Page 15 of Bitten & Burned
“Love you too,” Thalia said, reaching for my other hand.
“Yeah, love is a strong word,” Bram muttered, releasing my hand. I tossed a piece of beetroot bread at him.
It was at that point that the server returned with the check.Thalia refused my money, but I did get a to-go box to take my sandwich remnants home with me.
I said my good-byes to Thalia and Bram and left the tea house, promising to write while I was at Halemont.
As I made my way to the trolley stop, I mused about what they had said about Silas. Now that it had been pointed out to me, it was odd how coincidental it had been both times he’d aided me.
But that’s all it was, surely. A coincidence. I must have tried to use more magic than I realized. Even though I’d been very vigilant about it.
I reached up to twirl my finger in the silver chain around my neck. My leg was throbbing dully in the background; it had almost become white noise, had white noise affected your nerves.
There was one thing I’d discovered since my injury had occurred: I had more time to think than usual. Really think, not just go through work projects in my mind, or plan out my day. No, I mean, reallythink.
I thought about many things. Today was no different. As I waited for the trolley to arrive to take me to the Arcanum of Caer Voss, I thought. Mostly, I thought about Vael, about what he’d said the night before. About how I made him a weak man. I hadn’t brought it back up yet, but I was planning on it. Perhaps that evening after he’d risen, but before we began preparing for our trip to Halemont that weekend.
Weak. Not a word I’d use to describe Vael Vexley.
Vael came from House Vexley, a very prominent family in Verdune. Not a household name, but in certain circles, it still held weight. His house was famous for producing scholars and academics. Every single one of the Vexleys had procured a college degree in a time when degrees were saved for the rich, and, not only that, they’d produced philosophers, authors, poets, and scientists. Vael had been on his way to becoming one ofthose famous Vexleyswhen he’d been turned.
He told me it was his choice, that he was stifled by the nonstop work and expectations from his family. The idea of having not onlymoretime, butallthe time? That was a very sweet siren’s call, indeed.
So he’d been turned by the Vampire Queen known as Isodora. Isodora was known for hercollections. She sired and collected vampires based on their gifts. Every vampire was different, just as every person was different. They all had gifts. Some were more common, like flying, for example. That was a very common gift, but some? Some were very different indeed. Vael’s was one such gift.
He could convince anyoneof anything.
Literally, anything.
It was why his power was so coveted. Vael had told me that Isadora liked to think she could tell which humans would make extraordinary vampires. It was my understanding that, just because you were an extraordinary human being, it didn’t mean you’d be an extraordinary vampire. But, then again, she’d never been wrong.
The driverless trolley arrived, and I boarded. Old Solian ward-tech powered the trolleys. Etched copper plates beneath the carriage that drank from ley-lines under Caer Voss. It made a type of magic so mundane that now most passengers forgot they were riding on centuries of spellwork.
It was a short ride, thankfully, since the man nearest me thought I looked like a person who wanted to hear his life story. Thankfully, my stop came up, and I left before he could tell me about his third wife. I dropped a few coins into the box on my way out. We didn’t have to tip, obviously, since there was no driver, but I felt bad not tipping for a service I could not handle on my own. The tips went to fixing the roads anyway, and honestly, Caer Voss’s infrastructure could use all the help it could get.
I walked the rest of the way across campus to where Silas’s office was located. He was on the ground floor of the building, something that had always been a sore spot for him; he felt that given his seniority and level of skill, he should be farther up, closer to the top. In Arcanum tradition, the higher the office, the closer to Comium’s sunlight and Inera’s moonglow through the great glass dome. The climb to the top was a symbol of knowledge and status. Being left at ground level was a public slight Silas never truly forgave.
I, on the other hand, was grateful for whatever powers that were that had decreed his office to be on the ground floor. Walking up spiral staircases might have ended me now that the cursed wound was part of my life.
I knocked on his door, careful to call out who I was, just incase he didn’t see my missive I’d sent via Pulse to him that morning.Pulses weren’t quite as trustworthy as a homing bird, but they were so much easier to use.
“Dr. Drum—Silas! It’s me, Rowena.”
There was a slight scrambling behind the door before it clicked open. I pulled on the handle and walked into his office.
“Rowena! It’s so nice to see you!” Silas exclaimed.
“Did you get my Pulse this morning? I know I sent it awfully recently, you might not have had a chance to see it…”
“I got it, so not to worry, Dearheart. My teaching assistant is quick to bring me all the Pulses I receive… So, to what do I owe the pleasure? Is that blasted wound bothering you again?”
“It is indeed worse now, as a matter of fact,” I replied.
“No, it can’t be,” he said, sounding as dejected as I felt. “I just cleansed the amulet a few days ago!”
Cleansing, in his terms, always meant taking the chain from me and disappearing behind the tall screen in his office, out of sight, where the smaller bloodstone was pressed to its larger parent stone. I never saw the act itself, only felt the faint hum return when he handed it back.
“I know,” I replied. “Do you think the curse is getting stronger? Do you think it’s being actively manipulated?”
