Page 101 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

The trip to the bookstore in River was particularly insidious. I knew better than anyone that enticing as many senses as possible was an excellent tool of seduction. When I found myself sitting on the back patio, listening to soulful string instruments and a man’s deep, enthralling voice, flipping through a book of the most beautiful poems I’d ever read… I recognized my fate was sealed no matter what lies I spun. String lights twinkled above. The air smelled of fire and berry pastries.

I was surrounded by mortals, not a vampire in sight. And though I was alone, I was far from lonely. The enchanted notebook rested carefully in my crossbody leather satchel, one of the gifts Rune had delivered to my apartment this week.

Our notes spanned the realm. Like this book of poems, our words were the juxtaposition of the mundane and the ethereal, the sinful and the divine. It didn’t matter that he was a ruthless murderer and torturer, a warlord and clan leader who had lived for centuries.

When I spoke to Rune, it felt like I was talking to myself. I was starting to figure out exactly how he thought, know what he would say before he said it—and it was always, always what I wanted to hear.

I missed him. I missed the fire, the games, the way we mirrored each other’s darkness. I missed his pet names and his praise, his large form towering over mine. I missed his god complex, the maddening way he dragged my body down the deepest pits of ecstasy.

I was falling, hard and fast, and just like singing, it felt like soaring.

47

RUNE

On my way to Sadie’s estate, I visited each of the border districts to delegate, monitor, and boost morale. I also checked in with my eyes, the ones I’d tasked with finding Little Flame’s sister. My last stop before Sadie’s was Durian’s home district, Hatham. This was where his most lucrative den of depravity and lawlessness, Black Sapphire, was located. It might’ve appeared like any other feeding club from the outside, with more lax rules than any of mine. But everyone knew the workers there had a high likelihood of being drugged, coerced, manipulated, or trafficked.

When the time came, I would rid this island of the born. I would raid each club, each underground ring, and I would free all mortals from the born’s evil. Until then, I had to hold tight to the patience and restraint Sadie instilled in my vengeful blood.

That didn’t mean I had to appear weak.

My shadowbird, Millie, landed with a fearsome screech in the center of Hatham, right where I knew Durian had gathered a crowd for one of his religious speeches.

The weaselly bastard stood on a dais before a far less grand statue of Lillian than the one in Lillian’s Square. It was one of the borns’ pitiful attempts to match the splendor of Nyx—the district we’d taken during the war after pushing the born to the less desirable districts like this one.

His blond hair was thin and straight, barely moving in the wind. His cold, near-black eyes were downright venomous, his strong nose wrinkling as his features contorted with disgust before artfully smoothing.

He was holding one of his most famous tools of propaganda, a book supposedly containing Lillian’s divine will that had been lost during the war, all remaining copies allegedly burned and destroyed by yours truly. The one Durian held was hailed as the last remaining original copy. It predicted his rise to power as Lillian’s chosen, the enforcer of her desire for her children to rule the world above all others.

This entire story and the contents of the book itself, of course, were entirely fabricated.

The ground trembled under Millie’s dark hooves. Her bat-like wings spread wide, sending all nearby born and mortals scrambling. She thrummed with dark power, a firebird transformed into a beast of shadow and death, just as I had been.

Durian’s following of ignorant, short-sighted born scum was only expected. Of course, the born wanted to believe in a religious right to regain their stronghold and impose another rule of mindless hedonism and aristocracy.

But what I did not understand was the impoverished mortal population who’d been won over in the born districts, devoting themselves to a new world order that would only crush them and bleed them dry.

All gathered immortals, humans, shifters, and witches directed their ire at me. But I didn’t look at any of the glares. Instead, I found the frightened eyes of the children, the young who did not yet understand the war they were being dragged into. I looked for the innocent, the drugged, the confused.

And then I pinned my wrath on Durian. I’d fed with abandon the past few days, charging my magick to its fullest, most terrifying proportions. My shadows bled from my skin in a cold smoke as dark clouds covered the sky. My thorny branches leaped from my skin and expanded, crawling over the cobblestone and leaving cracks and rubble in their wake.

A couple of born stepped my way, rage in their eyes. “Bastard!” one yelled, a woman with short jet-black hair.

“Abomination!” the man beside her echoed.

“One more step and I will obliterate you,” I said calmly, though my lip couldn’t help but curl.

Durian finally spoke, all eyes returning to him. “Hello, Rune, the gods’ lost black lamb. I hope you enjoy your stay in Lillian’s paradise.” He gazed out over the crowd, raising his hands wide. “Be calm, my children. Be patient.”

He didn’t dare say anything too bold in front of me. He merely skirted around the dissidence and the treason, taunting me.

My gaze fell back to the rabid looking born close to me, and I grinned as my magick rumbled like heavenly thunder.

Durian had riled up their emotions to dangerous proportions, and I watched as their control slipped, facing the immortal they’d been taught to hate more than anything in this world. To them, I was the reason for all suffering, all injustice, all poverty. I was the reason only a few born lived as royalty and the rest lived in squalor. I was the reason that they couldn’t feast mercilessly on humans in both Aristelle and the dry lands and parade their slaves out in the open.

The couple entered bloodlust quickly, despite Durian’s lackluster attempts to reel them back in. They made it just two lightning-fast steps toward me before my shadow vines had grabbed them both and popped their bodies like blood-filled balloons.

They dropped to the ground in a puddle of mangled flesh.

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