Read The Key (Sanguinem Emere) for Free Online

decide on a new home once they have scanned every inch of the kitchen to ensure optimum cooking efficiency. Sitting around the counter in the middle of the kitchen, around a bouquet of red roses in another pretty, crystal vase, idly picking at a bunch of grapes, is Cecily and, to my inordinate surprise and near to hyper-ventilating distress, Delilah.
    The words “what are you doing here,” near rise to my lips, but I swallow them in the radiance of Cecily’s smile upon my arrival to the kitchen and Delilah’s mischievous little grin. Whatever the situation, she’s always one for the disarming glance.
    “You seem surprised, Ducky,” She trills and I feel annoyance at her I-have-a-secret-isn’t-this-fun tone for the first time since the two of us met years ago.
    “Well, yes,” I try to come across as nonchalant and bored, but all I can manage is mild accusation, and with an angry flush, I hear the force behind my own words, “One does tend to feel that way upon finding one’s best friend and one’s sister in the house of a notorious playboy that-”
    “That one has just had carnal relations with?” Delilah finishes slyly.
    Cecily’s expression freezes upon her perfect smile, as though trying desperately behind those eyes (and failing) to think of some sort of diffusion to the tension she has finally cottoned-on to.
    “Yes, D. That. I do recall you practically pushing me on to him. Everything but begging me to fuck him. Even though you would appear – from where I am currently positioned – to be doing exactly the same thing. You and Cecily.” The words come out of my mouth in a vicious drawl. But the look of Cecily’s perfectly happy façade crumbling like a tragedy mask makes the shame bubble acidic in my chest as bile rises in me again, but I swallow it down.
    A small frown puckers between Delilah’s plucked, prissy eyebrows, “I couldn’t tell you, Sweetheart. He told me not to,” She closes her eyes and breathes out as she speaks, dispelling negativity, or revelling in awe, “We are to be, at all times, sophisticated and discreet within and away from Dimitri’s presence, unless he instructs us to do otherwise.”
    Her eyes snap open as she looks at me and, for the first time since I have known her, I can see a hint of jealousy in the set of her jaw, “But I suppose now that you are here, there is nothing for it. He approached me almost a year ago and invited me to live here with him as his sometime consort, but mostly as his social liaison. Of course I was instructed to be quiet about our arrangement and only to accompany him to specific events and functions where I may be noticed on his arm. About three months after my injection into his home, Cecily was introduced for much the same reason.”
    A sweet, pink rose rises to my sister’s pale cheeks as she avoids my eyes.
    I stare her down, my mind tumbling over moments, discussions, attempting to find some link to Dimitri. Why did I never read about this? Him and Delilah? Get word of this? Were they that good at keeping it under wraps? Too high-brow for my publications.
    Shame punches me in the stomach.
    “So let me just try and get my head around this,” I begin, the accusation still colouring my voice, “You have been sleeping with him this entire time, as has Cecily. But you couldn’t tell me because he gave you some sort of cultist mantra to live by. And so you convinced me that he was attracted to me and wanted me and that it would be good for me, after Bram, to allow myself to be taken in by the charms of a man that keeps a harem of women, one of whom is my best friend and the other is my sister?”
    The sturdy set to Delilah’s face softens somewhat as she holds out a hand to me and I take it in my own without thinking. Years of routine have led me to be incapable of displaying appropriate anger etiquette where she is concerned. “I felt the same way when I came here at first. But he has this way of making you feel safe.”
    “Safe