A Shade of Vampire 79 A Game of Death - Bella Forrest Page 0,3

here in snake form when she came across a phillim fox. They struggled and wound up killing each other?!” Esme snapped, getting up and brushing the dirt off her dress. “Pardon me, but I don’t believe any of this crap!”

Tristan moved to her side, trying to calm her down. “Esme, please. Breathe.”

“Screw breathing! Screw all of this!” she shouted. “Someone killed Nethissis!”

Kalon and Valaine were both speechless, watching her as she paced around the scene, taking deep breaths and clenching her fists. Sofia helped Amal up, but the Faulty’s legs were still weak from the shock, so she leaned into my wife for a bit of support.

“This is odd, to say the least,” I said, looking at Corbin.

Petra was stunned, but Zoltan was downright annoyed. “It’s happened before,” he said.

“Not with Nethissis it hasn’t!” Esme replied, pointing an angry finger at him. “She wouldn’t have gone down like this. No!”

Part of me wished this had all been an unfortunate accident. It would’ve been easier to move past it. But I knew Esme was right. This wasn’t like Nethissis, to get herself into a tangle with a creature like this. She was extremely dangerous in her copperhead form, and she could’ve easily shifted back if she’d sensed a threat from the phillim fox. Her venom alone would’ve been enough to paralyze it, at least.

This was disturbingly foul, and it warranted a serious investigation.

One of our own had been killed, and the circumstances were beyond suspicious. Once again, I found myself wondering—was this where we drew the line? It had to be. Nethissis was dead, and no matter what the Aeternae believed had happened to her, none of us would rest until her killer was brought to justice.

I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with such a terrible situation, but fate clearly had other plans.

Esme

It took me a while to truly wrap my head around what had happened.

I might not have been close to Nethissis, but her loss caused me so much grief. We protected one another in this crew, and when a team member perished, I couldn’t help but feel partially responsible. Maybe I could’ve done more to make sure she came back to us alive… but what could I have done?

In the end, the cruel reality stared us right in the face.

We’d lost Nethissis, and we had to find out what had really happened. Despite Corbin and even Valaine’s knowledge about the phillim foxes on palace grounds, I still found it hard to believe that Nethissis would’ve gotten herself killed like that.

I’d seen her in snake form before. She was fierce and deadly. I doubted a fox, even a venomous, alien one, could take her down. The dead fox didn’t do anything to soothe me, either. In fact, it reeked of staging—as in, a staged crime scene, with the creature left there to basically provide us with what the culprits must’ve thought was a reasonable explanation. Only, they didn’t know Nethissis as well as us. Otherwise, they would’ve gone about things differently.

The more I thought about all this, the angrier I got.

Telling Lumi had not been an easy feat. Derek had been the one to do it on our comms channel, and I could still hear her crying, her pain surging through me like a forest blaze, burning and destroying everything in its path. I’d listened to her being given the official explanation while watching Amal oversee the process of removing Nethissis’s body from the garden.

She’d had Nethissis and the phillim fox taken to one of the study rooms so she could perform a proper, in-depth analysis. None of the Aeternae had protested, but it had been obvious that they weren’t comfortable with it.

Derek and Sofia had spent the better part of the hour after the discovery talking to the golden guards, kindly assisted by Corbin himself. Kalon checked every single speck of dirt around the flower bush, while Valaine called for all the gardeners to be rounded up later for interviews.

My heart ached, but I had to admit, the Aeternae weren’t giving me much reason to doubt them. Well, at least not all of them. There had to be at least one among their ranks who bore responsibility for this heinous crime, and I’d just made it my mission to find out who it was.

Petra and Zoltan kept a certain distance from the scene, occasionally exchanging glances and short words. They watched me while I spoke to Lumi.

“I don’t believe a fox would’ve killed Nethissis,” the swamp witch finally