Chapter 23: Chapter 23
Vivian
I stared at my smartphone in horror, the screen shattering in a web of angry lines. But my horror wasn’t from the fact that it was shattered.
It was at the wonder of how it left my bedroom to… the gate, where Edmund claimed to have picked it.
“That’s… that’s mine,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “But it is impossible. It was in my bag in the bedroom.”
The three faces in the room turned to me.
“It was a focus,” Adrian said, his usual composed face slightly twisted in horror. “They used your own artifact to track you.”
“What is happening outside,” I looked away from the device to the window. “I hear something.”
The others followed my gaze to the window. The sound was faint at first, like a low rhythmic thumping. It grew louder into a thousand, strong vibration of footsteps on gravel.
I approached the window.
The village had arrived, some of them carrying burning torches in the daylight. In the center of the mob, led by a parish priest, was a wooden pyre built on the back of a hay wagon.
“They have come for the catalyst,” Cordelia’s breath ghosted behind me, a strange satisfaction in her voice.
“We need to address this fear, Edmund—” Adrian trailed off, and I followed his gaze.
The space where Edmund was standing was empty.
I blinked.
“The baron always has a habit of pulling his useless tricks at the worst possible moment.” Cordelia hissed.
“We need to do something,” I cried. “What do we do?”
The chant of the village mob had grown to a terrifying cry, the descending sun casting a bruised orange over our face.
“The situation is become untenable, Cordelia,” Adrian said, his voice low and lethal. “If I do not face them, they will tear the gates from the hinges. I must remind them whose land they stand upon.”
“And if they are beyond reminding, Adrian?” Cordelia’s voice sounded bored.
“Then I shall speak in a language they cannot ignore,” he replied. When he turned to me, I didn’t see the Duke. I saw a terrified man.
I saw a man who was scared of losing his most valuable possession.
“Stay with her, Cordelia. Move to the inner sanctum. If a single hair on her head is harmed, I will consider it a breach of our blood-debt.”
Cordelia tilted her head ever so slightly. “She shall be as safe as a lamb in a wolf’s den, Your Grace.”
Adrian took my hand, his grip crushing for a brief moment before he let go. “Do not move from her side, Vivian. I shall join you when this… rabble is dispersed.”
He headed towards the door and walked through, the doors thudding shut behind him, leaving me with the woman who had spent the last week trying to socially and literally dismantle me.
“Follow me,” Cordelia hissed, the emerald dress that had lost its glory because of the fight earlier rustling with a sharp impatience.
“And do try not to trip over your own feet. We haven’t the time for your colonial clumsiness.”
He led me from the study to the library, leading me deeper and deeper, towards a section of the room where the shelves bore crumbling, vellum-bound volumes that looked like they hadn’t been touched for centuries.
Pressing a hidden latch, a section of the wall swung back to reveal a smaller, dimly lit reading alcove, hidden from the main room.
She stepped inside, and as the door closed with a small click, the mask she wore before Adrian disappeared, replaced with a look of disdain.
“You’re a plague, you know?” Cordelia hissed. It wasn’t a yell. Her words were sharper than razor blades. “A localized infection that Adrian refuses to lance.
“I’m a human being, Cordelia,” I retorted, my modern English cutting through, and for a moment, I was proud of it.
“I’m sure that’s something that you and your territorial integrity seem to have forgotten. I didn’t ask to be here, or to be the center piece of your little werewolf soap opera.”
Cordelia leaned against a stack of books behind her, eyes glowing with an unsettling, feline amber.
“You’re a catalyst for ruin,” she hissed. “Before you fell through that glass like a common thief, I was told, this land was in balance. Adrian was the apex, and I was his intended match. We are of the same ancient rot. And then you arrive… with your flat speech and your future eyes… and suddenly he thinks he can be more than the beast.”
“He is more than the beast,” I said, taking a step into her space as my heart hammered against my chest. “Is that what scares you? He doesn’t want a match who celebrates the rot. He wants someone who reminds him to breathe like a human.”
“He wants a fantasy,” Cordelia snarled, but I didn’t have a reason to flinch.
She was tasked with protecting me, and she wants Adrian’s interest, so she didn’t really have a choice.
“He wants a ghost from a world that does not exist, and when he realizes that you’re nothing but a fragile, temporary thing that will wither in fifty years while he remains eternal, he will hate you.”
“Is that why you’re sabotaging me?” I asked her. “Because you are so insecure with your destiny that you have to frame me for witchcraft before the villagers?”
“I am merely accelerating the inevitable,” she said, her voice too smooth. “The village sees what he refuses to see. You are the anomaly. And the land always, will reject the anomaly, surely.”
I gave her a blank stare, remembering vividly how she had denied it in the study a few hours ago, when Edmund mentioned it.
I was about to snort a reply when I heard the main library doors opening. We stood in silence for a moment before the hidden door was pulled wide, revealing Adrian.
He stood there, hair swept back by the wind, chest heaving.
“The village is dispersed,” he said.
Cordelia immediately smoothened her skirts, her face quickly wrapping into a mask of concern. “A masterful performance, I’m sure. I shall excuse myself, Your Grace.”
She brushed past me, her shoulder catching mine with a deliberate, gentle nudge.