Chapter 6

In my previous life, I never saw the truth of that night, not even at the end.

From the very beginning, Lucien hadn't stumbled beneath my window by chance.

He knew who I was.

He knew what my blood meant.

He knew his part in my family's deaths.

Even so, he came to me, playing the desperate soul cornered by fate.

He made me save him.

He made me love him.

He made me die for him all over again.

I laughed.

Cedric frowned. "What's funny?"

"Laughing at how blind I was," I said.

He didn't understand.

I didn't explain.

Then, rapid footsteps echoed from above.

A hunter rushed down the stairs. "Mr. Cross, something's happened.

"There was an attack on Old Apothecary Lane."

My head snapped up. "What happened?"

The hunter glanced at me, his face pale. "Moren's apothecary was hit.

"They took him."

My mind went blank.

I bolted out of the archives.

I raced back to the apothecary.

The apothecary had been torn apart.

Shelves overturned, glass bottles shattered across the floor, dried herbs mixed with rainwater and blood, trampled into mud.

A black note was nailed to the back door.

A single line was scrawled across it: "Midnight. Blackraven Dock. Come alone."

Signed with a black rose.

I stood in the wreckage, fingers ice-cold.

I'd joined the Guild early to secure its protection, but Lucien's people took Moren first.

Fate was a net.

I tore through one strand, and it cinched tighter from another.

Cedric picked up the note and sniffed it. "Vampire paper."

"I know," I said.

"You can't go alone."

"I have to."

He looked at me. "It's a trap."

"I know."

"And you'd still go?"

"They have Moren."

Cedric was silent a moment. "Moren isn't your birth father."

I looked up at him. "The man who raised me is my father."

Cedric didn't argue.

He handed the note back to me. "Then don't go alone."

"The note says to come alone," I said coldly.

"It was written by vampires. Why would you obey?"

I lowered my head.

I was terrified Moren would die in front of me again.

Cedric had already turned to examine the footprints on the ground. "Blackraven Dock has three entry points.

"You go in from the front. I'll circle through the waterway.

"I'll also notify the Guild."

"No," I said at once.

He looked at me.

I said, "There's a mole in the Guild.

"If they found out this fast that I accessed the Silverthorn files, someone's been watching me."

Cedric fell silent.

He'd reached the same conclusion. "Then I'll bring two people I trust."

"Who?"

"Lucy Ashby, and my second, Allen Bowen."

I nodded. "Fine."

Before nightfall, I changed into black hunting gear.

Moren had prepared this outfit for me once, but never let me wear it.

He said girls looked perfectly fine in dresses and didn't have to carry blades.

I used to think so too.

I stopped believing it the night Lucien grabbed the hem of my dress.

Now I tucked the dresses away at the bottom of a trunk, strapped on my silver blade, packed crossbow bolts and a vial of holy water, and slipped on Clara's ring.

I no longer looked like the girl from the Mistport apothecary.

I looked more like someone who had crawled out of a grave.

At midnight, thick fog blanketed Blackraven Dock.

Derelict boats lined the shore, their planks groaning with the tide.

I walked alone to the end of the pier.

A woman stood there waiting.

She had purple hair and red lips and wore a black cloak.

She was Maureen Doyle the witch.

I knew her as Lucien's ally.