The Abandoned Vampire Bride Walked Away novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Release

In front of sixty guests Rosalind drops her pledge ring into her own birthday cake and says the words that release it. Alaric tells her she will be back by morning, and his father goes white.

I walked across the terrace with the wind from the rotors still pulling at my hair.

Sixty guests stood frozen on the lawn with glasses in their hands.

Half of them were vampires of the old Houses, in pale suits and wide hats against the afternoon.

The other half were my friends, the ones Alaric had insisted we invite, and every one of them was staring at me.

My friend from the museum lifted her phone and filmed it.

I didn't tell her to stop.

"Ro!" Alaric came down the terrace steps and caught my arm. "What is this? Whose helicopter was that?"

"A ride," I said. "Since the car was full."

His jaw went tight behind the sunglasses.

"Don't do this in front of everyone. I was coming back for you."

"When?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

I pulled my arm free and went on into the sunroom.

The long table was still laid, with the gold banner above it and my place card at one end.

The cake sat in the middle with a slice cut out.

There were crumbs on a small pink plate beside it, and a fork lying in a smear of lemon curd.

Genevieve came in after me with her daughter on her hip, and her smile went soft.

"Rosalind, sweetheart, please. We didn't know it would upset you this much. We only wanted to make it a nice day for everyone."

Everybody could hear how kind she sounded.

That was the point of it.

"You didn't know," I said, "that I would mind being left in my parents' driveway on my birthday."

"The poor child was so frightened of the road."

"She wasn't frightened of the cake."

Somebody near the door laughed and then stopped.

The little girl looked at me over her mother's shoulder with a blob of lemon curd on her chin.

She was five years old and she hadn't done anything wrong, and I was not going to say one word against her.

I looked at the two adults instead.

I took off the left glove.

The silver pledge ring sat on my finger, with the small red stone that held a drop of my blood.

I had put it on in the Crowhurst chapel in front of two Houses and promised to wait and to yield.

I worked it over my knuckle.

It was tight and it took a moment, and the whole room watched me do it.

"Alaric," I said. "For three years I did what you asked every time you asked it."

"Ro, stop."

"You told me to wait for your father's illness. I waited. You told me to wait for her husband's funeral. I waited. Today you told a room of my friends that I'd forgive anything for a present."

Alaric's face went from pale to white.

"I never said that."

My friend turned the phone around so that the screen faced him, and she pressed play.

His own voice came out of it, clear in the silent room.

*I'll bring her a present tomorrow and she'll smile for me. She doesn't stay angry.*

Guests looked at their shoes.

Alaric looked at his hands.

I walked to the table and held the ring over the middle of my birthday cake.

Every vampire in the room made the same small sound.

An old woman by the window put a hand to her throat.

By the old law, a bride returned the ring to her groom's hand or to his table, and the words made it final.

"I release the pledge," I said. "I wait for no one and I yield to no one."

I let the ring go.

It dropped into the lemon curd and sank.

For one second the red stone flared bright, and then it went black.

My brothers had come in behind the crowd.

Hugh went white and said, "Rosie, what did you just do?"

"What I should have done at the gate," I said.

Perry took a step toward me, and I raised a hand.

"Don't. You told me to get out of that car. I got out."

Alaric let out a short laugh.

It was the one he used when he thought a scene had gone far enough and he was about to end it.

"Okay," he said. "You've made your point. Everybody saw. Genevieve, take the girl outside, and someone get this cleaned up."

He turned to me and spoke softly, trying to calm me down.

"You'll be back by morning, Ro. You always are."

I put my glove back on.

"No," I said. "I won't."

I looked around the room one last time.

On the far side of the terrace doors stood Alaric's father, the Lord of House Crowhurst, in a long gray coat.

He wasn't looking at me or at the cake.

He was looking at his son's hands in the sunlight, and his face had gone the color of paper.

Then he said in a low voice, to nobody, "She said it out loud."

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