Page 43 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Next, I noticed there were almost an equal number of people as the men Durian had brought gathered on one side of the long table. Their backs were to us, and they wore all black.

Across from those in black, a man sat in flamboyant attire—a white ruffled blouse, a golden and burnt orange suit over top. Though he appeared young by virtue of vampirism, I could read the ancientness in his features. He was born.

Directly across from the born vampire was a witch in a black dress. Her magick was strange and deathly potent. Her brunette hair was meticulously styled, and her laugh held the vampire across from her in a trance.

I couldn’t feel my body. I was only aware of my uncontrollable shaking, no matter how much warmth magick radiated from Durian’s guard.

My eyes were stuck on the creeping, thorny tattoos of the man in the center, his tall form rigid as he faced away from me.

“No,” I heard myself breathe.

They all turned, but I only saw him.

Rune.

I screamed bloody murder.

20

RUNE

“The kingdom hadn’t been receiving any of our recent messages,” I explained to Mason and Uriah in the deliberation room between gritted teeth. Sadie stood by my side. “They thought we’d gone dark in support of the turned in Ravenia. They thought we’d been the ones who had declared war.”

Mason frowned.

“Durian must have a greater network of support than we thought,” Uriah said, glaring ahead as he processed. He always looked angry when he was deep in thought.

We spoke with the kingdom most often via correspondence journals linked by magick. Just like the one I had given Scarlett. Durian’s own spies had to have gotten close enough to each member of the council with a book and replaced it with a decoy, or at least one in particular. There were technically three journals in the kingdom’s government, but there was only one we’d used consistently for a century—a line to the council’s head and King Earle’s most trusted advisor, Xenith. This journal or one of the others would likely have been handed off to Kole for the duration of his time in Ravenia.

Earle almost never wrote to us himself. He’d never truly respected us.

I hadn’t even considered our lines had been compromised. The timing had aligned perfectly with Durian’s political moves and the impending war in Ravenia. Though it had been the most harrowing scenario, I had genuinely believed Durian somehow gained Earle’s support through his ethos alone.

“Imagine if the born had pretended to be us…” Uriah said.

I shook my head. “They wouldn’t have known our codes.”

Sadie nodded. “Too risky. They don’t have the intel for that. It would’ve been sloppy.”

“Durian preyed on each faction’s paranoia expertly, making his own moves at exactly the right time to affirm each of his marks’ faulty sense of reality.” I was infuriated by the intelligence and foresight exhibited by a man I’d written off for far too long as merely an arrogant pest.

Durian had been intentionally positioning himself as a man to underestimate, powerful only in his speech and wealth, the stirring up of hatred and disorganized acts of terror. But it had been a façade.

“Our spies were merely working with the information available to them, blinded by our lack of true understanding. They ended up inadvertently reinforcing Durian’s scheme,” I concluded.

Mason’s tattoos vibrated, the waves and whorls of shadow softly churning. She looked at Sadie, who was smiling like a Cheshire cat. “I assume you’ve already remedied the situation?”

Sadie uncrossed her arms and rolled her neck. Calm and unperturbed as ever. “Of course I have,” she drawled. “I gave dear Kole a nasty fright when I intercepted him flying over dry lands.”

We’d been watching for him, of course. I sent Sadie as soon as I understood his flight path.

“He always did enjoy a well-timed surprise, the more sadistic the better,” she said.

No one knew who Sadie was to the turned. To Kole, she was a renowned courtesan, one of the few mortals who served the born on her own terms and lived to tell the tale. He had no idea that she’d used her position as a sex worker to meticulously plan the downfall of the born and the creation of an entire new race of vampires.

For all he knew, we’d tracked Sadie down and bribed her to help us. She was a fierce defender of Valentin mortal interests, but, in Kole’s eyes, she had only ever been a dominatrix. No matter how many times she’d managed to manipulate him and others into during her bidding for the benefit of the turned.

The born had a blind spot when it came to powerful women, and I could only hope that same weakness was what was keeping Scarlett alive.

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