Page 62 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

“The last time you saw her?” I repeated, gaping at him. “You mean this was the night she asked you to run away with her?”

“Listen,” he instructed with a bob of his head toward the expanse of murk where my mother’s fiery aura glimmered.

“What are you not telling me, Sapphire?” he repeated, his question echoing with a severity that had my teeth grating together in suspense, even though I had a pretty good guess as to what bomb she was about to drop.

“Can’t you tell?” she said with a dry bark of a laugh. “They say your senses are more honed than any other vampire, dead or alive.”

A few beats of silence crawled by as Sterling carefully considered Sapphire’s words, like mulling over a cryptic riddle. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me, I’m afraid.”

“I’m pregnant.”

More prickling silence blanketed the room. The tension between them was so palpable, I almost felt like I was a part of the conversation rather than watching it happen some twenty-four years later.

“That’s impossible,” he gasped. “I would know well before you. Every vampire in this house would, for that matter.”

“I can feel it. My body is telling me I have a monster inside. Growing. Getting stronger. My Helsing powers always tell me when a Knight is near. And—” her voice quavered “—it’s never been this strong before. It’s an ache in my bones, a screech in my head as soft as a breeze yet as blaring as a damn air raid siren. It never shuts up. I’m on edge, ready to strike at any moment, but I can’t because it’s inside me, Sterling.”

My lungs twisted, making me gulp for breath as I listened to my mom recount how it felt for a Helsing to be pregnant with a Knight. Pregnant with me.

She sniffled and cursed softly beneath her breath as she wiped her tears away. “It’s telling me to kill it before it gets any bigger.”

“Your Helsing abilities, perhaps. But maybe you need to stop using those as your guide to everything in life, especially now that you’re living with one foot in the vampire world.”

“You’re saying I should keep it?”

“What I’m saying is that you need to follow your heart on occasion, Miss Lockheart,” he said with a mournful wisp of a sigh. “For your Helsing powers might lead you down a path you do not wish to go…”

Even without seeing her face, Sapphire’s horror was so potent I could almost taste it.

“Sterling. I get that I’m talking to a Knight, but try to be Switzerland for a second here, please?”

“Presuming you’re referring to political indifference, I am in no way Switzerland in this scenario, for I am wholeheartedly on your side.” I could envision Sterling’s eyes narrowing in the way they always did when he spoke with the same sharpness he did in the memory. “Which is why I simply suggest that you take a moment and listen to what your heart is telling you to do. Not your logic, not your Helsing instincts. What does Sapphire want?”

“I… I don’t know,” she admitted. “I want a lot of things. I want to keep the guild going. But having this baby could mean the end of the guild. I want to kill the vampire king… But how can I do that if I’m having his fucking baby?”

“Keeping the baby doesn’t have to have anything to do with him. You can love the child and still hate the father. Many women do it.”

“But what if bringing this baby into the world means I’m giving birth to his replacement? What if it’s just as awful as he is? It will be half-vampire, half-Helsing. My grandfather died years ago. I’m the last living Helsing. Meaning...I’ll be tainting the bloodline. Lockhearts with the slayer power are supposed to kill Knights. I’d be dishonoring my family, fucking up an entire legacy…all because who’s to say which side it’ll be on? Even if the baby doesn’t turn out evil like its father, the guild won’t stand for it. They’ll want the baby dead. They probably wouldn’t even wait for it to be born. They’d eradicate the Helsing line if it means keeping the power out of the clutches of the Knight family.”

“Calm yourself,” the vampire said in a soothing murmur, breathing in heavy patterns—in and out—so that Sapphire might do the same.

She followed suit, inhaling and exhaling.

“It would be easier for you to terminate the pregnancy,” Sterling said, so softly I had to strain to hear it. “If you managed to escape, you could go back to running the guild and use what you’ve learned from your time here to teach your members how to be better slayers. You could write a more accurate account of vampires whenever you get to revising your grandfather’s guide. You could pretend nothing ever happened. But is that what you really want?”

“I–I want her.”

In my periphery, Sterling of the present’s lips curved with the ghost of a smile. “Then have her.”

“But how? I’ll be hunted.”

“By hunters who will never hold a candle to the greatest Helsing that ever was.”

“I’m not the greatest Helsing. I failed to end the Knight bloodline.”

“In the sense that your ancestors intended, yes. But maybe you are the end to it in the sense that you’re turning it into something else. Giving it a new beginning.”

“I don’t know how to raise a kid, let alone a vampire. I’m a Helsing. I kill vampires. Even if I can protect the baby from the guild, what if I can’t protect it from me?”

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