Page 87 of Our Sins in Blood (Coven of Sin 1)

For the first time since leaving my room, I found myself surrounded by something familiar. Books had always been the thing to pull me through the darkest times growing up, and now here I was surrounded by countless stories, worlds I could disappear into when this one became too much. Everything about the space was comforting, from the heavy drapes pulled over the windows and the candles lit in their candelabras that washed the space in a soothing orange glow to the scent of leather and old paper.

It was every goth nerd girl’s dream.

As much as I wanted to stay here forever, hidden among the books, I reminded myself of the task at hand and pushed forward. If things went according to plan, I would have a whole eternity to acquaint myself with every book in here.

I wandered among the shelves, drooling over the vast collection of their contents, when I found myself in front of an ornate, baroque-style fireplace with a roaring fire in the hearth. My gaze wandered up to the wall where a painting had once been mounted, by tell of the discolored square in the wallpaper. And seeing the deep claw slashes in the plaster, I’d say someone had taken it down in a rage.

When I noticed a few framed paintings leaning up against the bookcase nearest the fireplace, I flipped through them. They were all oil portraits, some pretty old, judging by how dark and faded they were. In a few, I recognized the faces as people in the hallways I had passed. There was one of Lavinia, and behind that, one of Lexi. In the portrait, Lexi was wearing an eighteenth-century style dress with a corset drawn so tight her waist looked like she could snap in half with a stiff breeze. Her dark hair was drawn up onto her head in a bodacious up-do with feathers and pearls entwined in her trusses.

This portrait had been done forever ago, but some things never changed, I guessed, seeing the unfriendly scowl painting her pointed features.

I don’t know why I had assumed Lexi was a young vampire. Maybe because I was under the impression people eventually grew out of their petty bitch phase.

Flipping through the rest of the paintings, my heart slammed into my ribs when my gaze fixed onto two characters posed in the final painting.

A man with black, wavy hair down to his shoulders and a goatee sat in a chair, wearing clothes that suggested the painting had been done in the late fifteen or early sixteen hundreds. He had gray eyes like mine, strong brows that curved downward into a chilling scowl, and thin lips pressed into a severe frown.

Behind him stood a man with silver hair and ghostly white eyes. With his hand curled over his master’s shoulder, he stood there with a dead expression that seemed to pierce right through the portrait, staring at me from another time and place.

It was as if Sterling from the past could see me staring at him now. Even though this was a painting, I felt connected to him.

There were slashes in the canvas, confirming this had been the picture once mounted over the hearth.

I didn’t blame Sterling for not wanting a portrait of him and his master erected where it could be seen every day.

My attention went back to Thomas Knight, sitting in his throne-like chair with all the authority of the medieval villain he’d been radiating around him like a noxious aura palpable even now.

This was the first time seeing any kind of depiction of my father, and looking straight into his cruel gray eyes sent a chill through my body despite the heat coming off the dancing flames in the hearth.

Whoever the painter had been, they’d done an amazing job capturing the glint of evil in my father’s face just as they’d captured the haunted expression on Sterling’s.

I found myself gaping back at the mysterious prince, and a weird sensation weighed down my chest, making it hard to breathe.

He was blind, yet his eyes were banked with infinite wisdom. Like he had accumulated more knowledge than all the contents of every book in this library.

The eldest surviving progeny of Thomas Knight wasn’t like the others. Corry, Eros, and Vincent hadn’t been vampires for all that long. They’d only spent a handful of years with the king and, in Corry’s case, only a few months. Sterling, on the other hand, had been with Thomas Knight for centuries.

I remembered Corry and Vincent telling me Sterling had once been a priest nearly a millennia ago. A man of the cloth, forced to serve a monster for almost a thousand years.

It was impossible to imagine how Sterling might have changed as a man, made to endure the cruelty of the vampire king for so long.

Then I remembered something else I’d been told about Thomas Knight. He had turned vampires left and right back in the day, all for the fun of seeing them break, testing the strength of men. Sterling had been one of the few to endure him, but looking into the haunted, hollow expression of his sightless eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of him had survived.

What horrors had he been made to endure while the others dropped like flies around him?

What exactly had my dad done to Sterling? Thomas Knight had blinded him, but that had to be only one line item in a gigantic list of messed-up, medieval shit.

There’d been a time where I daydreamed about my dad coming to rescue me from my mom’s house. That he would bring me to a new home without bars. And maybe he’d even bring me home to a new family.

I guess, in a way, I got what I wished for. I had a new family, alright. But daddy had turned out to be evil. And as for my so-calledstepbrothers, all they wanted was to mate and breed me.

Except for Sterling. Who knew what Sterling wanted?

It was a mystery I burned to discover for myself.

With my heart in my throat, I made my way to a door that sat on the right of the hearth. Inside sat a circular room with a winding staircase. This had to be the eastern tower.

With every step that carried me closer to Sterling’s room, my heart rate climbed, and a million thoughts thrashed around in my head.

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