I schooled every feature, locking down even the most minute of my muscles.
“Wait…” Olivia gawked at her father. “Mother didn’t tell you?”
He slowly narrowed his eyes. “She told me to get in the plane and bring her daughter home. What else is there? Is she playing games, again? You know she loves to pull one over on me.”
I glanced at Olivia’s shocked expression and then turned to her father. “No games, sir. We’re here to wake the Hunters.”
Olivia nodded.
“The war has gone that far?” he asked, fear and worry clouding his eyes.
“It has,” I answered.
“Fuck.” The duke heaved a sigh and closed his eyes, his fist opening and closing before his lids flashed open, and he pinned me with another glare. “You’d better be as good as you think you are.”
“He’s better,” Olivia answered.
I just prayed she was right.
4
Olivia
“You never told me you grew up in a palace,” Ransom said, his blue eyes wide in the diminishing moonlight as we walked the grounds of my family’s estate.
“I told you my family was wealthy,” I said in response, my voice softer than the breeze that ruffled my hair.
He adjusted the luggage he insisted he carry, despite Koyla’s offer—a modest two suitcases, one filled with our personal effects and the other backed with choice weapons we’d magicked for the first commercial flight. “Wealthy is an understatement,” he said, pausing to look up at the estate that fully came into a view. “This rivals Alek’s.”
“Don’t you dare say that,” I chided with a laugh but watched him as he took in my ancestral home. My father had elected to wend into the home the second he’d opened the plane’s door for us. Likely to give my mother a warning of our arrival.
Ransom’s eyes were nothing short of awed as he scanned the expertly manicured gardens that separated the vast stone walkway leading up to the estate. We continued our walk, passing the large circular fountain resting in the epicenter of the walkway. The rushing bursts of water broke the silence of the night, the moonlight casting it in a silvery glow that would soon turn to dawn. My sisters and I had played in the fountain’s water as younglings, much to the annoyance of our mother who thought us too wild.
I hesitated when we reached the first stone steps climbing to my childhood home, a weight locking around my ankles as if all the lies I’d told were holding me back. Golden lights flickered in the dozens of windows peppering the front of the estate, illuminating the rich red and yellow brick it had been constructed with. The breeze swirled around me, carrying the familiar scents of creeping willows and purple mountain saxifrages, the same indigo flowers my eldest sister, Katya, used to weave in my hair.
The coiling tension eased a bit at the scent, at the thought of my sisters waiting for me behind the grand doors nestled beneath the intricately carved archway.
“I’ve never seen you move so slow before,” Ransom whispered, drawing me from my thoughts.
I heaved a laugh, the remaining anxiety burying itself beneath his humor.
“Hey,” he said, and nudged my arm with his elbow, an innocent touch, and a natural one between us, but for some reason, here, tonight—perhaps with his fake mark warming my skin—it rippled through me as if he’d used his tongue. “Anytime, anywhere, you just tell me what you need, and I’ll make it happen. You’re not in this alone.”
His words made my heart clog my throat, but I managed to let out a long exhale around it. I met his burning blue gaze, damning him for looking so perfect after our long travel, and nodded. “Thank you,” I said, tipping my chin up a fraction and steeling my spine. I took one more step up, then another until we’d finally reached the doors.
Ransom glanced behind him, content to wait for me to make the first move. “Does this estate and grounds span the entirety of the northern island?”
“Yep,” I said, having already noted the hundreds of twinkle lights strung about the trees scattered about the grounds. “And the estate, along with its accompanying guest homes, will play host to the hundreds of aristocrat vampires who come to celebrate Kranitel Days.” Ransom nodded, his eyes dancing between me and the door. Right, no more stalling then. I arched a brow at him. “Brace yourself,” I warned, and he furrowed his brow.
“Why?”
“Wait for it.”
“What—”
The double doors swung open, and I was nearly tackled to the ground. “Zasha,” I said, my voice thick with emotion as I hugged her back. “You changed your hair!” I said, pushing her back enough to closely examine her. The once brown locks were now a beautiful, striking silver, as stunning as the moon.
“You like?” she asked, running her fingers through a few strands.