I heard the screams before I got to the level where the secret dungeons were. There was only one prisoner here, in the secret depths of the palazzo, and he did not scream anymore. Something was wrong.
I dropped my bags and drew the sword that had still been hanging in its proper place in my rooms, as had all my belongings. I hadn’t been able to decide if the Lord of Night thought I would just resume my place at his side, or if I was too negligible to draw his attention. Knowing him, it could be both.
I was weakened, but not so weak as a mortal would be, and more skilled than any of the vampires who would have worked down here. As long as the fight was short, I did not doubt that I could prevail once I got there.
The door at the top of the stairs had been ripped off its hinges, but there was a turn at the bottom so I could not see what was going on. It had grown, suddenly, very, very quiet.
“Stefan,” said Marsilia, her voice quite calm.
“Yes?”
“Move with care,” she said.
I took the stairs in two leaps, but obedient to her wishes, I slowed as I turned the corner. The area was dimly lit by a single flickering torch. Even with my ability to see in the dark, it was hard at first to understand what had happened. There was blood everywhere—both fresh and rotting—but that was to be expected in a torture chamber.
The bodies were less expected—my lord liked to keep his workspaces clear of corpses. Marsilia stood very still next to one of the cages, whose crude wooden door was open.
Like the room, she was covered in blood.
“I opened his door,” Marsilia said. “And then he killed everyone but me.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, and then saw the figure crouched at her feet, dirty hands wound around the bottom of her dress. He did not look like anything so much as an animated skeleton.
Seeing me, he came to alertness with a hiss and flash of blue eyes—the only part of Wulfe that was recognizable at all. I stopped and waited for him to decide what to do about me.
The bloody remains were Marsilia’s escorts. I recognized the shape of one man’s shoe. They had been vampires and alert—and it had done them no good at all.
“Are you sure it’s—” I asked, not because I doubted, but because I didn’t want to believe.
“Yes,” my lady said.
Wulfe, our clever and flighty friend, had been down here for centuries in Bonarata’s loving care, and we had not known it. A chance remark in the bitter fight Marsilia had with Bonarata over the werewolf bitch he’d taken to his bed had sent me hunting. After a dozen false starts, I’d followed some drudge from the kitchens to this secret space.
When this place had belonged to Wulfe, he’d kept his treasures in these rooms—musical instruments, tapestries, a poorly woven basket a child had given to him in exchange for his healing of her mother. Wulfe had been as likely to hoard dried flowers as exquisite jewelry.
I’d gotten only close enough to these rooms to sense him. It had been Marsilia who brought me over, after Wulfe disappeared, but my ties to him were still strong enough for me to feel him when I got close enough.
I was not such a fool as to think I could break him out and escape with him on my own. I’d gone to my lady.
For Wulfe’s sake, she’d confronted our dangerous lord, because we both knew that it had to be him banishing us. If it was our idea to leave, he would hunt us to the ends of the earth.
At the sound of my voice, the thing that used to be Wulfe scuttled across the floor on all fours, but no less agile for that. As he approached, the smell of him was indescribably bad. I tried not to look at the most awful parts of his mutilated body. Bodies could be healed with enough time and food. It was his mind, quick and unconventional, that would be harder to restore.
He fastened his fangs in my calf, but only took a taste. He sat at my feet, considering—then scuttled back to Marsilia.
“I expected to find you here,” said a familiar voice behind me.
Wulfe disappeared behind Marsilia’s skirts with a sound of panic.
Cursing silently because I’d let myself be distracted, I turned and raised my sword in the same movement.
Iacopo Bonarata gave my blade an amused look. “You’ll want these,” he said with a charming smile and feral eyes. In a careless movement, he tossed my abandoned bags at my feet.
He looked at Marsilia and, for an instant, all expression fell away from his face, and he did not look charming at all. “So it was never the wolf. Or rather it was a different Wulfe.” His mask reappeared. “My beautiful, deadly flower, my Bright Dagger, you dare more than I can allow. I will die of sorrow and boredom without you, but it must be done. There are servants above with a carriage that will take you to an estate in France where you will stay.” He glanced at Wulfe and then me before turning his face back to Marsilia. “Do not make yourself a threat to me.”
“It was the wolf,” she said, and unlike Bonarata’s, her sorrow was real. “Both of the wolves. All of the self-indulgences and the petty cruelties. But it was when I found out about this, about what you had done to him, then I knew that the man I loved was no longer inside your skin. Iacopo Bonarata, prince of my heart, would never be capable of this.”
I thought she was wrong. Bonarata had been a charming, ruthless, self-involved bastard from the first time I’d met him, and becoming a vampire had not improved matters.