Before Midnight (Book 1) (Blood Prince Series) Read online

  Eurydice’s heart pounded. She’d known the god would know what to do, had known the vampire would feel the power rush and leap to be a part of it, and had been certain that the werewolf would follow the vampire out of spite. However, if the prophecy were to come true, she needed all five princes to touch the tree, all five of them to give that powerful blood to the thirsty bark. She clutched her hands to her chest.

  “Looks like fun,” the demon said, dropping from the tree. He was being flippant, but Eurydice had seen his reaction when the god’s blood touched the tree while the demon still hung from its branches. Prince Adonis had felt the energy too. She could hear his heart beat faster. He held out his hand to the god, gesturing at the obsidian blade. “May I?”

  The corner of the god’s mouth turned up in a smile. He offered the blade to the demon without taking his bloody palm from the tree. The demon glanced at the angel and sneered. “Need a little help, birdie?”

  The angel wrinkled his nose as the demon cut his palm and added it to the tree. Prince Adonis waggled his eyebrows at Patricio, nodding to the tree. The winged prince ruffled his feathers and Eurydice held her breath as the angel’s fists clenched and unclenched. Her fallen angel had always been a bit sensitive. Oh, please, Patricio. Please don’t fail me.

  Price Patricio sneered at the offered blade. “If you think I’m going to drag that demon blood-tainted instrument of sacrifice across my flesh, you’re as insane as you are vulgar.”

  He raised his hand and Eurydice’s eyes widened as blood pooled in his palm, untouched by any weapon or sharp point of any kind. Stigmata. The angel was farther gone than she’d thought.

  “However, I have nothing to lose here.” Patricio glanced at the god and for a split second, time seemed to stand still. Then, without a word, the angel added his blood to the trunk.

  The energy in the tree climbed higher and higher until she could barely breathe. Eurydice dropped her head back, her eyes rolling upward. She wanted to fill the tree with her spirit until she poured out of the trunk in her true hamadryad form, but she couldn’t risk it. It was too early for her Blood Princes to know the whole story. Witnessing the powerful magic of her human half emerging from within the tree would put all of them on the defensive. They didn’t know one another yet, didn’t trust one another. To tell them now would just lead to fighting and then the prophecy may never come true.

  The tree sighed and shifted as Eurydice fought to breathe through the energy. Leaves rustled and branches waved, a steady power building inside it. Her leaves grew to a more vibrant green, the bark a richer brown. The scent of wood and earth thickened in the air like a natural perfume. Eurydice didn’t need to see the tree herself to know what changes were happening. It had been a long time, but she remembered.

  After several long minutes, the demon shifted and stared up into the leaves. “That’s it?”

  “There should be more,” the vampire muttered, mostly to himself.

  The god backed away from the tree, a serene look on his face. “It isn’t time yet. There are things as yet unfinished and all the pieces have not yet moved into place.”

  “What are you talking about?” the vampire demanded, his eyes flashing. “What do you know?”

  The god stared into the vampire’s eyes. “Some of the pieces are missing,” he said calmly. “We will have to wait.” Without another word he turned and walked away, disappearing into the trees.

  “What pieces?” the vampire snapped, glaring around him.

  The demon shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I should be going too,” he mumbled. Without another word, he turned and darted back into the trees.

  “I don’t know what we expected to happen.” The angel rubbed his hand on his robes, smearing a thin red line over the perfect white cloth.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the vampire asked crossly.

  The angel shrugged. “Nothing.” He turned and spread his wings. With a few wind-raising passes of the feathery limbs, he rose off the ground and disappeared over the canopy of trees.

  “You don’t know anything about what’s going on do you?” the vampire growled at the werewolf.

  Prince Etienne’s face looked pale. He refused to meet the vampire’s eyes. Without a word, he threw himself into the change, his human body suddenly enveloped in thick grey and white fur. He landed on all fours and took off into the trees.

  The vampire glared at the tree and stepped back. With one last long look, he turned and plunged back into the forest, not even a rustle of leaves giving him away.

  Eurydice rose through the layers of the tree to stare out at the vampire’s retreating back until he had completely disappeared into the woods. Safe, she raised her arms over her head, relishing the feel of the breeze on her smooth, pale flesh and running her hands down her body to where her lower half merged with the tree.

  It had been too long since she’d come outside, taken her physical body instead of just existing in an incorporeal form inside the trunk. She felt more alive than she had in centuries. The trunk of her tree greedily absorbed the blood from the five princes and she sighed as the energy buzzed through her body. They were the ones. It was starting.

  She stared through the trees in the direction the werewolf had gone. She could still see his face when the god had mentioned pieces missing, the pain that creased the skin around his eyes and the sorrow that made the grey orbs hazy. Her heart ached at the sadness she sensed from him.

  “Worry not, Prince Etienne,” she whispered. “You will be whole again very soon.”

  She glanced up into her boughs, eyeing the tiny creature peering at her from a leaf with a rapt expression on his face. “You have the wand?”

  The tiny humanoid with the glittering dragonfly wings waved the white stick in the air.

  “You know what to do.” Eurydice glanced toward the werewolf’s palace. “Do not fail him. He needs her.”

  “Pixies never fail,” the little blue creature informed her imperiously. He turned and disappeared in a blue glowing streak into the woods.

  “I hope not,” Eurydice said softly.

  Chapter 1

  “No, no, no, no,” Loupe murmured, slowly backing away with her gaze locked on the wolf carcass in front of her. “No, not again.”

  The sleek grey and white animal in front of her lay still in death. Its gold eyes were glazed over, the jaw hung open, and its tail dangled from the back of the narrow table. Loupe stared at the body, her heart pounding as she waited for further movement, for some sign that the wolf wasn’t as dead as she’d thought.

  “I know you moved,” she breathed, the sound barely audible even to her own ears. She leaned over, studying the wound in the wolf’s side. She must have been imagining things. Of course it was dead—it had to be.

  Her stepmother’s arrow had been straight and true, buried so deep in the animal’s flank that Loupe had no doubt death had been instantaneous. She’d scrubbed the dried blood from the wound and now the clean hole from her stepmother’s arrow gaped at Loupe like a mouth screaming judgment upon her. Her stepmother may have killed it, but she was the one about to skin it. She put a hand on her stomach to ease the swell of nausea.

  No movement came. The beast lay there as dead as the other four carcasses piled up in her room. There was nothing left to fear from this poor beast. And yet…

  Icy fingers of terror slid up her spine, spreading through her body until they reached the scar on the palm of her right hand. Her attention darted from one end of the room to the other. Skins hung over drying racks, filling the room with the musky scent of wolf and the decaying stench of death. The heads had been preserved on the hides so that each one could have passed for a living wolf…

  A memory rose up in her mind. She could see the carcass now, the one that hadn’t been as dead as her stepmother had claimed it was. In her mind’s eye, Loupe saw her hand reaching for the skin, the knife ready to make the first cut. Flashing yellow eyes flew open and lips pulled back in a snarl. Loupe
screamed, dropping the knife as the animal lunged at her. Its teeth dragging over her palm as the creature used its last bit of life to mark her…change her.

  Something thudded on the floor behind her, ripping Loupe out of the memory. She whirled around. Across the room, at the foot of the ladder that led up to the trapdoor entrance to her bedroom, there was a blur of movement followed by another thud. A scream tore its way from Loupe’s throat as a wolf dropped to all fours from the open trapdoor above her. From somewhere above her, a muffled curse followed her outburst. Loupe stared at the crumpled body of a wolf at the bottom of the ladder. Reality came to her in a rush as her stepmother’s skirts came into view above her.

  “Mon dieu, you foolish girl, are you trying to bring the king’s guards down on us?” her stepmother snapped.

  Loupe dragged her attention away from the carcass as her stepmother lowered herself through the trapdoor and climbed down the ladder. The older woman stepped over the carcass, straightening her skirts and staring down at her stepdaughter. Maude Tessier was a striking woman, the hand of time barely discernible in her face despite her fifty-odd years. The stiff corset of her deep plum dress was unnecessary—the woman had the posture of a stone statue.

  “What are you screaming about?” she demanded, her icy blue eyes lit with annoyance.

  “I—I’m sorry, stepmother,” Loupe whispered, her voice hushed by the fear that still gripped her. Her gaze flicked to the dead wolf then darted back to her stepmother’s face. “I was just…startled.”

  “You were just startled,” Madame Tessier repeated, disdain dripping from her voice. “Well, that’s all right then. When the king’s guards burst into our home and drag us off to the dungeons, I’ll just console myself with the knowledge that you didn’t mean to betray us—you were just startled.”

  Loupe flushed and dropped her gaze. The attack that had happened almost a year ago still hung like a particularly vivid ghost in her mind and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at the dead wolf her stepmother had just dropped through the trapdoor. She searched her room for something else to focus on. Unfortunately, her underground room was filled with wolf carcasses—the fruit of her stepmother and two stepsisters’ illegal hunts.

  Despite being underground, her cellar room was well lit, a courtesy from her stepmother to allow Loupe to properly see during the execution of her macabre tasks. There was nowhere Loupe could look where she didn’t find the waxy eyes of dead animals staring at her…judging her.

  “You are working too slow,” her stepmother grumbled. She stalked over to the table that sat perpendicular to Loupe’s modest little bed. Poking at the dead animal, she frowned. “I brought this carcass to you yesterday and you haven’t even started the skinning.” She eyed the two drying racks. “Are those two finished?”

  Loupe nodded, realized her stepmother wasn’t looking at her, and cleared her throat. “Yes, stepmother.”

  “As soon as they’re finished drying, I want them packaged and carried upstairs.” She turned and faced Loupe. “There were guards in the village today so we will not be hunting for a few nights. You will have plenty of time to get every one of these carcasses skinned and dried by then.”

  Images danced through Loupe’s mind, an endless parade of dead wolves. Her hands trembled and she swallowed the scream building inside her. All this killing and death and skinning. She couldn’t bear it.

  “Stepmother,” Loupe said hoarsely. “The king is growing more and more determined to stop all poaching in his woods. Perhaps you should stop—”

  The slap on her cheek shocked her out of her thoughts. Her hand flew to her face and she dropped to her knees on the floor, cowering away from the look of fury darkening her stepmother’s features like a sudden storm cloud.

  “Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” her stepmother snarled. “You are not the head of this family. Your father’s death put me in charge—not you!”

  She whirled around, as if looking at Loupe was too distasteful for her to bear anymore. Loupe winced at the burning in her cheek but kept her gaze on her stepmother. Madame Tessier wandered around the room, trailing her hand lovingly over the wolf pelts.

  “What a backward village I allowed your father to drag me into. All these laws protecting wolves—what is your king thinking? Alive, wolves are nothing but heartless predators, killing valuable livestock, not to mention the occasional hapless villager.” She stopped and stared off into space. “Those glorious creatures have so much more to offer us with their deaths.” She looked down at one of the pelts. “When I send these to my brothers, they will wear them into battle. My kin will take on the ferocious nature of the beast and strike terror into the hearts of their enemies!”

  Loupe kept silent as her stepmother raged. She’d heard the speech many times. Her stepmother was fiercely proud of her heritage and the constant wars her brothers seemed to be fighting back in their home kingdom of Midgard. Loupe suspected that her stepmother’s family was actually a bunch of marauders sacking villages and pillaging things that didn’t belong to them, but she wisely chose not to share those suspicions. Instead, she obediently treated the furs her stepmother and stepsisters brought to her and hid the illegal goods from the king’s vigilant guards.

  “You aren’t listening to me!”

  Loupe fell backward just as her stepmother’s hand flew toward her face. Shocked at her own audacity, she fell to a prostrate position on the floor.

  “I’m so sorry, stepmother, please forgive me,” she begged. Her body trembled as she thought of the beating that may very well follow her attempt to avoid her stepmother’s slap. She’d be lucky to be able to crawl to her bed tonight.

  “Sniveling, mousy little girl,” sneered her stepmother. “In my country we leave puny little prey like you to die in the wilderness.”

  Loupe dared to raise her eyes to her stepmother’s face—and immediately wished she hadn’t. Madame Tessier walked toward her stepdaughter, idly grabbing a knife from the workbench as she did so. She raised the knife.

  Loupe bit her tongue to hold in her cry of terror and covered her head with her arms. Braced for the impact, her entire body shook, anticipating the cruel stroke of the blade.

  The sound of metal biting wood cracked in her ears. She sobbed as she turned to see the blade buried in the floor a few inches from her head.

  “Oh, for the love of Pierre, get up, you stupid girl.” The swish of her stepmother’s skirts followed her exit. “Package those finished hides and bring them up here, or there’ll be no supper for you tonight.”

  Still quaking, Loupe pushed herself into a sitting position. She wrapped trembling fingers around the knife and pulled it from the floorboards. It took several deep breaths to calm herself enough to stand up and gather the packaging materials. Fear threatened to take over when it came time to lift the pelts into the box, but she shoved it away. She didn’t need to give her stepmother any more reasons to be angry with her.

  After fighting her way up the ladder with the heavy package, Loupe made her way through the kitchen and sitting room, up the main staircase to her stepmother’s room. She deposited the parcel on the table next to the dresser. For a second, she looked around at the bedroom that had once been her father’s.

  There was no evidence left that he’d ever been there. Her chest tightened as she noticed the simple white cotton sheets on the bed had been replaced by dark red satin. The simple, sturdy wooden dressers and table had been draped with silks, adorned with frills, and scattered with sparkling jewelry. She turned away, leaving the room on shaky legs.

  What had her father ever seen in her stepmother? How could a man as kind as he not see the cruelty etched into every line of Maude’s face? Had he been in such a hurry to give Loupe a new mother? Had he been so lonely?

  The all too familiar questions plagued Loupe as she plodded down the stairs. The large country home had once been comfortable and modest, despite its size. Now, however, it was as decadent as her stepmother’s inheritance
had been able to make it. Richly embroidered furniture, large ornate mirrors, and lush throw rugs covered every available surface.

  There was no sign nor sound of her stepmother, nor her daughters Danette and Arabelle. They must have gone out again, no doubt to purchase more dresses for her maiden stepsisters. Loupe’s shoulders drooped. It had been a long time since she’d had a new dress. As silly as it seemed, she would have liked to have something pretty to wear.

  “And where would you wear it?” she asked herself. “Down in your little dungeon room, amidst the skins of dead beasts?”

  She looked down at her body. Her simple tan dress was worn clean through in several areas and the ends frayed horribly where it brushed the ground when she walked. The bodice was too worn to fit as snugly as it should have, despite being laced as tightly as she could make it. Blood and filth covered her bare forearms along with the thick scent of musk. Her blonde hair hung in a thick braid down her back, but even that couldn’t keep it safe from the unsavory duties she performed on her stepfamily’s hunting trophies. Her fingers trembled as she scratched at the blood on her arms. A few flakes of blood drifted to the floor.