David pulled back, opening his eyes around confusion. “What is that—it’s warm?”
“I can use static energy.” I held my hands up, showing him the awesomeness of the snakelike electricity thrashing about over my fingers. “Whoa. It’s never done that before.”
David watched intently as the blue-white light danced around my hands then receded into my fingertips. He grabbed my wrist. “Kiss me again.”
“Happily.” I stood on my toes and he leaned down slightly, holding my neck firmly in one hand, my wrist in the other, his eyes cast to the side to watch my hand. “Why is nothing happening?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know how it happens, I just…” I exhaled my frustration.
“What do you think about when it happens?”
A thought warmed my entire body. “You.”
David laughed breathily, and with his cheeky smile igniting my emotions, a charge started in my center, branching down my arms and the bone in my wrist before coming out the tips of my fingers like a bad need to touch. I dug my hands into his hair at the base of his neck and pulled him to my lips again.
“My hairs are on end,” he whispered through the kiss. “It feels like a rush of excitement.”
I could feel it too, making me breathless, energetic.
He dropped my wrist, obviously no longer interested in the flaring electricity, and ran his hands under my shirt, lifting it, his skin cool against mine, so welcome yet so unfamiliar it made me take another breath.
“I missed this,” he whispered.
But I hadn’t missed it, because I hadn’t allowed myself to think of it. And now, the possibility filled me with new ideas, new hopes. His unwelcome leather jacket fell to the floor, and I reached for his shirt buttons, wanting his body on mine, his hands everywhere, anywhere, on every inch of my desperate flesh.
“Desperate flesh, huh?” David drew back, laughing.
“You heard that?”
“Like a speaker in my ear.”
“Holy crap. Why can you hear me?”
David raised my hand by the wrist and his smiling eyes narrowed. “Might be something to do with this. I mean, brainwaves are just electrical signals.”
“David?” I had to exhale heavily, so excited that I’d been holding my breath. We should consummate our wedding vows.
The old guy in him responded with shock, a laugh, but the David I loved so well—the boy from school, my husband—ran a hand across his mouth and shook his head before he picked me up like I weighed nothing, and we landed in the plush green grass with a very human jolt.
The electricity in my fingers hummed as I ran my hands along his shoulders between fabric and skin, and his strong body—so like the David I married—held me under him, pressed between my legs, wanting me once more the way only he could.
“Ouch.” David looked down at my hands on his hard arms.
I looked too. “Oh my God. I’m sorry, I’m not used to these nails yet.” I pulled my fingers away and vines of flesh raced over his cuts, closing them. “I only discovered them because I took the fur off Petey’s head a few weeks ago.”
Motionless, he watched himself heal, then looked back at me. “I’m going to have to teach you some self-control, it seems.”
“I don’t think you really want to do that.” I tilted my head to my shoulder.
He took a breath and let it out again very slowly. “I doubt I’m in any position to be teaching you self-control, anyway, when I have nothing but less-than-honorable intentions.”
“We’re married now, David, you don’t need to be honorable.”
He shook his head, hands traveling up my denim skirt. “I had no intentions of that.”
And his emerald eyes glistened in the sunlight then, his dimples pushing in with his cheeky, unreadable thoughts. In what seemed like one gesture he rose up on his knees, tore my underwear away and unzipped his fly, sinking himself inside of me.
The most pathetic sounds came from my lips, and I just knew the birds in the trees would be laughing. But I smiled, enjoying the feel of David being a part of me again.
“David?”
“Yes, my love,” he said right into my ear, his shoulder against my lips, his hands pressed flat to the ground beside my ribs.
“I know this sounds kinda corny but”—I wrapped my legs over his hips—“it’s like, when we’re connected like this, I feel like—”
“Like?” he said, laughing softly.
“Like we’re kind of one person. But not in the cheesy, romantic way. I really feel like, if I held my breath, you wouldn’t be able to take one.”
The moon-shape indent above his lip showed. “That’s how I’ve always felt.”
“Really?”
“We are one, Ara.” He kissed my hair. “Two souls, one heart—for always.”
“Always.” I felt it all around me then—what eternity felt like; what it meant to love only one person for all the years you could exist. It not only scared me but made me shaky and so happy I felt a tickle in my chest, like a cough, or maybe like I needed to laugh. There was nothing in the world that could feel more right, more complete than when two souls touched, and when those same two souls would do so for all time.
“Ara. Can you feel that?” David gasped.
“Feel what?” I looked up at him and squealed, pushing him off me as I backed away. “What the hell.”
He fell to the ground. “What’s wrong?”
“Your eyes!” I looked at my hands, then at his eyes again as the bright electric blue fizzled away and they turned green again. “They”—I pointed to his face—“they were blue.”
“They were?” He rubbed his face, rolling up to sit with his head in his hands.
“Are you okay?”
“I felt you—inside me. Like a flame, but a good flame.” His eyes lit up as he looked at me. “A very good flame. Not burning, more like… warming.”
I covered my mouth. “I could’ve hurt you.”
“No.” He rose to his knees, tucking himself into his jeans. “My love, I felt no pain. It was intense. You… I don’t know how, but you were in my head. I could hear everything you were thinking.”
I crawled closer to him and sat between his knees, curling into a ball against his chest. The electricity in my hands fired again, and I held them in front of me as David watched.
“I can’t control it. It just happens.”
“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. We’ll figure it out.”
And I believed him. Everything felt all right again now he was here. I knew he wouldn’t rest until we had this figured out. I knew I finally had someone on my side again.
“Don’t think that way, Ara. Everyone is on your side. They just want what’s best for you.”
“Hang on.” I turned slightly to look at his eyes. “You heard that?”
“Yes.” He kissed my hair. “Thank God.”
I grinned mischievously. “God had nothing to do with what we just did.”
His eyes widened, his gaze slowly moving from my hands to my eyes. “You heard that?”
“Course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
His answering silence, mixed with the look in his eye, said everything.
“Wait! That was a thought? You didn’t say that aloud?”
He said nothing more. Just rested his chin on the curve of my shoulder, hugging me to his chest as we watched the sun sneak closer to the treetops.
32
Leaning my elbow on the picnic basket, I smiled at the place we once laid the rug out and spent our afternoon unsure what the other wanted. The flavor of grapes that scented my breath that day once again sat on my lips.
“Thoughts?” David said, rolling up from the shoulders to look at me, the sun forcing him to squint.
“I can’t believe I ever thought you didn’t love me.”
He flopped back down with his hands on his belly, his long legs crossed at the ankles. “I know. It was irritating to more than just myself.”
<
br /> I laughed. “Yeah, guess I drove everyone crazy, didn’t I?”
“You wouldn’t be the girl I love if you didn’t.”
I popped another grape in my mouth and looked away from the memory of my old life. Despite today being our last day together until after my coronation, I still liked this life better than my human one. “It kind of sucks,” I said.
“Vampires?”
“Ha-ha. No. The coronation.”
“I didn’t realize we were talking about the coronation.”
“We weren’t. I was thinking about it. I’m just used to you being a part of my thoughts, is all. I forget to tell you exactly what I was thinking.”
“Yes. It’s certainly a new experience for me—to have no clue what you’re talking about.”
I shuffled over and sat by his hips. “Well, I was just thinking that it sucks you won’t even be there for the most important day of my vampire life.”
“I know. It hurts me too, Ara. But I’m so proud of you.” He sat up, pulling the sleeves of his black shirt over his forearms, then took my hand. “And I’d give almost anything to be there when you finally take your oath.”
“Really? I didn’t think you really cared either way.”
“That’s because you don’t know how much this means to me—to be married to the queen.” His eyes sparkled with admiration. “Royalty had always been highly respected both in my human life and my vampire community. I’ve worked for a hundred years to protect and serve my king, and now I will serve alongside the queen, for all time. I want to be there when you rise to power, Ara, but sometimes we have to accept things we can’t change.”
“So, what you’re saying is”—I looked at the sky—“life sucks; get used to it.”
“I’m saying life changes. We don’t always like the things we must endure, but being a part of the world means walking anyway, even when it would be easier to give up.”
My heart fluttered as David’s eyes met mine. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right.”
He sat back against the rock and shut his eyes, smiling. “I’m always right.”
“Not always.”
His brow arched, eyes staying closed. “Is that a challenge I hear in your voice, mon amour?”
“Frankly, I don’t think I have the energy to challenge you today.” I laid down in the shadow of the rock, my arms behind my head.
“You look exhausted.”
“I didn’t sleep last night,” I said.
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I laid awake, too.”
“Why?”
He recrossed his ankles the other way. “Arthur.”
“What about him?” I rolled onto my side.
“I don’t feel as though you took me seriously when I asked you to think before you act when around him.”
“I did, David. I know I didn’t make a point of confirming it, but you know him better than anyone. If you tell me not to trust him, I won’t.”
“I’m not saying that, sweetheart. You can trust him, just be careful before you do.”
“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, kind of frowning as well.
But a part of me already trusted Arthur. Maybe it was just a want for trust, because I wanted to believe what he told me about Jason—about him not wanting to hurt me.
I thought about everything he’d told me that day, my thoughts then running over the letters he’d sent since, and David just sat with me quietly, letting me get lost on the Train of Thought. Part of me wondered if he could read them, but when I looked at him and he smiled, watching me, I knew I was following them alone. But the train didn’t go in the right direction this time; it stopped in front of a dark, windy platform and pushed an uninvited passenger onto my lips in the form of a question.
“David?”
“Yes, my love?”
“I. Uh.” I wasn’t sure how to word it. “When Jason took me to the… um, when he was tying me to the chair.” I took a breath. “He told me that the skeleton—the baby in that room—was your handiwork. What did he mean by that?”
David sat taller, inhaling through his teeth. “So you know about that, huh?”
“No. I don’t know anything, because you never tell me anything.”
“And I’m not about to start.” He looked away.
“Hey! Don’t do that. I have a right to know if my husband is a baby-killer.”
“Ara, please. I don’t want to talk about this.”
And the steel wall was suddenly up between us again. I sat dead still, tears clouding my vision. I knew he wouldn’t tell me now, even if I begged. But I just felt so frustrated—untrusted, alone, isolated, left out. Why wouldn’t he just tell me? If it was that bad, I should know. I should at least be tested, offered insight to his dark side, so I had the chance to prove my love was unconditional. It wasn’t fair.
“David,” I said, feeling my strength grow inside me. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll—”
“Fine.” He leaped forward and grabbed my arm, his finger pointing right in my face. “Just don’t. Finish. That sentence.”
I nodded, sniffling. “How’d you know what I was going to say?”
“I don’t.” He sat back down. “Nor do I want to know. Your eyes said enough.”
“Then tell me what happened to that baby. And don’t just give me half the story, making it sound like you told me the whole thing.”
He sighed, rolling his head back onto the rock. “I never wanted you to learn of this.”
“Why?”
“Because, I… because it was the most heinous task ever requested of me.” He hung his head low. “And I did something that day that I am most ashamed of.”
I swallowed hard.
“After Drake killed Lilith, he believed his Warriors had wiped out her entire bloodline. But they were wrong.”
My heart picked up and my pulse suddenly became present in my stomach.
“Lilith’s daughter Evangeline bore a child. She hid the infant before they came to destroy her after Lilith’s death centuries ago.”
“And they found it?”
“No. That child survived but never triggered immortality. And her bloodline went on as if they were human. Then in nineteen forty-five when I applied for my position as a lower council member for my Set, Arthur pulled some strings. They accepted me on the provision that I carry out a task: to kill a child they believed to be Lilithian.”
My eyes closed slowly.
“She was barely two days old,” he continued. “I laid her on the stone steps of the torture chamber and watched her for a moment while she cried.”
I looked up to see him focus intently on his tightening fists. “And?”
“And what happened after has been my greatest shame as a vampire for a hundred years.”
“David?” I covered my mouth, feeling as if I wanted to grab hold of something to ground me.
“Ara, please?” He swept my hand up in his. I pushed him away. “Please listen. I—my honor as a vampire, my position as a council member was based on what I did in that moment. I know you hate me for even contemplating its death, for even accepting the mission. But…” He sat back and stared forward as if he watched the memory like a projection on the grass by the lake. “But it wasn’t as horrid an act as it sounds—”
“Oh my gosh, David—”
“Just listen. I don’t remember what happened, what went through my mind as I placed the knife to her throat, but I remember the way she stopped crying and stared at me with these intense blue eyes.”
Tears streamed then as I envisioned David taking the life of that innocent baby.
“I heard the blade hit the floor by my feet. I”—he looked at his hands—“I lifted her into my arms and when I rested my fingers to her tiny mouth, I could actually feel the softness of her skin, like I was under a spell. It was a softness I’d only ever felt the day I held my baby cousin—the day I lost my aunt.”
I wanted him to stop. I didn’t want to hear anymore. But he opened his mouth and kept going, while I struggled to believe I could still love him.
“She was as perfect a child as I had ever seen, and I fell instantly in love with her. So I ran,” David said.
“What?” I looked up, confused.
“I ran,” he repeated. “I stole the child and fled the castle. She slept in my arms while I carried her, trusting me implicitly as if I were human,” he said, telling his tale to the ground. “And when I placed her on the steps of an old church, she watched me with those sapphire eyes again—watched me back away like she knew something I didn’t. And I never saw her again.” David’s chin dropped to his chest. “But it’s what I did next that haunts my dreams to this day.”
“What?” I reached for him. “What did you do?”
“I walked—wandered until I reached Arietta’s grave, and then I dropped to my knees there, weeping like a fool. I was nothing of the hardened Council member I was supposed to be. My career was in ruins, my reputation, and that of my uncle’s.” David nodded to himself then. “So, I started digging.”
“Hu!” I gasped.
“I dug until I reached the casket of my aunt and her infant child. Then, I stole the baby’s bones, charred them to wash off the stench of aged flesh, and presented them to my king.”
“You didn’t kill a baby?”
“No.” He dropped his head.
“David?” I cautiously reached out to touch his forearm. “Why would you be so ashamed of that?”
“Because I lied to my own king, and I desecrated the remains of my dead aunt’s child.”
“But you did the right thing, even without compassion for my kind, you still did what was right.”
“Yeah, according to your kind.”
“But that’s what matters. Life. You protected something sacred, David, before you even had the heart to. That was a very noble and brave thing to do; the act of a true king.”
David looked at me then.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I came up in front of him on my knees and touched his face. “I owe you my life. You saved my ancestor. It’s because of you that I exist.”
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