A Shade of Vampire 81 A Bringer of Night - Bella Forrest Page 0,36

Elders and the destruction of an entire population of wood nymphs. In the midst of all this chaos and misery, he’d managed to reach out and carve messages with embedded memories on the five Beta elements of the seal that held him down.

As twisted and awful as it sounded, it actually made sense. It also broke my heart, because I could only imagine the kind of pain Night must have been experiencing since he’d been trapped here. The kind of pain that had forced him to take over a nymph’s body just to deliver a message. It couldn’t have been easy, but he’d done it. It was a sign that the Night Bringer had refused to let the Spirit Bender defeat him.

It was a sign of hope. Hope that someone, someday, might come along and find his runes and understand what had been done here—and what needed to be done. The wood nymphs had clearly been unable to break the Beta elements; otherwise, the Night Bringer would’ve been free already. Now it was up to us, and I’d just disabled the first piece.

“We need to find the other four Beta elements,” I said to Soul. “Not to sound like a masochist, but I’m realizing now that I really want to know what happened here.”

“You and me both,” Soul replied. “I’ll call the others over, and we can continue our search together. Morning is better off staying with us until she’s able to actually contact Night.”

Wherever there had been death and misery, we had to go. There were four places on Cruor where memories had been hidden along with the Beta elements. If we managed to free the Night Bringer, we’d be one step closer to freeing Death, as well. She needed all the remaining First Tenners to return to her so they could break the rest of her seals much faster.

And we needed Death back at full force, now more than ever.

Derek

Upon learning about Acheron’s unprecedented request, Sofia was just as stunned as I was. We’d settled in the study room, while Amal and Amane were in the quarantine area of the palace, where new patients had been brought in. There were twenty infected Aeternae now, five of whom were slowly slipping into critical condition.

“I can’t believe it,” Sofia said. “After all the ruckus they made about us not bringing in any more outsiders!”

“Let us note the fact that Acheron made the request, unbeknownst to his wife or any other officials,” I reiterated. “He doesn’t want anyone else to know about this.”

“And that, my darling, is what troubles me the most. It means that Acheron doesn’t trust Danika. His soulmate. His wife.”

I groaned softly, well aware of the implications. “I know, but at least he’s showing an openness to us working together against the Darklings. Properly.”

Sofia leaned back into her chair, her gaze wandering through the room. It stopped on Nethissis’s body for a while before moving back to the microscope and the plethora of Petri dishes strewn across one of the tables in the middle. The curtains were pulled back to reveal the overcast day outside. Soon, rain pelted the window, drops of water splashing and pouring down the glass in a steady rhythm. The new season was upon us, and it consisted of daily showers and gloomy skies.

“Danika confuses me, to be honest,” Sofia ultimately said.

“You don’t trust her.”

“I don’t. She’s too caught up in the empire’s old ways, and she doesn’t seem willing to change. The problem is that the empire will end up changing without her, as is natural, and she’ll be left behind. Eventually it’ll become a problem for Thayen, too. He’s young now, but later, when he’s old enough to assist his parents in the empire’s affairs, there will be issues. Acheron is clearly more progressive, since he’s willing to ban the blood slave trade altogether, regardless of what the nobility might think.”

“I see what you mean,” I muttered. “Thayen will probably have to make a choice at some point in the future. His father is clearly the ruling monarch, while Danika seems to function more as the second-in-command. Yes, they rule together, but I’ve noticed that Acheron usually has the last word. Case in point, the blood slave trade ban.”

Sofia gave me a pained look. “I actually feel sorry for the kid. He has no idea what he’s getting himself into.”

“It’ll be a long time before Thayen becomes a ruling monarch himself,” I said. “He’ll have years to prepare himself, to gather his