ride home.
When I got to the estate, my heart fell when I saw no sign of Katherine. I was about to double back to the stable to brush Mezzanotte when I heard angry voices emanating from the open windows of the kitchen of the main house.
“No son of mine will ever disobey me! You need to go back and take your place in the world.”
It was Father’s voice, tinged with the heavy Italian accent that became apparent only when he was extremely upset.
“My place is here. The army is not for me.
What is so wrong about following my own mind?”
another voice yelled, confident, proud, and angry all at once.
Damon.
My heart quickened as I stepped into the kitchen and saw my brother. Damon was my closest friend, the person I looked up to most in the world—even more than Father, though I’d never admitted it out loud. I hadn’t seen him since last year, when he joined General Groom’s army.
He looked taller, his hair somehow seemed darker, and the skin on his neck was sundarkened and freckled.
I threw my arms around him, thankful I had arrived home when I did. He and Father had never gotten along, and their fights occasionally escalated to blows.
“Brother!” He slapped my back as he pulled out of the embrace.
“We’re not finished, Damon,” my father warned as he retreated to his study.
Damon turned to me. “I see Father’s the same as always.”
“He’s not so bad.” I always felt awkward speaking badly of Father, even as I chafed against my forced engagement to Rosalyn. “Did you just get back?” I asked, changing the subject. Damon smiled. There were slight lines around his eyes that no one would notice unless they knew him well.
“An hour ago. I couldn’t miss my younger brother’s engagement announcement, could I?” he asked, a slight hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Father told me all about it. Seems that he’s depending on you to carry on the Salvatore name.
And just think, by the time of the Founders Ball, you’ll be a husband!”
I stiffened. I’d forgotten about the ball. It was the event of the year, and Father, Sheriff Forbes, and Mayor Lockwood had been planning it for months. Partly a war benefit, partly an opportunity for the town to enjoy the last gasp of summer, and mostly a chance for the town leaders to pat themselves on the backs, the Founders Ball had always been one of my favorite Mystic Falls traditions. Now I dreaded it.
Damon must have sensed my discomfort, because he started digging through his canvas rucksack. It was filthy and had what looked like a bloodstain on the corner. Finally, he pulled out a large, misshapen leather ball, much larger and more oblong than a baseball. “Want to play?” he asked, palming the ball from hand to hand.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A football. Me and the boys play when we’ve got time away from the field. It’ll be good for you.
Get some color in your cheeks. We don’t want you getting soft,” he said, imitating my father’s voice so perfectly that I had to laugh.
Damon walked out the door, and I followed, shrugging off my linen jacket. Suddenly the sunshine felt warmer, the grass felt softer, everything felt better than it had just minutes before.
“Catch!” Damon yelled, finding me off guard. I lifted up my arms and caught the ball against my chest.
“Can I play?” a female voice asked, breaking the moment.
Katherine. She was wearing a simple, lilac summer shift dress, and her hair was pulled into a bun at the base of her neck. I noticed that her dark eyes perfectly complemented the brilliant blue cameo necklace that rested in the hollow of her throat. I imagined lacing my fingers through her delicate hands, then kissing her white neck.
I forced myself to tear my gaze away from her.
“Katherine, this is my brother, Damon. Damon, this is Katherine Pierce. She is staying with us,” I said stiffly, glancing back and forth between them to gauge Damon’s reaction. Katherine’s eyes danced, as if she found my formality incredibly amusing. So did Damon’s.
“Damon, I can tell you’re just as sweet as your brother,” she said in an exaggerated Southern accent. Even though it was a phrase any of the girls in the county would use when talking to a man, it sounded vaguely mocking coming from her lips.
“We’ll see about that.” Damon smiled. “So, brother, shall we let Katherine play?”
“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly hesitant. “What are the rules?”
“Who needs rules?” Katherine asked, flashing a grin that revealed her perfectly straight, white teeth.
I turned the ball in my hand. “My brother plays rough,” I warned.
“Somehow I think I play rougher.” In one swoop, Katherine grabbed the ball from my grasp. As they had been the previous day, her hands were cold, like ice, despite the heat of the afternoon. Her touch sent a jolt of energy through my body and up to my brain. “Loser has to groom my horses!” she called as the wind whipped her hair behind her.
Damon watched her run, then arched an eyebrow toward me. “That is a girl who wants to be chased.” With that, Damon dug his heels into the earth and ran, his powerful body hurtling down the hill toward the pond.
After a second, I ran, too. I felt the wind whip around my ears. “I’ll get you!” I yelled. It was a phrase I’d have yelled when I was eight and playing games with the girls my age, but I felt that the stakes of this game were higher than anything I’d ever played in my life.
The next morning, I awoke to breathless news from Rosalyn’s servants that her prized dog, Penny, had been attacked. Mrs. Cartwright summoned me to her daughter’s chambers, saying nothing had stopped Rosalyn from crying. I tried to comfort her, but her wracking sobs never abated.
The whole time, Mrs. Cartwright kept giving me disapproving glances, as if I should be doing a better job calming Rosalyn.
“You have me,” I’d said at one point, if only to appease her. At that, Rosalyn had flung her arms around me, crying so hard into my shoulder that her tears left a wet mark on my waistcoat. I tried to be sympathetic, but I felt a stab of annoyance at the way she was carrying on. After all, I’d never carried on like that when my mother had died.
Father hadn’t let me.
You have to be strong, a fighter, he’d said at the funeral. And so I was. I didn’t cry when, just a week after Mother’s death, our nanny, Cordelia, began absentmindedly humming the French lullaby Mother had always sung. Not when Father took down the portrait of Mother that had hung in the front room. Not even when Artemis, Mother’s favorite horse, had to be put down.
“Did you see the dog?” Damon asked, as we walked into town together that night to get a drink at the tavern. Now that the dinner where I was to publicly propose to Rosalyn was just days away, we were heading out for a whiskey to celebrate my impending nuptials. At least, that’s what Damon called it, elongating his accent to a flat Charlestonian drawl and wiggling his eyebrows as he said it. I tried to smile as if I thought it was a great joke, but if I began talking, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold back my dismay about marrying Rosalyn. And there wasn’t anything wrong with her.
It was just … it was just that she wasn’t Katherine.
I turned my thoughts back to Penny. “Yes. Its throat had a gash in it, but whatever the animal was didn’t go for her innards. Strange, right?” I said as I rushed to keep up with him. The army had made him stronger and faster. “It’s a strange time, brother,” Damon said. “Maybe it’s the Yankees,” he teased with a smirk.
As we walked down the cobblestone streets, I noticed signs affixed to most doorways: A reward of one hundred dollars was being offered to anyone who found the wild animal responsible for the attacks. I stared at the sign. Maybe I could find it, then take the money and buy a train ticket to Boston, or New York, or some city where no one could find me and no one had ever heard of Rosalyn Cartwright. I smiled to myself; that would be something Damon might actually do—he never worried about consequences or other people’s feelings. I was about to point out the sign and ask what he’d do with one hundred dollars when I saw someone frantically waving at us in front of the apothecary.
“Are those the Salvatore brothers?” a voice called from up the street. I squinted across the twilight and saw
