Free Web NovelChapter 251: Chapter 251: The Letter From V
He wasn’t wrong.
Damian had been sitting with the same thing since he’d read it in his father’s study. The letter was right. The emotion of it, the specifics, the weight of two decades compressed into a letter, all of it felt real. All of it read like truth.
But feeling real wasn’t the same as being real.
And Malachai had two centuries of making things feel exactly as real as he needed them to.
"We respond carefully," Damian said. "We confirm nothing. We give nothing. We open the door and we see what walks through it in person." He looked at Damon. "If it’s real we need to know who V is. If it’s Malachai we need to know that too."
Damon looked at the table.
"And if it’s a trap," he said.
"Then we walk into it with our eyes open," Damian said. "Which is different from walking into it blindly."
Damon was quiet for a long moment.
Then he looked up.
"Fine," he said. "But I want to be in the room when she responds. Whoever V is....I want to be there."
"We’ll all be there," Silas said.
Damon looked at Eve.
She looked back at him steadily.
"I’m not going anywhere without you," she said. "Any of you."
Something in Damon’s face settled.
Not all the way. Not completely. The thing that had been bothering him since he read the letter was still there....Damian could see it. Damon was used to processed things at his own pace and this particular thing was going to take time. freēwebnovel.com
But he nodded.
That was enough for now.
***
Damian drafted the response that evening.
Alone at his father’s desk with both letters in front of him.
He kept it short.
We received your letter. We have questions that require answers in person before anything further is discussed. If you are who you say you are, you will understand why.
Name the place.
— D
He read it back.
The letter sounded neutral. Nothing confirmed. Nothing given away.
He folded the letter and then sealed it.
Looked at his father’s handwriting on the old envelope for a moment.
Then he put it in the outgoing correspondence tray.
Stood up and went to find his family.
****
He didn’t sleep well.
Hadn’t been able to sleep since the letter arrived. He kept thinking about it.....the paper, the handwriting, the years of silence from a woman who claimed to have been watching the whole time.
Watching.
That was the part that felt wrong the most.
If V had been watching for twenty years and Eve had spent most of those years not knowing what she was....not knowing about the throne, the bloodline, any of it....then V had watched her from the shadows, someone who knew about her even before she was born. Had watched her struggle through whatever her life had been before the estate and said nothing. Done nothing.
That wasn’t protection.
That was observation.
There was a difference and nobody else seemed to be thinking about it the way he was.
He finally got up around six, left the room and went downstairs to the kitchen, He made coffee and stood at the kitchen window dranking it.
He watched the grounds come awake in the grey early light and tried to figure out if he was being paranoid or paying attention.
The problem was those two things looked identical from the inside.
***
The response came four days later.
Lena brought it to Damian’s study the same way she’d brought the first one....quietly, without ceremony, set it on the desk and left.
Damian read the letter and then went to look for Damon first, when he found him he didn’t say anything. Just held up the letter for him to see.
Damon looked at the envelope.
Same handwriting. Same paper. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
"Get the others," he said.
***
They assembled in the study.
Same configuration as last time, Eve sat on the chair, Silas near the bookshelf, Damon at the window. Damian behind the desk.
He opened the letter.
The letter had just one page this time. Fewer words than the last letter. The kind of brevity that came from someone who had said what needed saying and wasn’t interested in filling space.
Damian read it silently first.
Damon watched his face throughout but he still couldn’t pick up any emotions from his brother’s expression.
"Damian," Silas said.
Damian set the letter on the desk and turned it around so they could all see it.
Damon leaned forward.
Read it.
You have your father’s caution. Good. You’ll need it.
My name is Vessa. Vessa Morvaine.
I was your father’s ally for twenty years and your mother’s before that i became Eve’s mother’s. I was present the night Azrael and Lilith died. I could not stop what happened. I have spent twenty two years making sure their daughter survived long enough to make it mean something.
I am not your enemy. I understand you have no reason to believe that yet.
There is a place your father and I used to meet. A village called Aldenmere. Two hours north. There is an inn there called the Grey Bell. I will be in the back room every evening for the next two weeks starting from the date of this letter.
Come when you’re ready. Bring everyone. I would expect nothing less.
I have things to tell you that cannot be written down.
Vessa Morvaine
The study was very quiet when they finished reading the letter.
Damon straightened up.
Read the name again.
Morvaine.
He knew that name.
Every supernatural creature alive knew that name....the most powerful witch bloodline in recorded history, believed extinct for decades. The kind of name that appeared in historical texts and old Conclave records.
Except apparently one of them wasn’t.
Except apparently one of them had been writing letters to his father for twenty years and had been watching Eve from a distance for years and was currently waiting in the back room of an inn two hours north waiting for them to show up.
Damon straightened up and looked at Eve., and saw that she had gone very still.
