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chance I could run away now?
My fingertips came away dry.
I didn’t understand. I probed my skin again, but I could find
no trace of the wound. Yet I knew—I knew—she had been drinking my blood.
It’s the serum! The serum they’d given me for the trials had been designed to help me access my vampire side. Of course. I
couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it sooner. Some of the substance
must still be present in my body, and it was accelerating my healing.
Thank God.
I looked up at Moira. She stared back at me. Something had
changed. There was fear in her eyes now.
I had scared her.
She wrapped her hands around the piece of wood I’d stuck
her with and pulled it slowly from her body, crying out in rage and
pain as she did so. She threw it to one side, and it clattered to the floor, staining the stone with her blood.
I slid forward, off the throne and onto my feet. I felt my lip
curl away from my teeth, baring them. I felt myself sink into a
crouch. I did none of it deliberately. I didn’t even think about it. My body was acting on instinct.
I didn’t even realize, until I saw Moira fall into a crouch that
mirrored my own, that these were the actions of a vampire.
I waited for her to spring, but she didn’t. She seemed
frightened, hesitant. She had misjudged my strength and my
abilities, and she knew it now.
Of course, I had no idea where the boundary of my strength
lay. But I wasn’t going to let her see that.
“Guards!” she shrieked suddenly, the cry echoing through
the acoustically resonant throne room. “Guards!”
Two guards were at my side in an instant. They were huge,
hulking men, towering over me, and I knew instinctively that I had
no chance of fighting them off. Not both of them. It wouldn’t matter how much of the serum remained in my blood. I couldn’t possibly
take them.
One of them grabbed my arm, and I knew right away that I’d
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been correct in my assessment. His grip was like a vice.
“Yes, My Lady?” said the second guard.
“Take her down to the cellar with the others,” Moira said.
Her voice was a volatile hiss. “I thought I could use her. I thought she might help me. But you can’t trust anyone besides yourself. I
should have known. Put her in a cell until I have further need of
her.” “Yes, My Lady,” the first guard said.
They dragged me from the throne room. I would have
walked under my own power—I had no desire to stay with Moira,
and she had mentioned locking me up with the others, which had to be a good thing. But the guards seemed to enjoy manhandling me.
They pulled me along so quickly that I couldn’t get my feet
underneath me, even when we reached the stairs that led down into
the cellar I had never visited before.
Could there really be jail cells below the palace? Even
knowing that that was where I was being taken, it was hard to
believe that such a thing could be part of Cryder’s home. What need
would he have ever had to lock anybody up? I couldn’t picture it. He was too kind, too caring. Cryder would never have used these cells.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded a corner,
and I saw them.
“Cryder!” I shrieked. I couldn’t help myself. I thought my
heart might explode with relief at the sight of him. He’s alive. He’s okay. Oh, God.
He looked up at the sound of my voice, and in a flash, he was
at the front of his cell, reaching through the bars. I grabbed his hand and pulled myself close to him, feeling as if I was being pulled to
shore after having almost drowned. “Rena,” he breathed, reaching
out to stroke my cheek. “Thank God you’re all right. We had no idea
what had happened to you. I was so worried.”
“So was I.” To my horror, I was crying. The shock of it all
had caught up to me, and now I clung to him desperately. “I’m so
glad you’re okay—”
I looked past him. Samuele sat slumped against the wall, his
usual regal bearing gone. He has always been pale, but now he
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looked as white as bone. “He’s the one, isn’t he?” I breathed. “Your father. She fed on him.”
“You know?” Cryder asked. He glanced back over his
shoulder. Drake, who was kneeling beside Samuele, looked up and
nodded darkly.
“That’s enough,” one of the guards holding me barked.
“Lock her up.”
I cried out as they ripped me away from Cryder. “For God’s
sake!” he yelled, shaking the bars of his cell. “Put her in with me!
What difference does it make to you? She’s human! She’s not going
to do anything.”
The guards ignored him and led me to a second cell. I could
see Cecile inside, curled up in a ball with her head resting on her
knees. Giorgia sat beside her, an arm wrapped around her shoulders,
watching the proceedings with a cold gaze. In that moment, I
realized how dangerous it would be to have Giorgia as an enemy,
and I did not envy my guards. When this was all over, she wasn’t
going to be forgiving.
Assuming we could find a way out of this, that was.
The guards unlocked the cell and pushed me inside. I
stumbled and fell to my knees, but that was fine. I wanted to be on
the same level as Giorgia and Cecile anyway. I crawled over and sat
beside my best friend.
“Cecile?” I asked. “Are you okay? She didn’t hurt you, did
she?” Cecile shook her head but didn’t speak.
“She’s all right,” Giorgia said quietly. “I think she might be
in shock. She’s never seen an attack like this before.”
I felt horrible. Poor Cecile. She had never asked to be a part
of this life. By rights, she shouldn’t even be here. She should be
home with her mother, or off enjoying her first steps into the adult world—the human adult world. She was a vampire because of her involvement with me, and now those doors were forever closed to
her. I wrapped my arms around my friend.
“What about Samuele?” I asked Giorgia. “Is he going to be
okay?”
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“Yes,” she said. “He’s already stronger than he was an hour
ago. Moira took a lot of blood, and he has some recuperating to do,
but he’ll heal.”
I couldn’t imagine how she must be feeling. If it had been
Cryder who Moira had hurt, I would have been out of my mind. And
for Giorgia’s own sister to be the perpetrator of all this violence...I was amazed that she was keeping it together as well as she was.
Pay attention, I told myself. This is what a queen does.
“What about you?” Giorgia asked. “We’ve been so worried
about you, Rena. It’s your position she wants, after all. We had no
idea what she would do to you.”
“I let her take some of my blood,” I admitted. “Is that going
to cause a problem? I thought it wouldn’t make things much worse,
since she’d clearly already been drinking royal blood.”
“You let her?” Giorgia asked
.
“She said I had to pick someone for her to drink from,” I
explained. “I couldn’t let her choose one of you.”
“Oh, Rena…” Giorgia reached around Cecile and pushed my
hair back from my neck to reveal my throat, and I could tell she was looking for the bite mark, checking to see how badly I was
wounded.
“I’m all right,” I said. “She only had me for a few seconds,
and then...well, I don’t know what happened. The throne broke in
my hand and I stabbed her with a piece of wood. She backed off.
She looked kind of freaked out, and then she sent me down here.”
Giorgia frowned. “Those thrones shouldn’t break,” she said.
“Only a full vampire would be strong enough to break them.”
“Well, I think I’ve got some of the trial serum in my system
still,” I said. “My trial ended early, and I’ve been feeling weird since I came out of it. Kind of ragey and stronger than usual. And then,
my bite healed up as soon as Moira was off me. It was right here.” I pressed two fingers against the spot. “And now it’s just gone.”
Giorgia gasped.
“What’s going on?” Cryder called anxiously from the next
cell. “Rena, did I hear you say she bit you?”
“She did, but I’m all right,” I assured him. “It’s the serum
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from the trials. It’s got me healing up quickly. I think it really
freaked her out, actually.”
Giorgia shook her head. “It isn’t the serum,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The serum wouldn’t last this long. You’ve been gone for
hours, Rena. It’s out of your system now.”
“I don’t understand, then,” I said. “Why am I healing
quickly? Why do I feel so...heightened? It can’t just be adrenaline.”
“It’s not,” she said quietly. “It’s the trials themselves. You
passed, Rena. You’re coming into your full power as vampire and as
queen. That’s what you’re feeling. It isn’t the serum. It’s your true nature manifesting.” She gave me a small smile. “You’re one of us
now, for better or worse.”
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Chapter Fifteen
One of us now. For better or worse.
For better or worse.
I hadn’t known what I would feel the day I became a
vampire, fully and completely. I had known this was coming, of
course, but I had never known exactly what to expect from it. It had always seemed so distant, almost hypothetical. It had seemed like
something that would happen to someone else, someone who existed
so far in the future that she would no longer really be me.
I had thought of it in the same way as I had thought of things
like growing old. I’d known, in my human life, that old age lay
ahead, but it wasn’t connected to who I was in the present.
But that had been foolish. I had known that my vampire life
wasn’t far away, off in some distant future I could hardly
contemplate. It was just around the corner, waiting to catch up with me. I should have been better prepared.
My mind reeled now at Giorgia’s words. You’re one of us
now, for better or worse.
What did that mean?
“Why would it be worse?” I asked her, my voice trembling.
“I thought this was a good thing. What’s worse about it?”
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I realized, suddenly and with a stab of confusion, that
Giorgia was backing away from me. She moved slowly, cautiously,
and it was clear that she was trying not to alarm me.
She was also positioning herself between me and Cecile.
“What’s going on?” I asked, feeling suddenly anxious.
Giorgia inhaled. “There’s a ceremony,” she said quietly. “It
was our plan, always, for you to awake from the trials with Cryder
by your side. He should have been right there with you when you
first came into your power. It never should have happened this
way.” “I don’t understand what you mean,” I said, frightened.
“You’re scaring me, Giorgia.”
“As a new vampire...you need the blood of your mate,” she
said. “The blood completes the process, brings you fully into our
world. The blood would allow you to ascend the throne.”
And Cryder was locked in another cell, away from me. I
couldn’t get to his blood. “So, I won’t be able to be queen?” I asked.
It was a blow, but at the same time, it didn’t explain why Giorgia
was acting so cagey. Did she think I was going to fly into a rage and start attacking people because I couldn’t be queen?
Could I blame her if she did think that? That was what her
sister was currently in the process of doing.
But it isn’t the same. I’m not like Moira.
“It’s not just that,” Giorgia said. “It’s…” she hesitated.
“Giorgia. Tell me what’s going on.” I was surprised at
myself, speaking to the queen so bluntly, but she didn’t seem to
notice my lack of decorum. She was like a cornered animal, so much
so that I actually looked over my shoulder to see if perhaps we were being stalked by someone who might mean her harm.
“If you don’t get his blood, you won’t turn out right,” she
said, her voice a breathy whisper. “You’ll be wrong. Damaged.”
Was it my imagination, or did I hear a buzzing sound in my
head? “What do you mean?” I implored her again. “When you say
damaged, what does that mean?”
“She means you’ll be like me,” a voice said.
I knew who was speaking. I didn’t need to look. But it was
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as if Moira’s voice had placed a hook inside me somehow, jerking
me around to face her, throwing me off balance. I physically
stumbled as I turned, and she laughed. It was a high, cold, menacing laugh that made me feel as if my insides had turned to ice.
I reached for the righteous anger I had felt before, the desire
that had fueled me to escape when she’d had me cornered on the
throne, but I couldn’t find it. My body seemed to be paralyzed.
“Like you?” I whispered.
I hated to ask her for anything. I hated turning to her for
answers. But Giorgia seemed afraid to explain herself, or even to
look at me. Moira, for all her horror, was not afraid of me now, and I knew that she was the only one I could rely on to give me the
information I so badly needed.
“There are others like me, you know,” Moira said. “Other
rogues. You don’t see us around here because we’re outcast from
society, because the ruling class—my dear sister and her bleeding-
heart little husband over here—they’ve decided we’re not fit to live among their kind.”
“You’re not fit to live among us.” I thought that was Drake.
The sharp, grating tone was familiar. I wished I could see him. “You deserve to be cast out.”
“Really?” Moira cooed. “Are you sure? And is that what
you’ll say to sweet little Rena when she becomes one of us?” She
was suddenly right in front of the bars of my cage, leering in at me as if she was a bratty child and I was a zoo animal. “Did you hear
him, little human?” she asked. “Remember those words
. Remember
what he said when you’re thrown out of their society, when you go
rogue and become just like me. Your friend here, all the people you
love and trust, they think it’s no more than what you deserve.”
I was shaking. “I’m not human,” I told her. “I’m vampire
now. And I’ll never be like you”
“Oh really? You won’t?” she laughed. “You heard my dear
sister. You have to drink of the blood of your mate in order to
complete your transformation into one of them. Fail to do so and you’ll be stuck in limbo. You’ll be partially turned. That’s where
rogues come from.”
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“Cryder?” I asked, trying hard not to sound like I was going
to cry. It was a struggle. I didn’t think I’d ever been that close to tears, while still managing to hold back, in my entire life.
“It’s okay, Rena,” Cryder said. “It’s all right. This was
always the plan. I was always going to give you blood to help you
complete the transformation. You and I are soulmates, and all we
need is to bind ourselves to each other. Once we do, your
transformation will be complete, and you won’t have anything else
to worry about. You’ll ascend the throne, just like we talked about, and we’ll put all this behind us.”
His words were meant to be reassuring, I knew, but they
weren’t. I had never felt less reassured. Because in that moment, Cryder didn’t sound like Cryder at all. He didn’t sound like the
person who had helped me find safety when Bristol had been
hunting me. He didn’t sound like the one who had told me his family
would accept me, and that I didn’t have anything to worry about.
Cryder had always been able to make me feel safe. But now
his words weren’t helping. He was locked in another cage, and he
might as well have been miles away from me. His voice sounded as
shaky as mine. I knew he was watching his father bleed. I knew he
was terrified.
And then Moira bared her teeth at me. “Sounds nice, doesn’t
it?” she said. “He shares himself with you, and you live happily ever after. Except—oh, silly me—I put you two in separate cages!” She
laughed. “What on earth was I thinking? I can’t imagine.”
And she gave a little shrug, as if to say that the matter was of
no consequence.
It was more than I could take.
The anger I had felt before came roaring back, but this time
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