Heart of Ash

by Kim Liggett

  34

  WE WERE SILENT the entire plane ride back to Castell de Coronado.

  The benefit and the curse of being blood bound was that I knew exactly what he was feeling. Sadness, fear, exhaustion, but it was the guilt that overwhelmed me. I understood it better than anyone. He was embarrassed for showing weakness around me, but he didn’t need to be. In that moment, his trembling hands covered in blood, I’d never felt closer to him, more bound to him.

  It was just before dawn when we arrived back at the estate.

  We used the side entrance to avoid seeing anyone, but the castle was quiet, empty. I was grateful. For me, for Dane, for everything we’d been through over the past twenty-four hours.

  The scent of fresh blood, Pino’s decaying corpse, and fragrant white flowers from the champagne was undeniable. No doubt the immortals had some kind of blood orgy to celebrate their victory before returning to their empty lives. The good news was that I’d have an entire year to prepare for their next visit. Hopefully, a much shorter visit.

  When we reached the top of the stairs, I told Dane I needed to speak with Beth, tell her what happened.

  He nodded and went to his room. It was the hardest thing, watching him slink into the dark, alone. But he needed some time to come to terms with what happened.

  On my way to Beth’s room, I practiced what I was going to say to her, but nothing sounded right. I was relieved to see the guards were gone from their post. The door to her room was left slightly ajar, but the lights were off.

  I knocked lightly. “Beth,” I whispered. “It’s Ash.”

  When she didn’t reply, I took it as a sign. Let her have one more night of sweet dreams. One more night of thinking that when she woke, Rhys would be by her side.

  One more night wouldn’t hurt any of us.

  • • •

  Going back to my room, I took off my bloodstained clothes and looked at myself in the mirror. I no longer saw a girl haunted by memories, I saw a woman.

  I knew Dane. He knew me. All our strengths, all our weaknesses.

  In sickness and in health.

  Tonight I was putting aside all the artifice, all the posturing, all the walls. And I was going to live in the moment. With Dane.

  I brushed out my hair, put on a dab of lip balm, and slipped on the white silk robe.

  Opening the agate box on my bedside table, I felt the weight of the key in my hand and everything it meant. Sliding it into the lock, I opened the door and stepped inside the darkened room.

  Dane was crouched in front of the fire, a towel wrapped around his waist, his gorgeous olive skin dotted with beads of water from the shower. He didn’t even register me coming in; his eyes were trained on the fire, no doubt replaying the carnage he’d just inflicted on an endless loop.

  I knew that pain. Better than anyone.

  The air was thick with regret, which only seemed to intensify his scent of sandalwood, musk, and earth. The pain pouring off of him was all consuming. I remembered what that was like—walking out of the corn, watching the sun come up on endless days of loss and regret—and I wanted to ease his pain. I wanted him to pour that sadness into me so I could share the burden.

  “Love is love no matter how it comes to you,” I said as I stepped behind him. “I understand that now more than ever.”

  “Forgive me,” he said as he glanced back at me. “I’ll get dressed.”

  “There’s no need,” I replied.

  I’d always thought it was impossible to tell what color Dane’s eyes were—blue, green, or gold—but that’s exactly how Dane was: complicated. But there was nothing complicated about this. About being with him in this way. It was actually the simplest thing in the world. And all I had to do was show him that this is what I wanted. That I was ready.

  I handed him the key.

  He glanced toward the door, surprised to find it open.

  “I come to you with no barriers between us,” I said as I untied the robe, letting it drop to the floor. “Everything I have is yours.”

  I watched him take me in. I welcomed it.

  As he stood to face me, he tossed the key into the fire.

  Skimming my fingers across the edge of the towel wrapped around his waist, I pulled it free. It dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. I smoothed my hands across his chest, and his breath shuddered. As I moved in close, pressing my body against his, running my fingers over his shoulder blades, I felt a change come over him—the sadness washed away by passion. I nuzzled my face into his neck, my lips brushing a pulsing vein. Suddenly, I wanted to feel the rush of his blood pulsing through mine. I longed for the closeness we felt under Heartbreak Tree. And I wanted to show him that I would’ve made the same choice. In any lifetime, in any form, I would choose him all over again.

  I took the letter opener from his desk and slit the palm of his hand and then my own. We laced our fingers together. The feel of his blood entering my bloodstream was euphoric. Everything I remembered, but it was so much more complex now. Time had only intensified my feelings, my desire to be with him in this way. As our wounds healed shut, a completely different desire rose up inside of me.

  As if reading my thoughts, he glanced toward the bed.

  “A little conventional for us, wouldn’t you say?”

  A sly smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he shoved the coffee table out of the way and we tumbled to the ground.

  The cold marble against my skin, the heat from the flames of the fire licking our backs, his mouth all over me, mine all over him. The desire consuming us from the outside in. He placed his hands firmly on my bare hips, stopping any movement.

  “We have all the time in the world,” he whispered. “This is not only our wedding night, but the first night of the rest of our lives. Eternity.”

  “Exactly.” I removed his hands. “We can do it again and again and again.”

  “I want to make this last,” he said as he sat up. “I’ve dreamed of nothing but you . . . but this, for so long. I want to memorize every part of you. Every movement. Every breath. Give me that. I want you to forget who you are, bring you to the brink of heaven and hell, until you beg for release.”

  “I’m begging,” I said as I wrapped myself around him.

  “But I’m just getting started.”

  I laughed into the crook of his neck as he picked me up and carried me to the bed.

  As I lay there on his fine bed, flushed, my breath heavy in my chest, his gaze melted over my skin. I opened up to him, and he kissed his way up my entire body until he finally threaded his fingers in my hair. He moved slowly, using every part of his body. He was so attuned to me, as if he knew exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it.

  Breathing in time, his eyes locked on mine, I didn’t care how I looked, what sounds came out of my mouth. We were striving toward a common need—but it was more than need. Everything in our past, present and future was building toward this moment, until a blistering warmth consumed us.

  He collapsed beside me and we lay there perfectly still. Empty in a state of bliss. All of the past hurts, all of the pain evaporating into the ether.

  All that remained were our bodies—vessels for each other’s hearts.

  35

  “THE PLANS,” THE familiar voice whispered in my ear.

  I awoke in the middle of the night to find myself alone, although Rhys’s scent hung heavy in the air.

  Maybe I was dreaming about him or maybe his scent was still on my skin from Spencer’s house, but I couldn’t escape him.

  I slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom. A shower would do me good. I stepped in, feeling the hot water caress my aching muscles. As I washed up, I was so content that I started humming that stupid Backstreet Boys song.

  Dane stepped into the bathroom.

  “Miss me already?” I asked as I peeked at him over my sh
oulder.

  “Always,” he whispered, stepping in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, pressing his body against mine.

  “What’s that tune you were humming?”

  “Very funny,” I teased. “What, you want me to sing it for you?”

  “Of course.”

  I held up the bar of soap like a microphone. “‘You are my fire / the one desire / believe when I say / I want it that way.’”

  “That’s nice. You’ll have to teach it to me.”

  I turned around, studying him. But he wasn’t kidding.

  And then I remembered Dane telling me that he held back certain things from Coronado for safekeeping. Did he hold that song back for a reason? So I would know. So I would be able to tell the difference?

  Holding his face in my hands, I whispered his name, “Dane.” But he just smiled back at me, nothing to suggest he’d slipped away for even a moment. But when I reached out for him, to get a sense of his emotions, I only felt my own reverberating back to me.

  That’s when I knew. This wasn’t Dane. He looked like Dane, acted like Dane, talked like Dane.

  But Dane would know that song.

  My skin erupted in goose bumps.

  “Let me warm you,” he said as he arranged my hair around my shoulders.

  I thought of him doing that with my hair when Dane let Coronado take over completely after the council dinner . . . and countless other times . . . at the library in New York . . . when we first arrived at the estate. Was Coronado the one who was with me all that time? Last night?

  I felt like I was going to be sick. As I looked into his eyes, I wondered whether Dane was even in there at all. Could he see me? Feel me? Or maybe he knew . . . maybe they had an arrangement, some kind of fucked-up love triangle.

  “I need to check on Beth,” I managed to say as I freed myself from his arms.

  He grabbed my hand. “A kiss before you go?”

  It took everything I had to do it, but I needed to keep my cool for just a few more minutes. Pressing my lips together, I kissed him, but he forced them open with his tongue. And again there was a part of me, the darkest part of me, that wanted to ignore my instincts. But if I gave in to him, gave in to the darkness, I knew it would be my ruin.

  36

  AS I LEFT the room, I grabbed a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around me.

  Running down the corridor, across the breezeway, down another corridor and up the winding stone steps, I barged into Beth’s room to find it empty. On the floor, next to her bed, was a set of blueprints. The same plans Dane had shown her for the wing he was going to build for Rhys. MP was printed on the bottom, Max Pinter’s logo, along with the date. June 28 of last year. These were drawn up a week after the solstice. How could he have possibly known I would come here? That Rhys would come here? But that wasn’t the most troubling thing. The file number printed on the top right-hand corner was the same number I scrawled in red wax at the dinner party. The realization worked its way down my spine until it was undeniable. These were the plans Max Pinter was referring to before he was dragged from the party . . . what Timmons was trying to tell me before he died.

  The blueprints indicated that the wing was underground, right below the main floor, not at all where Dane had told Beth it was going to be. I hoped to God I was reaching, trying to make connections that didn’t belong together, but I had to know the truth.

  Grabbing the plans, I ran down the stairs. As soon as I reached the main hall, the scent of the immortals’ blood filled my nostrils. Their stench should’ve dissipated by now, but it was more than that. Rhys’s blood was laced throughout. I’d know that smell anywhere. Was the council still here? Did they somehow get ahold of my brother? Following the scent to the ballroom, I flung the doors open to unleash a sea of blood, the floor littered with bodies. I wanted to run, to close the doors and never come back, but I could smell my brother among them. I had to make sure he wasn’t one of the dead. As I waded through the viscera, the bottom of my sheet soaking up their foul blood, I made a point to look at each and every face, frozen in a state of final agony. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport, Mr. and Mrs. Bridges, Mr. Jaeger, all of the immortals and the guards that were left behind to protect them. So many bodies.

  I was relieved to find that Rhys wasn’t among them, but Lucinda wasn’t there, either. I pried a champagne glass from one of the guards’ hands and took a whiff. There was no trace of my scent. It was Rhys’s blood, and it was fresh, too.

  I was racking my brain, trying to figure out how this happened, when I remembered Dane handing the blood bag to the guard, the same guard who went down to fetch the champagne. What if the guard brought up a different bag? Dane could’ve swapped those out in a heartbeat. Classic bait and switch—I’ve seen him do his little magic tricks with rocks, spoons—why not a blood bag? I couldn’t help going over every moment I spent with him, trying to decipher who I was really with, but none of that mattered anymore. I’d let myself be distracted by him for the last time.

  Dragging the blood-drenched sheet behind me like a corpse, I followed the lines of the blueprints, searching for a possible entry, when I found myself standing in front of a blank wall, the same wall Beth had urinated in front of when we first arrived, the same spot they found her weeping before they locked her away.

  I ran my hands over the wall, noticing Lucinda’s keys dangling from a false electrical socket.

  As I leaned down to turn the key, the wall popped open, sending fresh chills over my entire body.

  “Underfoot,” I whispered, a hollow sound escaping my throat.

  Slipping inside the darkened hallway, down two sets of metal stairs, I came to a glass-paneled door, which led to a small chamber. I peered inside the room; there was a solid metal door on the other side of the room, a half-dozen hazmat suits hanging from hooks in the wall, and a dozen or so metal cylinders lined up against the side wall. As soon as I stepped inside, the door locked behind me, a red light above the metal door on the far end flared, followed by a wet, hissing sound, as a fine mist sprayed down from the vents in the ceiling. It was some kind of hydrogen-peroxide-based solution. It was the same scent I always detected on Lucinda’s skin.

  I tried to open the metal door on the other side, but it was locked, too.

  “Three minutes,” a weak voice came from the back corner of the room.

  I whipped around to see Lucinda, slumped to the floor, blood seeping from her pores. “That’s how long it takes for the disinfection cycle.”

  “What is this place?” I asked as I tugged at the door.

  “All of this was created for you and your brother. A living tomb. We would keep you here, drain you, feed you just enough so you wouldn’t wither, but we’d have the disease and the cure. Coronado wanted to rule the council . . . rule the world.”

  “If my brother’s dead,” I said as I stalked toward her, “if this is some kind of a trap, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

  “I’m already dead,” she said as she closed her eyes. “Besides, I have nothing left to lose.”

  Pulling my hair back from my face, I took in a deep breath through my nose, trying to keep calm. More than anything, I wanted to paint the walls with her blood, but I needed answers. “Why haven’t you bled out like the others?” I said as I nudged her foot.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Coronado shared his blood with me—your blood. He said it would protect me. I believed him, because when I gave Rhys’s blood to Beth on that first night—”

  “Wait. That was the medicine you gave her?” I said as I clenched my fists.

  “That was before I knew.” She attempted to swallow.

  “Knew? Knew what? That you’re a psycho bitch?” I said as I paced in front of her.

  “That Beth wasn’t a seer hell-bent on destroying us . . . that you weren’t Katia, coming here for revenge, and that your brother was just a boy, a f
rail, sweet boy, caught in the fray.”

  “Don’t talk about my brother like you know him—like you care about him,” I said, my hands aching to be around her throat.

  “When Beth didn’t die, that was the proof I needed. But it needs to come directly from the source . . . I understand that now. Coronado’s blood only carries traces of yours. It wasn’t enough to protect me. It only slowed the process. I’m dying just the same.”

  “Good riddance,” I said as I turned away from her, staring up at the red light above the metal door, desperate for it to change.

  “He betrayed us both,” Lucinda said. “He must’ve switched the bag. He was always very good with his hands.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I said as I glared back at her. “He’s your brother. Your twin—”

  “You’ll never understand what it was like. All those years alone together in this house. He hid me from the world. And as centuries passed, I lost touch with right and wrong, good and bad; he was the only thing I had. But Katia was always hanging over us. My hatred for her clouded my judgment, made me do terrible things, and now I know it was all a lie.”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I tried to get you to run . . . but you were blinded by his charm . . . blinded by what he wanted you to see. I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands . . . to make you run. But Coronado was always one step ahead of me.”

  “And what about Timmons and Rennert and Max Pinter and all the other immortals you killed? You’re telling me you had no choice?”

  “All that was Coronado’s doing. He must’ve followed me to the alchemist’s, killing him after I left. I tried to stop Timmons’s death, but I was too late. Coronado’s been in control all along. Manipulating us. And when I saw what he was doing to Dane—”

  “What about what you were doing to Dane? You hurt him. I saw what happened. You broke his wrist—”

  “Inflicting pain is the only way to make Coronado retreat. My brother loves to inflict pain on others, but he will do anything to avoid the heat of an iron, the slice of a blade, the blow of a fist. Inflict pain and Coronado will hide from it like a coward to let Dane suffer in his place. I was trying to help you . . . both of you. The love you and Dane share is so pure. I’ve never seen a love like that. I thought I could reason with my brother, but when he married you, took you to his bed—our bed—I knew there was no going back.” She coughed, splashing blood on the back of her hand. “After sharing a womb, after everything I’ve done for him, sacrificed for him, he killed me along with the others, as if I were nothing. He wanted to be rid of me so he could have you all to himself, but you saw through him, didn’t you?” The slightest hint of a smile passed over her eyes. “You probably realized it wasn’t Dane the moment he touched you.”