“I’ll be at the training grounds today,” he informed me. “The training must go on for the vampires of The Shade.”

“Corrine told me about the draft…” The topic left a bitter taste in my mouth. “She said you wanted all vampires to be battle-ready. Why?”

“We’ve grown weak. Should the hunters attack us, we won’t stand a chance. I can only imagine the technological advancements they’ve developed over the years. They’re leaps and bounds ahead of the way they were four hundred years ago.”

“Maybe so, but how on earth will the hunters even find the island, Derek?”

“It’s just a matter of time, Sofia. Our defenses grow weaker by the minute… I’m surprised we were able to keep the secret this long.”

I quietly stared at the piece of toast I just dabbed with jam and butter before finally admitting something that’d been bugging me. “Ben joined the hunters, Derek. He wanted me to go with him, but I didn’t.”

Derek stiffened at the mention of Ben. He took a drink from his glass of blood before slowly raising his eyes to meet mine. “Why didn’t you?”

Because of you. I shrugged. “It didn’t feel right.”

It seemed he wanted to ask another question, but thought better of it. Instead, he nodded. “I have to go soon… What will you be doing?”

“I want to visit Ashley at the Cells. I’m thinking of visiting the Catacombs too.”

Blue eyes widened in surprise. “The Catacombs?”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

He paused and gave it some thought. “No. I’ll find you there later. I’ll make sure a guard accompanies you.”

“When is this trial with Ashley going to happen, Derek? You can’t keep putting this off…”

His face grew grim. “She’s a hunter, Sofia.”

“What?” I frowned. “How would you…”

“The tattoo on her back. The hawk. It’s the mark of a hunter.”

“But…”

“Look. I’ll strike you a deal. If you can get her to cooperate and give us all the information she knows about the hunters, then I’ll release her.”

“That’s not fair, Derek. She was defending me after you…”

“Don’t go there, Sofia.” His tone was stern, making it clear to me that I was about to cross a line I had no business crossing. “I know what I did, and I regret it deeply, but I am prince of The Shade. She was going to kill me. She almost killed you. My offer to release her is more generous than you give me credit for.”

I was taken aback. It was the first time I could remember him pulling rank on me. My familiarity with him often made me forget who he was. Whenever anyone at The Shade treated him with deference, I found it downright weird. The idea of calling him ‘your highness’ or even ‘prince’ seemed ridiculous to me, but sitting there, it hit me full force: the vampires recognized Derek as their prince and he was no pushover.

Words Ben spoke to me while we were still here at The Shade haunted me. Don’t be a fool, Sofia. We need to get out of here before he decides that he’s tired of you and kills us both.

My insecurities began to resurface. Who do I think I am?

The thought of Derek one day realizing that he didn’t need me gnawed at me even as I made my way to the Cells. The deal I struck with Derek weighed heavily on me.

I stepped into Ashley’s cell to find her sitting over the edge of her cot, looking absolutely distraught. She raised her eyes to me, probably expecting Paige, Rosa or one of the guards. Her face fell when she saw me.

“Oh. It’s you.”

My stomach turned. Since my arrival, the girls had been giving me a cold shoulder. Even Sam and Kyle were, at best, being polite to me. I couldn’t blame them really. We were friends and I left them at The Shade without even saying goodbye to them. To top that, I didn’t do a thing to help them out while I was outside The Shade. We’d planned an escape together so many times, with promises that once one of us actually got out, we would expose The Shade to the world in order to rescue the others. I didn’t do that. Even above all of that, upon my return, I walked in on Derek with a barely conscious Ashley on his bed and still, I managed to forgive him. That last part, I believe, was what they saw as the ultimate betrayal.

They definitely had good reason to hate me. That explained the heavy feeling I had upon approaching Ashley. The last time I visited her, she wasn’t very accommodating of me – especially when she found out that I was once again staying with Derek.

“How can you stand being around him?” she asked me.

I didn’t know how to answer. I couldn’t fully understand the hold Derek had on me myself, but it felt like a pathetic thing to say when I replied, “I see him differently, Ashley. There’s hope for him yet. I don’t want to give up on him.”

After that, Ashley asked me to leave.

Truth be told, I wasn’t happy about the setup of me still being seen around The Shade as Derek’s slave. I didn’t return to The Shade to become a slave, but Derek made it clear to me that it was the only way. After Derek went through painstaking lengths to keep my escape a secret from everyone other than a few select people, most of the vampires didn’t even know that I had been gone from The Shade.

“The only way I can protect you, Sofia, is to keep you under my wing. They won’t touch you if they know you’re mine. On your own, all you are is fresh bait,” he told me, and as much as I was protesting against it, I knew that in the culture of The Shade, the only way I could be safe was under his care.