Chapter 2
Alexandra's eyes snapped open, arms tightening around Mara. They were lost in a monstrosity of a bed big enough for a small family, but she always ended up with her arms around her sister. Wrapped around Mara's small body, her chin rested on the top of her sister's head.
She had to go, Mara's maid would be in soon and it wasn't worth the fallout if she was caught in the room again. She only had a few minutes before the woman came to wake Mara for the day, but that meant she had at least a minute to savor the moment.
Steel and Mara were the only things that kept her safe at night. When darkness claimed the land, the madness rose in her like a tide, washing away control with its caustic touch. Butchery called her name on the wind in the midnight hours, steel whispering its razored secrets. It was the time when the world turned into weak meat meant for the taking.
Steel quieted the voices, but only Mara silenced them. Alexandra had snuck into her sisters' room since they were young, before she even had names for the feelings that ruled her heart. It had never been okay, only every tolerated for the control it gave Alexandra over the savagery of her soul. But it had become taboo two years ago.
They'd locked her sister's door, punished Alexandra by denying her blood, taken away her books and left her alone in her room. It hadn't stopped her. Mara was the only answer to the needs thrumming through her malice ridden soul, the only peace she knew in a world begging for pain. She'd take their punishments with a smile if she could stay with Mara at night.
Slipping from under the covers, Alexandra was less than a ghost. Without even a breath to stir the air, or a beat of the heart to break the stillness of her body, she moved with trained skill away from her sanctuary. Opening the window, Alexandra looked down at the seventy-foot drop. Mara loved watching the gardens from her window, she spent hours reading and drinking tea from the chair beside the window.
Stepping out onto the ledge, Alexandra felt the tingle of the blood arts along her feet. Pulling the window shut with a suction cup tied around a finger, she walked to the flat wall beside the window. Stripped of any hand holds, without a crack to wedge a finger or piton into, the wall was more fortification than decoration.
Her hands tingled as she laid them along the wall and lifted her body off the ledge. Laying her feet on the wall, she moved with a spider's sureness over the wall. The blood arts were bound to meat, changing their beauty based on the vampiric race. But some traits were seared into bone. The clinging was the easiest skill to learn and overlooked in its simplicity.
Pressure mounted on her shoulders and back as she crawled across the featureless stone, skirting around the windows and balconies dotting the wall. Scorned as a peasant's use of the blood, the inherent ability was judged as a waste of sacred blood. But she'd found that what the knights scorned was a saving grace to her. Out here, she could go anywhere she wanted, ambush anyone that crossed her, and secure her spot next to the one sanctuary she had outside of god.
Her window swung open at her touch. Gripping the inside ledge, she swung into the room with a sigh of relief as the pressure left her shoulders. Waking up after a long day of working out to a rough climb across the walls stressed already torn muscles. But it was always worth it.
Peeling off her silk sleep wear, she padded quietly to her bathroom. She left the lights off, the night vision of her race stripping the room bare of secrets. Heavy oak inset into the walls ran undisturbed down one side of the bathroom wall with two sterile clean sinks sunk into the ancient wood. Silver faucets were turned into night born things in the black room, their shine smothered by shadows. A shower stood at the end of the room, dark stone polished into an obsidian monster of massive proportions, it was shamed by the simple bottle of shampoo and bar of industrial soap.
