Still in his dramatic, disparaging pose, Val cracked one eye open to peer at her. “What?”
“Val,” she said, growing serious, setting down her wineglass. “Where are you? I mean, where are you really?”
He let his hands fall slowly to his lap. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you in Romania?”
“No. Mia–”
“Maybe I could come visit you in person.”
His reaction, the abject horror that flashed across his face, startled her. “No. No, no, absolutely not.”
“Val–”
“No!”
She waited a beat, then said, patiently, “In modern-day prisons, prisoners can receive visitors.”
His face flushed. “I’m not in a modern-day prison.”
A shiver moved down her spine. “Val, where are you?” She said it with a touch of desperation now.
His jaw set, and he stared at the wall a long moment. Finally, he said, “Virginia,” and then vanished.
~*~
It was a coincidence, she told herself.
Val was in Virginia.
Her father was in Virginia.
Val was a Romanian vampire prince being held as a prisoner.
Her father was a scientist so obsessed with his work he’d allowed his family to fall apart.
Virginia was a whole state; there was no way they’d ever crossed paths. That their lives in Virginia were in any way connected.
But it was the sort of coincidence that nagged at her; that followed her into her dreams, until those dreams became nightmares.
~*~
She was sipping at an Instant Breakfast shake the next morning when Val’s voice sounded behind her: “I didn’t mean to run off yesterday.”
Mia was so startled she choked. She managed to swallow, and snagged a paper towel off the roll on the counter to wipe at her chin.
“Sorry,” Val said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
But when she turned around, she saw that his shoulders quaked with silent laughter, a smile hidden behind his hand.
He wore blue today, she noticed absurdly.
“Jerk,” she accused.
His eyes danced. For a moment, and then his hand fell away, and his smile dimmed, and he grew more serious. “I am sorry, though. About yesterday. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“You didn’t shout,” she said. Almost, but not quite. And she’d seen the emotion flickering across his face, hard to name. “But I was just trying to help.”
His mouth quirked to the side. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. She got the impression he’d practiced this. “I appreciate that you were trying to show me a kindness. That you would even consider…” He looked down at his hands and shook his head. “I don’t understand…But I am no regular prisoner, Mia.” He lifted his head again, gaze so direct she felt herself wanting to take a step back from it. “I am considered volatile, and dangerous; traitorous, and untrustworthy.”
“Are you those things?” She couldn’t really believe, afterward, that she’d asked such a thing.
He stared at her steadily. “What do you think?”
Careful. She wanted to be so careful here. “I think,” she said, slowly, “that real traitors never claim to be traitors.”
A thin, humorless smile touched his mouth. It was a beautiful mouth; lips thin but shapely, mobile, petal pink.
“And I think danger is relative.”
He released a single breath of quiet laughter. “Well, aren’t you the optimist?”
“No. I’m someone who’s spent weeks getting to know you. And I think wherever you are must really suck if you want to come dog my boring heels every day.”
He bristled. “You think – you think that’s what I’m doing? Dogging your heels?” He frowned. “You think I’m pathetic–”
“Val, no. Please calm down. Okay.”
He folded his arms and turned away from her, glaring at a cabinet face.
“I love spending time with you. I wish–” She caught herself before she could admit that she wished they had more time. That he could stay through the night; that she could open her eyes each morning and find him sleep-rumpled and gorgeous on the pillow next to her. He went very still, listening. “Every day it gets a little harder to think about you locked up in a cell somewhere. I hate it, Val. I wish I could change things for you.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up, a bitter smile. “No need wasting wishes on me.”
“I want to help you,” she said, and it sounded like a plea.
“You can’t. I’m locked in silver cuffs, and chains, and buried in the dungeon of a manor house out in the woods.”
Mia couldn’t help it; she gasped.
Val turned back to her, eyes bright with checked emotion. “Yes, darling. I am a horror. A monster who has to be locked in a cage.” He tilted his head, smile cutting. “And no one better get too close to the bars, lest my bloodlust get the best of me.”
All at once, she realized what he was doing.
She put her hands on her hips. “You’re trying to scare me off,” she accused.
His smile stayed fixed, but he blinked. “Am I?”
“You’re doing a shitty job of it too, by the way.”
He took a few huffing breaths, obviously offended.
Mia rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, don’t be stupid, Val.”
“I’ll have you know that I–”
“You asked yourself if I was lonely. You noticed I have zero social life. It’s just me, and the horses, and my books. You,” she faltered a second, chest tightening, afraid that admitting this would make her too vulnerable; would make the cramping of her stomach when she thought of him locked up in an actual dungeon somehow worse. She swallowed and pressed on. The time for cowardice had come and gone weeks ago. “You make every single day brighter. Every evening, when I unlock the door, I worry that it’ll be the night that you’re not here. And then you show up, and I…” She felt a furious blush stain her face. “And it feels like this amazing, secret, wonderful thing that I don’t have to share with anyone. That’s all mine.” You feel like you’re all mine, she didn’t say.
Throughout her speech, his expression had slowly blanked over…and then begun to warm, touched with wonder. He licked his lips. “I…”
“I’m sorry that you’re in a cell. In a dungeon. In cuffs.” Her voice cracked, the pain in her stomach spiking. What he’d said horrified her. “And I wish you’d let me help. That I could do something. But you won’t, so…” She shrugged. “Do you really want to scare me off? Or do you want to keep doing this?”
Whatever it was. As impossible as it seemed.
He swallowed. “I don’t…I don’t want to scare you away.”
“Good. ‘Cause like I said, you were doing a real shitty job of it,” she tried to tease.
But his smile bloomed sweet and pleased. “Alright.”
~*~
Her next USDF Regional qualifying show was two weeks away, and Donna had reduced her lesson workload so she could concentrate on getting Brando and herself ready for the competition.
Brando was having a stiff day – it happened, same as with human athletes – and so they’d worked on stretching, elasticity, and some simple gymnastics over cavaletti poles. Now, Brando stood clipped in crossties while Mia cold-hosed his front legs, freshly-showered body drying in the breeze of a box fan.
“I think he’s starting to recognize me,” Val said. He stood at Brando’s head, smiling softly as the gelding stretched his neck and reached toward him with his nose, nostrils flared. Val held up his hand for a sniff, and though that wasn’t possible, Brando tested the air anyway, bobbing his head in approving fashion. Val smiled, bright as the afternoon sun.
“He likes you,” Mia said, feeling soft and warm and hopeless.
“Hmm,” Val hummed, eyes sliding over. “Hopefully that’s mistress-approved.” He called her Brando’s mistress, which she found helplessly charming. She had been thin
king for a while now that whoever taught him English had been British, the very proper way he referred to things and composed his sentences.
“Mistress-approved,” she confirmed.
Val lowered his hand. He and the horse regarded one another, quiet and affectionate on both sides. It was quiet save the droning of the fan and the splashing of the water on the rubber floor mat.
“This show’s local, you know,” she said after a moment, after she’d worked up the courage – which was stupid, because they were together all the time, and they couldn’t even touch, so how was asking him to come to a show anything out of their strange ordinary? “If you wanted to come watch–”
She shouldn’t have been nervous, because before the words were even out of her mouth, Val was beaming at her. “Yes! I won’t be any trouble at all.”
“I know.” She smiled back.
~*~
Somewhere between reading aloud to him, and describing the taste of ice cream; between falling asleep on her sofa to the sound of his story about the time he and his brother got stuck on a parapet during a rousing game of medieval hide-and-seek, and the almost-crippling fear that one day he’d disappear, Mia realized that she had fallen in love with him. It was stupid, and painful, but unavoidable. She promised herself she wouldn’t let it wreck her.
But that was a pretty lie.
~*~
“Will your family be there?” he asked the night before the show, when she was lint-rolling her black wool coat.
She paused, lint-roller suspended against the coat’s shoulder, and let her eyes flick up and over the ironing board she’d unfolded, and to Val, where he sat cross-legged in her squishy old reading chair, chin cupped in his linked hands. His gaze was curious, imploring. She glanced away from it, smoothing the roller down the left sleeve again, lips pressed together against her initial, knee-jerk question: You haven’t ever met my father, have you?
One of the problems with realizing that she was in love with him was that there was still so much she didn’t know about him (like if he was even real, an obnoxious inner voice pointed out). She didn’t really know anything about his family, and he didn’t know anything about hers.
“No. Mom couldn’t get off work, and Dad hasn’t been in the picture for a long time. So.” She shrugged, tried to look casual about it. Inwardly, her pulse kicked up a notch. Whether he was a regular boy you met at a coffee shop, or a noncorporeal vampire prince who could float through walls, it turned out telling the guy you loved about your family was a bit nerve-wracking.
He was silent a beat – a beat too long. “The two of you don’t get along?”
When she looked at him again, his pleasant half-smile seemed off: affixed to his face, unnatural.
She snorted and returned her attention to her jacket. “I haven’t spoken to him in five years. Yeah. We don’t get along. Sure.”
“May I ask why?” His smile wasn’t the only thing off; his voice was too.
Slowly, Mia set the roller on the ironing board. A shiver stole down her backbone; a premonition. One she chose to ignore for the moment. “The long answer,” she said, “is that he’s a biologist with about a dozen degrees, and all he’s ever cared about is work. He was never home; he never remembered birthdays, or any holidays, really. He spent one whole Christmas in his lab. When he got home,” she breathed a humorless laugh, remembering, “Mom started yelling at him and he just…shrugged. He never yelled back. He wouldn’t fight with her.” Her face heated; she’d said too much. “Short answer: he’s an emotionless asshole who never loved us. So. No. We don’t get along. I don’t think he even remembers I exist.”
“And you believe that?”
“What?”
“That he doesn’t know you exist? In my experience, even terrible fathers have regrets.”
She lifted her brows. “Speaking from personal experience?”
He grimaced. “Yes.”
In a careful voice, she said, “You never talk about your family.”
He blinked. “That’s not true.”
“You tell me about being a little boy in Tîrgovişte,” she pressed, gently. “About you and Vlad as boys. But nothing after that.”
He glanced away, throat rippling as he swallowed. “It isn’t a pleasant story.”
“But I would listen if you wanted to tell it.”
A pause. “I don’t.”
“Okay, fair enough. But the offer stands if you change your mind.”
~*~
She slept poorly. Her usual show nerves were overlaid with a sick ball of dread that turned over and over in her stomach like a stone. Val was under no obligation to tell her about his past…but the longer they went without discussing it, the more convinced she became that it was truly terrible.
Later, she told herself sternly. Worry about that later. She had two blue ribbons to win.
Her alarm went off at four, and she was too busy rushing between bedroom and bathroom, getting ready, to worry about whether Val would appear before she left for the barn. She’d told him the address of the park – “What, do you have some sort of psychic GPS?” – and the barn number. He could find her; right now, she needed to focus.
“Get deeper in the corner,” she murmured to her reflection as she braided her hair with the help of a lot of styling cream. Flyaways were an equestrian’s worst enemy. “Half-halt, half-halt-squeeze…” Donna’s instructions to her turned into a mantra. Her stomach felt tangled with too many butterflies.
She grabbed a PowerBar she was too nervous to eat, and the cooler she’d packed last night, and hit the road in the pitch blackness before dawn. When she got to Everdale, all the barn lights were on, blazing against the dark, the truck and trailer rig lit up with happy orange running lights. Donna had hooked up the four-horse; Mia had packed all her tack in the dressing room the night before.
It was thirty minutes of controlled chaos: Mia and her three fellow bleary-eyed-but-wired students woke and fed their horses; brushed them; wrapped their legs for travel; secured their leather head guards between their ears, attached to their sheepskin-padded halters. They all checked the tack room one last time to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything. Chuckled nervously with one another; show day camaraderie. Then Donna appeared, in fawn full-seats, white farm polo, and sunglasses…even though it was still dark out. She clapped her hands, once. “Let’s load up, ladies.”
Horses were led, snorting a little in anticipation of the trailer and early hour, to the ramp and loaded up. Then it was off for the park.
Dawn bloomed with the slow, purple unfurling of spring iris over the show barns, warm and honeyed.
Mia fastened Brando’s girth on the loosest holes, the first of several adjustments, and let out a long, slow breath that quavered at the end. Damn, she was nervous.
A soft, fond, familiar voice spoke from behind her. “I don’t know why you’re worried. You’re the best horseman here.”
Mia turned, already smiling, butterflies in her stomach surging up toward her throat, and found Val with his arms crossed, leaning back against the stall wall, one booted foot propped behind him. His hair was pulled back at the crown, loose down his back, highlighting his cut-glass cheekbones and narrow, knife-edged jaw.
“You don’t know that,” she said, tone softer than the mocking one she’d aimed for. He was here. And suddenly she wasn’t nervous anymore; she was excited to show him what she could do. “You haven’t seen anyone else here ride. Also, Donna Masters is three stalls over.”
He shrugged. “Your hands are quieter.”
Mia…blinked at him. She’d shown him some old Olympic video of Donna, had gushed about how she couldn’t believe she got to work for one of her childhood idols. And Val had just said she had quieter hands. She didn’t know what to do with that.
“Pfft,” she scoffed, turning back to tighten the girth another notch. “Flatterer.”
“You think so?” He moved to stand beside her, spectral hand hovering over Brando’s side. “I�
��m unfailingly honest, actually. It’s always been one of my worst traits.”
Mia sent him a sideways glance, expecting to find a smirk, a teasing little wink. Instead, Val stared at Brando’s shiny bay coat, brows pinched, mouth tucked at a thoughtful angle.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s…one of the nicest things anyone’s ever told me.”
“Then that.” His head turned, blue gaze falling on her unforgivingly. “Is a terrible shame.”
She felt heat gathering in her cheeks. She wanted to kiss him right now. Reach up to trace those cheekbones with careful fingertips, slide her hands into the silken curtain of his hair, pull him down and kiss him.
Truly unhelpful thoughts at the moment.
“Mia,” Donna said from the open stall door, and Mia whipped around.
Her trainer frowned at her. “Who are you talking to?”
“Uh…” This amazing guy who you can’t see right now. “No one, just Brando.” The lie tasted greasy on her tongue.
Donna’s frown twitched; she didn’t believe. “Are you about ready? It’s time to head down to the warm-up arena.”
“Yeah, coming.” Mia tightened the girth for the last time and Brando tossed his head.
She turned back to Val, quickly, and he flashed her a toothy grin and a wink. “What is it modern Americans say? Break a leg?”
~*~
Brando always got a little wiggy in the warm-up ring. He was a serious horse, ordinarily, with a tremendous work ethic, and a touch of true sweetness that he expressed through gentle nudges of his nose and polite requests for ear scratches. But the things that made him a stellar athlete also made him nervous, and the hustle and bustle of almost a dozen horses moving through portions of their tests got his back tense and his neck bowing. He blew sharp little snorts with every step, eyes flicking wildly back and forth.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 5