Jae couldn’t decide what he hated more. Warlocks. Or Atlanta.
“Since when did we start letting their kind in here?” Boone said as he stared at the scheming warlocks, a muscle jumping beside the cleft in his chin.
“Two guesses,” Jae retorted before the door near the back of the room blew open as if a storm had entered the building. The next second, Hortense de Morny glided across the threshold, her arms wrapped in a cloud of cream-colored voile and her ivory skirts swirling about her. She stopped short when she saw Villiers. Inclined her head to one side.
“Non,” she said with a toss of her curls. “Je n’ai pas assez faim pour ça.” Then she plopped down on the other end of the couch and reached for Arjun’s glass. After a sniff of its contents, she wrinkled her nose and looked about, her gaze settling on a carafe of blood and absinthe warming above a tea candle, positioned to Jae’s right.
“Pour me a glass, mon chaton,” Hortense chimed, extending an empty tumbler Jae’s way. “It’s the least you can do, after all.” Her aura seemed to simmer, like steam rising from a kettle.
Jae almost did as he was told. His arm stretched of its own volition before he caught himself and sent Hortense a frown.
She grinned like a lynx, her brows arching, the empty glass still dangling from her hand.
Jae hated how much Hortense resembled Madeleine in appearance, though the two sisters could not in truth be more different. Hortense had taken advantage of these physical similarities on countless occasions, cajoling Jae into doing her bidding with a simple bat of her eyelashes and an imploring expression.
Guilt was a powerful motivator, after all.
Odette rapped the back of Hortense’s hand like a schoolmarm. “That’s not for you.”
“Strike me again at your own peril, sorcière blanche,” Hortense said. With a glance toward the back of the room, she snorted once, a finger winding through a dark curl. “Anyway, you have enough problems maintenant.” She indicated Bastien with her chin. “Keep feeding him like a god at a banquet, and he’ll never learn how to fend for himself. It’s time he learned our ways. A whole month has passed.”
“Everything is still new to him,” Odette protested. “I want Bastien to learn how to survive on his own just as much as any of us, but—”
“You want the ne’er-do-well to learn how to survive?” Boone said, his voice low. “Then stop pampering him like a babe in swaddling.”
Outrage cut lines across Odette’s forehead. “I don’t pamper him!”
Jae braced his elbows on his knees and peered at her through his long black hair.
Odette’s features flushed, the blood she’d recently consumed warming her cheeks. “Your opinion was not wanted, chat grincheux.”
“I said nothing.” Jae sniffed.
“And you cut nonetheless.”
Boone snorted. “Perhaps he meant only to scratch.”
Odette stood in a flurry of pastel silk. “Go back to glowering at nothing, grumpy cat,” she said to Jae. “And spare us your pithy retorts, Lord Hellhound.” She aimed a withering glance at Boone.
Hortense’s laughter bounded into the smoke-filled ceiling. Another breeze coiled through the room, accompanied by the scent of French lavender and iron gall ink. Jae breathed in the familiar perfume—steeling himself—before acknowledging the Court’s newest arrival. When he turned, his eyes met the unmatched stare of Madeleine de Morny. The warmth he found there vanished the next instant. Jae cleared his throat. Looked away.
Some things could not be changed, even after more than a century.
Jae searched around him for a distraction. Fool that he was.
Sébastien Saint Germain had descended lower in his makeshift throne, a single booted foot resting on one of the chaise’s arms, his wrinkled white shirt slowly being unbuttoned by a girl whose grandmother had been a celebrated nymph of the Sylvan Vale before she was banished by its ruler, the infamous Lady of the Vale, for reasons still unknown.
Just last week, the girl—Jessamine was her name—had set her sights on the nephew of Nicodemus Saint Germain, a target unattainable to her a month prior. Nicodemus would not have permitted his only living heir to dally in the open with any young woman unless she hailed from the uppermost echelons of New Orleans society. But times—and circumstances—had changed. Bastien was no longer mortal, so the chance of siring a son to carry on the Saint Germain line was gone, along with most of their maker’s most cherished dreams.
In short, Bastien was no longer bound by anyone’s expectations. Even his own.
Distaste curled in the back of Jae’s throat as Jessamine straddled Bastien, hitching her skirts in one pale hand and resting the slender fingers of the other on his bronze chest, over the place his heart used to beat.
Bastien said nothing. Did nothing. Only watched her, his eyes narrowed, his pupils black.
Jessamine loosened the ties on the front of her blue linen dress and lowered her bodice, her features sly. Then she drew a finger from the top of one exposed breast to the side of her slender neck, her head canting to one side, as if to offer him a taste. Bastien pushed her chin upward with his thumb, his fingers twining through her auburn hair. Then he leaned forward, the tip of his nose trailing along her collarbone.
Without a second thought, Jae crossed the room in three strides and grabbed Jessamine by the wrist. She shrieked in feigned protest when Jae hauled her to her feet as if she weighed no more than a feather. “Be gone from here,” he demanded, anger sharpening his accent. “While you still breathe.”
“I think not, vampire,” Jessamine replied primly. “Do you have any idea who I am? My grandmother was among the gentry of the Sylvan Vale’s Summer Court, my mother an ethereal of the highest order. Sébastien invited me as his special guest. If he wishes for me to remain at his side, then—”
“Stay at your own peril, you silly little bloodsac.” He pulled her closer. “But I promise you this: if he doesn’t kill you, I will. To a vampire, there is nothing sweeter than the blood of the Vale.”
The color drained from Jessamine’s pretty face, her grandmother’s aquamarine eyes blinking like those of a cornered rabbit. Without a word, she straightened her bodice and fled down the curved staircase toward the bustling restaurant below.
“Get up.”
Jae turned in place at the sound of this voice. The voice of their maker. The voice they were bound by blood to obey. Nicodemus stood before Bastien, who continued to sprawl on his chaise and sip from his macabre goblet as if nothing of import had transpired.
“Get up,” Nicodemus repeated, his voice going softer. Dangerously so.
Jae worried Bastien would continue defying Nicodemus, as he had everyone else for the past month. Instead, Bastien raised his goblet in salute and drained it before setting it down, his movements like a drop of honey on a cold December’s eve. Then he stood to his full height, his unbuttoned shirt hanging off one shoulder, the signet ring on his right hand glinting in the lamplight.
“As my maker commands,” Bastien said with an icy grin.
Nicodemus studied him in silence for the span of a breath. “Collect your coat and hat.”
Bastien pursed his lips, his jaw rippling.
Nicodemus matched him, toe to toe. “Tonight you will learn who you are meant to be.”
BASTIEN
Beyond the city lies a swamp that stretches as far as the eye can see.
It is almost impossible for a horse or carriage to travel freely here. The mud is too high, the road too unpredictable. For centuries, this natural barrier has protected New Orleans from intruders, much like the waters of the Mississippi.
I have not wandered into the swamp since I was a boy. The last time I remember trudging through the muck and mire was the day my best friend, Michael Grimaldi, and I hatched a plan to lay traps for bullfrogs. Later that afternoon, I was forced to race back to his cousin Luca’s house in the Marigny, so we could save Michael from a mudslide. At eleven years old, I was too small and wiry to pull him out by myself, and I knew I couldn’t ask Boone or Odette for help, since I’d lied to them about where I was going and what I was doing.
Madeleine would have refused to save Michael simply because he was a cursed Grimaldi. Hortense would have laughed at me for even asking. And Jae? I couldn’t stomach another curt lecture from the ghoul-eyed demon. So I decided to eat crow and ask Luca for help. By the time we returned, Michael was buried waist-deep in mud, scared out of his wits that a gator would find him and make a feast of his bones.
Once we freed Michael, Luca forbade us from being friends. His words should have frightened me. After all, Luca was in line to lead the Brotherhood one day. At eighteen, he was almost six and a half feet tall, his arms like tree trunks and his voice like thunder.
I decided I would show fear if Michael showed fear first. Since he didn’t look the least bit worried, we continued to defy both our families. Until another fall evening four years later, when Michael found me kissing the girl he’d admired for months at our cotillion ball.
Not my finest moment, I’ll admit.
My foot slides through a pile of leaves and sludge as I continue following my uncle through the dark swamp, listening to the groaning, muttering creatures gather around me, trying to decide whether I am food or foe.
I should have apologized to Michael that night. Instead I argued with him. Portrayed myself as a victim, of all things.
She kissed me first.
It doesn’t matter! Where do your loyalties lie, Bastien? I should have known better than to trust a thieving Saint Germain.
It isn’t my fault she prefers me to you, Grimaldi. Who wouldn’t?
I wince, recalling the way the blood drained from Michael’s face when I said that. How my fingers tugged through my hair, the only indication of the guilt roiling in my gut. I remember how he never again confided in me. How we both retreated into ourselves. The following morning, I cut my hair short and have worn it that way ever since.
I lost more than a friend that night. I lost a brother. It doesn’t matter how Michael retaliated in the years to come, attempting to undermine me. How he rose to the top of our class as I won every award for marksmanship and horseback riding, each trying to best the other.