Aleiya nearly jumped out of her skin from the sound. Before the door could open, she hid herself behind the Vampire Lord. It was instinctive, practiced: find something much scarier than herself to stand between her and the world, and everything would be taken care of.

  Her mother always found it endearing.

  She could only hope that Sullivan found it endearing too.

  The knock continued on and on and on.

  “Evie! Just come in.”

  It took very little to annoy Sullivan, but watching his wife vanish behind him? Had him irate at the intrusion of her fragile peace.

  Without further ado, the door burst open, revealing the sparkling grace of none other than Everest of the Drakovich Clan herself. She stomped as she made her presence known, hauling not one, not two, but three little red wagons behind her in a train. Each piled high with gifts.

  “Good morrow, dearest Uncle! For I have brought forth with your tower of finery! Behold its splendor before it wastes away in your fucking closet!” She announced, taking a knee to present said tower of finery to her Uncle.

  The sudden flare of Evie’s rage at “fucking closet” let Sullivan know exactly what he was going to have to deal with today.

  “They’re wedding gifts, not a bank vault for your pilfering little rat hands.” He deadpanned before he took off his jacket.

  She balked at his irreverence. “P-p-pilfering? Excuse you? These hands were sculpted by the Lord Almighty himself. Precision-engineered for prosperity.”

  She went to close the door, showcasing the evidence of her God given hands.

  “Besides, you’re not gonna do anything with them anyway! I can flip these babies for at least twice as much as they’re worth.” She smacked one of the boxes on its face to emphasize her point.

  The headache was returning.

  Then all at once it went away. He felt the timid presence just behind him, an accidental touch that grazed him. Accidental because he knew Aleiya kept her hands to herself. As if her touch was offensive and staining.

  Nonetheless, the small reminder of his wife calmed him just enough to deal with his unscrupulous niece. Even as his insides curled and writhed from guilt too fresh.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “I don’t know how many times you need to hear it before it drills through to that tiny smooth brain of yours. The gifts are for myself and for my wife.” He made sure to emphasize “my wife”.

  “Like you give a shit about your wife,” Evie used her fingers for quotations, mimicking her Uncle. “You even said we needed to recoup the losses! I literally just saw Oliver weeping over the receipts.”

  “Evie, I don’t have time for this.”

  Sullivan did his best to gain back control of the situation. Though, she wasn’t wrong. The wedding itself had cost a small fortune—enough for him to dip into their own family coffers. Selling an extravagant lie for the ruling class was inevitably expensive.

  But as he thought about it—about the wedding, the guests, the gifts—he felt the pressure and warmth of Aleiya’s presence behind him. Silent and frightened.

  And he realized, with a sinking weight, that he had left the very lynchpin of it all out of his plans entirely.

  His marriage was off to such a great start.

  Evie was so taken aback her head nearly spun around. “You said I could sell them yesterday!”

  She flung her arms wide. “We don’t even know if the Virelai got the sanctions lifted.”

  “We’ll give out my portion until we find another solution.” His word was final. He couldn’t drink the city’s sanctioned blood anyway—it usually served as a reward to divvy out when his court needed the carrot over the stick.

  “And what about you? You ca—”

  Evie caught sight of silver and white.

  Aleiya couldn’t help but look from behind him. She was curious—who could possibly speak that way to Sullivan? To anyone?

  Their eyes locked.

  Moonlit pearls against marbled black. And Aleiya could see the strings connecting each person in the room. Her silken madder string that curled around her husband, and a new colorless string. It stretched across the room to loop around Evie.

  She didn’t know what that meant. They never tell her anything useful.

  “Well, aren’t you a little ghost,” Evie said, one brow arching as she leaned slightly, peering around Sullivan to get a better look at her. “And here I thought my uncle just conjured a bride out of thin air.”

  Aleiya’s fingers curled in the fabric of Sullivan’s sleeve, but she didn’t retreat further. She simply blinked at the stranger—the string between them taut, colorless, humming with some possibility she couldn’t name.

  The click of Evie’s boots on stone was enough to send a sharp jolt of anxiety zipping through Aleiya, her breath catching for just a moment, but it was silenced as Sullivan’s hand reached for her. She took it, grasped it like a lifeline, hoping he could shield her from what was to come.

  Slick as silk, he brought her beside him, keeping a hand on the small of her back. It let her know he was still there, she was still safe. She was stiff and unsure, but trusted him all the same.

  “Put her there, Princess,” Evie held out her hand for Aleiya to shake. She was eager to meet her new auntie-in-law.

  It’d been at least a few decades since another fellow bloodletter made Sanctum Vespertine their new prison.

  Aleiya looked at the outstretched hand—hesitating, calculating—then plucked a flower from her hair and placed it in Evie’s palm. It worked well enough for that sickening man last night, she had no doubts it would work again.

  Evie stared at her gift totally floored.

  She twisted her hand all around, as if the answer might fall out of the damn thing.

  What?

  Why?

  She glanced up at her uncle that towered over the both of them. She put her hand next to her mouth as if to hide her words, and harshly whispered, “Uncle Sully. The fuck does this mean?”

  Sullivan gave a cough, covering his own mouth, not wanting the fact that this moment actually, genuinely made him want to smile. He wasn’t sure what was more amusing, his wife using the same tactic twice, or his niece’s reply to it.

  He cleared his throat, regaining his composure.

  “It means hello.”