Page 35 of To Vanquish Darkness

Henriette shook her head. "Master Vallon is extremely busy. He rarely sleeps here two days in a row. I was surprised to 'ear that he planned on returning in the morning."

Amalie put a hand on the door. "Thank you again, Henriette."

The woman bobbed her head. "I'll finish up here, then I'll pop back through your room. You won't even know I'm there."

Amalie nodded and pushed the door open. Her room looked exactly as she'd left it, besides the three stacks of books that now sat on the writing desk. She yawned and covered her mouth with her hand.

Time to get to work.

15

1836 NORTHERN NORMANDY, FRANCE

Amalie woke with a start, nearly ripping a page from the book she'd been reading. She peeled the paper from her cheek and straightened. Her brain moved slow like molasses as she stretched her arms over her head. She turned and scanned the room. Light poured through the windows stretching toward the domed ceiling. It had to be mid-to-late afternoon.

Though her eyes felt like they'd been scrubbed with sand, her mind raced. She couldn’t afford any more sleep. She turned, and her gaze settled on another tray. Henriette had been there. Amalie walked to the nightstand. There was a ham and cheese sandwich with a ripe apricot.

She picked the fruit up, feeling the velvet skin against her palm, and held it to her nose. The scent was sweet. Amalie sat on the bed and devoured it. It couldn’t have been long since her breakfast in the washroom, but she was starving.

When she finished with her meal, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and padded back to the table, her fingers brushing the spines of the books stacked in neat piles. She pulled out a few leather-bound volumes, flipping through the pages and scanning the titles.Le Savoir des Vampires, Vampiric Lore.Les Gardiens de la Lumière, The Guardians of the Light.La Fracture et le Sombre, The Shattering and the Shadow.

She flipped through the pages of the first book that claimed to hold the legends of the guardians, skimming passages. She found nothing different than what she'd been taught as a child. The guardians were stronger, faster, and more resilient than ordinary humans. Heroes.

Amalie scoffed and flipped to the middle.It is believed their blood has regenerative properties.That, at least, seemed closer to the truth. But the book didn't talk about their blood being used to satiate a vampire's thirst. The guardians in the books didn't bow to vampires, they held them back. They were a military wall protecting humans from shadow. Exactly what she’d always hoped for.

She closed the book and picked up another.Methods of killing vampires.Much more her speed, though she now knew all of it was nonsense. Well, not all of it. She only had proof that a stake hadn't killed Theo, though that was enough to breed doubt in everything else she’d been taught.

It was a strange feeling. Watching the foundational truths she’d built her life around crumble. It was even stranger to construct a new reality based on the words of her enemy. She wanted to strip her life bare and start with a blank slate. But how could she fill it? There was nobody left whom she trusted to guide her. She wasn’t even sure she trusted herself.

Amalie spent hours poring over the texts, her fingers flipping through pages and her eyes scanning the words. She jotted down notes in the margins, her pen scratching against the parchment. The light outside the window shifted as the sun dipped lower in the sky.

Amalie shifted in her seat, her muscles stiff from sitting for so long. She rolled her shoulders, her joints popping. There were hundreds of references to relics, and even narrowing her searchto swords didn’t help much. There were still too many references to count.

With a groan, she strode to the bed and flopped onto the mattress, then pulled her knees to her chest and ran her fingers over her blistered feet. They were inflamed and sore, possibly worse that morning than they had been the night before.

Amalie thought back to the moments preceding her bath. Had it only been hours before that her entire life had flipped on its head?

When Theo was there in front of her, the story he told made sense. But now, staring at the cherubs and clouds swirled in paint on the ceiling, nothing did. How had she allowed herself to be fooled and lured here? She should have demanded answers in Mordelles. She could have gone home—she could have stayed with Olivie and Marcel.

Even as she thought it, that assumption fell flat. Staying wouldn’t have brought her any closer to helping the Pourfendeurs, and besides, she hadn’t been in a position to demand anything. Not when she thought she was being acted on by forces beyond her mortal control. Theo had allowed her to believe that, and maybe he was only spinning another story now.

Amalie buried her face in the down pillows. If Theo was to be believed, not only had her family lied about vampires, they’d lied about their own heritage from the gods. Oren had lied about the injections he gave, but why? If the gods had granted this gift for humans and vampires alike, why were they in hiding? Why did they allow other humans to die when their blood could bridge the gap?

Amalie rolled, staring again at the vignettes above her. She didn't know if Theo was drawing her into his web, but she had proof he'd been honest about two things. The stake to his heart hadn't killed him. His bite hadn’t killed her. Whether his explanations for both were honest, she had yet to judge.

Amalie sat up and pulled out her disheveled plait, then ran her fingers through her hair. When it was smooth, she wove it back into a tight braid.If only she had pins to hold back the curls around her ears.

Her eyes landed on a set of carved boxes on the polished dresser. All the furniture in the room was delicate. Thin legs that curved into patterns of inlaid wood. She wondered who had lived here before Theo and his coven.

Hiscoven. That's what he'd called it. Had he only meant that he belonged to it? From the way his friends reacted to him, she doubted it. Theo was important to them, but she had yet to figure out why.

Amalie lifted the top off the first box and found an array of hairpins. Perfect. She put two in place then repositioned the lid and lifted the top to the second box. She sucked in a breath as ice slid down her spine.

There was a strip of azure fabric curled at the bottom, marked with intricate white shapes. Swans. She'd only ever seen that pattern once before in her life.

On her mother's favorite dress.

Amalie ran to the door and burst into the hall, gasping for breath with the strip of fabric curled in her fingers. She stumbled to Theo's door and raised a hand to knock, then hesitated. What would she say to him? That this was fabric her mother used to wear? That she'd found it inhiscastle?

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