‘Kizzy!’ I called warningly, but she hissed at me. I saw a glint of sharp teeth, and the sight was so horrible it struck me dumb.
Dracul did not cut her. He drew a line across his arm, and silver blood sprang up, running down his wrist and into one of the ornate cups left by his strigoi.
‘First you must drink of me.’
‘Kizzy, please!’ My cry rent the air. Dracul cast a dismissive gaze over me, as though tears were something disgusting. ‘Don’t!’
But Kizzy lifted the cup to her lips and drained it. She let it drop to the floor and looked up to the ceiling. She convulsed, once, twice silver shimmering on her open lips. Albu growled as the glow radiating from her skin brightened. She seemed to lift from the floor, but then I saw she was growing, becoming taller and taller, like Dracul, until I would come only to her shoulder. Her curly hair grew even darker, taking on Dracul’s blue-blackness. Her skin shone like jet.
Finally, the convulsions let go, and she stood straight. It hurt my eyes to look at her, my heart to see her so. More than a strigoi, now, but less than human.
‘Swan,’ crooned Dracul. ‘Do you feel it?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes.’
‘And your choice?’
Kizzy looked at me and parted her perfect lips.
‘Fen.’
Fen shouted, ‘No!’ but Dracul threw his ring to Kizzy. I watched as she caught it in one hand, the other tight about the stake, and slid it onto Fen’s finger.
Then I understood that both Cook and Old Charani were right. There was a promise ring in his future after all, but it was not for marriage. Only for safe passage, away from the woman he loved.
Dracul snapped his fingers again, and the doors opened. The strigoi were ranged outside, their shining bodies a seemingly unbreakable mass.
‘Well then,’ said Dracul. ‘Go. I cannot hold them back for ever.’
The strigoi began to advance. Albu slunk down, and Kizzy bent and slid her arms about his great, soft neck. She whispered in his ear, and Albu seemed to calm. He swept Fen onto his back as he had with Kem months before, and before Fen could do more than cry out Kizzy’s name, he was gone. Gone to Mira, gone to Kem, gone to the life I would never have.
Because now the Dragon was standing, tall as a tree beside me, and leading me to my sister. And she took me in her arms, and they were cold as ice, her skin smooth as glass. I sighed, and leant against her, and she brought her lips to my neck. I could feel nothing: no breath.
Her hair covering me, she whispered into my ear. ‘One more chance, Lil. Trust me.’
Her fingers were at my throat, her fingernails sharper than they ever had been in life. Then I felt something slice into my neck, and pain rang like a bell through my body, shuddering me into darkness.
I was cold. Cold as though plunged into an icy river or wrenched from a grave. I sat up, gasping, darkness pressing heavy against my eyes.
‘Hush,’ said a voice. Kizzy’s voice.
‘Kisaiya?’ I groped in the blackness. It was like being in a tomb. Terror gripped at my throat, and I wondered if the stories really were true, and strigoi slept in coffins. I pushed my hands out all around me, feeling for rock, but I felt only soft fabric, beneath me and on the walls. ‘I can’t see.’
‘Sorry,’ said Kizzy, and though she sounded like herself, I was afraid. ‘I’ll light the fire.’
There was a rustle, and I heard her moving, sure and light-footed as a cat. The strike of a flint against – what? Was that her fingernail? I shuddered as I remembered her hands on my throat, the slice …
‘You cut me,’ I said, finally understanding. ‘You didn’t bite me.’
As the room flared into brightness, I felt for the bandage at my neck. I saw I sat on a fine bed, covered in silks, and more silks were hung on the walls. It was a richly attired room, with a large mirror beside the fireplace. The air was freezing, the window closed by the same thick fabric curtains that hung everywhere in the hall.
My sister was silhouetted by the fire, still crouched with her back to me. She shook her head, perfect ravens-wing curls bouncing.
‘He was forcing you. You should be able to choose.’
She turned, and the full horror of her appearance closed over me, as though I really were in a coffin and the lid was bearing down upon my chest. She shone, as though lit from within, but not by fire. By moonlight, that pearly glow caught beneath her dark skin, shimmering and fine. Her red eyes glinted in the firelight.
‘Am I so awful, Lil?’ She went to the mirror. My blood seemed to freeze in my veins. She had no reflection. ‘I can’t tell.’
‘You’re beautiful,’ I said, my old loyalty springing up, natural as a bud. ‘But yes, you are … awful.’
She turned to me and smiled. I could see my terrified face in the mirror, the yawning absence where my sister should be.
‘Kisaiya,’ I said, tears starting in my eyes. ‘Did you really choose this?’
She sighed, closing her eyes, and it was easier to imagine them back to brown, her untransformed and living. ‘It did not feel like much of a choice at the time. But then, did I kneel before him, and let him bite me?’ She ran her hand over the flawless, shining skin of her neck. ‘I did. Memories are already becoming too painful to hold, but that I can remember well.’
‘Why?’ I shouted. The word burst off the wide walls and bounced back at us. Kizzy flinched as though she were struck by it.
‘Because of what Dracul told you.’ She spoke his name reverently, without fear. ‘The chance to be powerful in my life, to create my own future, and not lean upon fables and fates.’ Her voice was becoming layered again, rhythmic, like the terrible music of storms. ‘He speaks it well, doesn’t he?’
‘I want to hear you tell me. Tell me why you chose to become a monster.’
‘Much the same reason you did,’ she said harshly. Her temper made her seem even taller. ‘And if I had done as you asked, you would be strigoi by now.’
‘But you didn’t,’ I said. ‘So, tell me why you chose it.’
She sat down in a straight-backed chair beside the bed. I could see it, empty in the mirror. I turned determinedly away from the sight.
‘Calazan did not bring me directly here,’ she said, finally. ‘He lied from the moment we left to the moment we arrived. He wanted to take me to his castle, to be his … I don’t know. His mistress.’
I reached out for her hand and could only grip it a moment before its iciness made it impossible. ‘Kizzy. Did he—’
‘I gutted him,’ she said simply. ‘With his own blade.’ She looked sharply at me. ‘Are you not shocked?’
‘I killed Vereski,’ I said. ‘The night you left, he took me to the stables. I stabbed him.’
I did not expect sadness, but the unrestrained smile that crossed her face was ghoulish. I caught sight of her teeth, very white and very sharp. They did not look like her teeth at all.
‘Well done,’ she said. ‘So we are both monsters after all.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I said, and she laughed, the sound water freezing into ice. ‘What happened then?’
‘His men brought me to Dracul. I think they wanted me to be part of his fence as punishment, but he applauded what I had done. You must know it now, that he is more than a strigoi?’