Everest caught up to me in the blink of an eye. He had us zipping through corridors faster than I could track where we were going until finally we emerged through the back door of the ballroom. Just twenty feet ahead sat the throne. One last piece of this puzzle then I could go home to my Everest.

We lunged forward just as the ballroom doors flew open and a sea of terrified vampires flooded the room. Everest wrapped his arm around my waist and leapt forward, landing directly in front of the throne. I spun in his arms to look at the compartment but there were too many eyes. The vampires moved too fast. In the blink of an eye, we were surrounded by all of Avolire. Gasps echoed around us. Everyone was staring at the front of the ballroom with wide eyes and jaws dropped.

I turned to look.

Sweyn and her court sauntered into the ballroom with The Coven hot on their heels. All twenty-two of them. As Sweyn marched through the crowd that parted for her and sat on her throne, The Coven lined up shoulder-to-shoulder along the three walls of the room that weren’t behind the throne. They didn’t speak. That massive black dragon that looked a lot like Koth lowered down like a dog about to pounce but his head filled an entire archway. Little puffs of hot smoke left his nostrils.

Sweyn snarled from her throne beside me. “If The Coven thinks they can raid my castle unprovoked, then⁠—”

“Careful, Sweyn.” Cyrus Proctor stepped forward and crossed his arms over his chest, a move his great-grandson pulled constantly. He arched a black eyebrow. “We just pulled a dozen nearly dead humans from your bed. You’re hardly in a position to make threats.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

FRANKIE

“They weren’t dead,” Sweyn said with a growl. She gripped the armrests of her throne so hard chunks of crystal broke off and dropped to the floor at my feet.

“They weren’t here, Sweyn,” Cyrus snapped. He gestured to the open archways that led out onto the snowy field. “Unless you are about to claim they all wandered here on their own together?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Perhaps their wagon lost a wheel and saw the smoke from our chimneys and came looking for shelter from the cold?”

Livinia scoffed and rolled her golden eyes. “So why not drain them of their blood? Such hospitality you have.”

“My, my, little Bishop.” Sweyn stood and walked down the steps in front of her throne. “Remind me, were they huddled in front of a fire freezing when you found them? Or wearing nothing but the flesh they were born with in a warm room?”

“Chained to your bed,” Lavinia snarled. She looked just like a pissed-off Emersyn.

Sweyn smirked. “You should have entered more silently. You would have heard how much they were enjoying it.”