Chapter 50: Practice Tactics
The crypts beneath the western wing weren’t really crypts. That was just what the court called them—a damp, echoing warren of stone arches and packed earth that hadn’t seen a funeral in three centuries. Now it just smelled of cold stone, old dust, and the faint, iron-rich scent of the water table.It was perfect.
Charlotte stood in a clear space between two mossy pillars, Lucian’s silver pocket watch cool and heavy in her palm. The click of its mechanism was the only sound, a tiny, frantic heartbeat against the immense silence.“Again,” she said to the empty air.
She closed her eyes, not needing to, but it helped. The world wasn’t something she saw, it was something she felt. The thick, syrupy flow of seconds, the pressure of minutes piling up ahead. She’d learned to find the seams in it, the fragile places where one moment was stitched to the next.She found one now.And pulled.
The silence became absolute.Not quiet.Absence.The distant drip of water frozen in mid-air. The dust motes hanging, glittering, in the sliver of light from a high grating. She opened her eyes.The world was a painting, a diorama of gray stone and stillness. Her own breath was shockingly loud.She looked at the watch in her hand.
The second hand was motionless, trapped against the mother-of-peal face.She counted in her head. One.Two.Three.At ten, she let go.The watch ticked. A single, deafening clack in the resumed quiet. The water drop fell with a plink.She’d held it for ten seconds.The same as the library.
Her heart hammered, a mix of exhilaration and frustration.A week of this. A week of stolen hours, of Lucian switching her cold books for a warm goblet of blood, of Sebastian physically hauling her from her notes to spar with him in the courtyard—“You think your enemies will let you meditate, Charlie? Move your feet!”—to remind her body it was more than a vessel for a frantic mind.It was working.The paralyzing noise was gone. But the control… the control was a slippery, demanding thing.
“You’re pushing too hard at the end.” Lucian’s voice, calm and soft, came from the archway.She hadn’t heard him approach. He probably hadn’t made a sound. He leaned against the stone, arms crossed, a shadow in fine black linen.“You clench.It’s not a muscle you flex. It’s a door you hold open.”
“It’s exhausting to hold open,” she grumbled, pacing.The gravel crunched under her boots.“That’s why you need fuel. Come up.Sebastian has… acquired a wild boar.He’s insisting on cooking it himself. It’s a spectacle you should witness, if only to stop him from burning the kitchens down.”
She followed him up the narrow, spiraling stairs, the watch a secret weight in her pocket. The transition from the deathly chill of the crypt to the warm, bustling lower corridors of the palace was always a shock.Life, smell, sound. Servants bowed as Lucian passed, their eyes careful, lingering on Charlotte just a beat too long. The former maid on the King’s arm.The mystery.The kitchen’s heat hit them like a wall.And the noise. Sebastian, sleeves rolled up, auburn hair tied back haphazardly, was in a furious debate with the head chef, a three-hundred-year-old vampire named Gerard who looked like he was contemplating staking himself.“—if you sear it too fast, the inside is raw! It’s not a steak, you philistine!”
“It tastes better with a little life in it!” Sebastian shot back, waving a bloody butcher’s knife for emphasis.“You are a duke! Act like it!”
“I’m acting like a man who’s hungry! Charlie!” He spotted her, his face lighting up with genuine, chaotic joy.“Tell him. A little pink is good.”
“I’m staying out of this,” she said, sliding onto a stool by a long prep table.Lucian took a seat beside her, watching the scene with detached amusement.
Sebastian pointed the knife at Gerard.“You are dismissed. I am commandeering this kitchen for the next… however long it takes.”
With a sound of profound suffering, Gerard threw up his hands and stalked out.Sebastian turned his victorious grin on them.“See? Authority.”
What followed was less cooking and more structured mayhem. Sebastian moved with a warrior’s efficiency, but none of a chef’s finesse.Pans clanged.Herbs were chopped with terrifying speed. He narrated everything, a running commentary of boasts and near-disasters. Lucian sipped a glass of deep red wine, a faint smile on his lips, his golden eyes tracking Sebastian’s movements with a fondness so deep it made Charlotte’s chest ache.It was so… normal.So absurdly human. The boar, when it was finally hefted onto a platter, was admittedly perfectly cooked—seared and juicy, smelling of rosemary and garlic. Sebastian presented it with a flourish, looking unbearably pleased with himself.
“A reminder,” he said, placing a hefty portion in front of Charlotte, “that some things need fire, and time, and a bit of bloody-minded persistence. Not just thought.”
She ate.The rich, gamey meat was delicious. The blood-wine Lucian pushed toward her warmed her from the inside out. For an hour, there was no Corvin legacy, no purges, no locket, no crushing responsibility. There was just this: the heat of the kitchen, the taste of food, the sound of Sebastian’s laughter, and the solid, silent presence of Lucian beside her.It was the reminder she didn’t know she needed. Not to breathe, but to live in the breaths.
Later, alone in the crypt as evening bled into true night, she tried again. This time, she didn’t think of it as grabbing time, or stopping it.She thought of it as the door Lucian had mentioned. She found the seam, and simply… propped it open.The silence settled.The watch stopped.
She didn’t count.She just existed inside the stillness. She walked over to the frozen drip of water, watching it hang like a crystal teardrop from the stone. She touched a hanging cobweb, its intricate threads rigid as wire.The world was hers, and only hers.A secret palace.
A strange peace bloomed in her chest.This wasn’t panic.This was power. Quiet, immense, and utterly controlled.
When she felt the first real tug of fatigue, a slight trembling in her legs, she thought of the kitchen.The fire.The persistence. She let the door swing shut.Sound rushed back.The plink of the falling water. The scuttle of some tiny creature in the dark.The steady, loud ticking of the watch.She looked down.
The second hand was spinning, whirling around the face in a frantic blur, catching up. It slowed, settled.She compared it to the mental clock in her head, the estimate of the silence.
It had been much longer than ten seconds.Her pulse jumped.She waited, watching the minute hand. It didn’t move. Then, with a soft, definitive click, it shifted forward one single notch.Ten minutes.
She had stopped the world for ten whole minutes, and the only proof was the quiet, satisfied ache in her muscles and the correct, unforgiving mechanics of a silver watch. No one had felt a thing.No vibrations, no strange energy spike.Just… stolen time.
A slow smile touched her lips.It was a small, monumental victory. Not a weapon yet, but a tool.A secret.She pocketed the watch, the metal warm from her grasp. As she climbed the stairs back toward the living world, toward the light and the warmth and her two vampires, the calm inside her wasn’t empty anymore.It was full.It was focused. It was waiting.