Reign Shadowfell's Arc

Chapter 13 of 29

Reign turned the portrait fully toward the light. The woman looked back at him with his own eyes and his own mouth. He knew her before he had words for it. His hand went slack on the ledger and the blood from his cut smeared the page. Vixen stepped closer and said nothing. She had already seen what he had seen. The imp came in from the hallway on quiet feet. He crossed the small room and stopped at the base of the shelf. His shoulders folded down. Two tears ran through the dust on his cheeks, then a third. Reign had never seen him cry. He had never seen him stand still for this long. Lyla stayed by the door with her hand over her mouth. "You knew her," Reign said. It was not a question. The imp wiped his face with the back of his wrist. "I was her familiar," he said. His voice was smaller than Reign had ever heard it. "From before you were born. She fed me from her own plate." He looked up at the portrait, not at Reign. "Her last order to me was to watch you. To wait until your twentieth birthday. To bring you to Vixen. I have done what she asked." He touched the hem of Reign's coat once, then let go. "I am sorry I could not tell you sooner. She made me swear." Reign knelt so their eyes were level. The amulet at his chest was warm against his shirt. "How did she die?" The imp's throat worked before any sound came. "The grand inquisitor of the Church of Light heard of your birth," he said. "A child one part vampire, one part demon, one part witch. He said such a thing could not be allowed to grow. He came for her himself. Your father was not in the house. She hid you at the gates before they reached her. She died in the front hall." He looked at the smear of blood Reign had left on the ledger. "She died buying you the road to this room." Reign stood. He did not speak for a long moment. Vixen put her hand on his back, low, where no one else could see. Lyla lowered her eyes. Reign lifted the portrait from the shelf and set it on the desk beside the ledger, facing out. He picked up his father's pen. Under the last name his father had written, in a hand that shook only once, he wrote: mother. Then, beneath it: grand inquisitor, Church of Light. He closed the ledger over the drying blood. "We know her name now," he said quietly. "And we know who to find next."