Page 31 of The Prince's Curse

For the first night of waiting, Sasha had coaxed his way onto Paris’s team by reminding Julian that he had met Scarlett too, as had his partner, Kristina. He could pick out her scent from a mile away.

But when Dominic asked to come along, Julian had put his foot down. “If you want me to be your Elder, then you cannot pick and choose when to take my orders,” he had growled. “Brothers or not, I will banish you from this bloody city if you cannot follow orders.”

Properly chastised, the Nightwatch had taken their assignments for the evening. After last night’s uneventful passage, Julian had reassigned Sasha and Kristina to patrol the downtown college campuses tonight. That left him in the care of Paris and Misha, feeling quite like a third wheel.

Underground Atlanta was a strange place; once a bustling underground marketplace with shops and restaurants, it had died out over a few years before turning into a veritable ghost town. Its long corridors of wood flooring and brick walls seemed to reflect every sound a hundred times over.Posted signs read Private Property—No Trespassing.

Several storefronts and one large restaurant had been spruced up, their floors cleaned and power restored with a generator. Carrigan Shea and his court had been staying here after the first failed attempt to kill him in the nearby Constitution building. Surrounded by a magical barrier, Shea and his court had hidden here until some of the repairs on his high-rise castle were complete.

Now that modern king’s castle lay in ruins, and the partially updated underground facility lay unused. Julian and his companions had claimed the restaurant, which seemed to have been an Italian establishment. The smell of blood still lingered, as did a hint of decay. Humans had been killed here, their bodies stored for a short time before being destroyed. He shuddered to think of Shea and his court devouring their prey here, with the human population aboveground and none the wiser.

At Paris’s demand, Julian wore an armored vest and collar under his snug sweater, and was armed with a Taser and several syringes full of a sedative to knock down a dhampir hunter.

His companions both smelled human, thanks to the grassy-smelling tincture Misha had given them. Seated at a lopsided dining table, Paris was carefully loading darts into a rifle.

“No bullets,” Julian reminded them. “I don’t want her hurt.”

“It’s just a little sleepy juice. You think she’ll show tonight?”Paris asked.

Pacing across the dingy carpet of the lobby, Julian said, “I don’t know. I think there’s a good chance that Armina got enough out of Kova to figure out we were laying a trap. She might bide her time until Bri— until Scarlett’s birthday.”

Misha frowned, looking up from polishing his glowing, rune-carved blade. “You think the spell is actually tied to her birthday, or does the witch do it that way just to screw with you?”

“I don’t know,” Julian said. “I don’t know much about magic. But I’m inclined to say the latter.”

He knew only that he’d come out of the Midnight War with blood on his hands, as determined as ever to protect the ones he loved. Several of his brothers had been cursed, but he had dodged the witch’s malice. Even when Paris and Dominic crossed her path, he was spared. Secretly—and perhaps to his downfall—he had thanked his lucky stars that she had not cursed him, too.

Instead, after several blissful years, he’dmarried the love of his life, the woman who had become the sunshine in his darkness. Despite his long life as a vampire before, the few years he had with Brigitte felt like lifetimes and the blink of an eye at the same time. And then, shortly after she turned twenty-nine, she had been killed in what seemed like a random act of senseless violence.His grief was unspeakable, and he survived only because Paris and Alistair would not let him die.

No one expected to lose their soulmate twice, and so when he met the redhaired woman some twenty-seven years later, he thought he had come across a doppelganger, beautiful Rebekkah. Perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him, he thought, telling him that his grief-addled mind had reshaped this woman into a mirror image of his Brigitte.

But it was her. From the boisterous laugh to the resonant singing voice to the birthmark to the unmistakable scent that he had not forgotten for a nanosecond, it was her. And he dared to love her again, thinking that he had been spared.

And then she died again.

And again.

He had been a fool, and he had wished a thousand times to trade curses with one of his brothers. He would rather suffer unending physical pain, never sleep again, see a hideous beast in the mirror than to live in constant grief and dread.

There was no closure, knowing it was all to happen again. And he could never cut it off; he couldn’t convince himself he didn’t really know her anymore, that his Brigitte was long gone. Because it was always her deep down.

There was no pattern, except that it happened soon after her twenty-ninth birthday. And that was barely a week from now, so there was a decent chance Armina would just hold her back, waiting instead to turn her loose after that fateful day. Perhaps his efforts now were all in vain.

They waited well into the night. It was rare that Paris was silent, but even he held the conversation off to keep watch. Scarlett’s dhampir hearing would be sharp enough to hear them even at a whisper.

Hours passed. He took several silent messages from Olivia and Safira, who updated him on the evening’s activities. Alistair was back on his feet, though moving stiffly after Kova broke his neck.

Soon, the alarm came to warn him that sunrise was in an hour, then thirty minutes. Paris emerged with Misha in tow, both moving silently. “She’s not coming tonight,” Paris said.

“I’ll stay through the day,” Julian said.

“Not unsecured like this,” Paris said. Before he could argue, the other vampire put up his hand. “If she’s the clever little hunter Sasha says she is, she’ll realize she has to hunt her prey when he’s active. She’ll have an advantage over all of us in daylight, and while she may not want to kill you yet, I’m not sure that sentiment extends to the rest of us. Let’s go.”

Following his right-hand man, Julian trudged up the stairs. He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or disappointed that she hadn’t come to kill him. The blue-purple twinge of twilight already hung on the horizon as the city began to wake.

Paris and Misha talked quietly as they moved up the stairs. Their conversation was drowned out by a strange sound in the distance. In tandem, Paris and Misha both staggered back, clutching at their heads. A glass dart protruded from Paris’s temple, and his eyes went brilliant red as he clawed at his throat.

Misha tossed a dart with a snarl, then grabbed Julian’s hand. “Stay down,” he snapped, shaking his head violently. Shimmering red burst from his hand, but Julian shrugged him off. “Julian!”

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