Page 28 of Blood Currents
I sat where Mother had placed me—stage left, naturally.The midnight blue suit she’d chosen hung perfectly on my frame, tailored to suggest both youth and authority.My expression was arranged into the same polite neutrality I’d worn to a thousand such performances, the mask so familiar it felt like a second skin.
Echo had stayed behind in my rooms.My familiar’s scales were too honest for a dinner like this.They’d betray every flicker of disgust and every moment of revulsion at what I was about to do.Better she remained safely away from the corruption that seemed to seep from the very walls tonight.
The first act began with practiced ease.Small talk flowed like wine—equally intoxicating and poisonous.
“Lord Lowell was just asking about your studies,” Mother said, her smile so sharp it could draw blood.The warning in her voice was subtle but unmistakable:Perform well, darling.The audience is watching.
“They’re going well, sir,” I answered, my tone carrying just the right note of respectful enthusiasm.“Professor Irving praised my recent work in advanced illusion theory.”
The lie came so smoothly I almost believed it myself.Irving had said no such thing.He’d been too busy trying to understand why my illusions had been growing stronger, more complex, more… real.But, as I well knew, truth was just another prop to be discarded when it didn’t serve the scene.
“Ah, illusions.”Lowell’s chuckle held no warmth, like winter wind through bare branches.“A useful skill for… appearances.”
Father nodded with paternal pride that was itself an illusion.“A necessary skill in turbulent times.”
Every word tonight was code.I’d been trained my entire life to perform in these circles, to speak in layers that would confuse outsiders while conveying volumes to those who knew the script.It was a language of implication and inference, where direct statements were vulgar and honesty was weakness.
The wine tasted like copper pennies on my tongue.
“Speaking of turbulence,” Lady Crescott said with the delicacy of a surgeon making an incision, “what a tragedy about young Alstone.Such fine breeding, yet so… unstable.”
My hand tightened on my fork.Keane was fighting every day to hold on to the pieces of himself his uncle hadn’t shattered while these people discussed him like he was a racehorse that had gone lame.Such fine breeding.As if his bloodline somehow made his torture more regrettable than if he’d been common-born.
“Yes,” I said, my voice carrying the exact right mixture of regret and clinical interest.“One wonders if instability is inherent… or cultivated.”
The words hung in the air for a heartbeat too long—a silence so brief most wouldn’t register it, but in circles like this, timing was everything.Mother’s eyes cut to me across the table—a flash of warning as sharp as a blade.Careful, darling.Don’t let your mask slip.
I arranged my features into thoughtful concern, as if I’d been pondering an abstract philosophical question rather than making an accusation.The mask settled back into place, smooth as glass.
Then the temperature in the room plummeted.
Lord Alstone entered like a storm front, his presence preceding him in waves of cold authority.Behind him came Mr.Hanchett, the vampire consultant.The creature’s smile was too sharp, too knowing, a living reminder of exactly what my parents’ political alliances truly meant.
I kept my breathing steady, my heartbeat calm.But inside, revulsion crawled up my throat like bile.This was collaboration at the highest level—not just playing politics with monsters but inviting them to dinner and making them partners.
Alstone took the seat directly across from me, his stormy blue eyes fixing on mine with predatory interest.He looked like Keane might in thirty years, if someone had carved away everything human and left only the hunger for control.
“Your nephew’s situation has been… instructive,” Mother said to him, her tone suggesting she was discussing a particularly successful investment.
“Stability is an illusion,” Alstone replied, cutting into his meat with surgical precision.“What matters is control.Direction.Shaping power into something useful.”
Shaping power.Breaking it.Breakinghim.Making Keane into a tool, a weapon, a puppet that danced to his uncle’s strings.
The wine I’d swallowed turned to ash in my mouth.
“What are your thoughts on magical resonance, young Lightford?”Alstone asked suddenly, his question cutting through the polite conversation like a scalpel.A test.Everything tonight was a test.
“It’s volatile by nature,” I said smoothly, slipping into the role I was bred for.“When magic resonates freely, it creates unpredictable feedback.Isolation ensures control.Control ensures safety.”
Alstone’s mouth curved in something too thin to be called a smile.“Spoken like a Lightford.”He lifted his glass, his eyes gleaming.“Your mother’s power mapping was instrumental in the programming.Brilliant work—especially the trigger sequences.I doubt even the subjects knew which thoughts were truly their own.”
My fingers didn’t twitch.My smile didn’t slip.I raised my glass in silent acknowledgment, playing the dutiful heir with a poise that would make my parents proud.
But inside?
Inside, I shattered.
Power mapping.Trigger sequences.My mother hadn’t just known what they were doing to Keane.She’d designed it.Perfected it.She hadn’t just tolerated the cruelty; she’d architected it.
