by Keary Taylor
The wind has shifted, blowing the smoke back toward the mountain. It clears the view, and the entire valley of Roter Himmel opens up before us.
We can see everything from up here.
The homes. The old church.
And the countless tents pitched. The thousands of bodies milling about.
A look of horror fills Cyrus’ face. He turns pale white. His body trembles.
“It’s alright, my love,” I say, squeezing his hand. “That was me. All of this was my doing.”
He blinks once, his mouth slightly slack. But he blinks again, even if he’s still pale white.
But he closes his mouth. He swallows once.
So I pull him behind me again. I guide us back down the path that leads to the side door. The world around us grows brighter by the moment.
The pain just begins to stab at the back of my brain when we step into the safety of the castle, and I close the door firmly behind us.
Chapter 16
“The castle is completely empty,” I say as we step through the room and enter the hallway. Cyrus’ brows furrow, looking around in confusion. “It’s just us here. It will be for a little while.”
He swallows once and nods. I can see there are a million questions in his eyes. But now is not the time, and that is not what either of us wants to talk about.
“Let’s get you to a shower,” I say. The confusion in his eyes, the uncertainty, and the exhaustion, they break my heart.
What has he just gone through?
“Cyrus,” I say softly. I reach out for his hand, taking it in mine. Gently, I pull him behind me.
We work our way through the castle. We rise up two floors. And down the hall.
There, at the end of it, I see the giant doors to our bedroom.
What am I ready for? What does us being here, in our space, finally together, mean?
My heart beats rapidly.
My palms sweat.
But I can only be grateful. We have so much to figure out. But at least we’re here.
At least Cyrus is not dead.
I push the doors open and we step inside. Because I’m scared and I don’t even know where to begin, I go straight for the bathroom and start the water in the enormous shower. I turn it hot, testing the water for a moment.
“I’ll find you something to wear,” I say, turning to Cyrus.
There’s a confused, empty look in his eyes.
And I can’t blame him.
He may have just come back from the dead.
“You go ahead and shower,” I say, explaining things in very simple terms. “I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom.”
He blinks twice and nods, stepping into the bathroom.
I’m a ball of nerves as I step out, shutting the door behind me. I’m trembling as I go to the closet, gathering clothing for Cyrus. Mindlessly, I gather things, not really paying attention to what I grab. Without looking, I open the door to the bathroom slightly, laying the clothing on the counter, and exiting once more.
Nervously, I pace the bedroom.
So much anticipation.
I’ve imagined this day for over a week now, really, for multiple lifetimes. But now that it’s here, now that we’ve had our grand, epic moment of him opening his eyes, now that we’ve shared our first kiss as Logan and Cyrus, I don’t know what to do from here.
Do we just go about living as husband and wife? King and Queen?
I’m terrified of that idea.
I’m just Logan. I’ve never been married. I’ve never even had sex.
There’s too much pressure.
I sit on the edge of the bed and sit on my hands before I can explode into a racing ball of nerves.
But still, my heart rockets into my throat the second I hear the water in the shower shut off. My ears are simply too powerful, and I hear every movement and can nearly exactly picture every step he takes. As he towels off. As he pulls on the clothes.
And when his hand goes to the doorknob. When he twists it.
And then when he steps out, into our bedroom.
He wears the black pants I grabbed, and I see the waistband of his gray underwear. His feet are bare. He pulls the pale green button up onto his frame, but as his eyes lock with mine, he seems to forget to button it up.
I sit there, frozen. I can only stare at him, so many warring emotions raging through me.
So I focus on him. On his green eyes. On that wild, untamed dark hair. On his lips. On the valley that cuts between his chest muscles and continues in a line down his stomach.
He’s so beautiful.
But I quiver inside. I’m a scared mess.
“I don’t know where to start,” I confess. “After everything…all of this. So much has happened. I just…” I shake my head. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
Cyrus takes a step forward, and another. He comes to stand just before me and reaches out to take one of my hands.
“Are you scared?” he asks gently. He studies my hand, my knuckles.
I nod. “Yes.”
His eyes rise up to mine. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, as if evaluating my response, and how to give his own. He just keeps looking at me. Reading my soul. Searching down deep.
“I need you to know,” he says. And with his first words, I feel this…surge. Pulling me to him. Lacing us together even tighter. “That I have been scared, too. So scared for these past few weeks. The uncertainty. The worry.”
I understand. Because I sent him here, back to Roter Himmel, and refused to go with him. I asked for space. For time.
“I understood the pain I’ve caused you,” he says. I look into his eyes, and his voice thickens. He’s pale. I can see it: he’s still scared. “And finally, I accepted my own.”
He kneels so that he is between my legs. He looks up into my face, and I see him. A man submitting. Opening. After 286 years of being alone and ruling with an iron fist, he lays himself vulnerable.
“I need you to know,” he says, his voice low and husky. “Before your Resurrection, I watched you, Logan. I saw you. Every move you made. I listened to every breath you took. I was utterly aware of everything you did.”
He shifts just slightly closer and my eyes widen and my heart skips a little beat.
He places a hand on my thigh, and his look deepens.
“Everything you did over that month we spent together pushed me further and further. It all slowly drove me mad.” I think I see anger gather in his eyes. “At night, dreams of you filled my head, Logan.”
My heart flutters, something quivers in my stomach. “The things that wandered through my brain…” he trails off and his voice sounds shamed. “The desires that woke my body up.” He shakes his head, but he does not look away.
He reaches forward and caresses my jaw. “I could not admit it to you then, and I could not admit it to myself until just now.” He stops for a moment. And I see it. This is hard for him. This is stripping away every ounce of pride he has to say the words. “I fell in love with you over that month, Logan Pierce.”
My insides explode into a million diamonds at his confession.
“The hatred I felt toward myself was immeasurable,” he continues. “And I hated you. Because in all these centuries, millennia, I never, ever once was tempted by another. I longed for my wife and had never looked at another woman. But then there was you. And for the first time, I lusted for someone I did not know was Sevan. I craved your company like every living creature on this earth craves oxygen.”
I feel emotion prick the backs of my eyes, and emotion fills Cyrus’ own.
I reach up, clasping a hand around Cyrus’ wrist. It’s hard to breathe. He’s filled me to the brim with emotions.
“You said you’d wanted me to love you as you, as Logan,” Cyrus breathes. “I hated that I did. I tried not to. But everything, everything, about you made me.”
He leans in closer, and we breathe the same air. “I am so eternally grateful that we have finally been returned t
o one another, Sevan. But I also must confess. That for the first time, I fell in love with another.”
I lean forward, touching my forehead to his. And my blood goes electric with the connection.
“I did fall in love with you,” Cyrus breathes, his breath warming my face. “I am in love with you, Logan.”
Every broken piece in me slips into place. All my bitterness and all my hurt. All the injustices I’ve felt over my twenty years of life slip into a smooth and blissful mirror that reflects the whole me.
I wrap my hand behind his neck, and I can’t wait another second longer when I close the distance between our lips.
Our kiss starts out as passionately gentle. Love and acceptance creep into every crevice of it. Admission and progress make it sweet and perfect.
The hunger grows in me. I clasp him harder to me. My lips part and greedily I taste him.
I pull at Cyrus, twisting. He lays back on the bed, and with lust in my eyes, I straddle his hips. My hand caresses his jaw, and I press my chest into his.
Cyrus’ hands come to my hips, and electricity sparks its way from my stomach down my legs. His hands are hot and strong, so very, very real.
My hair cascades down around our faces, deepening the darkness.
But my lips move with Cyrus’ and our souls melt into one.
That tiny spark of fear creeps up inside of me again though as Cyrus’ right hand slips down my hip, onto my bare thigh.
I must have made some small sound. Or maybe he felt my hesitancy.
But Cyrus pulls his lips away from mine. He reaches up and pushes my hair back, tucking it behind my ear, and holds me so gently.
“No one can understand,” Cyrus says gently. “How complicated this is. It’s difficult, even for me. Because for the first time in my life, I find myself in love with two women.”
No wonder it was so hard for Cyrus to admit it, the fact that he loves and loved Logan. Because that part of me, Sevan, the words are difficult for even her to hear.
“I feel I must do right by you, Logan,” he says, staring into my eyes. “Because even though I know without a doubt in me that I love you, we still have only spent a month together. I…” he hesitates, and it’s obvious he doesn’t know how to word this. How this is so complicated.
“We need some time to get to know each other,” I fill in for him, the first words I’ve spoken in a while. “I’m here, Cyrus. I am with you. But I do need time.”
He studies me, and I see the relief in his face. The echo of what I’ve just spoken.
“Sevan knows everything about you, and you, everything about her,” I say, speaking with the words of both women. “But Logan needs time. I’m still only twenty-years-old. I’ve still never really had a serious relationship. I’ve never been married. I’ve…” I hesitate at the confession, slightly embarrassed, but at the same time, I’m relieved. “I’ve never even had sex.”
Cyrus reaches up again, tucking my hair behind my ear. His eyes are so soft, so open. And I know there’s no getting out of this hole. There’s no escaping the well I’ve fallen down into.
“I’m here with you, Cyrus,” I say, leaning in closer, his scent filling my nose. “I’ll never leave. But I, Logan, need to play this out. I need it to build, in a way that is real to me.”
Cyrus nods, a little smile pulling on his lips. “Yes,” he says. “Anything, Logan.”
Logan.
Oh. When he says my name…
He fractures me and pieces me back together all in two syllables.
“But I want you to know this,” I say gently, coming closer. “Forgetting every past life, forgetting the first, I, Logan Pierce, have fallen irrevocably in love with a man the world fears and obeys, because I see the real you. Because you take my acid. I love you, Cyrus.”
I see what my words do to him. I hear his heart skip. I feel the blood rush through his body. I see his eyes widen just slightly. And I know that the words that come out of his mouth next will be the absolute truth.
“And I, after only this short amount of time,” he says, reaching up and cupping a hand behind my neck. “Found a mate who matches my own dark soul. I love you, Logan Pierce.”
He means it. I know it, with every doubtful, bitter part of Logan, I know it.
I feel it when he pulls my lips to his.
I feel it as he holds me to him.
I feel his promise to never let me go.
Chapter 17
I’ve never spent hours kissing anyone, but they pass quickly wrapped in Cyrus’ arms.
He takes things slow. It seems to be enough for him, the touches and our lips fusing together as one. He never pressures me for anything more. And Sevan stays in the back of my head, quiet and dark.
Together, just Logan and Cyrus, we have a perfect day.
But as the night begins to fall outside, I feel the call. The hunger.
Together, Cyrus and I leave the castle. We slip across the valley. And then with incredible speed, we race through the canyon, to where we know the next town is.
It’s incredibly easy. There are only a hundred or so humans that live in this little village. But silently, we break into a home, and we drink.
The woman’s eyes flash open for just a moment, but paralyzed by my toxins, they slip closed once more.
I suck and pull, looking at Cyrus, who drinks from the man lying beside this woman in bed.
We drink our fill, and when we are full and when I can feel the amount I’ve taken from her, we leave them be, sleeping it off in their beds, to only awake thinking they’ve had a nightmare.
Together, we make our way back to the castle, avoiding the encampment of the army that holds the people of the town captive.
Walking through the doors of the castle in the dead of night, my thirst is sated, but my stomach growls with hunger.
“Come on,” I say, reaching for Cyrus’ hand with a smile. “I’m starving. I’ll make us some dinner.”
“I thought you couldn’t cook?” he questions with a smirk and the upward tilt of his eyebrow.
I shrug. “It’s a day for miracles.”
I’m sure Cyrus has never been in this kitchen in its current form. It’s huge and gleaming with stainless steel. Every gadget possible is tucked here and there, organized to obsession. A huge walk-in refrigerator and freezer sit side by side.
Thoughtfully, I gather ingredients, and I realize, they’re all going to go bad within a week with all the help locked up. Better get to cooking.
Together, Cyrus and I make fettuccini Alfredo. When we’re finished, we slip into the room next to the kitchen. It’s the workers’ dining room. There’s a roughly hewn wooden table, massively long. It could probably seat twenty people.
But just us, Cyrus and I sit, looking at each other from across the table as we eat the meal that I only burned a little bit.
“You have to have a lot of questions about what’s going on outside,” I say, swallowing a bite.
Instantly, Cyrus’ eyes darken and his relaxed demeanor falls.
My Logan-esque hardness forms, prepared to have to defend my decisions and actions. And I’m grateful for Sevan there, at my side, who is so confident that this is the right move.
“There are rumors and conformations manifested that Born and Royals alike are trying to take us out,” I say. “There were those who came after us—me, in Greendale. They were going to use me to make you step away from the throne. They told me that there was insurrection brewing in Court. And then there was what happened to you.”
My eyes slide down to his neck. There isn’t even a scar now, but I’ll never forget the bloody sight of his head detached from the rest of his body.
“I interrogated the man who did it,” I move on. “He snuck over the border. Considering no one sounded the alarm, that he got into the castle silently, I have to think at least one Royal was helping him. And he said something about having no choice but to trust a Royal, if he wanted change.”
Cyrus grits his teeth hard
, but doesn’t say anything.
“I’m trying to take care of this, but there are so few I trust. Larkin is on assignment. But that only leaves me with Alivia, Ian, and Eshan.”
At the mention of Alivia’s name, Cyrus’ eyes flare just a little.
“Yes,” I say, sounding annoyed. “She’s here. She’s helping me. Get over it.”
He gives me a little glare, so I immediately move on.
“The man is dead now, but he confessed that there were five others in Roter Himmel who were in on this, too. Two are dead already. But as for any of the Royals who were in on it…” I take another bite, slowly chewing, as everything overwhelms me once more. “We did an initial interrogation and ended up with six I intended to question further.”
Cyrus watches me, listening. But he seems uneasy.
“But I knew it wasn’t near enough. People can be two-faced liars. So I took a page out of your book.” I look up at him, and at my words, his eyes widen a bit. “I needed to make them afraid for their very lives.”
“All that out there is staged,” Cyrus concludes.
I nod.
“Dorian and Malachi helped me orchestrate it all,” I continue. “They loaned me their private human armies and we made them look like the Austrian government. They’ve all been placed under arrest for killing humans over the years.”
“They are going to interrogate Court and try to get them to confess what we are,” Cyrus says, sitting back, observing me. I see a twinkle of pride and admiration in his eyes.
I nod. “Anyone who confesses to being a vampire will be shipped off to the Houses around the world, where they can deal with them. They’ll never be allowed back at Court. And they’ll get a hard, life-long lesson in appreciation for what they had here in Court.”
Cyrus nods, but there’s still that far away look in his eyes.
“In the end, Court will be severely downsized, but any traitors will be rooted out because they will fear for their lives.”
I study Cyrus, now that he’s been brought up to speed. He studies the wall behind me, his eyes a bit glazed over.
“These are going to be some dark, tumultuous days in the weeks to come,” I say, my voice low and soft. “But in the end, we need to know who we can and cannot trust. Above all, we have to protect our secret.”