Page 54 of High Stakes

Mrs. Kerry reappeared a few minutes later, bearing a dress in an even darker shade of crimson. Plucking the corset off the bed, she held it up. “Would you like help lacing it?” Mrs. Kerry asked, eyeballing my suit as if it were the strangest thing she’d ever seen. It probably was.

“Sure,” I acquiesced. She almost smiled. I turned around and held the corset’s front while she tugged the laces on the back tight. When she was finished, my breasts were plumped up and it hurt my ribs to breathe, but she promised it would make the gown look amazing. Bunching up the gown’s bottom, she held it out and told me to swan dive into it.

The bodice was made of thick velvet, stretching from waist to jaw, while the wide bell sleeves, long enough to brush the ground, were constructed of fine, gossamer material. The voluminous skirts fell in thick layers, accented by a thin film of the sheer sleeve material perched on top.

“You look lovely,” Mrs. Kerry cooed, clapping her hands.

“Thank you for all you’ve done to help me,” I told her. For a moment she looked taken aback, but then the smile I’d erased so many times since my arrival blossomed on her face.

Together, we walked through the castle and she led me to a side door that opened onto a stone patio. A wooden trellis covered the square space, and across the structure, swaths of sheer, white fabric had been draped. Candelabras were placed all around a short, stone wall, and along the center of a rectangular table. Titus and Terah sat next to one another on a bench on the far side of the table, Terah staring at Titus like she’d like to drive her fork through his heart.

Enoch stood when I approached, dressed in a fine, black suit with his still-damp hair slicked back and smelling as dangerous as he looked. He bowed at the waist and took my hand, placing a soft kiss onto the back of it. “Eve, you’re breathtaking,” he whispered. “Until I saw you in that color, I always thought my favorite was a deep, sapphire blue.”

My heart skipped a beat.

The threat I’d once been so sure of melted away and in that moment, I saw him for what he truly was; more than a man, but not yet a monster. My hand tingled where his lips had touched. He sparked a fire beneath my skin, while in my bones, a wildfire had been ignited.

Terah growled at me menacingly as Enoch motioned to the other side of the bench he’d been sitting on. “Terah,” he chastised. “You gave your word.”

“How can you do it?” she exploded. “How can you pretend you aren’t thinking the same thing I am?”

“What exactly are you thinking?” Titus asked, sitting on the edge of his seat, ready to launch into action if need be. His hand rested lightly on his stakes.

She calmly took a sip of wine. “That we should just end you both and go on with our lives as if you’d never existed.”

To my right, Enoch took a deep inhalation and blew it out slowly. “Ignore her rudeness, please.”

“I am not rude!” she fumed. “Rude is waltzing into someone’s home with the intention of driving a stake through their heart,” she argued, crossing her arms and legs with a huff.

“We need to learn from them as much as I wager they need to learn from us,” Enoch placated. “My hope, sister, is that we can all come to a mutual understanding and find an amiable solution to the problem at hand,” Enoch finished.

As the sun sank below the hills, the lofty castle wall blocked its rays from the table. The evening wind toyed with the flickering fire at the end of each candle, but wasn’t strong enough to blow them out. We sat in silence as a woman brought a carafe of wine and began to re-fill our goblets. A few moments later, the food arrived and we filled our plates with steaming venison, turnips, and broccoli.

Terah and Enoch accepted a drink from the wrists of the two women serving us, using their hands to close their bite marks. These Nephilim were clueless. If even a drop of their venom entered the women’s blood stream, and the women somehow died with venom in their veins, they would become vampires. Enoch and Terah just thought they were feeding, when they were really just a hair’s breadth from siring their first monster.

It was only a matter of time.

Titus kicked me under the table. I flashed an irritated I know! look back at him.

Once the women departed, Enoch leaned back in his chair. “Tell me more about the vampires in your day.”

“How do we know you won’t try to make one?” Titus challenged.

Enoch sighed. “Because I don’t know how to make a vampire.”

“Yet.” Titus stuck a piece of meat in his mouth and chewed. “From the looks of the road leading to your gate, it looks like you’ve killed plenty.”

“Those men were charged with crimes, found guilty and executed,” Terah growled.

Titus shrugged. “So why not put their heads on pikes for decoration.”

“They aren’t decorative. They’re meant to deter others from making the same mistake,” Enoch calmly interjected.

Titus wasn’t finished. He looked at Enoch, then Terah, who had managed to calm herself down almost as fast as she’d been riled. “Why don’t you tell us more about Asa?”

Terah let out a groan. “I can tell you that I wish he wasn’t coming for a visit,” she answered wryly.

“How do you even know he’ll come?” I asked, interested in their sibling dynamics.

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