Page 44 of The Scarlet Veil

“A cheat is the same as a liar.” A sharp knock sounds on the door, however, interrupting us, and a truly evil smile lifts Michal’s lips at the sound. I recoil instinctively. Anything that elicits such a mercurial shift in his mood cannot be good. “Who is it?” I ask him, my voice wary.

He inclines his head. “Breakfast.”

The door opens, and a pretty young woman slips inside.

Small and round, she flicks auburn hair over her shoulder when she sees me, sauntering to where Michal sits in my chair. Startled, I study her lithe movements, the claw marks down one side of her face.Loup garou.When she drapes herself across Michal’s lap, her eyes gleam yellow, confirming my suspicion.

I avert my gaze swiftly.

“Good evening, Arielle,” he purrs, and at the low timbre of his voice, I can’t help it—I glance up to find him looking directly at me. He brushes thick hair away from her throat. Two more scars fleck the ivory skin there. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

She slants her head eagerly, wrapping an arm around his neck and clinging to him. “It’s always an honor, Michal.”

Mortified by their intimacy, I try to look away. When he hooks a hand behind her knee, however—when she twists in his lap tostraddlehim—heat washes through me until my cheeks blaze and my skin burns. Because I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be—watchingwhatever this is, but my eyes refuse to blink. With another cold smile, he skims his nose along the curve of her shoulder, kissing it softly. “Go on,” he tells me. “As you said, you have one question left.”

“I’ll just—I’ll come back later—”

“Ask your question.” His eyes darken over Arielle’s neck. “You will not get another chance.”

“But this isindecent—”

“You will ask your question”—he jerks his head toward the door—“or you will leave. The choice is yours.”

His tone is emphatic. Final. If I flee his presence now, he will not stop me, and I will rot in the darkness until Coco arrives in Requiem and he kills us both. Though he offers a choice, it isn’t a choice at all.

I force myself to nod.

Appeased, Michal continues his appraisal of Arielle’s neck, and she shivers in his arms. “What—” I clear my throat and try again, attempting to collect my scrambled thoughts, to remember myimperativequestions, as he cradles her head with one hand. “What do you—”

In the next second, however, he sinks his teeth into her jugular.

All thought vanishes as her back arches into his chest, and she clenches her eyes shut with a sharp moan of pleasure. I lurch to my feet at the sound—knocking over the chair in my haste—and gape at her, athim, at the way her hips writhe against him with each pull of his mouth. A drop of blood trickles down her collarbone, and realization punches through my chest like the thrust of a knife. My worst fear has been confirmed.

Michal is drinking her blood.

He’s—he’sdrinkingit.

I stumble away from the desk, falling over the chair, and rise on shaky feet as Michal releases her throat, tipping his head back and reveling in the taste of her, in thedecadence. He wipes her bloodfrom his lips. I press into the shutters. Though the wood abrades my back, I do not feel it—do not feelanythingbut the intensity of Michal’s stare as he finds me again. As he stands and lifts Arielle in his arms.

“Wh-What—?” But my breath is ragged, sharp, too painful to speak around.

“The word for which you’re searching”—he returns her loose-limbed body to the chair, where she sighs dreamily and closes her eyes—“is vampire, though we answer to many names. Éternel. Nosferatu. Strigoi and moroi. The undead.”

The undead.

Éternel.

Vampire.

I flinch at each name like it’s a physical blow. No books in Chasseur Tower ever alluded tothis. The puncture marks in the soldiers, in Babette and the other victims... their bodies drained of blood... I close my eyes, blocking out the sight of Michal’s scarlet lips. Of the blood still streaming down Arielle’s chest, staining her shirt, the chair.

Loup garou.

Human.

Melusine.

Dame Blanche.

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