helped you murder the Silversmiths, Van Helsing. All of us jeopardized everything to help you find justice for your mother and your brothers’ wives and children. There are no full-blooded Silversmiths left alive.”
My stomach clenched as Cole snorted, and Acyn joined him, turning cold eyes on me. Acyn lifted his hands and folded them on the table, staring at me as he spoke. “I’m aware of what you all sacrificed and placed on the line after the Silversmiths murdered my mother, and hunted down my children like animals, butchering my wife and leaving her womb outside her body with my dead, unborn son rotting inside. This girl is a full-blooded Silversmith, and that’s a fucking problem for everyone. She’s mortal. That means there’s a full-blooded mother who birthed her into this world running around out there somewhere,” Acyn hissed, holding my gaze.
Rhys placed the blade I’d made onto the table, and everyone stood, looking at the craftsmanship. “Lucky for us, Remington wasn’t taught much about the war between our bloodlines before she ran away from Elizabeth,” Rhys stated, and everyone turned to look at him before examining me once more. “She made this sword and gifted me her silver.”
“You accepted it? Was she forced? If she was, it’s invalid. Do you intend to offer her your protection? Elizabeth was the best Silversmith they ever produced, born of a pure lineage. Her children were always stronger than the others, and you think to claim this girl in the ancient ways of their line? You’ve gone mad, Van Helsing.”
“How so, Griselda? I claimed the strongest Silversmith I have ever encountered. By claiming Remington, I have ensured that she can never raise silver against me or my house. Look at her work and tell me that it isn’t better than anything Elizabeth or Roslyn ever created in their lifetime. But even better than that, I was shown exactly how a Silversmith creates their silver. In fact, my brothers and my knights also watched her crafting the blade before you.”
“And what did you learn?” Griselda asked, her eyes lowering to hold mine.
“That the Silversmiths probably sacrificed their staff and their own children to escape the fire, which I assure you, they could have lived through easily. Remington worked for fourteen hours in a room where the heat was five hundred degrees, and yet the room burned hotter due to the forge where she worked. It reached five hundred and ninety degrees, and her body temperature during that time reached a full seven hundred degrees.”
Everyone slid their gaze from the blade to me, and I glared at Rhys, who continued. I watched the way every immortal in the room hung on his every word. He was respected by more than just the women who had eye-raped him harder than I had, and that was saying something.
“Things have started to go awry for houses out of nowhere, and nothing has added up. Not until this little Silversmith walked into a fight between Cole and me, murdering a half-blooded Silversmith, shattering her into slivers of silver. Newborn vampires are being created without a sire. We all know a witch can make day-walkers that appear to be vampires, and the wolves have been attacked during the new moon when they’re at their weakest points.
“We thought it to be hunters because the bullets weren’t fully silver, just laced, but enough so to still kill them. Half-breeds have been turning up dissected, yet still alive with no memory of who took them, or how they were wounded. Only a few creatures can erase memories so deeply that others cannot pull them from their mind.” Rhys tapped the blade, smirking. “Then I went to her mother’s house, who Remington claimed was missing.”
My eyes narrowed on Rhys as the tick in his jaw slowly pulsed. “What I found was the glyphs to control an alpha in their younger years pulsing on the wall when Remington, herself, touched the door to her bedroom. The same glyphs appeared on her flesh. Being that we were very young that last time we’d seen the symbols, it took us a while to add it all together,” he explained, and the eyes narrowed on me intently, causing me to fidget beneath their stares.
“What are you saying, Van Helsing?” Griselda asked carefully.
“The house held all the signs of a rising son, but in this case, a daughter since we all know the only alphas in the Silversmith lineage are females. Snakes in the bed of the reigning alpha,