Chapter 51: Tricky Training
The stolen hours stacked up like secret coins in a purse. Charlotte’s journal, hidden beneath a loose floorboard in her old maid’s quarters—the one place she was certain no one would look for a noble’s notes—filled with precise, minute notations.
Day 23: Held for 47 minutes. Headache: mild, behind the eyes. Fuel: two goblets.
Day 25: 59 minutes. No headache. Fatigue in limbs, like after a long run.
Day 28: First full hour. Felt… spacious. Like walking through an empty gallery.
The pocket watch became an extension of her hand. She learned its individual quirks, the soft grind of one particular gear, the way the silver warmed to her dhampir temperature almost instantly. She carried the bubble of stopped time with her, moving through the frozen palace like a ghost. She watched a scullery maid, perpetually caught in the act of dropping a porcelain cup, the shards and spilled tea suspended in a perfect, glittering arc above the flagstones. She saw Sebastian, paused mid-stride in a corridor, a scroll in his hand, his expression uncharacteristically thoughtful and tired. She saw Lucian in his study, a quill poised above parchment, his golden eyes distant, looking at nothing. King of a motionless kingdom.
It was during those stolen hours that she did her real work. She slipped into the restricted archives, the air thick with unmoving dust, and read treaties and bloodline records no junior diplomat or maid should ever see. She traced the systematic dismantling of House Corvin, not in the dramatic histories, but in the dry, bureaucratic footnotes: land redistributions, favorable trade contracts revoked, “accidental” deaths listed in neat, clerical script. The anger was cold, solid, a stone in her gut. It fueled her. An hour here, an hour there. The world ran on its 24-hour day. She was quietly living 25, then 26.
The strain was subtle. It wasn’t migraines anymore. It was a deeper, metabolic debt. Her body, existing outside of time, burned energy at a ferocious rate. She compensated with blood—goblets taken with meals, extra glasses slipped to her by a watchful Lucian. But the need for true sleep, the kind that reset the soul, became undeniable.
That’s how he found her.
Lucian entered the royal suite expecting to see her at the desk by the window, buried in one of the approved texts on telekinetic theory. The afternoon sun slanted through the crimson velvet, painting the Alaskan king bed in stripes of blood and gold. The room smelled of jasmine from the arranged flowers, of old books, and of them—the faint, dark spice of vampire, the cleaner scent of Charlotte’s soap.
She wasn’t at the desk.
She was on the bed, curled on her side atop the black silk duvet, still dressed in her training leathers. One hand was tucked under her cheek, the other lay open, palm up, on the mattress beside her. Deep, unmistakable sleep softened the usual sharp lines of her face. He stood there for a long moment, watching the slow, deep rhythm of her breath. Concern threaded through him. She’d been pushing hard, but she’d been eating, drinking. This was more than study fatigue.
He moved silently to the bedside, intending to simply drape a blanket over her. His gaze fell on the nightstand.
His pocket watch lay there, its silver casing catching the light. It was a habit now, he knew, for her to fiddle with it. A comfort object. He reached for it, thinking to move it to the desk so it wouldn’t be knocked off. His fingers closed around the cool metal.
And stopped.
He knew this watch. He had owned it for four centuries. He knew the exact, microscopic wear on the winder, the faint hairline scratch on the crystal from a long-ago duel. He knew, without looking, what time it should be.
This was wrong.
He turned it over. The hands read half-past three. He cast his awareness out, a subtle pulse through the palace’s ancient stone, feeling the position of the sun, the activities of the court winding toward late afternoon. It was just past two.
A discrepancy of an hour and a half.
Not a lot. Easily explained by a forgotten wind, a mechanical hiccup. But Lucian was not a man who believed in easy explanations. He thought of her deep, hungry sleep. The watch had been perfectly set the morning before; he had watched her do it, frowning in concentration. He opened the back casing, an old, delicate maneuver. The intricate gears were clean, gleaming. No malfunction.
He placed the watch back on the nightstand with a soft, definitive click. The sound didn’t rouse her. She slept on, utterly depleted.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the vast expanse of it swallowing the slight dip of his weight. He studied her. The shadows under her eyes, darker than they should be even for her. The slight, almost imperceptible leanness to her cheeks. She wasn’t just studying telekinesis. Telekinesis didn’t do this. Telekinesis, when overused, caused nosebleeds, static shocks, shattered vases.
This was a drain on the core. On time itself.
The realization settled over him, cold and clear. The missing hours. Not just today. He tracked back over the last week—her occasional moments of disorientation, of being slightly elsewhere in a conversation, the way she sometimes seemed to have read a book he was certain she hadn’t had time to touch. She wasn’t stealing moments. She was hoarding them.
A slow, incredulous respect unfurled beside the worry. She was doing it. She was mastering it. And she was hiding it, even from them, to keep the secret safe. The sheer, terrifying audacity of it left him breathless for a second.
He reached out and brushed a curl from her forehead. Her skin was warm. She stirred, a soft, drowsy sound escaping her lips. Her storm-gray eyes fluttered open, blurry with sleep, then sharpened into awareness. She saw him, saw his face, and then her gaze darted to the watch on the nightstand. He saw the calculation flash behind her eyes, the quick, panicked inventory.
“You’ve been burning time,” he said, his voice low. Not an accusation. A statement.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, sleep falling away, replaced by wariness. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The watch is ninety minutes ahead, Charlotte. It’s been perfectly set every day for a week. Until yesterday.” He tilted his head. “How many? Not just the ninety minutes. The total.”
She held his gaze, her jaw tight. The lie she was forming died on her tongue under the weight of his patient, knowing silence. She looked away, down at her hands. “Twenty-seven,” she whispered.
“Hours?”
“Yes.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “An entire day. You’ve lived an entire day that the world did not.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a murmur meant only for her. “What did it cost?”
She finally looked at him, her defenses crumbling. The fear, the exhaustion, the lonely weight of the secret showed plainly. “It’s not pain. Not anymore. It’s… emptiness. A hollow feeling. Like I’m running ahead of my own blood.”
“Because you are.” He took her hand, his fingers cool around hers. “You are splitting your existence. You can’t sustain that, my heart. Not yet.”
“I have to get stronger,” she said, the words fierce. “You saw those records. The purges weren’t a battle. They were a ledger. I need to understand the ledger. That takes time I don’t have.”
“You are taking it. I understand why.” He brought her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “But from now on, you do not do this alone. You will tell me. Or Sebastian. When you practice. We will be your anchors. We will make sure you come all the way back.”
The door to the suite burst open. Sebastian strode in, shedding his formal jacket, his hair mussed as if he’d been running his hands through it. “The Eastern emissary is a pompous windbag with the strategic sense of a drunk goose—oh.” He stopped, taking in the scene: Lucian on the bed holding Charlotte’s hand, the charged, intimate silence. His sharp eyes missed nothing—Charlotte’s rumpled, slept-in clothes, the deep exhaustion on her face, the watch on the table. “What’s happened?”
Lucian didn’t let go of Charlotte’s hand. “Our heir has been overdrawing her account.”
Sebastian’s face went from confused to comprehending in a heartbeat. A slow, proud, reckless grin spread across his features. “You did it, didn’t you? More than a few minutes.”
“An hour,” Charlotte admitted, a hint of defiance returning.
“An hour!” Sebastian crowed, crossing the room in three strides. He sat on her other side, crowding her with his vibrant energy. “That’s my girl. Sneaking through the day while it naps. Brilliant.” He flicked a glance at Lucian, reading the deeper concern. “But the King’s right. You can’t bank time and starve yourself. So, new rule. You practice, we supervise. I’ll even volunteer to be your test subject. Freeze me mid-sentence, see if you can make me look even more handsome.”
Charlotte let out a choked laugh, the tension breaking. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m practical,” Sebastian corrected, tapping the pocket watch. “This is your gauge. We’ll be your balance. No more secret hours. Every one you take, we know about it. Deal?”
She looked from Sebastian’s fierce, supportive grin to Lucian’s steady, golden gaze. The loneliness of the secret receded, replaced by the daunting, solid reality of their shared burden. They were in it. All of it.
“Deal,” she said, her voice firmer.
“Good,” Lucian said, rising. “Now, the first order of supervision is dinner. Actual dinner, not a glass of blood you choke down between chapters.” He extended a hand to her.
Sebastian was already off the bed, heading for the door. “I’ll tell the kitchens. Double portions. We’re feeding a time-witch now. It probably requires extra cake.”
As Charlotte took Lucian’s hand and stood, the world felt both more dangerous and infinitely more secure. Her secret was out, but it hadn’t been taken from her. It had been shared. The ledger of her revenge would now be written in triplicate.