“Fine. Search him,” Mike said, and a patting sound filled the silence.
“Unarmed, Chief,” another unfamiliar voice said.
“Fine.” Mike exhaled. “So you’re unarmed. That means nothing to me. How do I know you’re not here to kill her?”
“If that were so, she’d already be dead.”
“All the same, you’re still not getting within an inch of her. Now leave.”
“Goddamn it, I fought for her. I fought for her!” The austere voice rose. “I did everything I could to have her life spared, and I battled within the last inches of my political boundaries to save my nephew.”
Nephew?
Arthur. That was Arthur’s voice!
I sat up. Arthur was the austere voice?
“Yeah, well, some job your political boundaries did. How ’bout moral boundaries? How ’bout life versus bloody death?” Mike yelled.
“Please. She’s all that’s left of him now. Just show me that she’s all right. I’ll give you anything—anything you ask for.”
“Where’s Drake?” Mike asked.
“Show me the princess, and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me, and I’ll show her to you.”
Arthur sighed. “Very well, he’s hiding in Rome. He has a safe house there. Show me the princess, and I will give you the exact location.”
“Why would you give up your own king?”
Arthur went silent. “I have my reasons. Reasons I do not wish to share at this point, but you must trust me. I mean no harm to Amara, or to the Lilithians. I merely want to keep her safe.”
“Why?”
“Just take me to her. Please?”
“Mike?” Morgaine’s voice broke into the conversation. “Show him. Then he can leave.”
Mike huffed, and the front door closed.
He was coming in here. I looked around for an escape route, not sure whether to run, wake up and have a casual chat, or pretend to sleep. And none of them had footsteps. I should’ve been able to hear them coming, but there was nothing until the door handle twisted.
I flopped back down on the pillow and closed my eyes. I wasn’t ready to face Arthur.
A long, slow sigh carried the sound of relief. “So, it is true.”
“What?” Mike asked.
“My nephew left a note telling me where I could find her if everything went to plan.”
“Plan?” Mike scoffed, closing my door. “What plan?”
“Jason was supposed to throw her from the window if you didn’t get there in time.” Arthur cleared his throat. “I was to pick up the pieces and bring her here.”
“Why would he do that?” Mike snarled, and a scuffling noise ended with a thud on the wall. “Why would he throw her out a window?”
“Relax, Mike,” Morgaine cut in. “She wouldn’t have died from it. It was actually very clever. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it.”
“No,” Mike said. “Don’t you believe him, Morgaine. There’s no way they could mutilate her like that and be planning to help her all along.”
“I know how it sounds, but…” Morgaine said. “Arthur, what’s your deal? What’re you doing here?”
“Let me see her tomorrow—speak with her—and I will explain.”
“No. I think you need to explain now.”
“Please. I am a man of my word, Morgaine, if nothing else. You know that.”
“Yes,” she whispered humbly.
“I must speak to the princess alone. If you gift me that, I will return your kindness with any information you require. I can help you catch Drake and remove him from power.”
“Why would you do that?” Mike asked.
Everything went quiet, then, in a low voice Arthur said, “Freedom.”
All I could hear was breathing.
“Fine,” Mike said. “Tomorrow afternoon. Across the road—that’s as alone as it’s going to get, and only if she approves.”
“Very well,” Arthur said. “I shall be there at precisely fourteen-hundred hours.”
“I’m sure you will,” Mike said, and the front door slammed shut.
“Damn,” Morgaine said. “Did not expect him to drop by.”
Mike sighed heavily, probably dropped his head into hands too. “He’s convincing, I’ll give ’im that. I almost believed his story about that depraved prick.”
“I know,” Morgaine said, “me too. He’s definitely up to something.”
“But what? I just don’t get it. What could he hope to achieve by making himself and Jason look like the good guys?”
“Mike?” I called out.
The door popped open and Mike smiled at me so warmly my fears melted a little. “Hey, baby, how you doin’?”
“I don’t get it either?” I sat up, continuing the conversation as if I’d been a part of it all along. “Why would he want to help? He watched Jason hurt me.”
“I don’t know. But I want you to find out.”
I shook my head. “No way. Uh-uh, I am not meeting with him. He drank from me, he sat there while Jason”—my lip quivered—“while he…”
“While he what, Ara? What did he do to you?” Mike landed on the bed in front of me, but Morgaine walked away.
“I…” My chest shook. “I never thought I’d get out of that dungeon. I thought I was going to die in there and be hoisted onto the wall with the other skeletons.”
“Oh, baby, that was never going to happen.” He grabbed my face and pressed his nose to mine. “Morgaine and David were planning your rescue from the start, before they even knew you were a Pure Blood, before Emily and I even knew you’d been kidnapped. They were never going to leave you there.”
I nodded, cupping my hands around his forearms, keeping his face against mine. His veins were still blue and his heart beat just as strongly as before. I could feel the way his blood would pulse under my tongue if I bit him, see the appeal humans had to vampires.
“You’re still so warm,” I said. “I can’t believe I turned you. I mean, I’m really sorry, you know, if you didn’t want to be a vampire-murdering kind of Lilithian.”
“Are you kidding? Ara, this is the best kind of vampire to be. Morgaine’s completely pissed—wishes she could swap.”
“Why? I mean, she seems totally cool.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “But she can’t kill vamps, and”—he bristled with arrogant pride—“I’m stronger than her, which she hates.”
“I bet.” I smiled a little. “How does Emily feel about it?”
“She’s—” He shook his head, smiling. “She’s over the moon, Ara. Well, she was once the shock wore off.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“We didn’t. Morgaine knew.”
“How?”
Mike laughed. “When I met with her to go over the rescue plans, she shook my hand and the first thing she said to me was, So you let her bite you?.”
“What, she knew just from a handshake?”
“Yeah, apparently I nearly broke her hand.”
“But you have a strong handshake, you always have.”
“Not strong enough to hurt a vampire’s hand.”
And my spine straightened with a memory. “You hurt Jason’s—at the wedding. I saw you.”
Mike nodded, grinning. “Ara, I was immortal then.”
“Oh.”
“And I don’t think hurt is the right word.” He grinned. “I heard crunching. I mean, it wouldn’t have actually been broken, but I think he knew—Jason—if he knew what you were then, he would have known at that moment what I was.”
“Why didn’t he kidnap you as well then?”
Mike stared ahead, his smile trailing away with thought. “I… don’t know.”
“Do you think maybe there’s some truth to what Arthur said?”
“No way, Ara. We can’t trust him. He’s up to something. I don’t know what, but what ever it is, don’t trust him.”
“I’ll meet with him.” I nodded. “I want to know what he h
as to say.”
Some small part of me needed to know how Jason could possibly have loved me so deeply in my dreams then hurt me so viciously, only to help me again in the end. Whether what Arthur said was the truth, or not, I could handle a lie better than the fact that Jason just hated me so badly.
“Okay, that’s fine, baby, but don’t talk to him about David.”
“David?” My lips fell apart. “Why would I talk about David?”
“It’s just—”
“Mike?” Emily popped her head in the door.
“Yeah, gorgeous?”
“Um, I need to talk to you for a sec.”
“Sure, uh—” He looked back at me as he stood up. “You be okay for a minute?”
“I’ll stay with her.” Morgaine came gliding in. “She looks like she could use a good girl-to-girl chat anyway.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in a few.” Mike closed the door behind him.
Morgaine reached across to flick on my bedside lamp. “How are you healing?”
I shrugged. “I can still feel the pain, but the cuts have closed up.”
“The bruising on your face has gone down,” she noted, taking a seat beside me.
“Yeah, like magic, huh?” I ran my hand over the closed gash on my lip.
“Not magic, Princess. Vampirism.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how to feel about all this, Morgaine. I don’t like it—any of it.”
“You’re scared,” she stated in a factual yet kind voice.
I nodded. “And Arthur really scares me, too. He was watching, you know. Through all of it… he just sat there.”
“I know, and you should be scared of him, but do you know how powerful Drake is?”
My shoulders responded for me.
“Put it this way: I once heard he ripped a human in half, straight down the middle with his bare hands, then made her human family eat the—”
“Oh, God. Stop,” I said, covering my ears.
“Sorry.” Her lip quirked. “But, you have to understand, even if Arthur were on our side, which I doubt, he wouldn’t have been able to help you. Drake says walk, you walk. Drake says rip the arms off child, you do it.”
“Is that why Eric helped Jason?”
“No, Eric went back to help Jason so he could report your position to the knights. He sent a text as soon as he found you.”
I pictured Eric standing over me, phone in hand, blue light against his face as he sent that message. “Did he tell you what he did?”
“What Jason did?”
“No. Did Eric tell you what he did to me when Jason—” I swallowed, unwilling to re-experience the scene.
Morgaine touched my shoulder. “I know he had to suffocate you. Is that all Eric did to you?”
“I…” My heart pumped faster. “I don’t actually know.”
She sat back. “For the most part, neither do we. Mike wants me to talk to you and find out what happened.”
My stomach turned to bubbling lava.
“But we don’t have to, Amara. Okay? We don’t have to talk about this yet.”
I nodded, feeling so fragile, like I was made of glass or rice paper. Even mentioning what happened made it all too real to bear.
She sighed. “Okay, subject change?”
I forced a smile.
“Do you like gossip?” she said, flipping her cherry hair. “Always makes me feel better after I’ve been tortured.”
“You’ve been tortured?” I gaped.
“Of course. Most Lilithians have.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a means of control,” she said simply, reliving every ache within her gaze. “Why do you think we’ve prayed for your existence—would fight to the death to save you? We lost half our knights tonight, Amara. That’s no small loss.”
Words could not carry my gratitude. I simply shook my head, my mouth open to all the things I wanted to say.
“It’s okay.” She touched my hand. “I know. I really do know how you feel.”
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Everyone knows how I feel. They always have.”
“Yeah, but I’m different.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“No, I really am. I have”—she rolled her shoulder back and flicked her hair again—“I mean, I have this special ability: empathy. I meet a person, and I can sort-of know where they’re coming from. I kind of ‘get them’.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, it’s a useless tool, really. But I get this.” She motioned around my room, and especially at me. “I get this complex relationship you guys have got going on.”
“Who?”
“You, Emily, Mike—the whole flaming love triangle thing.”
I looked away. “Not even I get that, Morgaine.”
“But I do. And Emily does. It’s just you and Mike lost out there in the dark.”
“What do you mean? What are we not getting?”
“You’re not sure if what you feel for each other is love or friendship.”
I grimaced.
“And that’s okay, you know,” she assured me. “It is okay to be confused.”
The news about being partly spirit bound to him—since it was his face and Jason’s body that tainted me in a dream-link before David ever laid a hand on my body—highlighted that. It wasn’t love at all. It was trickery. “I’m not confused. It’s all very clear to me now how I feel about Mike.”
She studied me carefully for a second. “Well, you might be able to convince yourself of that, Princess, but even if you do, it won’t change the fact that Mike is so confused he can’t even be in the same room as Emily.”
“He can’t?”
“No. We noticed it yesterday. He finds a reason to leave every time she walks in.”
I pictured that in my mind. “Why is he so confused?”
“Things got worse after you were kidnapped. Emily said they were fine until Eric came that day, and then…” Her voice slowed, and she twiddled her fingers in her lap. “Then he punched a wall and just sat against it with his head in his knees, and cried. Emily said she’d never heard a man cry such deep agony.”
I took a moment to digest that.
“She was beside herself—Emily,” Morg continued. “Not just because of what you were going through, but because, at that moment, she realized he’s never going to let go. He’s incapable of not loving you.”
“But it’s not that kind of love.”
“Well, neither of you really know what kind it is, do you?”
But I did. I just wasn’t sure I could tell them, admit it aloud.
“I’m sorry.” She slapped her own head. “I’ve upset you.”
“I’m okay,” I said quietly.
“No, you’re not. And I do this too often. I’m”—she grabbed my hand—“please, Amara. Don’t listen to me. I’m a horrible person. I—”
“No.” I placed my hand on hers. “It’s okay. Really. I think…” I forced a smile. “Maybe it’s good you say too much. At least I can rely on someone to tell me the truth about what’s going on around here.”
“Well, then we’ll make good friends,” she beamed, her smile stretching out and pulling me into the kinship I’d seen between her and Emily earlier. “If you can always handle the cold, hard truth, and I can rely on you not to hate me for it, I think we’ll get along great.”
I studied her soft skin and thin heart-shaped face, seeing a lot of myself in her. “I can see why he loved you.”
“Who?”
“David.” I nearly choked on the word.
Morgaine dropped her chin to her chest. “Did he… did David ever tell you why he left me?”
“No. Apparently he never told me anything. Never even told me about Pepper, or the Set, or what he did to Jason’s girlfriend.”
“Don’t hate him for it, Amara.” She put her arm around me. “He just wanted to protect you from the truth about himself.”
“Why?”
“He was
worried you’d hate him for it.”
“I can’t hate him. I—” I couldn’t even think about him. “Why didn’t you marry him? He did tell me once that you were the only one he ever considered marrying.”
“Really?” Morgaine flipped her head to one side and grinned. “That could… so never have happened.”
“Why not?”
“We were kind of in love, but… we were really just too different.” She struggled with the words, like she was choosing them carefully. “He needed someone to care for—to protect—while I’m really more the sort to be the protector.”
“And that’s it?” I asked. “That’s the only reason?”
“We just weren’t right for each other, but he’ll always have a special place in my heart.”
“So, why did they bring you in to torture him?”
Morgaine pressed her lips together, her nose crinkling across the bridge. “I’m kind of like David in that sense. He was the best punisher in the Vampire Set, and I was the best in the Lilithian Order.”
“So they meant business, didn’t they? They wanted him hurt bad if they brought you in.”
“They ordered me to inflict a pain on him so great his soul would turn to the Devil for help.”
“But you didn’t hurt him?”
She shook her head. “We had to starve him and smack him around a little to make it look like I had, but…” She stared forward, her eyes glassing over. “I never thought… when the vampires came to take him, I just never thought they’d—” Her delicate fingertips covered her lips. “God, poor David.”
I nodded, digging my thumbnail into my fingertip.
“I know what Jason’s done to your life, Amara.” She turned to me quickly, grabbing both my hands. “I saw it in his soul. He suffered for what he did to you. Not enough, but I saw the suffering.”
“He bound me to him.” I looked down, unable to hold the truth any longer.
“What?” She balked. “A spirit bind?
“Mm-hm.”
Morgaine brushed my hair from my neck. “But Lilithians can’t be bound.”
“I was still human then.”
“You have no Mark.”
“It wasn’t physical. He bound me in a dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yes.”
Morgaine smiled. “But, a spirit bind is only physical? How can he—”
“He made me believe my hair was blonde once, even when I woke. And all those dreams… every touch, it was as real as we are right now.”
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