A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)(7)

I figured that we could get a lot more done over a shorter period of time if there were more of us up here. My True Sight alone could significantly speed things along.

“I’d like to stay and help, if that’s okay,” I said. “I think I’m of more use up here, for now. You, Hansa, and Patrik could easily establish a route through the gorges for tomorrow…”

“Fair enough,” Jax agreed, and gave Scarlett a gentle nudge. “Scarlett, you can stay too. You can all cover more ground together.”

Emilian gave us a curt bow, then escorted Farrah and Rowan toward the stairs. He glanced over his shoulder, noticing Caspian still standing next to me.

“We’re going to the White Star now. Rewa needs us to be there for her,” Emilian said. “Will you join us, Caspian?”

“I’ll come down later,” Caspian replied softly. “I’m not very good at comforting the bereaved. I’m sure you know that. Perhaps I’ll be of more use up here.”

Emilian pursed his lips but didn’t object. Instead, he went downstairs with Farrah and Rowan. Jax and Hansa left shortly afterward, leaving Avril, Heron, Scarlett, Caspian, and me to continue combing through the five mansions for any evidence we could use.

Of course, we were quite certain that the daemons were behind this. But the explosives used were local, and processed by an Exiled Mara craftsman. We couldn’t draw any conclusions regarding that until Caspian’s Correction Officer returned with the Mara in question.

Until then, however, there was still plenty of rubble to look through. With everything that had happened, my exhaustion was nowhere to be found.

We still had a lot to do. And I had a lot more to learn about Caspian. I was particularly intrigued by the shift in his attitude toward me. He’d been hot and cold—well, mostly cold—since the first day we’d met. I was dealing with a peculiarly warm Caspian now, and it made me feel all kinds of wonderfully strange.





Harper





(Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)





An hour went by as we scoured the remains. Houses Xunn and Kifo remained central to our focus, as they’d been specifically targeted in this attack. Avril and Heron covered Darius’s mansion, while Caspian and I looked through his, and Scarlett briefly scanned the other three.

Caspian’s home was mostly destroyed, but there were parts of the first level still standing. After we checked the ground floor and found more traces of explosives, we moved upstairs. I used my True Sight to look through the piles of rubble, and found several notebooks in a metal box buried at the bottom.

I dug the box out as Caspian came to stand next to me. Its lock was melted shut, but I pried it open with my bare hands, and revealed its contents. I pulled one of the notebooks out, its pages soft and pale brown. This particular corner of the house had not been fully damaged, from what I could see. The notebook was a sketchbook, I realized as I flipped through it.

“Can I have that, please?” Caspian asked, his voice low and a flicker of sadness in his jade eyes. I nodded and handed it over. He looked through it, then looked at me. “I’ve been drawing since I was a little boy, especially after my parents died. It helped me handle the loneliness and loss.”

I glanced at the pages and saw pencil portraits of his mother and father. Caspian would’ve been an accomplished artist if given the opportunity. His lines were firm and the contrasts were quite dramatic, but the overall compositions were beautiful. They showed a side of him I hadn’t thought existed.

“You didn’t want to forget their faces, did you?” I murmured.

“I already have,” he sighed, “but I can always look at what I drew and the images come back, albeit a little hazy.”

My chest tightened at the rawness in his voice. I could only imagine what it must’ve been like to grow up like he did, with nothing but a military regime instead of loving parents. His adoptive father must have been good to him, but I could tell from his demeanor that affection wasn’t part of his daily life. Caspian had a hard time trusting people, and I was sure it stemmed from his childhood.

I flipped through another notebook and found sketches of daemons in different forms—from hunters to the armored ones we saw earlier, but others, too. Some were huge, with hunters hastily doodled on the side for scaling; others looked weak and covered in rags. I saw female daemons, too, with long hair and slim horns. Caspian had been drawing these for a while, from what I could tell. There were pit wolves and schematics of the gorge caves. He’d drawn other Exiled Maras, too, and panoramic views of the daemons’ underground cities.

I looked up at him with questioning eyes, and he shrugged, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“I promise I will tell you everything, Harper, as soon as I make sure that it won’t put anyone’s life at risk,” he said gently, his gaze softening.

He was definitely different from the Caspian I’d known prior to the explosions. And the change felt more permanent. I didn’t know what to do with that. My mind tumbled around the events since my first day on Neraka, as I tried to pick at the signs that might’ve pointed to this dynamic shift between us.

As far as I was concerned, it was getting harder to deny that I was developing feelings for him. I already felt closer to him simply because I could see his emotions. But I wasn’t sure what those emotions were, as the colors changed back and forth and further confused me.