Chapter. 62

The man slams the door closed, and the foyer is completely coated in darkness. A metal latch clicks behind me, locking the door and sealing Jaclyn outside.

Not waiting around for an invitation, I step into the main hall – a large room lined with pews and tall thin windows.

The man’s hand lands on my shoulder, and he pulls me back into the foyer.

I glare at him. It seems like no matter whether I’m with vampires or humans, large men think they’re welcome to physically push me around.

“Weapons,” he growls.

My first reaction is to argue, but that may result in me being expelled. Reluctantly, I pull my sword off my belt and hand it to him.

He places it on a small table beside the door and quickly pats me down.

The second he’s finished, I spin around and enter the hall. The rows of windows light the pews in streams of moonlight. There’s a figure standing by the alter. Broad shoulders indicate that it’s a man, but the rest of his features are obscured in the darkness.

I hurry forward down the aisle before the bald man can stop me.

The figure’s back is to me. He has the black and gray peppered hair I remember. We’re family, bound by blood. My time wandering without a home are over.

Jumping up onto the raise stone platform, I stop just a foot away from him.

He turns, revealing his slender face, his pointed chin and his dark eyebrows.

It’s him. “Ivan-”

He pulls me into a hug. My arms wrap around him too. In the past, our hugs were little more than a formal gesture, but now I feel closer to him than ever before. It’s just us now. Together, we will share Jacob’s memory.

“Jacob told me you’d come, but I thought it impossible,” he says, still holding me. His voice is gruff, as if he’s suffered over the last while.

I choke up at hearing him speak that name. Ivan may not be aware of Jacob’s terrible fate. “Jacob… He-”

“I know,” he says, deducing the meaning from my broken words. I’m grateful that I don’t have to say it out loud right now.

He releases me, catching my gaze with his. His brown eyes have a tense look behind them – the look of a man on edge, a man driven to fulfill his mission.

The bald man stands waiting for instruction just a few steps behind me.

Ivan’s eyes don’t share my relief at finding him. I feel like my struggle is over, like a weight has been lifted off my chest, but the lines in his brow portray a man in the middle of a battle, a man struggling. I recognize that look. It was often on Rahlan’s face before he believed Ivan to be dead.

“Your brother was brave. He forfeited his life for a great cause,” Ivan says.

Jacob died because Rahlan crossed paths with him after Rahlan’s father was assassinated by the Huntsmen. Ivan may have ordered the assassination, but I cannot believe that Jacob would have anything to do with it. The only cause that Jacob would fight for would be the Huntsmen’s cause – to protect people, not to assassinate old vampires.

A piece of metal bounces off the stone floor, and the ring echoes around the building. All our eyes snap to the foyer.

The door creaks open. Dim moonlight draws an outline around a man’s frame on the other side. It’s just enough to make out a cape across his broad shoulders and a curved sword in his hand.

Ivan steps back, pulling me with him. The bald man moves forward to block the aisle.

Heavy boots march over the stone floor, echoing around the room. It’s a sound I’ve heard hundreds of times before. It can’t be him. I walked for days. This is a human country. I covered my tracks.

He steps into the hall, and the light reveals his pale skin, his sharp jaw, his ink-black hair and his blood-red eyes. Rahlan.