Beyond the Night by Thea Devine

They had parked it where it was barely noticeable and had uncoupled the horse, but Senna was unsure where they’d put it.
    She concentrated all her powers on transporting out of there.
    She heard a flipping sound, as if the thought had transfigured her body into action, and suddenly she was flying out and over the streets of London.

S enna’s stomach felt as if it had grown even more since this morning. She felt queasy. She lay in Mirya’s bed, exhausted and drained, as Mirya made her own meal and heated some water for tea and stared at her.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe child needs food.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI know.” Another maddeningly cryptic answer. “So you will begin to nourish the child in that way.”
    â€œThe blood is not enough?”
    â€œNo. You need to nourish the child,” Mirya said adamantly. She spooned some of the rice and beans she’d prepared into a dish. “Eat.”
    There was no use arguing with Mirya. The food tasted like dust.
    â€œWhy are you insisting I eat today?”
    â€œYou are growing. The child needs nourishment.”
    Mirya set out her own plate and began to eat. “You were fortunate today. Another day, there would be no mercy for an intruder.”
    No denying that. They could have turned her away, even after her fall. But now she knew how easy it would be for Charles to carry out his plans.
    The possibilities were worse than she could have imagined: a Queen immured in a castle several hours of travel beyond London surely was a target, and not only to a tyrannical, self-appointed vampiric overlord.
    Senna didn’t know quite what she could do about any of it at this moment. Lady Augustine might be in London, or at Windsor. Senna wondered if Mirya knew.
    â€œWhere is Lady Augustine?” she asked suddenly, after pushing down the last spoonful of the rice and beans.
    â€œNot here. Not anywhere.”
    â€œShe’s at the town house,” Senna guessed. “In the coffin room.”
    â€œShe exists. That’s all you need to know.”
    â€œThey’re all there, aren’t they? Dominick, the bitch, Charles.”
    â€œThat may be,” Mirya said carefully. “You cannot go. Not now.”
    â€œWhat can I do?”
    â€œWait.”
    Senna hated that answer.

    Another bowl of blood was at her elbow in the morning.
    Senna drank. Did it matter where her nourishment came from? Nothing mattered but circumventing Charles’s plans. And that she and the child survived.
    Dominick figured nowhere in that equation. She felt such a distance between them. Everything that had gone before seemed as evanescent as dust. The pain, the pleasure, the love-lust, the reality of the child.
    She didn’t need Dominick. Was she really all that helpless in the face of Charles’s scheming? They’d been sired under the same circumstances, nearly at the same time. Could she not somehow outwit him?
    â€œNo, you can’t,” Mirya said, as if she’d read Senna’s mind. Mirya sat down at the table. “He is craftier and more devious; he has no conscience. You do not want to go point to point with him.”
    â€œI have to do something,” Senna murmured, looking into the bowl as if it were a crystal ball.
    â€œWhat much can you do, carrying a child?”
    â€œThen who? They are making an army of undead under the Keepers of the Night.”
    â€œDominick will,” Mirya said confidently, getting up to set the teakettle on.
    Senna iced up. “Dominick hasn’t.”
    â€œPerhaps, as yet, Dominick can’t.”
    â€œWhat do you know?”
    Mirya shrugged. “I know you can return to the town house this morning.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œCharles is hunting for you. Dominick is . . .”
    â€œIs?” Senna said, her tone skirting the edge of endurance.
    â€œTrailing him,” Mirya said reluctantly, taking two teacups from the