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Remember why you left us.’ “Remember why you left us.”
“HERE’S A TRUTH about sword fighting, coldblood: Even if you’re bad at it, when the person you’re fighting doesn’t have one? You’re still going to be pretty good.
Though the habit was a squeeze, the veil covered my scruffy beard at least. And clad as sisters of the San Cleyland Sorority, we crept along the walls to a stairwell, then up to the battlements above.
Lol
What I can tell you is that the only heaven I’ve found in all this hell was in the people I loved. Friends. Famille. So, you need to keep on thinking the best of folk, despite seeing the worst of us. Hold on to that fire inside you, girl. Because it makes you shine. And once it goes out, it goes out forever. Know you’ll make mistakes. Understand that it will bruise—hell, it might even break. But don’t lock it up inside your chest.’
Aim your heart at the fucking world.’
‘I can’t believe in a God that loves us. Not after all I’ve seen. But I believe this: My friends are the hill I die
It can’t be coincidence, though, can it? A fifth bloodline, with almost the exact same name as Michon’s daughter? Esan. Faith. Esani. Faithless.’
LITTLE LION! ’ Baptiste roared.
Fairdawning, Peasant,’ Aaron grinned. “‘Godmorrow, Lordling,’ I laughed.
Aww
“‘That was one of my wife’s many talents, see. She always knew just the right thing to say to get her way. That woman had me wrapped around her little finger, and it only got worse when Patience learned how to do it, too. She took after her mother, that one, sure and true. One look into those eyes, and I’d melt like springtime snow.’
Past tense
‘God may have sent the storm, but he gave me arms to swim for shore. He might bring the winter snows, but he gave us hands to light the flame. You see the suffering all around you but not the joy right beside you, and you curse him for the worst but don’t thank him for the best.
You only appreciate the sunshine after you’ve stood in the pouring rain. Everything happens for a reason, Gabe.’
“‘It matters not what you hold faith in. But you must hold faith in something.’
The Worst Day,’ she insisted. ‘The day he found you. That’s why you left home, why you’ve come all this way. Why you drink. Why you don’t believe anymore. All of it. This isn’t about me, none of it is. It’s about them, Gabe. Astrid and Patience.’
That’s where you buried them, Gabriel.’
“To speak it would make it real. “To speak it would be to live it again.
That’s the awful part about it: the worst days of your life start out just like any other.
So true!
“She looked more beautiful than she’d ever been. But it wasn’t the beauty of a thousand smiles, nor of the mother of my child, nor of the light of my life. No. Hers was a dark beauty now. Those lips that had once breathed life into mine? Now red as murder. That face shaped like heartbreak? Not milk-white and soft, but marbled and hard. I saw no rise and fall of breath in her breast, no pulse at her throat, still marked by the press of his teeth and the leavings of his feast. And I reared back, almost breaking at the final, awful horror of it. Because she wasn’t dead. She was Dead.
Astrid was turned
I made a vow then and there, a promise to them both, my Astrid, my Patience, my angels. Whispered in the dark, cold as tombs and black as hell, that never again would the blood of another touch my lips. Never again would I feed this monster I was. “Never again.
there is a time for grief, and a time for songs, and a time to recall with fondness all that has been and gone. “But there is a time for killing too. “There is a time for blood. “And a time for rage. “And a time to close your eyes and become the thing hell wants you to be. “And so. I did.”
‘Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill, Lachance.’
“‘Remember, Gabe,’ he whispered. ‘It matters not what you hold faith in. But you must hold faith in something.’
But when there’s little you can do, do what little you can.
It was as my love had told me, as she’d always said. Hearts only bruise. They never break.
“And in the end, I knew I’d not take back a breath of it. Not the bliss I knew then, nor the pain I felt now. Not all the forsaken hours I’d spent without them, the ache of my lips without Astrid’s kiss, the emptiness of my arms without Patience’s embrace. In those few moments I had them, and if only then, I was immortal. Because they were immaculate. And they were mine. “And no matter the God I’d turned my back on. No matter the father I cursed and the heaven I defied. Because in the end, it matters not what you hold faith in. So long as you hold faith in something.
And I realized at last that the blood on the blade wasn’t his, it was hers—it was hers, her palms sliced open and the blood of the Redeemer Himself smeared upon Ashdrinker’s broken edge.
And Ashdrinker, forged in an age long past by the hands of legends and now blessed by the blood of the Grail herself, split his throat from ear to ear.
“The Beast of Vellene was dead.”
“‘Sister Chloe!’ Dior cried.
Chloe still alive!
But it’s a fool who looks with more fondness to the days behind than the ones ahead. And it’s a man drenched in defeat who sings that sad refrain; that things were better then.
‘Even now you dare to speak of sacrifice when that girl shall pay a thousand times the sum of your own on the morrow! She shall be the one to spill her blood in the name of this empire, not you!’
“And my throat opened wide.”
Oh shit!
“Moth wings.”
“Blood. “Blood.
“The blood of an ancien.
“‘Snatched from the fall by our thousand wingsss, dragged from death’s door by our opened vein,
“My baby sister. “My little hellion. “‘Celene…’ I whispered. “My stomach turned as she tried to smile with but half a face. “‘Well met, brother.’
Liathe is Celene!
“‘You said your name was Liathe.’ “‘My title. Not my name.’
If that girl’s blood is spilled on holy ground, then all will be undone! All of it!’
“I looked at this girl beside me. My hill to die on. My shoulder to cry on. I’d no clue what I believed, save only that I believed in her.
“But we have tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.”
“You know, you never answered my question, Chastain.” “And what question was that, de León?” “When your dark mother and pale mistress set you this task … did you think she was locking me in here with you, or you in here with me?”
Jean-François burst apart in his hands, the vampire’s body collapsing into a tumbling, jumbling mass. As Gabriel staggered backward, pink froth at his lips, he realized he was holding only the vampire’s feathered mantle and frockcoat; dark velvet embroidered with golden curlicues. A horde of rats was swarming about his feet now, spilling from the legs of the historian’s britches, the sleeves of his fine coat, rushing in a flood from the cell. Meline had rolled to her feet, clutching the historie to her bosom as she dashed from the room and slammed the door, a few rats chittering and squealing
...more
He raised his pipe and gifted Jean-François a grim smile. “Can’t blame a man for trying.” The historian narrowed his eyes and hissed. Gabriel breathed a plume of bloody smoke into the air. “Until tomorrow, vampire.”
IT WAS THE twenty-seventh year of daysdeath in the realm of the Forever King, and his murderer was still waiting to die.
He killed the Forever King
