about vampires as though they were real, and neither had my mother.

Yet two vampires had reacted to my name as if it meant something.

I pressed my palms against my knees and stared at the wall.

I needed to find the prisoner.

If he knew something about my family, I wanted to hear it from him. I also wanted to know why he had broken into the castle. Had he come for Vladimir? Had he come for something else? And why had he looked so pleased when he saw me?

I didn’t trust him. He was a vampire, and I had seen what vampires could do when they wanted to hurt someone. But I couldn’t ignore the possibility that he knew something that could help me understand what was happening.

There was only one problem.

I had no idea where they were keeping him.

I spent the next few hours going over everything I knew about the castle. The guards had taken him toward the lower levels, but there were several corridors I hadn’t been allowed to enter. I had never been given a reason to go near the prison cells beyond the ones where human servants were kept.

If I wanted to find him, I needed information without making anyone suspicious.

Arissa was my best chance.

The next time I was called for my shift, I left the dungeon without complaint. My stomach was still unsettled from the smell, and my body ached from sleeping on the hard floor, but I forced myself to stand straight as the guard led me upstairs.

Arissa was waiting in the servants’ corridor with a basket of clean cloths. She looked tired, though I couldn’t tell whether it was from work or from the trouble caused by the attack.

When she saw me, her eyes moved briefly over my face.

“You look better than you did yesterday,” she said.

“I feel better than I look.”

That earned me the smallest smile.“Come. We have a lot to do.”

I followed her toward the rooms where the servants kept the cleaning supplies. As we worked, I tried to think of a way to bring up the prisoner without making it obvious that I was interested in him.

Asking directly would be stupid. Arissa might be kind to me, but she was still a vampire living under Vladimir’s roof. I had no reason to believe she would risk her position for my curiosity.

I picked up a stack of folded cloths and glanced at her.

“Do you think they’ll find the people who helped that vampire get inside?”

Arissa paused while arranging a row of bottles on a shelf.“I imagine they’re already looking.”

“Does that mean the whole castle is going to be searched?”

“Probably. The guards won’t rest until they know whether he came alone.”

I nodded as if that was all I wanted to know.

“What will happen to him?”

“Who?”

“The vampire they caught.”

Arissa looked at me for a moment before returning to her work.

“That depends on what the prince wants to know.”

“And if he refuses to answer?”

“Then things will become unpleasant for him.”

She said it quietly, without any excitement or satisfaction. That made it worse. I remembered Vladimir lifting the intruder off the floor with one hand and throwing him against the wall as if he weighed nothing.

I didn’t want to imagine what would happen if Vladimir decided to stop holding back.

“Do they keep prisoners in the same place as the human servants?” I asked, making myself sound casual. “I only wondered because I heard the guards talking about the lower levels.”

“No.” Arissa turned to face me. “The prisoners are kept in a different part of the dungeons. You shouldn’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s restricted, Veronica. And because you have a habit of finding trouble.”