Heiress of Lies by Cege Smith

and the taste of his blood when they finally finished with him was so sweet, that Connor could not stop his mouth from watering even though his mind rebelled against it.
         Connor was able to pick up a few more impressions. The thoughts of the dark mind had turned to Angeline and the possibility of capturing her for himself. For even though it was the Master’s game that set this madman on Angeline’s trail, he hoped that he would have a chance to play his own game with the princess. And that was when the vampire’s name swept across the tall grass between them and hit Connor with full force.
         Searon.
         For the first time in a long time, Connor felt fear rising up through his core. Searon had been the Master’s favored son, at least until a particularly gruesome encounter with a traveling merchant train that had braved the wildness of the lawless side of the Solera Valley in search of a profit.
         Connor had been summoned to the coven’s council to witness Searon’s sentencing. He hadn’t wanted to, but Monroe had insisted on it. He knew that his reclusiveness vexed his sire and had even caused some bad feelings between Monroe and the Master. The request had been so simple it hadn’t even been worth getting into a fight with Monroe. And as much as he detested what Monroe had done to him, cursing him to live as a murderer for eternity, he had grown somewhat fond of the man over the years. He suffered Monroe’s rants in silence, and tried to accommodate the small favors, just enough to curry sustained goodwill between them so that Monroe left him in peace.
         Connor had been against the very back wall of the circular chamber when Searon had been brought before the Master in chains. While everyone else pushed forward to get a better look at the wayward son, Connor had leaned back against the wall and yawned. The extra four inches he had on most of the men meant that he could see just enough of what was happening in the center of the chamber. High up the wall in each of the four corners hung huge oval mirrors wrapped in ornate gold cases. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house, and it was a guarantee that you wouldn’t miss even one excruciating detail of the action.
         The Master looked downright shaken. Connor knew that the Master had doted on Searon and looked the other way over his transgressions for years. But the truce with the Robarts required that the vampires stay hidden, and given the Master’s carefully laid plans, what Searon had done had put all of that in jeopardy for the last time.
         Connor saw that of the two, Searon looked far less concerned than his father. The man was still very young for a pureblood, only slightly older than Connor, but he had all the brash and swagger of one much more immature. Being a pureblood made Searon rare amongst the ranks of the vampires gathered in the hall. The legends said that before Alair Robart had made it his personal vendetta to exterminate their entire race, one in every two vampires in the Master’s coven was a pureblood. Of course, that had also been a time when there were multiple covens scattered across all of Altera. Now turned vampires like Connor outnumbered the purebloods fifty to one. And Searon was the only pureblood son of the Master and the only link left to the Master’s deceased wife, who had died giving birth to Searon. Searon had lived a pampered life.
         Searon had knelt down before his father and knuckled his hand to his forehead. Connor felt the gesture dripped with condescension.
         “Father, you have summoned me. And now I have come. How can I serve?” Searon’s tone carried no worry.
         “Searon, my son. My heir. You have caused great difficulty for the coven. You must answer for your crimes,” the Master said.
         “My crime was only in a zest for living the true vampire way, Father. I think it is time that we throw off the shackles of this so-called truce