Seduce(32)

“What you saw tonight... that is Snow on a good day.” He rested his head on her slender shoulder, seeking more comfort and warmth from her. He felt cold. He could still feel the icy blast of snow that had cut him to the bone that wintry night. He could still see the freshly fallen powder stained dark with blood. The place that had been such a core part of his life, full of happiness and security, love and warmth, had become a terrible vision of horror that had tainted his memories of his time there. Both his future and his past had been destroyed that night. “I came home late. It was barely a few hours before dawn. It was snowing heavily and the grounds seemed strangely quiet... the sort of quiet that sends the hairs on the back of your neck standing on their ends and triggers your senses to high alert.”

“God, Antoine... Snow didn’t—” She cut herself off, as though voicing her conclusion was too horrific, let alone hearing him confirm that it was right.

“There was no sign of the carnage from the front of the house but on entering it I found a bloodbath. My family, from my cousins’ children to my aunts and uncles, all savaged to the point where I could no longer recognise any of them. I had thought it was hunters, but the attack was too brutal. Werewolves crossed my mind next. I heard a noise outside, coming from the back of the house. Every room I passed through to reach it was... I do not think I need to say.” Antoine closed his eyes against the pain and focused on the soothing motion of Sera’s hand across his back. She was so warm and compassionate, taking away his hurt with her touch as though she was absorbing it into herself so he didn’t have to suffer. What strange magic had she worked on him to bring him to his knees so quickly? It was too late now to turn back. He would confess all, would confide these terrible things in her so she could witness the full brutality of his past and would know of what he too was capable. “I found Snow trampling through the roses, drenched in blood, dragging our mother’s corpse behind him. He was looking for something. I wasn’t sure what it was until he turned and spotted me. Then I knew with chilling certainty that he was seeking more blood.”

Sera stopped breathing, the motion of her hand against his back ceasing too.

She was still for too long. He needed to hear her speak, needed the reassurance that came with her steady caress.

He jumped and his heart lodged in his throat when she flung her arms around his shoulders and squeezed him tightly, her face buried in the crook of his neck. “My God, Antoine... your brother did those things to you.”

Antoine tamped down the sharp wave of pain that threatened to tear through every scar on his body, unwilling to surrender to the past and afraid that the intensity of it would wake Snow. His brother needed his rest. He had vowed that night that he would do all in his power to ensure that Snow never suffered like that again, a slave to his bloodlust, mindlessly killing and unaware of what he was doing as he gorged himself.

“He did not mean to. It wasn’t him who attacked me that night. It was the sickness that festers within him.”

Sera tightened her hold on him. “He said something like that to you earlier. I heard him.”

“He means it,” Antoine said on a sigh. “I fought my brother and although he almost bested me, the familiar scent of the blood he was spilling and the sound of my voice eventually reached him. I brought him back but I didn’t have the heart to do the right thing, not even when he begged.”

“He wanted you to kill him.” There was sorrow in her voice. He felt it in his blood too, but it was his sadness not hers.

“Was it cruel of me to refuse such a request? I forced him to promise me that he would never take his own life in payment for what he had done to me, and to our family. He was all that I had, and I love him. It was not Snow who wrought such horrific destruction that night. It was his bloodlust. I told him that, countless times. I promised him that together we would master it and he would be free again. I mean to keep that promise.”

“You didn’t want to be alone.” Those words were whispered but each screamed in his ears as though she had shouted them.

There was a time once when he had convinced himself that he had refused Snow because he had wanted to help his brother and save his life. That honourable intention had faded and worn over the years to reveal the uglier truth beneath.

He hadn’t wanted to continue in this world alone, bearing the horror of what he had witnessed and what he had done. He hadn’t wanted to kill his own flesh and blood, the brother who was everything to him, who he had looked up to all his life and loved more than anything in the world.