“Viola, come away.”
“No.” She slapped at his hands.
Lady Venetia was as wild-eyed and desperate as her daughter, but for different reasons. “Viola, you have to leave. You have to run!” She tried to clutch at Tristan’s arm, but the chains stopped her short, rattling with a cold, awful sound. “Please. They can’t know she’s seen me like this. It’s not safe. Protect her! Run, damn your eyes!”
The clack of boot heels on the cobblestones near the tower seemed louder than the blacksmith’s hammer. Lady Venetia went paler than she already was and then flung herself at the end of her chains like a wild animal. “Not my daughter!”
Viola just frowned at her grandmother who approached them, strange and pale as she always was. “And who is this you’ve brought with you?”
“Tristan Constantine of Bornebow Hall,” he replied with a bow, though his sword was still naked in his hand.
“I see.”
Viola crossed her arms. “We want to marry.” She stepped closer to her mother, trying to keep her safe even though she wasn’t entirely sure what the danger was.
“You’re already promised to Richard Vale,” Veronique replied briskly. “Return to him at once.”
“No,” Viola said. One of the servants gasped from where she was pressed against the dog kennel. Venetia began to weep. Tristan wondered how the hell he was supposed to fight an old woman. Viola just narrowed her eyes.
“You will do as you’re told.” Veronique’s voice was sharp and strange. It was like nails inside their skulls.
“I won’t,” Viola insisted, gritting her teeth against the inexplicable pain. “I’ll run away first.”
“My husband is not here to mediate,” she said dispassionately. “And my son has been troubled enough. But believe me when I tell you, I shan’t let you further dishonor our family name by breaking a perfectly good marriage contract.”
Viola could not understand how her grandfather or her father could know about this and not be filled with righteous fury. Her grandmother had always been inscrutable and cold, but Lord William had a laugh that could shake a barrel of ale out of its hinges. Her mother was baring her teeth like a bear protecting her young.
“Further dishonor?” Viola asked. “What are you talking about?”
Tristan grabbed her hand before she could get a reply, and dragged her behind him. “Run,” he shouted. She turned back to stare at her mother but Tristan’s hold would not break, nor his pace slacken in any way. He tossed her onto his horse and scrambled up behind her, shielding her back so she wouldn’t be vulnerable in their escape. Her mare was already in the stables being rubbed down. They thundered out of the first gatehouse and down the path to the main gates.
“Never mind,” Veronique said to the guards waiting for her order. “This is best done away from prying eyes.” Her eyes glittered as Venetia began to wail. “It’s time to rid my son of this embarrassing problem.”
Tristan and Viola made it out of the castle grounds and across the field before the horse stumbled. Tristan reined him in, casting a baleful glance at the sky, which was moonless and so dark he could barely see the gleam of the river in the ravine below. He could barely even see the glint of Viola’s golden hair inches from his nose. He slid off the mount. “We’ll have to go on foot,” he said grimly. “He could break a leg over the moors.”
“I don’t understand,” Viola said, shivering under her thick cloak.
Tristan tilted her chin up so she was looking at him. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
She swallowed, looking more frightened instead of comforted. Dread clawed at his spine as he turned around, expecting a dozen knights, a rabid wolf, a rain of spears.
Anything but a strange old woman.
Veronique crossed the field, quicker than anything he’d ever seen. Her hair streamed behind her under the white linen of her wimple. Her face was pale and perfect, even at a distance. And then she was suddenly standing right in front of them. Her teeth were too long and too sharp.
“Grandmother, why are you doing this?” Viola asked. “And what’s wrong with your teeth?”
“Don’t call me that,” Veronique snapped. “You are no bloodkin of mine. But your father has a soft heart and he loves you as though you were his own.”
“But . . . I am.”
“Christophe cannot father children.” Veronique smiled for the first time, but there was no humor in it. “For the same reason I move faster than you can imagine, for the same reason that I died over thirty years ago and yet still, here I stand.”
Viola began to wonder if age had addled her grandmother’s mind.
“Vampire.” Tristan didn’t wonder. He saw the teeth, the pale skin, and reacted as he would have reacted to any other monster. He swung his sword.
“Don’t be absurd, boy.” She sighed, breaking his hold with a single twist of her hand. His sword fell into the frost-tipped grass. He felt a primal ancient fear such as he’d never felt before. “Your mother tried to foist her bastard on my son,” Veronique said. “And still he will not kill her. Because of you.” Before Viola could blink, her grandmother had her by the throat. She forced Viola’s head back even as she drove Tristan to his knees with a careless blow to the temple. Viola screamed.
And then her father was suddenly there, just as pale in his fury as his mother.