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Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 6)

Though I’ve been coasting quite well through my second run at being a newborn (and I now realise that, though I have the mental fortitude of a vampire of three decades, there are still certain physical indications that my body is still new to immortality), Scintilla can’t seem to say the same. I remember her as a mentor figure, a beloved older sister that guided me through those early, tumultuous years of my unlife. She went with me hunting well past my newborn months, regardless of the many duties Canus had tasked her with, citing her position as the eldest as justification for granting her the dubious honour. She stayed with me during the nights that I wanted nothing else but to bury myself in the back garden to get away from all the noise, all the light of London at night. It wouldn’t even be wrong to speak of her as a motherly figure, as opposed to a sisterly one. Now, however… ‘How did you do that?’ she asks me one night as she practises calling forth her witchlights and I prac

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 7)

Canus ignores my question. ‘Are you still willing to meet her and befriend her?’ he asks, addressing both Scintilla and me. Scintilla was watching me intently, but she returns to looking at the back of Canus’s head at his question. Her answer is slow, carefully considered: ‘If she’ll be a potential sister, then I think I’d rather have a new sister I don’t know all that well than not have a new sister at all.’ ‘Favilla?’ ‘How does surviving the transformation vary?’ I ask again. Canus sighs and turns his key, reviving the car’s idling engine. We drive past the next several city blocks in leaden silence before, finally, he responds, ‘Sometimes the Sire isn’t as careful as he ought to be. Sometimes the newborn isn’t as strong as she needs to be.’ He’s talking around the issue, and I’m more annoyed at him for it than I probably should be, considering how often I do the same to him. Such is the taste of my own medicine, I suppose. We get to the next red light before he finally says, ‘

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 8)

These past three weeks since Canus’s startling revelations about the bloodline curse, I’ve been turning them over and over in my mind, wondering if what he said was true, if he was lying, why he would lie. The answer is that of course it’s true; there’s simply no point to lying about something like this. But it raises another question. Chiefly, if it’s true, then why hadn’t he told me this last time? It can’t be that he didn’t know, since the theory originated with the Prince’s generation, or even that he wasn’t sure, considering he said that Chryseus had corroborated. It is only here, in the warm light of the café, studying an emotion in his eyes that can only be described as thirst, tinged with a sadness that can only be named regret, all because he’s looking at Scintilla watch the human beside her with growing interest, that I finally understand. You see, in my first life, Canus had preferences when it came to drinking from his progeny. He always preferred the newborns above all,

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 9)

For the subsequent week-and-a-half, Scintilla seems to go through a metamorphosis. She catches up to me a little in sorcery and surpasses me in most of the more physical aspects of immortality. She’s always been better than me at seeing in pitch dark, but she’s stronger than me now (though I have more experience so I still spar better than she does), and she seems to hear better as well. It’s pretty obvious that she’s finally figured out the trick to her bloodline curse and is gradually beginning to embrace it. And I, too, deliberate on trying to reach a similar epiphany. Before I can corner her for a conversation about it, however, she gets to me about a very different topic. It happens at Katy’s flat. It’s Friday night (or as good as, since it’s barely after midnight). Both her flatmates are out, and Katy herself is, as usual, still at work. She lives modestly, her only luxury being a large collection of first edition encyclopaedias. I’m flipping through one of her rare personal bo

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 10)

‘The letters weren’t explicitly intimate,’ I say, but I concede Scintilla’s point: ‘They were close enough to it, though.’ I pause, considering my words. ‘Of course, I asked him about that, asked him why he never told me. And he—he implied that I never agreed to be transformed.’ ‘Oh,’ Scintilla says. There’s a pause in which I think she must be pitying me. ‘So it’s not that I don’t like him,’ I conclude when the silence becomes too much. ‘I just haven’t been able to figure out how I feel about him, and he’s been decent enough to keep his distance.’ I hoped Scintilla might be satisfied with the conversation, but instead she presses on, ‘But what about this week? What changed?’ It’s a much more awkward question, considering the change was Scintilla. ‘This week…’ I begin, hesitating on my phrasing. Just then, Scintilla returns the brightness settings to what they were before we came, then shuts the laptop and readjusts the position of the wireless mouse. ‘Are we done?’ I check my mo

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 11)

Canus’s head of staff is Simon, who I suspect might even be older than Canus. He has the ageless white hair and flawless skin common in legacy thralls, maybe even by multiple generations—he slips into a tongue that I suspect might be Middle English sometimes. Before he sends us home, he tells us that he and Margaret will take shifts watching over Katy during the day, while Scintilla and I will alternate between watching over Katy at night. If this had happened before I’d gotten mysteriously sent back to the past, I wouldn’t have blinked. Right now, however, Canus only has five thralls and two progeny, which means that sending out a member of each group will render us even more short staffed than we already are. ‘We need more thralls,’ I mutter to Scintilla in the back seat of the cab on our way back to Canus’s estate. ‘We should probably send the thralls out in pairs to cover daytime protection, and, whichever one of us takes the night shift, we should also be accompanied by another

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 12)

My chance to catch Canus in a conversation comes the next evening, after Scintilla volunteers to take the first shift to watch over Katy. I walk with her to the front door, then double back to Canus’s rooms to see him still reclined in his chaise longue, scrolling through his mobile. The cold light of its screen illuminates his face from below, glancing across the elegant ridge of his brow. He glances up when I step inside again, languidly inquisitive. ‘You’ll need more blood from now on, won’t you?’ A small furrow appears on his forehead. ‘Yes,’ he says, tone hesitant. He mentioned not three minutes ago that he would recruit more thralls to help watch over Katy; it’s not a difficult inference to make that he might need more sustenance on a more sustained basis. I just stand there, waiting for him to explain. ‘I was planning on supplementing my diet with mortals,’ he eventually admits. Though he’s looking levelly into my eyes, his expression is carefully blank. There’s something

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 13)

The next couple of weeks are exhausting—so exhausting, in fact, that I table my plan of trying to have a conversation with Canus. He’s slippery, and I’m both tired and distracted. Scintilla and I have been taking turns watching over Katy. We’re usually accompanied by thralls now, at least one at any given time, so it’s less dangerous. Still, though, it’s a lonely prospect; thralls aren’t very good conversationalists, and I haven’t seen Scintilla for more than minutes at a time since we first discovered Claudia’s scent trail in Katy’s stairwell. It’s been a little more than a fortnight since then, and we’ve encountered no less than three instances of other scent trails appearing suspiciously close to various places that Katy likes to frequent. Scintilla finds one scent trail in one of the hospitals where Katy works, though two storeys above the unit where her shifts are normally scheduled. Scintilla describes the scent as masculine but clean, like sandalwood and snow. It’s not a descri

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 14)

‘You have to turn her soon,’ I tell Canus after we return to the estate and I allow him to drink from me for the second time tonight. ‘I can’t last like this.’ He licks his lips, a flash of scarlet sweeping away a streak of crimson that had marred the pale stretch of his bottom lip. I watch the movement, so mesmerised that I almost startle when his lips part further and he says, ‘I will. I plan to ask for permission at court this Sunday.’ Even vampire lords like Canus need the Prince’s permission to add to the vampire population of a city, though for Canus it’s more of a formality than anything else. I make a plaintive face at him. ‘Why didn’t you ask last month?’ We could have avoided all this mess if we’d managed to turn Katy immediately after discovering Claudia’s scent. His gaze suddenly turns cool and assessing. ‘Are you questioning me?’ Once, I might have quailed, but I no longer fear his potential discipline, so instead I say, ‘It’s me you’re drinking a double helping from.

Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 15)

Canus’s decision, as reluctant as it is, seems to please Scintilla. She thanks him and leaves the room, giving me a brief smile on her way out. Meanwhile, Canus begins to explain what I’ll need for court tomorrow. I tune him out, however, listening instead for Scintilla’s footsteps to fade out of hearing. ‘…not greet anyone else with any deference, as you—’ ‘Sire,’ I interrupt quietly, ‘did Scintilla give any other reasons for not going to court tomorrow?’ Canus blinks. ‘Hasn’t there been a suspicious lack of foreign scents lately? She claimed she would be a better guard. Her sorcery has been improving drastically in the past month or so, and she’s always been better at physical combat than you.’ ‘Oh, right,’ I say. ‘If I may, Sire, I’ll see you in the evening? I just remembered that Katy changed her schedule a little, so I need to tell Scintilla about it before she turns in for the morning.’ ‘Have her help you pick out appropriate clothes, then. I’ll instruct you further in etiqu

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