Chapter 226: The Next Step.
The first birds hit me with their sharp morning chatter, then the small waves lapping gently at my side, cold and insistent, until I finally cracked my eyes open.
Celestine was still draped over me, her head resting heavy on my chest, both of us completely naked in the shallow water of the artificial lake. The lake had turned itself into our bed overnight and we’d let it. Pale morning light spilled over the capital’s rooftops, painting the water in soft, shattered pieces of gold and silver. Tiny waves kept rolling in, swirling around our skin and tugging lightly at our bodies.
"Celestine," I said, voice rough from sleep. I tapped her bare shoulder.
She didn’t move.
"Celestine."
She stirred slowly, pushing herself up on her hands. The cold water hit her all at once as she sat back in the shallows. Her long brown hair clung to her neck and breasts in wet ropes. Her dark eyes widened.
"What the hell," she muttered, fully awake now, voice husky.
Then she looked around—at the soft sunrise bleeding across the sky, the pale light catching on the ripples around us, the capital’s rooftops glowing in the distance—and a slow, crooked smile spread across her face. "It’s already six, isn’t it."
I nodded and stood up, water streaming off my body in sheets. I offered her my hand. She took it without hesitation, her grip strong and cool, and rose to her feet. The shallow waves broke around her thighs, leaving her pale skin glistening.
Day twenty-nine. Day thirty was already behind me, and the morning of twenty-nine had arrived with birdsong, cold water, and a marked Vale vampire standing naked beside me in an artificial lake at sunrise.
The small waves had been busy overnight. Celestine’s black bra and panties lay tangled on the shore, soaked and packed with wet sand. My boxers were right next to them, half-buried. Celestine glanced at the ruined underwear, then at me, and let out a low laugh—the kind that came from someone who’d lived four hundred years and woken up in far worse places than this.
Our real clothes waited higher up on the dry part of the shore: her sleek black dress, my shirt, and pants, untouched by the water.
We dressed in silence, brushing off what sand we could. Wet fabric stuck to skin. Sand ground between toes and inside shoes.
Up on the road above the lake, the first cars of the day were starting to move, engines humming low as the capital slowly woke up around us, completely indifferent to the ancient vampire I’d marked the night before.
"What’s the plan?" Celestine asked, pulling her black dress down over her shoulders. The fabric clung to her still-damp curves, the morning light tracing the lines of her body.
I studied her for a second. She was marked now. I needed to see what that actually looked like in daylight, in a real conversation.
"Drop me at my apartment," I said.
"Okay." No argument. No pushback. Just instant agreement.
"And I need you to tell me everything you know about the Awakening," I added, tugging my shirt on.
She nodded once, smooth and obedient.
Just like that. The same woman who had sunk her teeth into my neck outside Vale 2 and warned me to never cross paths with her again was now nodding at my instructions without a flicker of resistance.
It wasn’t obedience that unsettled me. It was how natural it looked.
She stepped close, close enough that I could smell the lake water and her skin. Her dark eyes locked onto mine. "Ready?"
I nodded.
One heartbeat I was standing at the edge of the artificial lake, wet sand in my shoes, birds wheeling overhead, sunrise painting the water gold. The next heartbeat the capital blurred past in a rush of buildings, streets, and morning traffic—and we were standing at the door of my apartment.
Celestine Vale, moving through space like it belonged to her.
She stood right there in the hallway outside my door, morning light pouring in from the stairwell window and catching on her brown hair. The black dress still clung slightly to her damp curves from the lake.
"The Awakening is already in motion," she said, not waiting for me to invite her in or even open the door all the way. "The families are governing the walls now. The revolutionary government exists to serve it. Every move Sinn makes, every policy the government announces—it’s all pointed at the same end."
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, turning her words over. Sinn’s offer still sat heavy and unresolved somewhere in the back of my skull. "Yeah. How do we stop it?"
I already knew the answer. I just wanted to hear if she had another one.
Celestine looked at me for a long, quiet moment. Her dark eyes searched my face. Nothing came. The marking, the extraction of the remaining sources—that was the only road left.
"Do you know Monica Veyron’s daughter?" I asked. The question slipped out before I’d even fully decided to say it, but it had been burning in me since Riya’s letter. The one thing the system couldn’t give me.
"Monica’s daughter." Celestine repeated the words slowly, tilting her head. Strands of her hair shifted across her pale shoulder. "I’ve heard she exists. But I’ve never met her." She held my gaze steady. "Nobody has."
"Okay," I said. "Thank you."
She smiled then—something softer, quieter, more genuine than anything she’d shown me last night under the moonlight. "Thank you," she said back, voice low.
"We’ll meet again," I told her, and finally pushed the door open wider.
She looked like she wanted to say something else, then thought about it.
She turned without another word and headed for the stairs, moving the way she moved through everything—like the world bent and arranged itself around her instead of the other way around. Her black dress swayed with each step. I watched her go until she disappeared, then stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
The sun had climbed higher, pouring full and warm through the half-open curtains. Golden light flooded the apartment, catching dust motes in the air and warming the wooden floor under my bare feet. The faint smell of lake water still clung to my skin.
Sinn’s offer still stood. And no matter how wrong it felt in my gut, it was the only way to stay close to the families, close to the government they’d built, close to every name the system wanted me to mark.
I need to use every single day, I thought, dropping heavily onto the couch. The cushions sank under me as I leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
Twenty-nine days left.
And the Awakening wasn’t waiting for anyone.
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