Page 58 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

There was a brief stint of silence, then Sterling from the memory spoke again.

“You killed him...?” There wasn’t a shred of emotion in Sterling’s tone. Maybe shock, which explained his lack of relief, considering this was the moment he’d found out about his abuser’s death. “How?”

“By drinking liquid silver and then offering myself to the fucker for an earlier dinner last night, right after he made you...” Vincent’s voice thinned and cracked. “...In front of the entire coven. I couldn’t— I lost it. I–I killed him. Our master is dead, Ster. The blight on our existence is gone. Don’t you know what this means?”

“I know what it means. However, I don’t believe you understand exactly what you’ve done. The Elders—”

“Who gives a shit about those archaic fucks?” Vincent’s aura gleamed and sharpened when he cut off the older vampire. “They’re a pathetic excuse for a government, and that’s coming from a dark fae who grew up in the fucking jungle.”

“I’man Elder, Feral.”

”Yeah, and you’re the only one who’s worth a damn. You’ve made laws that make things better for our kind. The rest of the council is just the king’s glorified fan club.”

“Even so. There will be consequences. Severe ones.”

“Only if they find out.”

The silence simmered. Vincent stepped closer to Sterling, his aura growing noticeably softer around the edges. “I’m not the brains of this outfit. But I’m also not stupid or arrogant enough to think that. I know there’s going to be a mess to clean up, and I’m not talking about the master’s body bleeding out in my room.” The grin in Sterling’s voice made my own lips twitch.

“Whatever price there is to pay for this, it’s worth it.”

“I agree,” the eldest prince said in a taut whisper. “He can’t force you to be his blood whore anymore. He can’t command Eros to kill his friends from the guild. And thank the Lord that Corry will never come to know the depths of his master’s brutality. And me...”

“Thank God, or whatever deity you pray to these days, that he can’t hurt you anymore,” Vincent finished for him.

“No, Brother,” Sterling rasped. “My God had one thousand years to answer my prayers and deliver me from damnation. God had nothing to do with it. It’s you I’ll thank, Vincent. Of all the emotions I’m feeling, all the words in my vocabulary, and the languages at my disposal, all I can think to say is thank you.”

As I watched the exchange, a warmth seeped into my chest and my heart, filling me with a sensation that left me bursting with love for Vincent Feral. Not the painful kind of love I was used to feeling for the savage male. This was just a pleasant, tingling kind of love that left me with that floating feeling.

The world was turning upside down.

I allowed Sterling to pull me away and into another memory. Vincent was in this one too, but this time with his rival sitting beside him. His aura was less chaotic and stifling than Vincent’s. Deathwish’s energy was just like him, controlled and precise with its lethal emanation. His aura was a smokey gray, thick and spirling.

Like a silent revolver versus a war hammer.

Beside Eros was another aura. This one was pleasant to stare into, a bright-white light with a faint-blue tinge to it that reminded me of a lamp called a happy light. Trinity Baxter bought me one once because she saw an ad on TV about how it was supposed to increase dopamine if you stared into it. It hadn’t really worked for me, though. I could stare into the light all damn day and feel nothing at all. Gazing into the bluish-white light of this person’s aura, I felt all sorts of things.

“Uh-oh,” the aura’s owner said, my heart squeezing when I recognized Corry’s voice. “Are we about to get a scolding from big brother?”

“Quiet,” Sterling demanded, sounding irritated as fuck. “Miss Baxter has almost died more than twice now since coming here. That is a problem considering she hasn’t been here for more than a few days.”

Eros, Corry and Vincent all tensed at the bodeful weight of Sterling’s words, preparing for the incoming scolding.

“You are not to hurt her. You are not to manhandle her ‘less she specifically asks for you to do so. No feeding from her femoral arteries. And no feeding from her at all if you’re less than one year turned.”

“Hey, that’s not fair—” Corry began to protest but fell silent, probably from the scathing glare I imagined the elder vampire gave him.

“I don’t want any more accidents. Be gentle with her.”

Eros snickered. “Yeah, see, the princess isn’t exactly into the whole gentle thing.”

Vincent emitted a growl that had a familiar pressure building between my thighs.

Sterling ignored him. “Even more reason to act with caution. You were reckless. When you found her in your den, you should have sent her back upstairs.”

“Hey. I don’t want to shift the blame here, but you were reckless to give her all that blood in the attic... She’s basically a youngblood. That’s like giving bath salts to a lunatic already inclined to ripping people’s faces off and eating them.”

“I understand perfectly well what could have happened,” past Sterling hissed while the present one tensed beside me. “It will never happen again. However, in this instance, I’m specifically referring to your peculiar mating preferences.”

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