Ignoring the urgency in her tone, he stood and peeled his bedsheets back from the top of the mattress. “You mortals take everything so literally. I never threatened anything. I said it would give us the grounds to. Whether or not I act on it is up in the air; plus, if I were wanted to retaliate, do you really think I’d lay all my plans out for the one person who should know nothing of them?”
Just then, a knock came at the door. Garin sauntered over and opened it a crack, returning with a tray of what looked like lumpy liquid and a mug of water. He retrieved a small key from his pocket and opened the cell door just wide enough to hand it to her.
She hesitated, half considering shoving him out of the way and escaping. But where would she run? She would have nowhere to go, and very little time before Garin caught up to her—or worse, Bastion. The thought of the vampire guards in the main chamber and the many more probably slumbering in the other shadowed halls of the makeshift crypt made her shudder.
“You can try,” said Garin, following her longing gaze to his door. “I promise, you won’t get far. Plus,” he added dryly, “I wouldn’t give any hungry vampire a reason to give chase, if I were you.”
A jolt of fear rippled through her, but she quickly swallowed it. “You just… ate, though,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m stuck in the body of a twenty-five-year-old man. I have the perpetual metabolism of one, and the blood of the dead never satiates me for long.”
Reluctantly, she took the tray and sniffed at the suspicious gray-green matter floating in the bowl. She glanced up at Garin in shock. “It smells incredible.”
“Smells like leek soup.” He shut her cell door and took his seat across her at the foot of his bed once more. “They have to keep those people—the cattle, I mean—alive somehow.”
The cattle. The men and women in the cells of the vestibule. Despite the hunger gnawing at her stomach, she suddenly felt too sick to eat and placed the tray beside her and returned to the bench. In her determination to undo her submissive pretense, she’d momentarily forgotten about Piper.
How could she?
Unbidden, the image of gaunt Piper with a crooked neck and blood trickling from her lips flashed through Lilac’s mind. A pang of heavy guilt spread through her chest for not being more upset about it, but in the moment, she’d been forced to hold her tongue. Anger surged back up within her.
Lilac buried her face in her hands. Other memories of her old friend began to surface, ones that she’d tried to block—for the most part, successfully—for years. Her face burned as she glared at the abomination watching her curiously from the bed. Piper, who was banished from the castle because of Lilac, who had become nothing more than a blood bag of skin and bones to the starving Darklings. She imagined Piper carried away by vampires. The moment she was captured, had the former handmaid gone along with it with minimal resistance, as Lilac had?
Or was Piper braver? Had she fought back, kicking and screaming?
“Was killing her necessary?” Lilac croaked from between her palms.
She peeked through her fingers.
Garin was staring at her, mouth open in confusion. “Who?”
“Piper!” She raised her voice. “Piper.”
“Oh, the redhead?”
“She wasn’t just a redhead, you stupid Darkling,” Lilac exclaimed, shooting up and once more pressing up against the bars. “She was my former handmaid.”
Garin wrung his hands and licked his lips before speaking. “I had to satisfy Bastion. I gave him the inhumanity he was seeking. If he’d asked me to drink from you, I would have been done for. So would you.”
He frowned and squinted. “Wait. If she was your handmaiden, then how is she here? We wouldn’t dare bother your castle with kidnappings. Not even an idiot like Bastion would attempt something so foolish.”
“I got her into trouble once and—and she was banished,” she explained miserably, then hiccupped twice. “Banished from castle grounds. I’m not sure how she got here, but I’d imagine she might’ve been captured on her way back to her parent’s house. I know they lived on the outskirts of Rennes.” She felt lightheaded, imagining Piper’s terror at being captured, then left in a cage for years to be used at the Darklings’ beckon and call.
It was her fault. All of it. She sunk to her knees and bent over the makeshift toilet, heaving dryly.
“And now,” Garin continued in mock reverence, hand clutched dramatically to his chest. “She’s dead. Gone forever. Fin.” He opened his eyes just in time to dodge the full stone mug that came flying at his head, liquid splattering all over the bookshelf. The mug bounced without cracking and landed near the swords.
“Watch the armory,” he chortled as Lilac sobbed angrily, now standing and clutching the scalding bowl of leek soup to chuck at him next. “Put that down this instant.”
“Or what?” she spat through the tears. Her churlishness wasn’t uncalled for; he had kidnapped her and thrown her in a cage, after all. And killed her friend. Her only friend, perhaps. “It’s not like you can do anything to me, anyway, you sorry excuse for a vampire.”
Stunned, he crossed his arms, not a trace of humor remaining as he examined her from across the room. She couldn’t tell if the look was hunger, lust, or a combination of both—but she scuttled aside when he strode over to her cell door. She shrank into the corner when he entered the cage, snatched the soup bowl from her grip, and reached for her—but, instead of grabbing her again, Garin expectantly held his other hand out.
“May I?”
Lilac loosened from her recoil. “May you what?”
“Your hand, princess.”
Half surprised, half satisfied that he’d bothered to ask, she guardedly obliged and allowed him to lead her out. When she realized he intended to bring her to the bed, Lilac wriggled her arm away; he let her, using his free hand to knock one of the two pillows onto the floor.
“Bed’s all yours, Your Royal Highness,” he drawled, placing the bowl down upon the sheets. He fetched her sack and rummaged inside it until he found her damp wool cloak; he gave a good yank to shake it out and then placed it, hood hanging, at the end of the sword rack near the fireplace.
Lilac watched in bewilderment, almost forgetting her anger. He then lowered himself onto the floor next to the bed, propping himself up against the pillow and wall.
“Eat,” he said encouragingly. “And just so you know, princess. I didn’t kill her.”
Lilac plopped onto the mattress, not out of comfort, but because her knees began to feel weak. It was surprisingly comfortable.
“Don’t you dare,” she seethed. “How could she—I saw what I saw.”
But Garin was shaking his head. “No. You think you saw. I turned her.”
Lilac, who’s nausea finally prompted her to pick up the spoon, let it clatter back into the bowl of soup with a plop. She balanced the bowl on her knees.
Garin watched her, his lips curving in satisfaction. “When Bastion turned her over to me, I force fed her a few drops of my own blood that I had drawn before killing her. There was so much of it all over the poor girl, no one took notice any of it was mine.”
The blood upon Piper’s chalked lips had been his, not her own. Reeling, Lilac leaned back on an arm. She was glad she was already sitting. What a horrible ending for Piper.