Page 26 of Break Her Heart
Then I saw it. The body convulsed. The man sucked in a sharp breath, his chest rising like something had clawed its way back into it. When his eyes opened, they glowed crimson.
No longer a human.
A vampire.
I stared down at the sight. Vampires cheered as one came forward, pulling a pale woman along with him. She looked as if she was seeing through everyone around her with a smile shining on her face. When brought to the new vampire, she extended her neck to him. I blinked and he was on her feeding with such force that she went limp almost immediately.
“He wanted that,” August said.
I turned to him. “No one would want that.”
His jaw tensed, only for a moment before his cool composure returned. “You’d be surprised. Many of the servants here are working for one thing—immortality. The better they serve, the faster they get turned. But most of them are just here, stolen in the night.”
“And the woman that just lost her life?”
August laughed. “Don’t start acting like that bothers you, Winnie.”
I stared at him as he scanned over the crowd, the candlelight catching the sharp lines of his face. He looked more at home here than anywhere else I’d seen him—regal, detached, a king in his kingdom of horrors. But I saw the tension in his jaw, the stiffness in his posture. He didn’t smile here like he used to, not like before everything happened. This wasn’t ease. It was control.
I wanted to tell him he was wrong about me, but he knew me better than most.
August turned to me slowly, his eyes drifting up my frame before meeting mine. He tilted his head just slightly, then gave a single, deliberate gesture back toward the thrones.
I rolled my eyes and moved back to my seat.
As August sat beside me, a pale servant glided forward, offering him a goblet of deep crimson. Without hesitation, he took it.
I watched as he raised it to his lips. The liquid inside moved thickly, almost syrupy, and I knew instantly it wasn’t wine. My stomach turned as I watched him drink. His eyes slipped shut, the smallest sigh leaving his lips.
“It calms the hunger,” he said softly, catching my gaze before I could look away. “Helps me think.”
“But it doesn’t stop it?”
He glanced down my throat. “No, Winnie, it doesn’t.”
I hated the way the thought of him feeding on me sent heat curling low in my belly.
My gaze dipped downward, sweeping over the great room below. Amid the chaos, I caught sight of Corwin, lounging on a velvet chaise and deep in conversation with another vampire. But his eyes weren’t on them—they were on me. A wicked smile pulled at his mouth when he noticed me watching.
A chill crawled down my spine. There was something in the way he looked at me that set every instinct I had on edge.
I turned back toward August—and found him already watching Corwin. His face was a mask, completely unreadable, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the arm of the throne.
“Is this where you were on the nights you weren’t with me?”
He turned his head just slightly, but his eyes stayed locked on his brother. “Why do you think that?”
“Everyone seemed so comfortable at dinner, and then at the end, you all got up like this was second nature. I had just assumed you needed a break from harassing me, but now I’m not so sure.” I pointed to a particularly happy woman spinning herself dizzy on the dance floor. “I just don’t understand. Your siblings are here, and yet you had a home in town.”
August was quiet for a moment, as if he was sorting through his thoughts. “When I lived here, I made it as difficult for everyone as possible. I pushed every limit Carrow tried to place. He punished me, locked me up, starved me. But I never stopped. Eventually, we came to an agreement. I didn’t have to live here if I attended a weekly dinner to let him live out his fantasy and comp—“ He stopped mid-sentence but quickly recovered. “performmy duties that he expected of me. It let him pretend he still had power over me.”
It wasn’t always once a week that he disappeared. It was random, leaving me wondering what took his attention away from me. I shouldn’t have cared. “And the other nights?”
He sipped again, the red staining his mouth like a bruise. “Some of those nights were my designated time to hunt.”
I frowned. “Your what?”
“Carrow scheduled when we were allowed to feed. Another one of his rules. The night we met, it was my night to hunt. He sent the other vampire to watch me, for ‘protection.’ I told you that.”
