Page 84 of Fated In Blood

Unless he’d had help.

But I kept my suspicions to myself because one…no man on earth would sell his daughter to the enemy and two…fuck Blake, and even Riordan.

They didn’t deserve to know what I was thinking, not when they were only planning to use me. We weren’t a team, we weren’t lovers. We were feeding and sometimes fucking and using each other for our own ends, and by the time we all went our separate ways—providing we survived—we would hate each other even worse than we did right now.

I tossed the knives down at Riordan’s feet, the points embedding so deeply in the grass only the hilts were visible.

“I’ll get you the dagger, but I want assurances that once Tyrell is dead, you will fix my sister so she remembers none of this. Not a single minute.”

35

EVANGELINE

After Riordan and I endured yet another ‘clinical’ feeding that nearly went off the rails, I barely slept that night, tormented by nightmares of a blond woman on her knees in the middle of a dead-end street, begging for her life. Of my father pulling his sword and slicing her head off.

Not cleanly, either.

Silas Silverwood needed three blows to take Aurora’s head, and I’d seen every single one. I’d forced myself to watch while cradling a sobbing, hysterical Angel, and I would never forget the dull thwack of his blade severing sinew and bone, or the way her screams cut off so abruptly.

My fault, my fault, my fault.

Over the years the pragmatic part of me reasoned thiswasn’tmy fault, but my traitorous soul begged to differ. And my soul usually won out.

Angel had been hiding in the house when Silas torched it.

I always wondered if he realized his youngest daughter was inside, or if he even cared. We’d been saved by a propane tank exploding, nearly killing one of my uncles. In the ensuing chaos,I’d dragged Angel out the back door and into the woods. After we’d escaped, I’d taken charge of keeping us both safe.

Hidden from our family.

Yet I’d failed miserably at both tasks.

Maybe, my sleepy, traitorous mind wondered,if I’d been able to keep my…

No. There was a good reason mom protected me from her own past. A reason we never, ever trusted witches. A reason we Silverwood women kept our secrets, no matter the cost.

I woke with a dried mouth, thundering heart, and sweaty limbs tangled in the moldy blanket. Bolting out of bed, I heaved up my guts in the toilet, drank a few mouthfuls of water from the tap in the bathroom, then tried to fall back to sleep.

My next dream was even worse.

I stared down a long hallway I hadn’t thought of in years, my breath fogging the air even though it wasn’t that cold. The door at the end led to the Silverwood Vault, which took up the entire subterranean level of White Chapel, the home our family had occupied since the seventeenth century.

The Vault was an engineering marvel, an impenetrable box with eight-inch welded, riveted iron walls surrounded by twenty feet of granite in every direction. The only way in or out was that single—locked—door leading to the cavernous space my uncles proudly called their trophy room.

As if their vendetta against vampires was some sort of sanctioned holy war.

Surrounded by shelves packed with jewels and gold and ancient artifacts was a box on a simple wooden stand. Made of ebony wood so dark you couldn’t see the grain, polished to an unnaturally mirrored shine, the box contained the Silverwood family’s greatest treasure.

In my dream, I reached in and wrapped my hand around the hilt of the dagger, cool to the touch, even wrapped in a black velvet bag.

Scythe of Cronus, Sickle of Zeus—this weapon had been called many names over the millennia.

We called this blade the Harpe Dagger—named for the blade Perseus used to kill Medusa—a parable that resonated strongly with my great-great-grandfather and my father’s lofty view of himself.

Always the hero, my father.

Silas Silverwood believed he was called by a higher power to become a slayer, and that unshakable belief gave him a fanatical dedication to the family business.

His three brothers, my uncles, felt just as strongly.

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