My chest shuddered, the sobs turning to short, quick breaths as I settled myself. When I pulled slightly away from Arthur and saw the wet outline of a face all over his white silk shirt, my cheeks burned. “Oh, my God, Arthur, I’m sorry.”
He looked down too, wiping his hand over my mess. “I wear the tears of the queen with honor.”
I laughed once. “It sounds funny when you say queen.”
His teeth showed on one side as he breathed a smile. “Yes, but you are Queen. And we are all so proud of you.”
“I thought I failed, you know.” I stepped away from his arms and let the wind dry my cheeks. “I can’t tell you how scared I was that I’d let everyone down.”
He only nodded, as if waiting for me to speak. Then, like falling asleep with a heavy book on your chest and suddenly waking to lift it off, I sat in the sand with Arthur, by the lashing whitewash and, leaving out the part about David being alive, told him everything. Everything. Told him all I saw on the Walk of Faith, everything I came to face—all the failures, all the truths—especially the truth about Jason. And he listened, with his hands linked together, his arms falling loosely over bended knees, smiling and nodding every now and then.
As the blanket of shame, fear and sadness blew away in the wind, I took a deep, shaky breath and turned my head to look at him for the first time since we sat down. “I’m sorry.” I grabbed his arm and looked at his watch. “I’ve been talking for an hour.”
“Then you have nowhere near been talking long enough.” He touched his hand over mine.
I sniffled. “You’re a good friend, Arthur.”
He opened his mouth, his chest lifting with a deep breath that he let out slowly. “I’m glad you told me all of this.”
“What do you think it all means—all that snake business?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure. But, like you said, this snake, this entity who came to you, it wanted you to realize the truth of yourself, correct?”
I nodded, more than a little eager to hear his take on it.
“Perhaps, that is the truth. Perhaps you loved them both—Jason and David—and maybe when you come to terms with this, your life can take a journey on a new path.”
“I have come to terms with it, Arthur. So where’s this new path?”
“No, my dear, you have not. You have admitted it, barely, but you have not come to terms with it.”
“Aren’t they the same things?”
He laughed softly. “No.”
“Well, how do I come to terms with it?”
“That, my dear child, you will have to learn on your own. One day, you will wake up and everything will suddenly make sense to you—the path you must take, the road you’ve been down, all the questions you ask yourself about why—it will all make sense, and then, and only then, does it mean you have come to terms with what is in your heart and, essentially, what you, deep down inside, are.”
“What I am? What do you mean by that?”
He looked out at the ocean. “I mean that… you perceive yourself as this confused little girl, who thinks she knows what’s right but doesn’t trust herself. You also believe every impure thought you have—perhaps thoughts for another man—make you a bad person, somehow. But you’re not. You are, for all intents and purposes, human. And you make human mistakes and feel human emotions. You berate yourself far too harshly for what you feel, Amara, and that will, in the end, be your undoing.”
“My undoing?”
“Emotionally. You cannot rule if you are not strong, in here.” He tapped his chest. “And you cannot be strong if you do not love yourself or at the very least, understand yourself.”
I nodded. “That’s the problem. I can’t understand how I could feel anything for Jason at all. I can’t understand how I can love anyone else but David. He…” I looked ahead, closing my eyes for a second. “Even though he’s gone, he should still be the only one I ever love.”
“Amara, don’t be so harsh on yourself. You cannot expect to be alone for the rest of your days.”
“I know. But what about when he was alive?” I said. “I loved Jason then, Arthur, and I can’t forgive myself for that.”
“Did David ever know how you felt about his brother?”
“He asked me a few times, but we always got interrupted and just never continued the conversation.”
“What do you think he would say now if he were to find out?”
I went a little stiff. “I’m not sure. I think he’d hate me.”
Arthur nodded.
“Really?” I looked at him. “You’re nodding. So, you agree?”
“Unfortunately, my dear, I can’t honestly answer that. You see, David spoke to me shortly after he first saw you. And we had many conversations preceding that, where I learned two things: one: David had lost faith in the world. He believed there was no good left in anyone—not vampires and not humans. The other thing I learned was that, through reading the minds of humans for a hundred years, David had a bitter hatred for their kind. Until you came along. He saw in you a pure soul; he said all your thoughts were battles between right and wrong and he had never met a girl so innocent, so undamaged by the world, that he instantly fell for you.”
“Undamaged?” I scoffed. “Arthur, I have to be just about the most damaged girl in the world.”
He laughed. “Yes, but he meant that you were not tainted by the world’s ways. You weren’t mean, harsh—you thought of others before yourself.”
“I did?” I rubbed my hairline. “Boy, did he have me figured all wrong.”
“No, my dear, he did not. He was right. Sometimes you look past other people, too busy worrying about how not to hurt them, that you do just that. I know what you are, and David fell in love with what you are. He told me he learned more about compassion and kindness in a week with you than he did in an entire century from the human race.” The sun made his nose look longer as he looked at the ocean again. “He loved you fiercely, my dear, and it was because you are a good, pure soul.”
“Which is exactly why he’d hate me so much if he realized that I’m not.”
“By loving another?” Arthur frowned. “You think you’re impure because your heart wanted his brother?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have his brother? Did you cheat on David?”
“No. I mean, I don’t really know. I held hands with Jason and I know I kissed him, but—”
“But this was in your dreams.”
“Mind-links.”
“Or maybe they were merely dreams, Amara. You don’t actually know, do you?”
I shook my head slowly. “I guess not.”
“And, if Jason were here right now, alive, would you be with him?”
“Um, no. Not if David were alive as well.”
“Why?”
“Because I love David. I’d never want to hurt him like that.”
“Precisely.”
“So what are you saying? What’s your point?”
“My point is… David would hate you for doing the wrong thing, my dear. He would likely be immensely angered to learn you had feelings for Jason, but unless you acted on those, I doubt he could ever bring himself to hate you.”
I shook my head. “Even then, it doesn’t make having feelings for Jason right.”
“No, but you are not declaring that you didn’t love David by facing the truth that you love Jason.”
“Yeah, I guess not.” I laughed, moving my toes to make patterns in the sand under them. “But… I still lose sleep over it.”
“Well, if ever you find yourself unable to sleep, come to my chamber,” Arthur said. “I have some herbal remedies that assist with relaxing the mind of a vampire.”
“Do you have one that makes the heart stop feeling anything?”
“No. And you do not need such things.”
“Hmpf!”
“Amara”—he turned my face to look at him—“you’re a young girl, nineteen, to be exact. You are still learning the inner
-workings of your heart. Most girls your age have had many boys in their life at this point to learn from, but you, my dear, have had one.”
“No, two,” I corrected.
“Ah, of course.” He drew a breath through his teeth. “Mike. But, Amara, falling for, having feelings for, and even acting on those feelings for boys does not mean you are bad or promiscuous; it simply means you are young and learning about yourself through the eyes and actions of others, as we all do. As we all must.”
“So, are you saying I shouldn’t have gotten married—that I can never be monogamous in my heart because I’m young?”
“No.” He tilted his head. “Simply that if your heart wants, don’t hate yourself for it. A wise young girl once told me that the heart lives by its own set of rules.”
He smiled. I smiled back.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the world has created its own rules about how love should be, too. That doesn’t mean it’s natural. Queen Lilith, for example, had four husbands—”
“But I thought she was promised to marry Peter?”
“She was. He would have been her fifth.”
“Then why do we see him in the dome, and not the other husbands?”
“Because he was the catalyst that saw her demise.”
“What did he do?”
“He gave Drake information on how to kill her, since it was he who discovered that if a Pureblood is beheaded, they will remain in a state like death until reassembled. We didn’t know that. We figured she was indestructible like her father and brother, aside from the fact that her venom was deathly to vampires.” Arthur smiled, tapping his tooth. “And that fact was the only thing that rendered Drake compliant when Vampirie stripped him of his title as King.”
“Why did Vampirie do that?”
Arthur cleared his throat, sniffing once. “Drake’s love for his new wife Anandene turned to obsession; he became reckless, nonchalant in his duties as King. Vampires were out of control again and wreaking havoc on the world. It was more than the Set leaders and the World Council, combined, could control.”
“So, what, Vampirie just came in and kicked Drake out?”
“Yes. Then rounded up a number of vampires—any who had committed offenses in the past—and handed them over to Lilith. She kept these vampires as food for the next few years, ridding the world, once again, of around three quarters of the population of vampires.”
“Wow, and… where did Drake go?”
“He and Anandene disappeared for a while.”
“And then what? How did he come to kill Lilith?”
“Some years later, Drake returned to Loslilian and reunited with his sister. The family feud had healed, and all was well, for a while. But Anandene was a well-known, very powerful witch, and when she learned of the Stone’s powers, sought to use it to cast a great spell.”
“What kind of spell?”
“I don’t know. I only know that Lilith warned her this spell would bring a curse down on the lands.”
“Why?”
“Because it was black magic—used for personal gain, not for good.”
“And the Stone doesn’t condone that?”
“No.” He laughed. “It doesn’t.”
“So, what happened then?”
Arthur looked at his watch. “Anandene went behind Lilith’s back. She used the Stone and, sure enough, a plague hit. Many people died. In a desperate attempt to right the wrong, Lilith went to her father. He told her the life that cast the curse must be given back to the Stone in order to end it.”
“Anandene?”
“Yes.”
“Lilith had to kill her?”
“On the Stone. Yes.”
“Did she?”
Arthur hesitated. “This story, my dear, is not the one you will read in books nor is it the one you will be told, should you ask Morgaine. And I do hope this will stay between us.”
I nodded. “But, why doesn’t anyone know this story?”
“They know what Drake wanted them to know. All this I have learned over the centuries by doing some digging, drawing conclusions. I may have some of the story wrong. But it has been kept a secret for reasons unknown to me, and I intend to do the same until I piece everything together.”
“Okay. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Be sure you don’t.”
“So… did she do it? Did Lilith kill Drake’s wife?”
“To begin with, Drake actually offered his life in place of Anandene.”
“And Lilith agreed?”
Arthur nodded. “But when he went to the forest to die, Lilith had him captured and locked away under hold of Created Lilithian venom. When he woke from a nightmare, hearing his beloved scream, he was released to a healed world—the curse lifted, Anandene cold in the ground.”
I covered my mouth. “So he wanted Lilith dead because she killed Anandene?”
“Yes.”
I let out the breath I’d kept inside for too long. “Wow, well, that’s a different spin on the story to what Morg gave me.”
“I know. Try not to listen too closely to what she says. She… Drake gives tidbits of information he wants you to have for some greater purpose of his own. She believes he let slip the story about the coming of a Pureblood and a prophecy, but I don’t believe he is that careless.”
“So you think he wanted her to set up a knighthood—set up hope for the Lilithians?”
“I cannot even begin to understand his strategy, and I have exhausted myself trying. All I can do now, princess, is try and stop him.”
I laughed inside when he called me princess because it wasn’t a title, but a pet name. “So, did the other Set leaders know about Anandene?”
“For some reason, no. When I approached even the World Council leaders, they knew nothing of her death.”
“How can that be? Weren’t you all some kind of brotherhood?”
“Yes.”
“Then how can you know, but they didn’t?”
“These proceedings occurred here in the United States, and the world was a much bigger place then, Amara, gossip did not travel the way it does today. Our only method of communication was via letters.”
“So they just never got on the grapevine?”
“Grapevine?”
I laughed. “It’s my dad’s term—for being in the loop.”
His eyes narrowed. “Hm.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I sat back a bit then and rubbed open palms over my cold thighs. “I don’t understand how Drake kept it a secret all this time—to the point where Miss Nosey herself doesn’t even know.”
“Miss Nosey?”
“Morgaine.”
Arthur laughed. “Well, there was no one left to tell the story. Within a month of Anandene’s death, any who knew she existed were dead.”
“Vampires too?”
“Yes.”
“How? If Drake killed Lilith, how did he kill the vampires without her venom?”
“He used the only remaining stores we had.”
“Oh.” I looked down at my sandy feet. “So he obviously went to great lengths to keep this a secret?”
“Yes.”
“And Morgaine doesn’t know any of this—at all—not even one bit?”
“No. Even Lilith kept what Anandene did and what she did to Anandene a secret from the greater population in the weeks before Drake came for her.”
“And what about Walter? And Margret. They were on Lilith’s Council then? Do they know?”
“No. That is why they’re still alive. They were living human lives at the time and hadn’t seen Lilith for some years.”
“Hang on. So that’s the real reason why Drake stormed Loslilian and killed everyone: because they all knew Lilith killed Anandene?”
Arthur sat back a little. “For the most part, I believe so.”
I sat back too, feeling a bit more alert, a bit more awake now. “Wow. Devious little bugger, isn’t he?”
&nbs
p; “My dear, there is so much deception going on around here, I’m beginning to think myself an illusion.”
I laughed. “Maybe you are.”
“Well, one cannot be an illusion and a traitor,” he said mockingly.
“You’re not a traitor.” I bumped him softly with my shoulder. “But I think you have some grand plan; some reason you’re here that you’re not telling me.”
“Perhaps. But until I figure out what everyone else’s plans are and where, in the midst of it all, you sit, I will keep those plans to myself.”
“I’m Queen. I sit on the top,” I said proudly, and Arthur smiled.
“Amara, the queen very rarely sits on top. You have all the power, but you will come to find that, essentially, you make very few of the decisions.”
“So I’m a puppet?”
He cupped my hand in both of his. “But you are not alone. I will not see them control you.”
“I didn’t realize they were.” I frowned at the distant cliffs.
“I know. And this is why I watch from the sidelines, rather than to step in and make my point known. Very few people notice a pawn while the Bishops are rallying around the queen.”
“And very few ever worry about the king either, do they?”
“No. And I imagine, if David were here right now, he would be operating things from behind the scenes somewhere—unnoticed.”
“You think?”
“I know.” Arthur nodded. “He always knew how to play a hand, make you think you’d won until he blew you out of the water. He was under Drake’s rule long enough to pick up some clever strategies.”
I smiled. “Yeah. When he died, I found myself waiting for him to come back—hoping it was just some kind of ploy, you know, that maybe he found out about immunity before I did and was just faking his death.”
Arthur gently rubbed his hand against his heart. “When I first discovered immunity, I had hoped the same thing.”
“Did you ever go back?” I asked delicately. “To the chamber. Did you ever go see his remains?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to. I wanted to sweep them from the fireplace and set them free on the wind, but I couldn’t bring myself to open that door.” His eyes pooled with the agony of that memory. “That was once a room of gathering where, when I was a child, my father and mother would invite our guests to dine and dance. To reach that door and find myself unable to enter was the final straw for me. I left the castle and haven’t returned.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 170