The Red Queen | Lucien Castle & Tristan de Martel

Chapter 10

Her heart was ready to burst out of her chest.

No answer from Klaus. No answer from Kol. No answer from Rebekah. The plane had taken off, flown, landed, she was in Charlottesville and still, no one replied.

She tracked her brothers to the Gilbert House. It was quiet, too quiet.

Klaus was tired of yelling. Tired of staring at the dead body across from him. Vivalda fell to her knees in the doorway when she saw the charred corpse of her favorite brother.

The hybrid turned to her, having no energy to say anything. He watched his sister's face change. First confused and nervous, then slowly her eyes began to darken, her jaw clenched, she glared only at Kol, eyes watering, until she seemed to find her voice, which he had never heard so filled with anger.

"I will get you both out of here," she vowed coldly. "I swear it."

It wasn't hard to find the murderers once Klaus managed to relay what'd happened. They would all die for this, that much Vivalda was certain of. Surely they'd done something to Rebekah, too. All bets were off the table. The wretched friend group would be annihilated by midnight.

They were congregated in the Salvatore House, perhaps stupidly thinking no one would come for them, perhaps convinced that they were untouchable. She could hear their voices. The two Salvatore brothers, the Gilbert siblings, and only Bonnie Bennett to protect them.

"Klaus is trapped in our living room," Elena explained to the group.

"Temporarily," said Bonnie. "I drew on the new moon to bind the spell. We've got three days to find that cure– four, max."

"If we don't," said Jeremy, "we might as well look up Katherine Pierce and see if she wants some company in hiding, 'cause he will come after us if one of his siblings doesn't do it first."

"We'll find it," said Elena confidently, a surprising tone coming from someone who claimed she didn't want the cure. "Now that we've got Rebekah taken care of, all we need is professor Shane, and then we'll have everything we need."

Stefan cleared his throat. "Yeah, I didn't, uh...I didn't dagger her."

"What? Why not?"

"I didn't need to. She's on our side."

"On our side? Did you really just say that?"

"Yeah, she handed over the headstone. I mean, she wants to find this cure more than any of us."

Vivalda's hand clenched around her sword, unable to believe that Rebekah would simply let bygones be bygones and help them after they'd killed Kol. She should have annihilated the lot of them before Vivalda even arrived. And yet, it didn't seem like she was all that bothered by it.

She didn't wait to hear Elena's remark. She flung the sword through the window, shattering it and impaling Bonnie into the wall, the witch barely clinging to life and unable to help as Vivalda stormed in, grabbing Jeremy first and tossing him into the wall to knock him out.

Elena ran to his aid while the two Salvatores tried to confront her. They were no match for her. She caught them on either side by the heart, tugging her arms inward and letting them drop dead on the floor as Elena let out a strangled sob.

Vivalda had just dropped the hearts when Elena sped off with Jeremy. She let out a mirthless laugh. "You can run," she called out in a sing-song voice. "But you can't hide."

Tracking their scent was easy. They hadn't even made it out of Mystic Falls when Vivalda had already caught up, yanking Elena back by the hair to drag her to the Salvatore House once again, where Bonnie was trying and failing to free herself from the wall.