"You came all the way here after the meeting? Must be important," Vazer said with a soft smile on his face, his vibrant red eyes gleaming beneath the warm light as he picked up a bottle from the bar of his study along with two glasses.
Aira stood beside Cain just before Cain gently pulled his arm away from her grasp and asked her to leave.
Vazer said nothing as he placed the two glass cups on the polished table, making it clear that he had not made any space for Aira’s presence in the conversation.
Moreover Aira herself lowered her gaze to the ground, not daring to look at Vazer whose sole focus was on opening the bottle of red wine in his hand.
Aira bowed her head before heading to the door, quietly closing it behind her even as Cain and Vazer spoke at the same time.
"I’ll be careful with her if I were you..." Vazer said as Cain leaned back into the chair, his brows furrowed in pain.
"Tell me that’s actually wine and not a concoction made partly with blood," aware that Vazer as a vampire could not taste anything that was not coated with blood. The last thing he needed was to drink one of their well-curated wines.
"Am I not a friend? Would I dare to feed you poison?" Vazer responded with a low chuckle in his tone as he spoke, clearly finding Cain’s worries to be something laughable.
Popping the wine bottle open, he went ahead and poured each of them a glass.
"It’s obvious that I’m sacrificing my palate for your benefit," he continued, setting the bottle down as he picked up his cup and fixed his eyes on Cain.
Allowing his dark hair to slightly fall across his face, having grown longer since they last met, which had been quite a while ago.
"How is your sister?" Cain asked, regretting it the moment the words were out of his mouth. It soon became clear that it was the last thing Vazer wanted to talk about.
"Is that really what you came all the way here to talk about? Here I thought we could plan some daylight murder," Vazer responded even as Cain slowly nodded his head, allowing Vazer to go ahead and change the topic.
"The next person we have to kill is a werewolf," he said, making it clear what his stance was. Mooza would not have it any other way if the scales were to remain balanced.
"Then another vampire. It has to be the one most loyal to Eldric," he continued with a thoroughly blank expression on his face.
"It’s the only way..."
"Lord Javi is bound to attack with Eldric. I think they’ll set their sights on me," Cain spoke, downing his entire glass in one go right before he reached forward to pour himself another.
Grabbing the bottle without holding back. The pain was incessant, right in the pit of his chest as his head thundered like there was a perpetual earthquake crumbling through his brain.
Aira was a form of relief but he wanted nothing more than to attack Eldric and kill him. Something he would have done if not that it would erase his chances of finding a cure completely.
Eldric could be bullied and blackmailed to stand in line once there were no other options but Lady June was someone he would instantly kill on sight before his brain could process anything else.
It did not help that Violet was with her. Who knew what Lady June was doing to her, his gaze growing distant as he stared into midair until Vazer called out to him, drawing his attention back.
"Violet, if what Uva said is correct then the possibility remains that Lady June made her sign a contract."
"She can’t tell you about it and she can’t leave unless it would kill her," but Cain was already shaking his head in anger.
"Possibility!" he spat out. Logically sometimes he understood it while at other times he could still recall the words that had poured out of her mouth the last time she had spoken to him.
"I do not love you! I just wanted somewhere safe..." the memory was enough for Cain to grit his teeth in anger as he downed the wine in his cup again in one go before pouring himself another.
Vazer did not stop him. He simply watched as Cain poured himself another glass of wine, leaning back into the couch he sat on, his head resting against it, his eyes almost fixed on the ceiling.
"We’ll attack Harriet first then Magnus. I’ll say we attack them both if I didn’t think it would give Javi and the other vampires something to exploit," Cain said after taking a moment of silence to sip from his wine glass.
Fixing his gaze on Vazer whom he had come to trust. At first he had simply been a partner in crime but after all they had been through he could not help but realize that he trusted Vazer.
Something that worried him, aware that if Vazer betrayed him and decided that power was more important to him, eliminating the werewolves and ruling as king over all the districts they had amassed from the humans, then he would not know what to do.
Violet’s betrayal still stung hard enough for him to still want to rip her into shreds on sight and at the same time fall on his knees before her, begging her to take him back.
He could not help but slowly drain the wine from his cup, hoping it would bring some form of relief but not surprised when it did not.
"Your wine distillation process needs some help," Cain pointed out even as Vazer slightly shook his head, ignoring the comment completely since anyone else, vampire or werewolf, would already be drunk.
Cain’s metabolism was simply different.
"I propose we start immediately then, before the next meeting. In three days?" he said, thinking about it and not seeing a reason to hesitate.
"If you can you should also speak to Violet. Find an opportunity to talk. It might put your heart at ease," Vazer said with a sigh as he watched Cain pour himself another glass in a way that nearly emptied the bottle.
It was clear that Cain was not doing well. Even without the pain, the mental stress he was under was obvious and the last thing Vazer needed was for it to affect him when they fought together.
Aware that if Cain indeed went mad then it would mess with all their plans and might even get him killed.
’I have no love life of my own yet it’s clear that I need to help him with his own,’ a frown settling on his face as he decided to take it as the distraction he needed from the fact that his sister was gravely ill and there was nothing he could do to fix it.