Page 13 of Nocte

Yet the others—countless many that compose his collective of souls—all have names deriving from his. Cassius. Beneath him swell an army of brothers:Cassander, Cassper, Cassador.Among them lies a harem of sisters:Cassie, Cassandra, Cassidine.

Then there is me, Caspian. His broken one. In fact, he named me differently from them. To prove it. To remind me. To torment.

I hate him. I hate him.

You love—the thought comes from outside my skull, bearing down like the stern hand of a parent. Scolding. Guiding. Warning.We all love Cassius. We all love Caspian.

As if the vamryre know any damn thing about such an emotion.

We feel nothing. It’s why we like to masquerade as we do, luring fae, human, and lunaria alike. Oh, how we fucking love to play pretend. Those fools eat it up. They play into our hands, ripe for the taking. Ripe for the killing. Ripe for becoming yet one more of the undead, a new pawn in the Three’s collection.

But her…

She irritates. Pale-faced and wide-eyed, she should have trembled head to toe with fear at the sight of me. Tears should have sprung to those strange, black eyes. Damn. It should have been easy.

But she resists, stubborn and unwilling. And yet she felt…

So soft. Unafraid. Another word trips into my brain, as unwelcomed as ebony.Ivory. The color of skin like the petals of that infernal rose. Delicate ivory.

Like a rose, she was fragile and weak, with limbs like petals that could be easily plucked. It was only natural for her to tremble. Even if they craved my touch, so many others before her shivered in apprehension. Instinctively, they knew to fear me. To hate me. To want to run from me.

She didn’t. Her gaze held mine, those eyes unyielding. They relented to my touch as if she wasn’t afraid, and I…

I wanted to taste her.Me.Not Cassius or the others. Her taste would belong to me.

Come, Caspian.

At night his command is too strong to resist. Cassius is awake at full strength, his veracity running through me. I am enslaved to the pull of the collective, those blind, dumb bastards. Their thoughts suck me in, pouring over the fae with disgust before scurrying away.

She doesn’t interest them. They can’t understand Cassius’ greater plan.

Because he is, of course, why I have any interest in her at all. His will commands it.

There is something wrong with her, the broken fae with black eyes. They all can see it. Smell it. The nearer I am to her, the more revulsion they feel. As if cringing from an insect, they pull away from my thoughts. It’s brief, but I get a glimpse of silence. Absence of thought.

I should loathe that emptiness.

You do,Cassius’ voice in my head urges, potent with slavish devotion.Resist it. Resist her. Kill her at the ceremony and be done with it.

I will.

After a little longer play. He owes it to me after what he did to Cassiopeia. Loyalty is a foreign concept to our kind. There is only our master. Only the enclave and the collective. Only the vamryre.

No.I don’t give a damn what Cassius thinks—what they all insist I think. Cassiopeia wasn’t a mindless slave in a hive mind—what the other races call our collective. She resisted. We would tangle and clash our thoughts together. Sometimes, the clamor blocked him out.

Sometimes his voice overpowered us both.

I want her back.

No, you don’t,Cassius’ voice demands.Cassiopeia was a traitor. She betrayed us all.

How? We can’t fucking know. He won’t let us. No matter how hard I try to unravel the twisted thoughts, he keeps me at bay. It’s only when I think of the fae creature that he lets me close. Slithering over my memories of her, he darts away once more. Apart from his plan, he has no interest in her, that broken thing.

He doesn’t see in her what I do. Oh, she does her best to hide it. Maybe it would be more fun if she did? That hunger in her eye. That blind acceptance of pain. I know it well:desperation. She’ll make this game too damn easy.

Good.

Centuries at Cassius’ beck and call, and I need a good distraction. I’ve earned it. Earned her. He said I was a disgusting mortal. Evil, callous, and cruel. That was what drew him to me. Sometimes, he’ll let me get snippets. Fragments of thought.

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