‘Yes; your grandparents. They’ve been put up in your old room, and in a couple of days you may visit them.’ He performed a little bow, complete with circling hand.
I stood there, staring into space for a long moment before tears sprang to my eyes. I looked to Damir, waiting for him to laugh and declare it all a joke; but his face only softened, so much that he almost resembled Marko.
‘You can thank me whenever you’re ready,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to have a polygamous marriage during my reign. I might even start a new trend here in Marin. Declare polygamy law.’
Marko dropped his blades and lunged at Damir, shoving him up against the wall. A guard waiting in the wings started forward but Damir raised a hand to halt him.
I bent down and collected Marko’s daggers from the ground and tucked them behind my back.
‘What? You don’t believe me?’ he asked Marko, his eyes sparkling with excitement and evil and spite all at once.
‘I believe you,’ spat Marko. ‘But now I want to kill you for risking their lives by bringing them here.’
‘You flatter me,’ said Damir, his hand to his heart, a theatrical smile on his lips. ‘But the fact is,’ he stared hard at Marko, ‘Miranda’s family are here now. Her sister is about to have my child. I am the true and rightful king, and you are guests in my home right now; so, unless you want to be thrown out, so that Miranda will never see her grandparents again, you’d better learn how to behave like a good baby brother.’
I edged closer to Marko and, instead of placing a dagger in his hand, I leaned in and whispered, ‘Let him go, please. I have to see them.’
He stiffened beneath my touch but eventually withdrew his hold on his brother. It was hard for him to bow down like this and submit to his brother’s request, and harder still for me to watch. But I didn’t want him hurt. And I wanted to see my grandparents, wanted to be there when they woke up from their drug-addled state.
‘This room and that one,’ Damir nodded to Marko’s room, ‘they’re both yours. I’ve repossessed my old one. It should be ready by now. It’s bigger than these quarters, and I don’t really care to share sheets with you, brother. We’re not that close.’
Marko flinched beside me, then took the daggers from my hands and sheathed them.
‘We’ll stay. Until Miranda’s grandparents have woken. When they are well enough to travel, we will all leave the castle and live in the city.’ He glared at Damir. ‘That is, if they survive the next couple of days.’
Damir shrugged. ‘They wanted to come.’ He pointed to me. ‘Your grandfather begged me to bring them after I told him about the light crystal’s powers. He wants to help your grandmother find her marbles again.’
In a blink I found myself slapping Damir’s cheek so hard his head swung to the side. He swore out loud and rubbed his cheek. My own hand throbbed like I’d just hammered it with a mallet. I shook it and tried not to show the pain.
Again he held his palm up to the twitching guard beside him, while Marko restrained my arms with his.
‘Don’t speak about my grandmother like that. Don’t go near them,’ I spat.
Damir nodded. ‘Still feisty I see,’ he said with a grin, his eyes roving down to my heaving chest.
Marko lunged for Damir again; but this time the guards were signalled by Damir’s hand, and within moments they had Marko’s arms pinned back and a glinting dagger pressed against his neck.
A single bead of blood streamed down Marko’s neck.
‘Let him go!’
‘It’s okay, Miranda,’ he said, breathlessly, his eyes on mine. ‘Damir won’t kill me. It might jog the memory of Marin’s people; remind them that he is a murderer who can’t be trusted as their king.’
Damir pushed his face right up to Marko’s, nose to nose, blocking my view.
‘I’m the king. If I choose to kill you, nobody will doubt my choice.’ He smiled. ‘And if I decide that one heir is not enough, I’ll take another wife.’ He cast a glance over his shoulder. ‘Miranda, for example.’
Marko struggled against Damir, causing the dagger to release another trickle of blood.
‘But if you behave, you and your girlfriend can live happily ever after.’
The guards drew Marko’s arms back tighter still, until he groaned in agony and closed his eyes.
‘Stop it! You’ll break his arms!’ I punched the nearest guard’s solid arm and Damir’s hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist, hard.
‘Tell your boyfriend to accept me as king, and to stop fighting me, and I’ll promise not to go near you or him.’
I bit my lip to stifle the scream in my throat as Damir bent my wrist back, his face still in Marko’s. Marko’s eyes widened as he watched my face contorting.
‘You’re king!’ Marko spat. ‘You’re the king. I won’t fight you. Just let her go!’
‘Say you’re my king and that you’ll do as I say from now on.’
‘You’re my king, and I’ll do as you say,’ Marko spluttered, sweat dripping from his temples. ‘Just let her go.’
Damir released my wrist and, with a nod of his head, had the guards release Marko, who fell to the floor on his knees, gasping for breath.
I dropped to his side and wrapped my arms around him, listening with relief to the sound of Damir’s and his guards’ footsteps moving away until it died out altogether.
For a long time we remained on the floor, holding each other wordlessly, until my tears, and the blood on Marko’s neck, had dried.
‘Lie down on the bed and let me clean you up.’
Touching the wound with tentative fingers, he shrugged. ‘It’s just a scratch.’
I dragged him to the bed and made him lie on his back. The defeat in his eyes, as he stared up at the ceiling, brought a lump to my throat. I wet a flannel and came to sit beside him.
He winced when I pressed the cloth to his skin, the muscles in his neck cording.
‘Should I stop?’
‘No. Keep going. I think it’s only superficial,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘That’s why it stings. Just a surface wound.’
I found his hand and squeezed it, before again dabbing the flannel against his neck. When most of the blood came away, I saw that he was right. The wound was superficial and had stopped bleeding altogether. But it didn’t stop me wincing every time I looked at it.
Putting the flannel aside, I started to unbutton Marko’s shirt, which was now wet with water and blood. ‘You don’t want to fall asleep in this,’ I said.
A low sound erupted from the base of Marko’s throat as I undid the last button and slid the shirt over his smooth, muscled shoulders. He raised himself so that I could slide the shirt down his arms. His body was spectacular, all lean muscles and long limbs.
‘Seducing me when I’m at my weakest?’ He smiled and stared down at my lips.
That lazy smile, and the way he was breathing hard, made my heart race. We could have just as easily picked up where we had left off before Damir had intruded.
‘Don’t go back to your room tonight,’ I said, leaning in to press my lips to his bare shoulder. ‘I won’t be able to sleep without you here, beside me.’
Marko groaned as though in pain. ‘I’ll stay, Miranda, but—’ He stopped and cleared his throat, before shifting away from me and lying on his back. ‘Now that Damir has returned, we mustn’t let ourselves get too distracted. We can’t have a repeat of what just occurred.’ His face turned serious. ‘We’re sharing a roof with a psycho.’
A cold chill snaked down my spine.
The fact that Lauren and my grandparents were here had just made things all the more dangerous.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, itching to be with Marko, to have him touch me intimately and forget the problems we faced until the morning.
My thoughts drifted to Lauren, and snippets of memories flooded my mind: Lauren groaning about her ‘food-baby’ on the eve of my birthday; the night of the party and how Jackson had cal
led her a slut and how she’d cried. I remembered her vomiting into a bucket when she’d first arrived at Marin and saying it was from a hangover.
But I knew the truth now. Lauren hadn’t lied. She was most certainly pregnant.
But the baby wasn’t Damir’s.
‘Are you okay?’ Marko asked, stroking my face. ‘You whispered your sister’s name.’
I swallowed the bitterness collecting in my throat. If Damir found out that Lauren was lying, there was no telling what he’d do to her.
‘Nothing, I just want to see her and make sure she’s okay.’
Marko stifled a yawn and stroked my hair away from my face. ‘In the morning we’ll find Lauren and your grandparents, make sure they’re safe. But she’s pregnant, Miranda. And while Lauren’s pregnant, she’ll be treated like a princess by everyone—even Sylvia.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE NEXT DAY I woke to find Marko in his room, skolling a glass of wine, the shadowy circles under his eyes deeper than ever. He must have woken up through the night while I slept. When he saw me enter the room, the worry etched on his face deepened still.
‘I’ve been trying to think of a way to keep you safe from Damir. I can hardly believe he’ll leave us alone just because I’ve acknowledged him as king. He doesn’t work like that.’ Marko paced the floor and finished his wine. I glanced at the carafe. It was nearly empty. There was another empty one beside it.
‘I’ll be fine. If Lauren’s going to be treated like a princess I’m sure that means I’m off everyone’s hit list, at least for a while. I am her sister, remember.’
Marko looked at me for a long time and sighed, rubbing his eyes.
‘I’m more worried about you,’ I said, coming to stand before him.
‘Robbie had suggested we send you and your sister back; but now that your grandparents are here, things are complicated.’
‘True. I’d never leave them behind,’ I said, scraping my nail against a chip in the polished wooden table surface. ‘Just like I would never leave you, either. Not ever.’
Setting his wine goblet on the table, he drew me into his arms and pressed his lips to mine. His tongue tasted of sweet wine.
‘You need to sleep, Marko,’ I said, looking into his tired eyes. ‘And you don’t need any more wine.’
He offered a fleeting whisper of a smile. ‘I won’t be sleeping for a long time, Miranda. Not until you’re entirely safe and we can be together without the threat of Damir over our heads.’
And he was true to his word.
Days passed without much sleep for either of us. While Marko and Robbie spent their time at the cottage with their few remaining allies, plotting against Damir, I spent my days at my grandparents’ bedside. They were in a sort of coma, Robbie explained. They breathed, but their pulses were dangerously low, almost non-existent. And yet they held on. This alone gave me hope.
Their bodies were covered, neck to toe, with special blankets: quilts with light crystals sewn in at the seams. Apparently the crystals were restoring energy to their weakened bodies.
At the beginning of the second week of their coma, I was sitting beside Pop’s bed when Lauren came in. It was the first time I’d seen her since she’d been back. Whenever I’d enquired after her I had been told she was resting.
‘Hi,’ she said, both hands resting against her now-pronounced belly. The fact that she was showing already further confirmed my suspicions as to who the baby’s father was.
‘Hi,’ I said, not rising to greet her. ‘You look good.’ She did. Pregnancy had made her eyes brighten, her lips redden and her skin glow with health.
‘I know,’ she said, rubbing her belly nervously several times. ‘Damir tells me all the time. He said it’s because I’m nearly in the second trimester. It’s when all mothers look their best. He loves me, you know; even if you don’t want to believe it.’
I bent my head so she couldn’t see my face contort with disgust.
‘Are they working yet? The crystal quilts?’ she asked, making a big fuss of her condition by waddling over to the bed and rubbing her back.
With a sigh, I stood up and slid my chair in her direction, and she plopped down into it and sighed.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t; the wound she’d left me with was still fresh.
Her face turned sour. ‘Get over it, Randy. I chose Damir. You chose Marko. You know we need each other here. What if Nana and Pop don’t wake up? We’ll only have each other.’
My hands gripped the end rail of Pop’s bed so hard my knuckles showed white through my skin.
‘Why did you bring them? You knew it would be dangerous. Damir should have known better.’
‘How could I leave them again? They fell in love with Damir right away—especially Nan. She went all gushy for him.’
I started to pace the room. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Suit yourself. I’m not about to tell you how to feel about it,’ she said, with an air of maturity I’d never seen Lauren demonstrate. ‘Damir has a good heart, deep down. He cares about me, and that’s enough in my book.’ She smiled down at Pop’s sleeping form. ‘Pop begged Damir to take them with us, despite Damir’s warnings of the dangers.’
I stopped mid-pace and sighed. ‘Fine; so they wanted to come. But you still brought a murdering psycho who has killed innocent people—his own father, even—into our family home. I don’t care how charming he’s been to you. That’s insane!’
She shrugged and brushed a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder.
‘You don’t get it, do you? You only ever see things from your point of view. Damir did what he had to do to get his crown back. He said he was sorry for attacking you in the Underworld; he’s changed now. He’s promised to be a good father and husband, and a good king.’
‘What are you talking about? He nearly broke my wrist a week ago, and almost slit Marko’s throat—that’s hardly daddy material.’
‘Hey, girls, easy on the old ears.’
Lauren and I froze, staring at each other with wide eyes before rushing to Pop’s bedside. He lay on his back, blue eyes blinking open and shut. He tried to raise his head, but we both pressed our hands against his chest, gently guiding him back down.
‘No, Pop. You’ve got to rest,’ I said, between tears. He craned his head slightly to the right to look at me, and his eyes misted over with tears.
‘Miranda,’ he said, in a dry, croaky voice.
‘I’ll get some water,’ said Lauren, rising to her feet and shuffling in her flats over to the nearby jug and glass.
I kissed Pop’s forehead after he’d had a small sip of water, and his eyelids fluttered closed. His breathing deepened and he fell asleep again, but now his skin had a healthy flush to it.
‘Randy, come here!’ said Lauren from Nana’s bedside.
‘Nana,’ Lauren whispered, stroking the wispy strands of white hair away from Nana’s wrinkled brow.
After a minute, Nana blinked and made a groaning sound.
Lauren looked up at me and smiled and I smiled back, my hardened heart melting slowly.
‘Nana,’ I whispered, and she blinked her eyes open. ‘You’re okay. Pop is okay. Just rest,’ I said, and gave her bony hand a squeeze. She weakly squeezed me back and closed her eyes, falling, as Pop had done, into a deep, contented sleep.
Lauren and I were quiet for well over an hour, each of us beside a different grandparent, before I finally spoke up.
‘Please don’t trust Damir, Loz,’ I said, speaking over the top of Pop’s snoring body. ‘I know of a place, a safe place, where you can go into hiding until your baby is born.’ I was thinking of Blake’s mansion, but I wouldn’t tell her that until she agreed to let me take her there, in case the information leaked.
She stared down at Nana’s wrinkly hand and traced the prominent blue veins with her fingertips before she answered in a shaky voice.
‘Damir loves me, Miranda. I’m pregnant and he
still loves me. Do you know how nice it is for a guy to actually want you when you’re pregnant and not reject you?’
The hurt in her eyes was so raw I had to look away.
‘Jackson,’ I whispered.
‘Yeah, Jackson,’ she said. ‘That night at the party, when I told him, he said that there was no way the baby was his and that I must’ve slept around.’ Tears pooled in her large blue eyes. ‘But I didn’t. I’m not a slut. When I’m with one guy I’m true to him.’ The tears spilled down her rosy cheeks. ‘But when I met Damir…it was the first time someone had treated me with respect.’ She paused and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Sylvia introduced him to me—as a guard. We met in secret, in her room, and had little romantic dinners. He told me how his one wish was to find a wife and have a baby with her.’ She laughed like a lunatic and wiped her face with the backs of her hands. ‘He was like something out of the dark ages; a living, breathing prince charming, and I loved it. He was exactly what I was looking for.’
‘So you just threw yourself at the first available guy? You know, we are in modern times; you could raise the baby on your own. I’d help you.’
She shook her head and twisted a strand of her golden hair between her fingers.
‘No. I want Damir. He’s going to be an amazing father.’
I wanted to scream at her, tell her all of the disgusting mermaid stuff; but I couldn’t because of Nan and Pop. I hardly wanted to frighten them the minute they woke.
‘You’re alive, aren’t you, Miranda? Marko’s alive. He’s even got his old room back.’ She stood up and kissed first Nana then Pop, before heading for the door. ‘What more do you want?’
That night, and the following few nights, I hardly slept a wink. Not only did Lauren’s confession keep me tossing and turning, but I kept traipsing down the hall to check in on my grandparents to make sure they were okay.
Robbie stayed with them during the night, like he’d done with me when I’d first arrived, and fed them a vitamin-nutrient fluid from sippy cups. But they couldn’t stay awake for longer than a few minutes, and during that time they usually only managed to mutter a handful of words.
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