Maisa accepted the paper with trembling hands. The address was written in neat, unfamiliar handwriting and beneath it was a small mark resembling a flower with five petals which she assumed was the girl’s signature.
She clutched the paper against her chest.
“Thank you,” she appreciated the help even if it came in the form of a deal.
The words were too small for what she felt.
They could never express the depth of her gratitude, the relief that had flooded through her, or the terror of knowing she had just made a bargain with someone whose true identity she didn’t know.
The white-haired girl studied her for a moment. She reached out and gently brushed a tear from Maisa’s cheek.
“Take care of yourself, Maisa,” she said, “I wish that we can meet again under better terms but…” She didn’t finish.
Maisa leaned into the touch before she could stop herself and for the first time in weeks, she felt the warmth of another person’s hand. The simple sensation nearly broke her all over again.
“And take care of your mates,” the girl continued. “They have suffered enough confusion already.”
Maisa nodded, unable to speak. She could feel the girl was holding back something that she wasn’t letting herself reveal but for now, it didn’t matter.
“Good.”
She turned her head toward the courtyard, where the surviving vampires were beginning to recover.
“There’s one more thing to do,” she snapped her fingers.
The courtyard became silent. Not the silence of death or the oppressive stillness that had accompanied the flower’s awakening. This was different.
It was as though a hand had reached into the minds of everyone present and gently turned a page.
Regina blinked. She was standing near the tower entrance, her tablet in hand. Around her, guards were getting to their feet, professors were helping students, and healers were rushing toward the injured.
For a moment, she felt disoriented. Had there been an emergency?
She looked at the tablet. The screen displayed the report she had been reviewing before rushing toward the tower. Maisa Loven’s blood signature had triggered a biological hazard warning, and she had been ordered to escort the student for further investigation.
Regina frowned. She couldn’t remember why she had been standing outside.
A few steps away, a guard rubbed his forehead. “Did anyone else feel dizzy?”
“Probably the pressure from the storm,” another replied.
“What storm?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like I need to sit down.”
The conversation drifted away because no one remembered the flower or the five-colored light and the lifespans being drained from their bodies or the sight of a young redblood standing beneath a bloom that should never have existed.
The memory of the flower’s awakening had been erased from every mind that had witnessed it. Not altered into a false story or buried beneath confusion but forcefully removed.
The girl had also erased the memory of Evelyn’s arrival, her death, and her presence within Veris Academy.
To everyone who had seen her, there had never been a human feeder named Evelyn Loven waiting in the whiteblood tower, a body carried into the courtyard or a miraculous resurrection and no one would remember the bargain made in blood.
No one except Maisa. The white-haired girl lowered her hand. “There. Much better,” she said with relief.
She glanced at Maisa. “You won’t have to explain something that would only bring you trouble.”
Maisa looked around in disbelief. Regina was already checking the tablet, her expression returning to its usual professional severity.
The guards had resumed their duties. The professors were gathering students and ordering them back inside. Nobody was looking at Evelyn or asking what had happened to the flower.
Nobody seemed to remember that the courtyard had nearly become a graveyard.
Maisa’s gaze returned to the girl. “You can erase memories, too?”
The girl gave her a playful look. “Would you like a list of everything I can do?”
Maisa immediately shook her head. “No,” she feared her head might explode if she agreed.
“Wise choice.”
The girl laughed and then the body she inhabited shuddered. Her expression changed.
The light in her eyes dimmed, and Taratoya’s original features began to return. Color slowly seeped back into her irises, and the tension in her shoulders shifted.
The white-haired girl glanced inward. “Time to return what I borrowed. Until we meet again, Maisa.”
For one fleeting instant, the flowers around her hair became brighter and then they disappeared. 𝖋𝘳ℯ
“Aah,” Taratoya gasped.
Her eyes flew open, and she staggered backward, catching herself against the tower wall. She looked down at her hands and then around the courtyard.
“What… happened?” her voice sounded hoarse.
She remembered rushing toward the courtyard with Katrina in her arms. She remembered the oppressive pressure in the air and the sight of the five-colored flower and then darkness but nothing after that.
Taratoya pressed a hand against her temple. “Katrina,” she whispered. She turned sharply, searching the courtyard. “Katrina!”
There was no answer from all around her. Panic seized her. She hurried forward, looking behind the fallen guards and along the stone steps, but Katrina was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she?” Taratoya demanded of a nearby attendant. “Where did they take the woman I was carrying?”
The attendant stared at her in surprise and looked around. “What woman, my lady?”
Taratoya froze. “The woman in my arms!” she went on to describe how Katrina looked like and hoped that the attendant would remember her.
“I didn’t see anyone with you, Lady Taratoya.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Taratoya lost her temper. The attendant recoiled. Taratoya’s eyes narrowed. She could remember Katrina’s weight against her chest, the wrinkles on her face, the terrible weakness in her body.
She could remember all of it yet everyone around her acted as though Katrina had never been there. She could tell that something was wrong. Very wrong.
Taratoya looked toward the courtyard entrance. Across the distance, she caught sight of Delah, Kheamossa’s guard approaching with Jarel Ashbourne. Their expressions were unreadable, but Delah’s gaze lingered on her for a moment longer than necessary.
A strange chill passed through her. She had no idea what had happened during the time she had lost but she intended to find out.
—
Maisa stood alone near the tower entrance. The courtyard was returning to normal. Healers were tending to the fallen, guards were collecting weapons, and students were being sent back to their quarters.
The academy had already begun swallowing the evidence of the catastrophe that had nearly destroyed it.
Maisa looked down at her hands. She could feel the cool air brushing against her skin. She could feel the paper in her fingers and the ache in her chest, though it was no longer the unbearable emptiness that had consumed her after Evelyn’s death.
The bond was back. She could feel the others. Varitreya’s lingering weakness, Addessa’s relief, Lumi’s confusion and Zolani’s growing impatience as she struggled to understand why she had woken up on the ground.
Maisa closed her eyes. ‘I’m here,’ she whispered hoping her mates can hear her.
The emotional response that came through the bond was faint but immediate. It was concern, relief and affection unlike anything she had ever felt before.
She pressed a hand over her heart.
For weeks, she had begged for this connection to return. Now that it had, she almost didn’t know what to do with it but there was something else beneath her relief.
A cold awareness beneath the warmth, the bargain. She had promised her first child to a stranger whose true name she didn’t know. In exchange, the girl had restored her bond, cleansed her blood, sealed the flower, and brought Evelyn back from death.
It was an extraordinary gift. It was also a debt she could not pretend she hadn’t agreed to pay.
Maisa looked at the address in her hand. Evelyn would wake in two hours. She would be alive but as a vampire. Her aunt would have questions.
Maisa had questions of her own, too. She needed to know who had killed Evelyn, why she had come to Veris Academy, and what warning she had carried that forced her to pass the threshold between their two worlds.
She also needed to understand who the white-haired girl was and why she had the power to command the flower of fate.
The girl had promised that Maisa would learn the truth one day. Maisa had no choice but to wait.
For now, her blood was clean. The numbness was gone. Her mates were within reach again, and Evelyn would soon open her eyes.
The immediate danger had passed but as Maisa folded the paper and tucked it carefully into her pocket, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had traded one mystery for something far more dangerous.
She didn’t know whether she had made a terrible mistake. She only knew that, for the first time since Evelyn’s death, she had something to hold on to and for now, that was enough.