“No, Proctor, I am demanding to know why you get to break your own rules.” Sweyn crossed her arms over her chest, no doubt to mock Cyrus. “The Coven who provided me and my vampire kingdom with the castle and land made a treaty. We would not make any stands of violence against The Coven or her allies, and they would not trespass my land without cause. You had to have a reason to come here.”

The High Priestess let out a menacing chuckle. “I am so glad you asked. Selah, darling, why don’t you bring out our guest?”

“Yes, Mother.” The teen with the Magician’s Mark who looked like Esther held her left hand up and blue magic poured from her palm. “Our reason for making the trip, Your Majesty.”

I buried my face in Everest’s back to stop myself from laughing.

Sweyn gasped. Everest straightened. I frowned and leaned around him again and my jaw dropped. It was the human I attacked in the Land of the Lore. The woman in the green cotton dress with mud stains halfway up to her knees and frizzy, curly blonde hair. Her eyes kept rolling to the back of her head like she was struggling to stay conscious.

The Lovers Card was holding her up, but she reached over and pushed the woman’s hair back to reveal a fresh set of bloody puncture wounds perfectly spaced to the size of a mouth. “Imagine our surprise to find a human who’d been bitten by a vampire.”

Sweyn balled her hands into fists. “Where did you find her?”

“We found her outside of Eden in the Appalachian Mountains.” Elizabeth looked over. “Isn’t that right, Anna?”

“That is right.” The brunette Card holding the bitten human nodded. “Do not worry. We cleaned up the mess the other humans were making about her attack.”

“That is our job, after all.” Cyrus glared at Sweyn. “To keep the human world safe from the rest of us and the monsters we brought here.”

“While we’re not sure how she managed to get all the way down there from here, we do know that she did.” Elizabeth’s gaze casually shot over to me before returning to Sweyn. “She was barely able to tell us what happened, and in little detail, so we called upon our allies with wings and flew up to see if there was a problem needing tending to. Imagine our surprise when the dead rose to tell my daughter your sins.”

“The dead you find here are not from my hand,” Sweyn said in a low voice.