by Rye Brewer
Stop, stop, stop! Shut up! I’d wanted to warn him away from that, to make it known I was strong enough to fight back and overcome him if I tried. I’d settled for knowing I could do it if needed and left it there.
She’s smarter than you give her credit for, I’d reminded him.
And I was right. It brought a smile to my face.
I opened my eyes, looking up into hers. There was something I needed to tell her while I had the chance, in case something else happened and I lost the chance again.
“I love you.”
“Oh, Vance.” She kissed my forehead, my cheeks. “I love you, too.”
“I was there all the time, listening and watching. It drove me crazy, knowing he was…”
“We don’t have to talk about it now. Or ever, really. You just rest, okay? There’s all the time in the world.”
“I only want you to know… why I let it go on.” I had to explain it. I couldn’t let another minute go by without explaining it. “I wanted to fight him. I wanted to stop him. But I was afraid for you. That he would hurt you to get back at me.”
“I understand.” Her hand was tender as she ran it down the side of my face. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Who knows what he was capable of?”
She had no idea. I did, and that was all the more reason for me to fear what he could do to hurt her. Or worse. Because I had felt Tabitha’s blood on my hands. I had watched her die, had listened to her final rasping breaths.
A strange woman knelt at my side, touching my forehead, my throat, my wrists. “He needs to rest,” she announced.
If I’d had the strength, I would’ve asked how long she’d trained to learn the skills it took for a diagnosis like that one. Anyone with eyes could see I needed to rest. I was falling apart.
“We’ll take him up to the apartment.” Philippa wasn’t asking a question. “Scott, help him.”
Scott slid an arm under my shoulders, picking me up until I was on my feet. Not a lot of good that did, as I couldn’t support my weight. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you out of this place.”
I looked over my shoulder at what was left of Valerius sitting in a pile on the floor. “What about him?” I asked no one in particular.
“What about him?” Fane echoed. “He’ll stay there until somebody gets around to cleaning him up. If anyone ever does. I doubt I’ll lose sleep over it.”
Lose sleep over it. We didn’t sleep. I wondered if that was just an expression or if there really was something different about him. I’d felt it, even when Valerius had possessed me. He wasn’t the same as me or Philippa or Scott. Not anymore.
I was too tired to think about it, too wrung out. I let Scott help me out of the vault and back to the elevator.
Philippa watched closely the entire time, as though she was waiting for something. For what? For me to fall apart? For Valerius to come back through my eyes, my words? That wouldn’t happen. He was dead. Finally, for good. I never thought I would be so grateful.
But I had watched my father being murdered. By my own hands.
I closed my eyes, hoping the images would fade. That didn’t help. I didn’t think it ever would.
“You’ll feel better soon enough,” the woman in the red robes murmured as she rode with us in the elevator. “Rest all you can. Feed, if possible.”
“We have plenty of blood in the refrigerator and more in our bank downstairs,” Philippa assured me. “You’ll be fine.”
“I have no doubt,” I murmured, eyes still closed.
The bell sounded, signaling our arrival at the top floor. It would feel good to be in the penthouse and be able to control my body, my voice.
They helped me to the sofa, which I sank into with a sigh. Just that little bit of movement had wiped me out even further.
Philippa joined me, seemingly glued to my side. I wouldn’t be able to shake her easily. Not that I wanted to.
“I’m so relieved for you,” she murmured, curling up beside me. “I was so scared when it was all happening, and there was this light…”
“I remember that part.” I chuckled. My voice sounded far away.
“And you were shaking…”
“We don’t need to go over this right now, do we?” I asked, turning my head slightly to look down at her. It took so much effort, but she needed to know how I felt about this. “I would rather not relive that right now. If you don’t mind.”
Her eyes went wide. “I’m sorry.”
I sighed, remembering how Valerius had wormed his way into her head when they were arguing. He had taken all of the memories I had of her, had mined me for information and violated even the most cherished, personal moments. All for his own gain, all so he could twist her up and use her.
Here I was, so soon after she had been hurt, being sharp. “No. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. There’s been so much going on. So very much. And I’m trying to make sense of it.”
“I understand.”
“You were always the one thing I was most concerned about. I want you to know that.”
“Thank you.” She closed her hand over mine.
Scott returned from the kitchen, carrying a bag of blood. “Here. Start building your strength up.”
“Thanks.” I drank deeply, savoring the taste even though it was synthetic. In my state of weakness, what I craved more than anything was real blood. I hadn’t experienced a craving this strong in decades.
Once the bag was drained of its contents, Scott took it away. He seemed strangely subdued. We had never been close, but I’d spent enough time with all the Bourke siblings to know their personalities. I wasn’t the only one who’d been through quite an experience, it appeared.
Fane and the witch had disappeared somewhere. Scott went down the hall, probably to his room. That left Philippa and me alone for the moment.
“I am so, so sorry,” I whispered, resting my head against the pillows Philippa had stacked behind me. “I wanted so much to protect you, to be with you. To at least tell you it wasn’t me you were with earlier.”
She winced, clearly uncomfortable at the memory of those moments. “It’s all right. I understand, really. I’m angry with myself, if anything.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew something was off, but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t listen to my instincts. Shouldn’t I know better? I’m not a child. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time, and a lot of that depends on listening when my gut tells me something is wrong. I didn’t listen. I blocked it out.”
“You didn’t want to listen.”
“No. I didn’t.” She shook her head, looking as though she was ready to burst into tears. “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it badly enough to ignore everything that told me it wasn’t you.”
The pain she tried so hard to hide tore at me. I pulled her into my arms, wishing that was enough but knowing better. “If anything, it was better for you to play along. Who knows what he would’ve done if you had fought back or let him know you were wise to him?”
“I would’ve hurt him.”
I chuckled. “Hey, remember. You wouldn’t have been fighting the old man. You would’ve been fighting me. I’m pretty strong.”
“Hmm. We would have to see, wouldn’t we?” She pressed herself to me, practically crawling into my lap. “I don’t ever want to let you go again. Not ever.”
“I feel the same way. I couldn’t let myself think about you while he was in my head. He would see, he would know. He already knew too much. He already did too many terrible things.”
She raised her head, looking at me with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry about your father. I really am. It’s terrible, what he did.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath to hold back the wave of heartache her words brought. There would be time to think about that, time I hadn’t been able to take up to that point because of Valerius’s presence. He’d spent the entire duration of his possession searching for ways to take advantage of me. Leaving myself
open to greater damage would’ve been foolish.
And it wasn’t the thing I felt worst about.
“I know on some level my father would’ve met a bad end no matter who delivered the death blow,” I reasoned, running a hand through her fiery hair as I spoke. It was so soft, smelled so sweet. She didn’t know how soothing it was to touch this one small part of her. “I do wish it hadn’t come at my hands, but I can rationalize it when I have to. It might be the only way to get through this—the ability to rationalize what happened.”
“Whatever you need to do for yourself,” she murmured as she tried to snuggle back in at my side.
I stopped her. “There’s something else. Something I feel even worse about. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget it, or if there’s a way to make it up to those who will suffer the worst over it.”
“Oh, Vance.” Her face fell. “What happened? What did he make you do?”
I wondered if I should tell her at all. If I would only come to regret it later. “There have been enough secrets and lies and half-truths between us. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, isn’t that a large part of the reason why we fell apart?”
“A large part, yes,” she agreed, nodding slowly.
“However…” I closed my eyes, struggling to put words to my thoughts. “However, I’m so afraid that you won’t be able to forgive me when you hear about this. I don’t want you to always see this when you look at me, to imagine what I did.”
“Whatever it was, you didn’t do it. I can’t say it enough.”
“You’re right. You can’t say it enough. It’ll never be enough.”
She glanced down at her hands, picking at her nails the way she always used to when something uncomfortable was going on. “I want to say that you don’t have to tell me, but I’m afraid I’ll always want to know.”
“That’s what I mean. I don’t want it to come between us. Even if it doesn’t right away, it will in the future.”
“So, it really is that serious?”
“Not just serious. More like… severe.”
“Oh, no.” She breathed deeply, letting it out slowly before deciding. “Out with it, then. I would rather hear it. And you know I won’t judge you or blame you. It might be difficult for me to hear, and I have to admit, you’re frightening me more than a little. You didn’t wipe out an entire neighborhood or a bunch of kids, did you—he?” she corrected at the last moment.
It was too late. She had already slipped. I let it go.
“No, nothing on such a large scale. It was a woman. She was alone. In a tower.”
She closed her eyes. The sudden color in her cheeks and nose told me she was trying not to cry. “All right.”
“I was in there—we were, I should say, him and me. Locked in a cage. I’m still not sure why, the person who did it never explained. He was a shade. I felt as though I had seen him before. I think he may have been at the meeting where I… Where Valerius…”
“I know what you’re saying.”
I cleared my throat to get rid of the brick of a lump lodged in it. “He never explained why he put me—us—in the cage. But it was silver, so there was no getting out. We were there for hours. I was sure we’d be there forever, that it was some sort of massive cosmic joke. The shade had freed us from the dungeon, only to leave us in a cage in a tower. I mean, why do something like that?”
I remembered so clearly the confusion, the certainty that we’d never get out. That Valerius would never leave me, and we would never leave that tower. The worst was the not knowing why.
“Valerius raged, roared, demanded we find a way to get out. But what way was there? See, he never thought about my limitations when he took my body. He could handle silver, but I couldn’t. Which meant he couldn’t—not that it stopped him from trying.” I held up my hand, where a mostly-healed burn still scarred on my palm.
Philippa picked it up and kissed it. “I’m sorry.”
“He soon found out there was no getting out. Until… until she got there. The woman. It was her room, her tower. She didn’t expect us, that was for sure.”
“Who was she?”
“Valerius pleaded with her,” I continued, unwilling to answer until I got the entire story out. “He begged her to be let out, told her he had no idea why he was there. That he’d been locked up while under someone’s spell, that he couldn’t fight back, that he was afraid and hurt. He used this burn to convince her and told her how hungry he was.”
“Oh, no…”
“She was a good soul,” I murmured, remembering how concerned she had seemed. “And I felt as though I knew her, too, though she didn’t appear to remember me. I was a small part of her former life. I know that, now. She was different from the way I remembered her. Part shade. I know that now, too. I had time to think about it. it was safer than thinking about you.”
“What happened once she freed you?”
“He went on the attack, of course. He couldn’t leave it alone. It wasn’t enough she’d let us go. He had to kill her. She went on the defensive, bared her fangs. It was strange, seeing a shade with fangs. She was strong, too. Just not strong enough. Not as strong as me.”
She squeezed my hand.
My voice broke, but I managed to continue. “I was too weak to fight him. I tried. I did. I saw what was coming, and she didn’t deserve it. I wanted to save her. There was no way. And in my head, all the time, he laughed. He delighted in it. He savored throwing her to the floor, her groan of pain, the way she tried to scramble from us. He reached for her and held her down, hand around her throat. And… my fangs…”
She covered her face with her hands, and I stopped. There was hardly a reason to continue. I didn’t need to tell her about tasting the blood, about begging Valerius to pull away before I had to drink it. Only his disgust at the idea of drinking a shade’s blood stopped him from feasting on her.
“He did the strangest thing,” I remembered. “He went away, stepped back, let me take over. Maybe he wanted to sit back and laugh as I fumbled through trying to make her last moments a little less lonely. I told her how sorry I was, that it wasn’t me, that someone had control over me. I don’t know if she believed me or not. I hope she did.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Oh, yes. She told me to tell her daughters and her son how much she loved them. Anissa, Sara, Allonic.”
Philippa let out a cry of dismay.
As I’d known she would.
21
Philippa
“You’re sure? Those three names?” I knew he was sure.
He didn’t need to respond.
I covered my face with my hands, shaking my head. It all came together. Allonic was the shade who’d locked Vance in the tower. Why, I didn’t know. He had his reasons for everything he did. Did he know she was dead?
Did he know she wouldn’t be if he hadn’t stolen Vance from the dungeon?
My heart broke for him. For Vance. Even for the girls. I didn’t like them, but that didn’t mean it made me happy to know their mother had been murdered. My mother had been murdered, too.
“You’re close with them?” Vance’s voice was flat.
I shook my head. “That’s not the right word. But I know them. Anissa is Jonah’s… woman. Consort. I don’t know what to call her. But we’re not close.”
“Even so.”
“Even so.” Fate was too cruel sometimes. Why did it have to be Allonic who brought them together? Why did it have to be Vance who he caged in that tower? He couldn’t have known, of course, but he had to know by now what had happened.
Had Allonic found her? A fresh wave of grief hit me. He had taken a big chance for my sake. He had been captured because of it, too. Tortured. And he had likely found his mother’s body in that tower, knowing when he saw the empty cage it had been Valerius who killed her.
Vance glanced away, suddenly very interested in something off in the distance. “I thought it would be best for you to know this, even if you can’t look
at me the same way again.”
“No. Don’t say that.” I reached for him, but he flinched away, and my heart sank even further.
“Come on, Philippa. You’re going to sit there, sad like that, then tell me you could ever forgive what I did?”
“You didn’t do it! And I’m sad for Allonic, but I’m sad for you, too. Not because nothing will ever be the same between us. I’m not worried about us right now. I’m worried about you. My heart hurts for you. I wish I could take this away from you.”
I took his face in my hands.
He tried to pull away, but I was having none of it.
“Look at me. Believe me. I don’t hold this against you. You couldn’t stop him. I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for you. But I do not blame you. I never will.”
“How can you ever look at me the same way again, after hearing this?”
“Because I know you.” My hands dropped from his face, landing on his chest. “I know who you are. We’ve had our problems, yes. You’ve hurt me in the past. You’ve done some things that made me want to forget you ever existed. You were responsible for that, but it’s all over now. This? What you told me just now? That’s not you. You didn’t do it.”
“I don’t see how you can forgive it.”
“Because you don’t see how you can forgive yourself. But you have to try. You can’t live this way. We can’t.”
He blinked. “We?”
My hands landed in my lap, and I blushed. “I might be going too far. But if there’s a future for us… If that’s what you want…”
“When did you mature so much?” he asked, the slightest smile touching his lips.
I smiled, too. It was good to hear him lighten up, even just a little. “I’ve been through a few things, too. It’s been a pretty busy time for so many of us.”
“We’ll have to catch up on all of it.”
“We will. For now, you’ll have to rest up.” I kissed him—there he was, there was his kiss—right before Fane walked in.