A Violet Fire (Vampires in Avignon #1) - Kelsey Quick Page 0,102

Wavorly Sterling. I am Thelor. I believe you saw me from the chariot on the way into Isshar?”

“That was you?” I ask with disbelief.

He nods. “I am the only one with eyes outside of the seraglio holdings. Keeping an eye open at all times is necessary.”

“And at the Basilica?”

“Yes.” He smiles slightly before shifting gears. “The place that you interacted with beyond Ceti’s lavender gate was a room that I was stationed to for decades, it seemed. I knew every book, cover to cover. The Avignon artifacts, however, came much later, only about one decade ago.”

“Avignon artifacts?” I breathe in and out slowly, trying to keep control over myself. Thelor nods.

“Do you remember the second memory behind the gate, Wavorly?” Ceti interrupts my thoughts. “The one that was your own?”

Castrel and Glera straighten uneasily, as if waiting for a bomb to go off. My sight focuses on Castrel as I murmur, “The cathedral…”

He smiles sadly, and the revelation strikes.

‘“Did you have a nightmare?” my mother asks, pinning the right side of her cloak, connecting it to her left.’

I force my memory to her figure standing in the mirror. To every part of her. To the left of her chest where...

...she is pinning it, the blue-gold brooch. The same one from behind the glass case in that room.

I lean into my elbows, mouth open as I turn my head to Thelor while nausea warps every other feeling. “Where... was that room?”

He frowns knowingly. “In a stronghold in Cain, meant to protect all known clues to the prophecy of the Setting Sun.”

The Setting Sun…

“That poem,” I mutter. “In Cain,” I repeat, not wanting to acknowledge what that means.

“The poem you read is a cyclical prophecy,” Ceti says, “Either started or broken by that century’s heir.”

The heir apparent...

Ceti continues. “All that is known about the prophecy is that the heir is always human, so as to offset the strong from the weak. If the heir dies of old age, the cycle is broken for five-hundred years; if the heir dies an unnatural death, another heir is immediately reborn.”

“And,” Glera adds, “we also know that if the heir arrives at, and commits to the temple of Jerusalem as a plea for humanity, all but a tenth of the vampire race will be cast from this world.”

Ceti glares at her and Glera shrugs.

Jerusalem. Temple. I remember those words from the transcription. This can’t be real.

Castrel leans in, sensing my disbelief. “We will explain everything fully once we are out of here, but we need to get back to the task at hand. Getting you out.”

My thoughts are spent. Pulsing sunspots are all that I can see. I can’t possibly be this heir that they are talking about. I can’t be. And Zein…

I swallow hard, looking up at Castrel as I delicately ask, “What attacked Avignon that night?”

He sighs heavily, and my heart instantly sinks. “A sentry of Cain’s.”

Everything around me shatters and I lose control of my senses.

I shake my head over, and over. “No, they were rogues… lowest of the low. Zein saved me from them.” It dawns on me suddenly how bad this sounds. I am using Zein’s word to denounce Castrel—a human, an old friend, and a survivor from that night. His existence proves that Zein lied. Zein is a liar.

Castrel shakes his head, clenching his knuckles.

“Zein’s infantry slaughtered Avignon, Wavorly,” Glera says, garnering inauspicious stares from the rest of them.

“Glera,” Ceti murmurs, but the noise fades to a low buzz and my consciousness zooms in and out; despair and confusion filling my head.

“She needs to know.” Glera stands shoulder to shoulder with Ceti before turning her attention back to me. “Ask any vampire in Cain. He’s a certified hero for it. Most think he killed you, too. The survival or death of the heir is a hot political topic in Cain. Not everyone wants to take the chance at an heir finding their power for the sake of five centuries without one.”

Zein’s infantry destroyed Avignon...

Thoughts keep slipping away, none of them fastening.

“He saved me from a vampire. He made sure to keep me safe all these years,” I say low, and listless, trying to find footing in the muddy illogical rather than accept Glera’s dreadful claim. “He treats me like I’m not—”

Castrel cringes at my words. “He made you believe all those things so you wouldn’t try to leave Cain! So you could sit in his castle and die of old age to end the prophecy. So that humans would lose