The Damned (The Beautiful #2)(21)

Madeleine would have refused to save Michael simply because he was a cursed Grimaldi. Hortense would have laughed at me for even asking. And Jae? I couldn’t stomach another curt lecture from the ghoul-eyed demon. So I decided to eat crow and ask Luca for help. By the time we returned, Michael was buried waist-deep in mud, scared out of his wits that a gator would find him and make a feast of his bones.

Once we freed Michael, Luca forbade us from being friends. His words should have frightened me. After all, Luca was in line to lead the Brotherhood one day. At eighteen, he was almost six and a half feet tall, his arms like tree trunks and his voice like thunder.

I decided I would show fear if Michael showed fear first. Since he didn’t look the least bit worried, we continued to defy both our families. Until another fall evening four years later, when Michael found me kissing the girl he’d admired for months at our cotillion ball.

Not my finest moment, I’ll admit.

My foot slides through a pile of leaves and sludge as I continue following my uncle through the dark swamp, listening to the groaning, muttering creatures gather around me, trying to decide whether I am food or foe.

I should have apologized to Michael that night. Instead I argued with him. Portrayed myself as a victim, of all things.

She kissed me first.

It doesn’t matter! Where do your loyalties lie, Bastien? I should have known better than to trust a thieving Saint Germain.

It isn’t my fault she prefers me to you, Grimaldi. Who wouldn’t?

I wince, recalling the way the blood drained from Michael’s face when I said that. How my fingers tugged through my hair, the only indication of the guilt roiling in my gut. I remember how he never again confided in me. How we both retreated into ourselves. The following morning, I cut my hair short and have worn it that way ever since.

I lost more than a friend that night. I lost a brother. It doesn’t matter how Michael retaliated in the years to come, attempting to undermine me. How he rose to the top of our class as I won every award for marksmanship and horseback riding, each trying to best the other.

One day, they will all see through you, Sébastien. And no amount of money or influence will stand in the way of them knowing what it’s taken me too many years to realize. You are nothing without your uncle. Nothing.

Even now, Michael’s words scratch open wounds that will never heal.

I should have told him that kiss at cotillion was my fault and mine alone. I knew better. I thought he would forgive my rapscallion ways, as he always had before. I was wrong.

But I will burn in Hell before I ever admit it now, especially to a sanctimonious Grimaldi.

“Do you know why we are called the Fallen?” Nicodemus comes to a sudden stop in the middle of the watery wasteland, tearing me from my reverie.

When I was mortal, I would have weighed my response before making it. Since I have nothing to lose now, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I’ve never known a modest vampire, so I can only assume it has to do with Lucifer being a fallen angel.”

Nicodemus turns in place. It rankles me how he still manages to look regal, even though his dark trousers and his walking stick are covered in mud. “That would be the prevailing thought, yes.” His lips form a thin line. “But it is not the sole reason.”

I wait.

He resumes his walk, his strides purposeful. “A thousand years ago, the Sylvan Vale and the Sylvan Wyld were not separate,” he begins, the words barely audible to the human ear. Like the susurration of an insect. “They were part of a whole. A place with a name we no longer speak out of anguish, ruled by a king and a queen, who sat on a horned throne. An otherworld mortals sang about in nursery rhymes and poets wrote about in sonnets. Tír na nóg, Fairyland, Asgard, the Valley of the Moon—all sorts of whimsical names were bestowed on it over the centuries.” I hear the smile in his voice. “But for those who lived there, it is simply called home.” Unmistakable melancholy softens his tone.

I say nothing, though I desperately wish to hear more. My uncle has never spoken of his past in anything more than generalities. I recall a time when my sister, émilie, begged Nicodemus to tell her what the mysterious Otherworld was like before vampires and wolves were exiled during the Banishment. To describe the castles carved from ice and the forests of never-ending night. He denied her request, his laughter distant. Almost cruel.

It is in her memory that I refuse to beg my uncle to continue.

Nicodemus trudges surefooted through the darkness, toward a band of warm light flickering in the distance. We pass a grove of twisted tupelo trees, and a turkey vulture cocks his head at me from his perch on a skeletal branch, his beady eyes unblinking. To my right, gators nestle in the marshes and bullfrogs croak a dissonant melody.

Everywhere I look, I see the watchful eyes of predators. The sting of insects, the flurry of tongues lashing through the air like bolts of lightning, followed by the crunch of wings or the snapping of jaws. Strangely I feel at home here. As if I, too, am a predator of this age-old swamp.

Perhaps I am. Perhaps this wasteland seeks to swallow me whole.

I welcome it.

The scent of mortal blood curls into my nostrils, causing me to halt midstride. Distant human shouts bleed through the cacophony of sound. As I step closer, they sharpen into curse words and barks of encouragement.

I remain silent, though the smell of warm, coppery salt grips my throat, the hunger pounding in my veins. My eyes narrow. Something about the scent is . . . different. Like warm honey instead of melting sugar.