To Vanquish Darkness (Le Sombre #1)

Chapter 1

1

1836 MORDELLES, FRANCE

H is face haunted her. Branded into her childhood alongside lapping streams and plucked bluebells. Wild and ferocious. His lips smeared with her mother’s blood.

As Amalie peered around the stone turret, she dredged up that image from her nightmares to keep from being drawn out of the shadows into the evening twilight prematurely.

Her heart thumped like a war drum.

He is darkness. Evil. Deadly.

She repeated those truths in her mind like a prayer, and still, his beauty—she had no other word to describe it—tugged at her like a cord cinched to her middle. She’d known it would be this way. Not only because of the old myths, the stories of death and seduction, but because even as a terrified child she’d been stunned by him. As an adult, she’d felt that low ache in her gut the day she’d seen Theo Vallon striding down the rain-drenched cobblestones one year prior.

She’d been in the company of handsome men before. Kissed them even. But Theo was a work of art. Tall and powerfully built, his broad shoulders and tapered waist were noticeable even under an overcoat. On the night they’d crossed paths last year in Paris, his jet-black hair had been slicked with rain, but now under the starlight, it was soft and tousled. Amalie wanted to stretch her arm out and thread her fingers through it.

This was why her uncle never let them out after dark, was it not? Amalie clenched her jaw. Her aunt and uncle scoffed at the ancient fables of gods, curses, and creatures of the dark, yet they wouldn’t allow the girls out past sunset. Wouldn’t give permission for her and Bethany to go beyond the bridge or up the stairs to the abbey.

“Le Sombre reigns in the darkness,” Uncle Oren would mutter with a sad shrug of his shoulders, and how could she argue? The world was split into light and shadow. Consciousness and sleep. Pleasure and pain. They were either swayed by Solène or Le Sombre, and there was no middle ground.

You could not serve two masters.

Theo Vallon was proof of that.

Amalie’s hands trembled, and she adjusted her grip on the wooden stake. Where was Marcel? She’d been standing here long enough to grow roots, and they didn’t know how long this opportunity would last. She listened for his call so intently, she could almost convince herself his voice was floating through the trees.

It wasn’t. Not yet. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that Theo’s glamour wasn’t able to affect her from this distance.

This was dangerous. She’d known it would be. Uncle Oren wasn’t wrong for instituting his rules, and she was partly grateful. After her mother’s death, Oren had kept her and Bethany safe. He’d provided for them both to adulthood. Four years longer than he was required to in her case.

At twenty-two, Amalie should’ve been married with at least one babe on her hip. But men didn’t jump at the chance to marry a woman with slow blood. And she hadn’t been able to keep his rules anyway. Seeing Theo Vallon’s face in the torchlight had pushed her down a path she couldn’t turn away from.

Yes, Oren was right that the world was torn, but that didn’t mean humans had to drop their heads and suffer. It didn’t mean they had to live in terror or watch their loved ones be hunted night after night.

Her uncle and the people of France had resigned themselves to their fate, and Amalie refused to join them. So there she was. Standing in the courtyard after sunset. Sweating through her shirt. Waiting for?—

The hoot of an owl echoed against the stone, and Amalie tensed. Finally. Marcel. It was time.

Amalie wiped her clammy palm on her slacks, then re-gripped the long, sharpened spike of ash wood before creeping along the wall into the courtyard. She clung to the shadows, cursing their poor luck. All week there had been clouds before midnight, but now the moon hung like a silver dollar above the trees, bathing the courtyard in mellow light.

Don’t turn around , she silently pleaded as she flattened her bare feet one after the other over the chilled cobblestones. Was she stupid for insisting she wield the spike? Marcel and Olivie had trained far longer than she had, and both of them had vanquished before, but the idea of setting the flare or blowing the whistles made her nauseous.

Amalie wanted to feel the weapon punch through Theo’s flesh. Wanted to see his black blood pour from his chest and stain the worn stone beneath him. She wanted to know without a shadow of a doubt that he was dead and that she’d vanquished him with her own hands.

Just as he had murdered her mother.

This was justice.

Amalie pulled a fabric shade free from her hood, lowering it over her eyes as a white-hot flash burst from the trees. The air crackled, and Theo jumped back with predatory grace, dropping into a crouch and throwing his hands over his sensitive eyes. The shrill squeal of the whistles came next, but they barely penetrated her ear coverings.

Now. This was her chance. She walked faster, and when she reached the corner of the wall, she broke into a sprint toward Theo, who still hunched next to the fountain. His muscles pulled tight, cording his neck and forearms.

He had twice her body mass. At least twice her strength. But she had the element of surprise. She had a spike made of ash wood.

Amalie’s heart threatened to burst from her chest as she gasped for breath and closed the distance between them. The rough stone tore at the pads of her feet as blood rushed in her ears.

Theo’s ears pricked. His head began to swivel. But Amalie was already leaping, raising both hands high into the inky night sky.

As Theo Vallon shuddered and forced himself up from the ground against the barrage of his senses, Amalie streaked from the darkness and plunged the spike through the fine cloth of his shirt into his flesh. The stake slipped between his ribs and buried itself where she’d intended.

Directly into his heart.