Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - All Just Glass

Sarah disappeared without even the sense to demand an explanation. She wasn’t sure where she was going; instant transportation was a vampiric trick she used by instinct instead of intent, and the extra effort of bringing the bag with her made her head spin. She nearly fell as she reappeared, before she was caught and pulled into an embrace.

“Sarah, thank god.”

She could feel the wash of emotion that accompanied the words, and knew as she leaned on him that this was Kristopher. When she had first woken as a vampire, he had given her his blood so she would not need to hunt and kill an innocent human. Doing so had opened his mind to her.

She closed her eyes and let him hold her for a moment, while simultaneously trying to shield her mind from his thoughts.

Kristopher had flirted with her before he had known she was a witch; she had allowed it because she could sense in his aura that it had been a long time since he had killed, and because she had assumed he was allied with SingleEarth … and because it had been nice to have a friend. She didn’t know what might have happened between them if she hadn’t been a Vida, and if his brother hadn’t reacted violently to what he saw as a threat to Kristopher. As it was, they had never even managed a successful first date before their romance had gone the way of Romeo and Juliet’s—except that Romeo and Juliet didn’t wake up the next day, leave the crypt and say, “Now what?”

Sarah had chosen to go to SingleEarth because she needed distance , so she could learn how to live this new life before she had to figure out what she wanted to do about the relationship she had never intended to die for. Now she could barely hear her own thoughts through his anxiety.

“Nissa told us there were hunters at SingleEarth.” That piece of information came from another voice, similar to the first but indefinably different. “We were concerned.”

Sarah pulled back, fighting the gentle insistence of Kristopher’s arms that encouraged her to stay close, when she heard Nikolas’s voice. Looking up, she saw that Christine had also joined them.

She had to get herself under control, not just because she still instinctively wanted to be strong in front of Nikolas, her recent enemy, but because Christine had gone through enough lately. She didn’t need to see Sarah panicked.

And maybe she could admit, if just to herself, that having someone else to be strong for helped. As a Vida, she had always existed for others. She had lived and died to fulfill vows written by ancestors thousands of years earlier. She had never hesitated to risk her life to protect the innocent. Her friendship with Nissa and Kristopher had been the first thing she had ever sought for herself.

Look where that had brought her.

“Hunters at SingleEarth?” she echoed. “They’re powerless there.” Might Adia have been looking for her? One reason Sarah had gone to SingleEarth was that it was owned by the Smoke witches, and they had treaties so even the Vida line was not obligated to hunt vampires within its walls. She hadn’t expected her family to want to see her, but she had wanted to give them an option that would free them from being bound by law to kill her.

Kristopher shook his head, his gaze now as dark as his brother’s. “They tried to take Nissa. They threatened to kill her if she didn’t cooperate.”

Sarah shook her head, horrified and amazed. What was going on ?

All four of them tensed when another figure appeared in the room. Christine recoiled, her face going pale, and as Sarah moved to comfort her, Nikolas and Kristopher stepped protectively between the newcomer and Sarah and Christine. Did they think she needed to be protected, defended, coddled, as if she were helpless? Or was the position accidental, a result of her moving closer to Christine?

That didn’t matter right then. What mattered was that Kaleo Sonyar, the vampire who had just appeared among them, looked pissed . The oldest living direct fledgling of Kendra, Kaleo was an apt representation of his line: beautiful, an artist, absolutely mad and capable of undeniable cruelty. He had features like a Roman sculpture—quite literally, since rumors claimed he had modeled for some of those works—and golden blond hair that gave him an angelic cast. The looks were misleading, however. By killing Nissa’s father and threatening Nikolas, Kaleo had convinced Nissa to let him change her. More recently, he had bloodbonded Christine and tortured her for months, mainly to spite Nikolas.

Seeing the anger stark on his aristocratic features now gave Sarah the chills.

“What is going on?” Kaleo demanded.

“I think that’s our question for you,” Kristopher said. “What are you doing in our home?”

Kaleo spun to face Sarah, which made both boys take a protective step forward. “Your ‘family’ was in SingleEarth.”

“I know. They—”

He shook his head, silencing her explanation. “They took Heather. I demand you three get her back.”

“You demand ?” Nikolas repeated incredulously. “Why would we possibly help you rescue one of your bonds? What exactly were you doing while she was fighting hunters, anyway?”

Though Sarah was also surprised that he would expect their help, she didn’t share Nikolas’s shock at the request. She knew what the hunters might do to Heather if Heather refused to give them information.

“She is surrounded by witches waiting for some fool to step in to pick her up,” Kaleo said. “I’m not about to be the only fool there. As for why you should help, if Heather hadn’t distracted the hunters, they would have taken Nissa instead. And finally, I was in the same place you were: not in SingleEarth, where I am very much not welcome, and not policing my people in a place where they are supposed to be safe from exactly this kind of assault. Since when has that rule changed?”

Both brothers answered the question by looking to Sarah for explanation. “Sarah?” Kristopher asked.

“SingleEarth’s autonomy is a high law among all witch-kin—”

“Which is why I was a little surprised they seem to be ignoring it,” Kaleo interjected.

Sarah stepped back. It didn’t make any sense … but Caryn had acted like it did. My mother says if I cross them, it could endanger everyone at SingleEarth . “Oh, goddess,” Sarah whispered as the answer struck her like lightning. Her stomach plummeted. Her chest constricted.

“Sarah?”

She wasn’t sure who had spoken. She felt blind. But she remembered the ancient words she had spent many hours studying as a child. A Vida was only given a true blade, crafted by the witches of old and imbued with generations of power, after she had recited and then sworn to all the laws of their line. She could have said the words in her sleep, but the only law applicable in that moment was so ancient she would never have thought anyone would invoke it.

When witch-kin is slain, there shall be no safe haven, no higher law to protect the guilty. Every hunter shall turn her blade to the task, and there shall be no rest until those responsible have been slain .

The Rights of Kin hadn’t been called upon since the death of Smoke Madder, thousands of years earlier. The conflict had led to the schism that split the witches into separate lines for the first time, with some obeying the Rights and some swearing a vow of nonviolence and giving up the title of hunter for themselves and all their descendants.

Hunters’ deaths were avenged when they could be, but most of the time it was simply accepted that hunters eventually lost their lives, usually to their prey. No one had called on the Rights when the Light line had been extinguished three centuries before, and the Vida line had nearly been forced to the same fate. No one had called on the Rights when Nikolas and Kristopher had killed Elisabeth Vida in the 1850s, or when Zachary’s sister Jacqueline had been slaughtered, or when Sarah’s father had been bled and dumped on their front step.