Ibrahim cast us a glance over his shoulder, as if wondering whether we wanted him to wait for us.

“Just go full speed ahead with Jeriad, Ibrahim,” I called. “We’ll catch up and meet you in the Sanctuary.”

I wanted my father to be treated by a witch, but I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him. After losing Kailyn, I guessed that he would crave his own space for a long time to come.

Before Aiden left, I hugged him, gently so as to not cause pain to either his or my sensitive skin, and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. “I love you, Dad,” I whispered.

He nodded appreciatively and kissed my cheek back, but his mouth didn’t crack even the smallest of smiles. Then he turned on his heel and marched away from us, deeper into the dark woods.

I glanced up at Derek’s face. His expression was stoic, though his eyes were filled with disappointment. I understood where his thoughts still were.

He cleared his throat as he met my gaze. “I guess it was naïve of me to think that he would be different.”

I reached for his hand and held it tight. I raised it to my lips and planted a kiss over the back of it. “Not naïve, Derek,” I said, meaning it as I looked into his blue eyes. In truth, I was proud of Derek for even being willing to consider that Jeramiah might not be a replica of Lucas. I liked to think that it was my influence that had made Derek develop a habit of not always assuming the worst in people, and first giving them the benefit of the doubt. Though, as I’d experienced more times than I wanted to count, as much as this mindset led to living with a lighter heart, it could also lead one into pits of scalding hot water. Still, I tried to comfort my husband. “You turned out different from your father. Why couldn’t Jeramiah have turned out different from his?”

He grunted. The disappointment in his eyes was eating away at me. Poor Derek. I could relate on a deep level to his desire for a strong, connected family because it was something that I’d never had while growing up. My family had been as dysfunctional as one could get—I’d had no siblings and had been cut off from both of my parents, until I’d rediscovered them in rather unceremonious circumstances at the age of seventeen.

Despite the danger Jeramiah had just thrust us into, Derek appeared to have reached a point beyond anger. He was just… sad. And sadness wasn’t an emotion that I was used to from my husband, at least not in recent years. His emotions were usually fiery and swung in extremes—whether in anxiety, joy, passion or anger. Rarely had I witnessed him so crestfallen.

I wrapped my arms around his midriff and hugged him. I wanted to say something to comfort him, like maybe Jeramiah would come round in the end, but after our first encounter, I simply couldn’t see how it would ever happen. The young man had refused to even listen to us. He wasn’t interested in kindling a relationship with his family. He was interested in only one thing, it seemed—maintaining his posthumous, imaginary relationship with his father, while refusing to believe Lucas was anything but a good man who’d been wronged.

I planted a tender kiss on Derek’s cheek.

“We don’t need Jeramiah,” I said softly.

Derek heaved a sigh. “Of course we don’t.”

And yet the heaviness didn’t leave Derek’s expression. My comment had been a stupid one, born out of the fact that I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Of course we didn’t need Jeramiah. But to Derek, having lost both his father and brother before having a chance to come to even the slightest cordial understanding, Jeramiah would have been a way to make the past less painful. Less regrettable.

Derek pressed his lips against my forehead in a kiss, his mind still elsewhere.

“The man needs help,” Derek muttered after a pause. His voice now sounded more grounded than before, his expression less distant, as though hauling himself out of his melancholy and planting himself back in reality.

I couldn’t argue with his statement. Jeramiah did need help. He seemed mentally unstable.

“But it would appear we’re not the ones to offer it,” I said.

Derek nodded slowly in agreement. But then a frown twitched his dark brows. I wondered what had flitted through his mind as he grunted, “Hm.”

Julie

After Arletta and I managed to escape from her turned brothers, we drifted in the ocean for hours. I had not been confident that I’d be able to navigate to land before sunrise—especially since we had no boat and were only swimming—but I’d thought that we’d make it far enough at least for The Tavern’s shores to come into view. It turned out that I was being naïve. Horribly naïve.

Dawn broke, and my worst fear came to pass. We got stranded at the mercy of the sun’s piercing rays. Though we were lucky that it was the middle of the ocean and not the middle of some sprawling landmass. As vampires, we were able to hold our breath for a long time. This ability was the only thing that saved us. We swam deep beneath the waves and stayed there for as long as we possibly could. Although particles of light still reached us through the water, it wasn’t nearly as bad as being out in the open. This of course made traveling all the more difficult, because I could hardly bear to do what was required to gain a sense of our direction: rise to the surface.

I couldn’t have known how far we were from The Tavern, but when I finally caught sight of a ship in the distance, I heaved a sigh of relief. We sped up and swam closer. The ship was of unusual appearance—far too beautifully decorated with drapes and flowers, and the wood too intricately carved, to belong to any normal wanderer. And it didn’t appear to be steered by vampires, due to the lack of covering over the deck. I didn’t know who was in the vessel, or whether we would be welcome aboard, but it didn’t matter. We just needed shelter from the sun, and we found that beneath the wooden figurehead of an angel at the bow of the ship. We clung onto the rope fender around the hull and huddled together beneath the shade.