by Elle Cross
In the back of her head, she knew that he was feeding from her and knew that there was a danger to that for some reason, but she was too wrapped up in euphoria to remember what those reasons were. She was enraptured by the sight of him, powerless to fight him off, not that she wanted to.
A slow flame gathered in her belly and licked outward, devouring her from the inside out. Her muscles knotted and clenched as her body came alive. A moan escaped her lips.
Death’s black eyes fluttered open and met hers. Red seeped into the sclera, swirling in the iris. Death drew his fangs from her, and slowly, deliberately, lapped his tongue over the puncture wounds once, twice, before sealing them with a kiss.
That press of lips against her sensitized skin was her undoing. Pleasure rippled in cascading waves down her spine as the fire in her belly roared to life, consuming her reason. She trembled as her overwrought nerves sought release.
The arm around her tightened. The hand at her knee traveled up her leg, scorching over her already ignited flesh. She parted her legs ever so slightly in invitation.
A low growl sizzled through the air.
Don’t.
Whether the word was spoken, or she had imagined it, the result was the same. The hand stilled mid-thigh.
A scream of frustration rang out in her mind, though only a tiny whimper escaped her lips.
“She is willing,” the man who held her said.
“She is beyond reason,” Death countered.
Ice surged through her veins now, as if Death had pushed it into her veins like an antidote to the fevered lust that had taken her. Immortelle bit her lip, teetering between relief and disappointment. She focused on her breath to clear that fog of lust from her mind even more.
Inhale. Exhale.
Her head lolled again so she could regard who held her. The man wore a black on black suit. More tattoos curled up along his neck. She didn’t see much of his face from this position, but if she could, she would bet that he curled his lip up in a smile.
Fear.
When had he join their group? And how had he gotten to them?
Immortelle felt his chest expand as he inhaled. He sighed as if he smelled something good and wanted to savor it. As if he would hold whatever it was inside of him. The rumbling laugh in his chest was as oddly soothing as it was annoying. “So many emotions. Delicious. A man could get used to this feast.” The drool practically dripped off his words.
“Don’t.” This time, she was sure she heard it. That one word rippled through the air, vibrated through her skin as Death spoke it.
There weren’t many people who would have spoken back to Death, especially since Death didn’t invite further conversation. His words usually ended them.
But it seemed that Fear wasn’t like most people. “Don’t what?” His words were garbled in a throat that worked to remain in human form.
“Get used to it.” The words so quietly spoken held the potential of a coming apocalypse. Tension crackled between Death and Fear, as taut as a bowstring pulled back and ready to be released.
Immortelle could have said something. Should have said something. But words evaporated in the crush of wills that battered against her. The firestorm that swirled inside of Fear. The chilling frost that drifted from Death.
It was the thought of having to choose and navigate between the two egos that finally brought Immortelle back into herself fully.
This was what she didn’t want. This was the life she had decided to leave behind so long ago. She was sick of choosing between two potential forces. Tired of making a wrong move that could inadvertently massacre an entire nation. Or be part of some other catastrophe.
She should not have chosen this life, even for vengeance and justice.
If she had stayed out, stayed away, she wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t have been caught up in whatever game Bianco devised for her in naming her his heir. She wouldn’t be between two men hurling barely concealed threats at each other because of her.
She would be at peace.
At peace, but ignorant. The damning thought twisted in her belly.
Lady Maeve had wanted that for her. She had wanted Immortelle at peace and happy in her ignorance. Immortelle should have been happily distracted with her boring peace so that Maeve’s schemes could have gone undetected, whatever they might have been.
The flash of stolen memory lingered in Immortelle’s mind like an afterimage. The golden shimmer that lifted from her unconscious, wrecked body, disappearing into the night.
No. Immortelle didn’t want to be part of this political intrigue that fed the Cabal’s appetites for power. But she had to swallow down the bitter truth: that she had still been a pawn, used, even when she did all the right things.
She had followed the rules. Earned her freedom. Should have been free of the Cabal’s machinations.
Yet, she still managed to gain an enemy when she wasn’t looking for one.
Her peace was served with ignorance that led to the destruction of her carefully crafted freedom. A freedom that she was now suspecting was more a carefully crafted cage all along.
Anger, familiar and welcome, focused all the fuzzy emotions that made her unsure and soft. Sharpened her senses again until they sang like a killing blade hurtling through the air toward her target. Strengthened the steel of her resolve that she pushed into her spine.
Being crushed between Fear and Death no longer awed her. Instead, she was annoyed. With a huff of frustrated air, she swung her legs out to the side so she could move off the couch.
Each man placed a hand on her in protest, arguing that she ought to rest. She glared down both Fear and then Death into silence. “Don’t.”
Her one word command, shaped out of her anger and frustration and spat out of her mouth like a rifle blast made both of them raise their hands off of her as if in surrender.
Immortelle rose away from them and headed toward the exit with barely a light-headed sway in her step. She was somewhat aware of the dark wood accents and leather bound books that signaled that they were in Chancellor Thorne’s private chambers.
So we did make it here.
Immortelle had her hand on the doorknob when War opened the door and pushed it in. He startled upon seeing her, but recovered quickly. Relief flickered over his face and he scanned down her body as if ticking off a checklist in his mind about her state of being. “You good?”
Immortelle nodded once at the warrior filling the threshold.
To his credit, War didn’t glance at the other two men in the room for confirmation. “Good. Chancellor is pacing a trench in his office. Might want to come talk at him for a bit.” He backed away, giving Immortelle space as she swept past him.
War fell into step beside her. She darted a sidelong glance at him. “How long was I out?”
He shrugged in that nonchalant way that meant absolutely nothing and everything. “Not long, less than an hour.” War seemed to be mulling something over, so she kept her lips pressed together so that she wouldn’t interrupt his train of thought. “You had been fighting…it. Whatever it was, you fought it hard.”
That swirling tornado. The whispers. The seeping intentions. “What happened?”
“The White Rose Court had set up a block right outside of this office. The delegates inside of the Council’s chambers must have tipped off their entourage to slow us down.”
At his pause, she looked at him. They were in the foyer that separated Thorne’s study from his office. The fact that the Chancellor remained in that office and had not greeted her in his study meant that he was still in the mood to talk business with her.
War was grinning, but mirth didn’t touch his eyes. A steely chill clouded over them.
Immortelle almost didn’t want to know what happened next. Almost. “And?” she prompted.
War’s eyes danced in delight. “They didn’t slow us down.” His frozen smile was unnerving, but the flashes of fire she saw in his eyes made her pulse race. “We were close enoug
h to Thorne’s chambers that the Omnia opened a door in the wall, and allowed Death and Fear to carry you in.”
Immortelle couldn’t picture any of this. All she remembered was the churning tornado around her. It had felt so real that it was weird that no one else had seen it. “And Fear? How did he join us?”
War shrugged again. “One minute we were walking. The next minute, you buckled like you’d been shot. Death erupted into the full mantle of his power ready to take heads. We all were. Fear stepped out of shadows right then, and swept you up and kept walking you along. Gave Death an outlet for all that fury as he lashed out on some bodyguards who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Immortelle could imagine. Death in battle fury was poetry in motion. Killing was his art, and he was the master of his craft.
Immortelle wanted to ask War more questions now that she had anger to give her focus. Why did Death feed on her? Why had she been tangled up with Fear?
Since they lingered just outside of Chancellor’s Thorne’s office, both warriors in question had caught up with them, and her moment to ask those questions in confidence had passed.
Did she even want to know the answers?
They were still immaculate in their suits while she felt exposed in her night sky dress that covered the essentials yet still managed to be revealing.
War looked at her in anticipation, waiting for whatever she was going to say to pass her lips.
She swallowed her curiosity down along with those questions that would have made her feel even more raw and exposed than she was.
Maybe she’d get her chance at another time. For now, she gestured to the door. “Maybe Thorne’s got some answers for me.”
* * *
War hadn’t been overstating matters. Chancellor Thorne paced the area in front of his desk. That part wasn’t that unusual—he often paced when he needed to plan.
No, what was unusual was the state of his clothing. Usually impeccable, he had removed his jacket and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows. The top button of his shirt was undone and his unknotted cravat laid limply under his collar.
One lock of black hair curled on his forehead. The hair which he kept obsessively tame, was what troubled Immortelle the most about her old mentor.
His gray eyes snapped to Immortelle when War entered. The look of relief was startling.
Why had he been worried?
Thorne strode to her, and placed his elegant hands on her shoulders, looking her over. “I am relieved you are well,” he stated.
“I was a little dizzy, but I’m fine. What happened to you?” Immortelle could see that it wasn’t just his clothes that were in disarray. He looked worn out, as if he’d had to succumb to manual labors.
“The council chambers devolved into mayhem after the pronouncement. They would have come for you. The sentinels and guards kept most of the Cabal present contained in the room.”
Chancellor Thorne’s gaze flicked to Fear, and for a moment there was a silent exchange as if he wondered how Fear slipped away. Smoothing the errant lock of his hair back into place, Thorne continued. “I cannot protect you here. And the White Rose Court and many others within the Mircalla Circle will stop at nothing until they get to you and the pieces of Bianco that they feel they are entitled to—even if it means taking those pieces from you.”
“As if they’d be close enough to touch her.” The murmur of Death’s voice barely stirred the air yet it resonated clearly in the room for all to hear.
Immortelle gloried in the words, but kept matters focused on what Thorne might have had in mind. “Can’t you tell them that I didn’t want this? That even if I could release it, I wouldn’t know how? Power would be divvied up anyway, right?”
Chancellor Thorne looked every bit of his ten thousand years. “Power is the least of all. Memories. Access. Leadership. All of it was transferred to you, and you were found acceptable to host the inheritance. All of it.”
Thorne communicated a gravitas but Immortelle couldn’t quite capture its nuance or scope.
“So, let me renounce it. I don’t need the power.” Dread pooled in her stomach even as she said it. She knew it wouldn’t be that simple. Couldn’t be that simple. They wouldn’t have had a blood rite with a fountain of knowledge and an oracle to archive it all if it were as easy as transferring money between bank accounts.
“You may give over power the usual ways. Blood, flesh, energy, will…all those are currency. A title though? Memories? Since you have already been deemed the most suitable host among the dignitaries of all three Vampire courts in the Mircalla Circle, the only way you can release that is with your death.”
The rage that met Chancellor Thorne’s pronouncement rocked throughout his study like a rushing river.
Immortelle didn’t hear the words, but let the feeling crash over her like a wave. And it was like she was carried along in a tumble of water. For a blessed moment, all was quiet around her. She couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything except for a numbing cold.
Too soon, that moment passed, and she was left untethered. Her nerves felt too exposed. Skin too tight.
She sat heavily onto one of Thorne’s chairs. It could have been the floor for all she knew.
How did it come to this?
A carefully crafted peace. A life set apart. Only to be pulled into politics she cared nothing about because of a whim from a deposed lord.
No, not a whim. A demand from a father to find justice and truth.
Her head throbbed, and the loud, echoing beating of her heart raged at her with this unnamed anger. She hadn’t understood where it had come from, but it felt like it had stretched her skin.
Rage. Vengeance. Justice.
Fury.
Nemesis.
It was starting again. Lord Bianco wanted that mantle of Nemesis to be used on his behalf now. And he had every belief that it would happen because they both wanted answers.
An enemy of an enemy was a friend.
That selfish prick.
Immortelle rubbed her hand over her face. She saw the two puncture wounds on her wrist, already fading. She touched them, and the sensitized area of skin sent lightning bolts of sensation through her body.
Death knelt by her side. He grabbed hold of her chin and forced her to look at him. A halo appeared around him, black and smudgy, that extended out and around him like a pulsating waterfall of power. “Immortelle? Are you okay?”
She willed her eyes to focus on him. The thrumming heartbeats. The anger. She had thought it came from a spillover of Bianco’s rage, but she had been wrong.
Looking into Death’s eyes and the black depths there, she knew that what she felt had come from him. Was still coming from him.
“I should ask you that same question.” At his confused look, she continued. “You’re angry.”
He looked at her puncture wounds as understanding finally dawned. The more they shared of each other—flesh or blood—the more tied they would become. He retreated, and she could almost feel a weight leaving her.
“I didn’t know,” he said, caressing her cheek. “When I fed from you I thought I would just take on a little of what was happening to you. I didn’t realize that you’d get some blowback from me. Especially since you never fed from me.”
Chancellor Thorne looked from one to the other, a slight lift in his eyebrow as if connecting the two together in his head. If he disapproved of their relationship, he kept it to himself.
“I think it would be best for you to leave. Now. While there is still time, and while the rest are still contained. They will not be so for much longer.”
Immortelle rose, a little lightheaded but in control of herself once more. “Leave? Where?” But as she said it she knew where he referred.
“The Mortal Coil is the only safe place for you at the moment, as relative as that term may be.”
“Il Torero said the Ephemera Gates are being watched,” War said. “Even with dispensation, how do you want us to get the
re?”
Chancellor Thorne moved to his bookshelves, and with a slight pressure, they moved apart to reveal a passageway.
“I’d wanted to check out the Fae wing. Maeve’s suites.” The thought of losing this opportunity to see it all for herself before Underhill withdrew its hold inside of the Omnia Compound completely was another loss that felt like a sucking wound in her heart.
“You will have your opportunity, my dear, since this passage leads you to the Fae wing.”
She shook her head as if she couldn’t quite understand what he said. “What?”
“There is no time to explain why I thought it would be prudent to have my own access to the Fae wing. Suffice it to say that I do.”
Il Torero appeared in the shadows, flanked by sentinels. Their glowing eyes were feral and restless. Predatory. But they didn’t intimidate Immortelle as much as the bullfighter’s implacable calm. “They have taken the many lures. The houses will be divided and distracted. Now is the time.”
Chancellor Thorne nodded to the Consigliere to the Council. “Thank you, old friend. Now, you must go. And I am sure that after enough long and boring council meetings, this will all blow over, and Lord Bianco’s last stunt will be forgotten.”
Immortelle lifted her brow. “It’s my experience that immortal clans have extremely long memories and not a lot of grace for forgiveness.”
Humor flickered in Chancellor Thorne’s eyes. “Well, it was my attempt to ferry you along so that there will be few casualties. I would rather not have swathes of the Cabal obliterated by your lovers.” He patted her shoulder as Immortelle’s face flamed. “They may be full of rage at the moment, but they will cool down once more and see the political advantages of having you hold the Della Serra inheritance, at least for now.”
Immortelle couldn’t resist asking, even though her old mentor was practically shoving her toward the Fae wing. “What advantages would those be, exactly?”
Chancellor Thorne shrugged. “I am sure I will think of something convincing in not too long.”