Vampires Realm Prophecy 01 - Child of Light

sighing in satisfaction. She could hear all his vertebrae cracking back into place. He really was an idiot. She glared at him, trying to show him how angry she was with him but failing dismally when he raised his brows and dusted the white plaster off his jacket. It was impossible to be angry with him when she just wanted to hold him again and breathe a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been killed.
    He looked past her and she glanced at the dead werewolf.
    “You did better than last time.”
    She smiled at the note of admiration in his voice.
    A train squealed to a halt on the other platform. She listened to the sound of his boots on the hard floor and turned to follow him. Walking away from the platform, she realised that she had done better than last time. She had more control now.
    He held the door of the train open for her so she could board and she smiled into his eyes as she stepped towards him.
    She took one last look at the station as the doors closed and then turned her back on it.
    The train began to move.
    In just over an hour they would leave Prague behind for the second time.
    She would see it again.
    When everything was said and done, she’d come back and free her family of Arkalus’ reign.

Chapter 25
    Prophecy leaned back into the couch seat, listening to the steady clackety-clack of the train. They were thirty minutes outside Prague, the moon was still high in the heavens and they had a compartment all to themselves. Her eyes slid across to Valentine where he was sitting opposite her. She wondered what he was thinking as he stared pensively out of the window. He’d been quiet since their arrival at Prague station. The playful banter and light atmosphere they had enjoyed since running into each other again was gone. She wished with all her heart that it would come back. She liked being on easy terms with him. It made her feel as though some of their barriers were beginning to fall away and he was starting to let her in a little.
    When his gaze left the outside world, she looked away and stared at the patch of worn leather covered couch beside his thigh.
    “It is almost a day’s travel to St. Petersburg. We will need to change train several times, some of which may be during daylight hours.” His tone was emotionless, matter of fact.
    She could feel his eyes boring into her. The feeling of him watching her made her want to look at him. She wanted to stare straight back at him, deep into his eyes, and search them for the reason he was suddenly so withdrawn.
    “I’ll be fine,” she said and moved her gaze to rest on his knees, before dropping it to his boots.
    They were scuffed now, no longer pristine and shining at her. The fight with the werewolf in Prague and the vampires in Venice had taken their toll on them. She smiled to herself. It struck her as a physical representation of what was happening to him on the inside. His mask of duty and loyalty to his family were melting away. Gone were his uniform and his allegiance to Aurorea. They had been replaced by clothes more common looking and an alliance with her. She supposed they had both changed. Her eyes had been opened and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shut them again. They had been opened to the world and opened to the man sitting opposite her. She no longer saw the other bloodlines as below her notice. They were all the same at heart. They were nothing more than vampires, nothing more than men and women. The only thing that differed between them was their ancestry.
    And that meant nothing to her now.
    Valentine was an Aurorea, but he was a vampire first, a man. His feelings had been shaped by years of duty to his bloodline and listening to their teachings about the other bloodlines, but all of that was falling away now, leaving the individual he had always been rather than the child of Aurorea they’d taught him to be. She was the same. Everything they had poisoned her mind with was being forgotten or proven irrelevant. Valentine wasn’t her enemy. Her enemy was her own family. Her enemies were those that were against her, those that were attempting to kill her and stop her from fulfilling her destiny.
    She started when the door to the compartment burst open and several people fell into it. She scowled at the two men and the woman as they stared at her and Valentine. They burst out laughing and grabbed hold of each other to stop themselves from falling over while the train rounded a bend. She cocked her head to one side,