by Rye Brewer
“Which makes you the ideal candidate to draw a map for me, that I might study it and learn the most efficient route to the blood.” I grinned as the hair on her head began standing straight up. A little reminder of my abilities. “You wouldn’t want to upset me, would you? If you think Elena’s difficult to deal with when she doesn’t get her way…”
“All right, all right. Enough.” She shrugged off my hands, which sent her hair back to its normal place. “I’ll do what you ask. But you have to swear on your life that you’ll make it out all right. I couldn’t carry your life on my conscience with all the others.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“Yes. He’ll be perfectly safe,” Branwen agreed with a tranquil smile. “Because I’m going with him to ensure he remains so.”
12
Branwen
My heart thumped so hard, so rapidly, I could scarcely breathe.
Had I really just spoken those words? Had they come from my mouth? It seemed that way, for Stark and Anissa gaped at me in disbelief.
“What did you just say?” Stark murmured, brows drawing together as he frowned. “You’re coming with me?”
It was the only chance I would get to back down, to see the error of my ways and admit my impulse had been foolhardy. I was not skilled at subterfuge. I’d never attempted anything close to this.
Yet just then, watching and listening and knowing Stark might be walking into mortal danger, announcing that he would not walk into it alone had seemed the only reasonable reaction. How could I allow him to go alone?
How could I live with myself if any harm befell him and I was not there to do everything in my power to stop it?
This was foolish. I should have remained silent. Yet there was no going back if I hoped to live with myself later.
“You mean it?” Stark asked, perturbed. “Why would you consider something so dangerous?”
“Why would you?” I countered, a bit brasher than I needed to be. But when he looked at me with such disbelief, as though one such as I couldn’t possibly think herself up to the challenge, he struck a chord in the deepest, most stubborn corners of my heart.
“Someone has to, and Anissa is not the one to do it.”
“Why does it have to be you, though? Why can it not be me? Am I unworthy of something so difficult? From what Anissa tells us, it would be nothing more treacherous than finding one’s way through the mansion to the room in which the blood was stored. If she knows where that room is and can direct the way, what more is there to it?”
“Quite a lot more,” he growled, “and you know it.”
“Which is why you shouldn’t go alone,” I concluded with a sweet smile. “This is a dangerous mission, and two of us would certainly be better than one.”
Anissa burst out laughing. “It’s like watching a game of tennis. Back and forth.” She shook her head, hands in the air. “One of you, both of you, however, you wish to do it. Only it needs to be done. I can’t imagine Marcus’s hiding places won’t eventually be looted by his son, Will, or one of the advisors. And Lena’s running out of time.”
I smiled at the babe in my arms, and she patted my cheeks. There were moments, such as that one, in which I was all but certain she understood us. When she watched and listened, she was truly watching and truly listening. Our words were more than mere noise to her. She appeared interested, ready to absorb the information around her.
I suspected that once she learned to speak, she would be quite something to behold.
“You believe your friend Branwen is up to the challenge, do you not?” I whispered, bouncing Lena on my hip. “Yes, you know she is brave enough and skilled enough to take care of herself.”
“All right, have it your way,” Stark grumbled. “Forget my concerns. They’re of no seriousness.”
“What are your concerns?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
For all my attempts at lightening the mood, I was little more than a shaking, quaking wreck inside. What was he thinking? What would he say was his true concern? Not me, surely.
Would he?
He lifted his shoulders in a flippant shrug. “If I am too busy being concerned with your welfare, how will I be able to concentrate on my own? How can I focus myself when I have you behind me, possibly being injured or worse? And what if you were injured and slowed me down?”
Each word was a dagger aimed straight at my heart. I withstood the blows with all the dignity I could muster, staring at him, willing myself to remain calm and strong even as he crushed me into dust.
Anissa clicked her tongue, wagging her head back and forth. “You truly have a way with words,” she muttered, coming to me to take the baby. The look of sympathy she shared told me she understood better than he did. I hardly knew her, and she understood.
I almost wished she didn’t, for her witnessing my humiliation while knowing just how deeply I still cared for him embarrassed me double as much.
I would have liked nothing better than to leave Hallowthorn Landing right then. Forever, never to return. After days and days of caring for Lena and spending the rest of my time and attention focused on avoiding Stark at all costs, this was the moment which threatened to break my will.
But it would not. I would not allow it.
“I assure you,” I replied, making my tone dry, “that I’ll do my best not to slow you down or hold you back. And if anything were to happen to me, you have my permission to leave me behind.”
“What is all this?” Sirene stood in the doorway, looking at the three of us. Four, counting the baby. “Where are you planning to go? You aren’t leaving, are you?”
We exchanged a look, the three of us, before Anissa took her by the hand that the two of them could walk and she might explain.
Which left me alone with Stark. Exactly where I didn’t wish to be, yet wanted to be more than anything else. Would I ever get over him?
If decades spent apart—not to mention his betrayal—had not been enough to banish him from my mind and heart, what would be?
There was nothing to say. How would either of us speak when the air was so thick? As if so many years of unspoken words, unvoiced sweetness, hung between us. I could hardly draw breath.
I went to the open window in the hope that fresh air would enable me to breathe freely. “The storm passed quickly,” I observed for lack of anything else to say. “It was quite violent. I feared over the damage it might cause.”
“That was no ordinary storm.”
I knew it well. I had merely wanted him to speak it. “What brought her here?”
“She wished to say goodbye to her sister.”
“Goodbye?”
“She intends to… be away for quite some time.” He left it there.
I knew him. I knew he was reluctant to share more.
“She means a great deal to you, does she not?”
He hesitated for so long, I thought for a moment that he might have left Anissa’s bedchamber. We ought to have both left, seeing as how she’d made her exit, but how could I when his presence in the room was like an invisible tether which bound me in place? If he did not leave, I could not.
“She did. Once.”
Why did my heart leap so at his words? I hated it. I cursed its weakness and stupidity. Just because he no longer cared for her did not mean he cared for no one.
There was still Elewyn. Perhaps he carried her deep inside himself just as I carried him. If that were the case, he would never be free.
For I never would.
“She was angry,” I murmured, staring out over the now-still water.
Sunlight shone over the blue expanse, nearly blinding me with its brilliance. Sara had been able to change that so quickly, in the blink of an eye. She was frighteningly powerful, more so perhaps than Stark, and he’d been the most gifted elemental she’d ever known.
“Sara carries a great deal of anger with her at all times, it seems. Some of it directed at myself—most of it, perhaps,” he added with a grim chuc
kle.
“Why?” I looked over my shoulder in time to see him wince.
“Must we speak of it now?” he asked, folding his arms. “There are far more pressing matters at hand, such as your insistence on accompanying me.”
“I will do as I say,” I vowed. “You will not go alone. Just because this Marcus is no longer a threat does not mean you ought to step foot in his clan’s home without someone there to watch out as you search for the blood. I would…”
I pressed my lips together as if to prevent greater madness from pouring forth. He could not hear tell of how I would most certainly worry myself into a fit over his welfare if he left me behind. He need not know of the suffering I’d already endured through years of never knowing for certain where he was or whether he was safe. Only the occasional report from Sirene had made me aware that he was even alive.
I could not suffer that again, not after seeing him and being in his presence these past weeks. The yearning I’d borne prior to this time together was stronger than ever before. What a fool I was, allowing him to make me care so. Still. When he did not deserve my caring. My love.
He overlooked my having trailed off. “Anissa will prepare a map, as per my request, and we will go over it with her. She is quite thorough—I have the utmost faith that she will tell us precisely where to go.”
“Will we leave today?”
“Do you believe we ought to wait?”
“Why must everything become an argument or a debate?” I snapped, turning to glare at him now. I had but so much patience, and he was wearing it thin.
He took a step back. “Tonight, then. We shall travel by portal tonight, arriving somewhere outside the grounds of the mansion. Anissa will instruct us on the safest area, I’m sure.”
“I will be ready.”
“Are you certain?”
“I will be ready.”
“I do not mean prepared to leave. I mean—”
“Prepared to face what we must face. Do you believe me so weak? You of all people know of that which I am able to do. You know very well.”
“I do,” he admitted, sounding apologetic. “It is merely that—”
“You wish to be certain I will not hold you back. Is that it? And that I will not be so foolish as to be wounded or discovered by some vampire guard.” I scoffed, and when I tried to move my feet to leave the room, they allowed me to do so.
I had to get away from him. When he reached out to touch me as I walked past, I deliberately moved aside that we might not brush against each other. Even that would be more than I could bear, and more than he deserved.
No, I would not hold him back. I would see to it that we both made it through our mission safely and successfully.
Then? Once it was over?
I made a resolution as I stormed down the corridor, in the direction of my bedchamber.
I resolved to remove him from my heart by any means necessary, no matter how long it took.
13
Anton
I was more than a bit dizzy and still unclear as to what I’d missed while unconscious—everything had seemed to happen so fast—but all that mattered at the moment was getting Genevieve out of there. Getting us both to safety.
I fled into the forest, back toward the cottage which sat on the De Clerq side of the border between our lands. It was a long trek, however, one which might take close to an hour.
My thoughts flew in a million directions as I ran. There would be guards on their way after seeing smoke in the air—they might be nearly on top of us already. I had to get us as far from that cabin as possible before they discovered Isolde’s body.
The image of her, crumpled in agony with a pool of already congealing blood spread around her would stay with me, I knew. Someone who had once been so pleasing to the eye, yet who had possessed a withered shell of a soul. Destroyed by greed and vanity.
She’d met the only possible end for one such as herself, and perhaps it had been for the best. She would never have found true, lasting happiness or even satisfaction. She would always have been hungry for more—more wealth, greater power, higher prestige.
Creatures such as that swallowed everything in their path, including those nearest to them.
I would not have allowed her to swallow me that way, and she’d likely known it. Even if she had not, she would have found out, and there would have been nothing but misery.
There might be misery still if I did not manage to escape unnoticed.
Genevieve tucked herself into a ball in my arms, drawing her legs up and inside the sack. With the thick growth around and above us, very little of the sun’s light got through. I was not willing to take the chance of so much as a single beam touching her skin.
She was already hurt badly enough.
Then again, so was I, but the pain from the wound on my head had already subsided to little more than a dull ache. Even if there had been a crack in my skull, it would have already begun to heal itself.
Genevieve, on the other hand, would not heal without help. I jostled her a bit too hard at one point and felt her flinch, heard her sharp intake of breath as her burned wrist struck my chest.
“Forgive me,” I whispered, telling myself I didn’t truly smell burning flesh.
We reached a deeply shadowed section, where it was dark enough that it might be night, and I paused to catch my breath.
“I think we’re safe for a moment,” I whispered as I set her on her feet. “It’s dark here.”
She worked the sack over her head and drew a long, deep breath. “I thought I would suffocate in there,” she admitted, her uninjured hand over her chest. “I was certain that after everything we’ve been through, I would suffocate in your arms. By now it would seem to be par for the course.”
“Let me see that.” I took her arm, careful not to touch anything that might be burned. My wolf eyes made it easier to see in the dark, and what I saw hardly pleased me.
“It hurts,” she admitted through clenched teeth, trembling either from pain or the strain of holding back.
“We’ll have to find a way to treat it,” I mused, wondering exactly how we would manage to do that.
“It will heal on its own—in due time.” She withdrew her arm with what struck me as an apologetic smile. “I don’t heal as quickly as you do.”
“We have to get out of here.” I was stating the obvious, and I knew it, but there seemed little else to say. There was no time to rest or wait and see how things turned out.
“Where will we go?” she asked in a tight whisper, her back against a tree. She was weak, I could sense it, and would need blood. Soon.
“I have to get you back to our private place. I have blood there. You need to feed.” I glanced at her arm, which she held in the other hand. “It might help you heal faster.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit too dangerous? Won’t they be looking for us there?”
“If we get there quickly enough, take the blood I’ve stored and run, we ought to be able to get away before anyone hears of Isolde’s… death.” The word murder seemed a bit too strong for what had been done to her. She deserved it, certainly, and whatever had been done was a matter of self-defense. Of that, I had no doubt.
What would we do after that? Where would we go?
“We might be able to go out to the waterfall,” I suggested.
“Why?”
“I have a boat concealed nearby—a small boat,” I amended.
“To what purpose?”
“In case we ever needed to get away.” I shrugged when she shot me a quizzical look. “You know your safety and protection have always borne the utmost importance. If you visited me here and we needed to get away quickly, I wanted to have a boat at my disposal.”
She took my face in both hands and rewarded me with a soft, lingering kiss. “I do love you.”
“I love you.”
We shared a moment this way, in which the only people existing in the world were the two of us, before I stepped back
to look around and get my bearings.
I pointed through the thick, close-growing trees. “Another half-mile in that direction, I believe.”
“I hope you’re correct.” She paused in the act of replacing the sack over her head. “I look forward to traveling while being able to see.”
“There might not be enough light to burn you from here on through to the cottage.”
“I would rather not take any chances.”
I understood why when she glanced down at her wrist. Moments later she was in my arms again, and not a moment too soon.
“Footsteps,” I whispered. They were far away, well behind us, but they spoke to the presence of others in the forest. I wasted no time, running full-out now, dodging the worst of the undergrowth which might cause sound to carry through the dense woods.
We tumbled into the cottage minutes later, and I was quick to shut the door the moment I could. Genevieve fought her way out of the burlap and drew several deep breaths.
“Finally,” she whispered, eyes closed.
“I wouldn’t feel too secure yet,” I warned her, as much as I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe we were safe now. I wanted to stop running, to stop hiding our love.
I bent to open the door in the floor. “All right. The tunnel is unlit, so hold my hand and follow me carefully. I’ll take us through to our room. And bring that sack,” I added as an afterthought. “We need something to carry the blood in.”
She hesitated halfway down the ladder, the upper half of her body still outside the tunnel. “Are you sure about this?”
My heart sank somewhat when I recognized her fear. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do.” She snickered. “It’s everyone else I don’t trust.”
“I can’t blame you for that.” I looked down the length of the black tunnel. It could have held any number of threats. When our eyes met again, I stared at her with all the intensity I could muster. “I will do everything in my power to protect you. Do you believe me?”