Graced

by Amanda Pillar

“You knew about it?” Dante looked at Clay.

  Elle swung back to look at him. She hadn’t wanted Dante to know. She’d gathered that he really had been hunting Graceds. Worse, she’d just given away the lifelong secret she’d been charged with keeping.

  She really sucked.

  “Maybe it’s the bond,” Clay said. “Makes it easier for your thoughts to slip into his mind.”

  “The bond is not meant to be telepathic,” Dante said.

  “Wait just a second,” Anton was saying. “You seriously believe she can project her thoughts?”

  Elle, Clay and Dante said in unison, “Yes.”

  Anton scoffed. “Impossible.”

  “Haven’t you ever noticed that humans with eye colors other than brown are…different?” Dante asked his husband.

  “No, that’s ridiculous!”

  Elle sighed.

  Clay’s hand gently touched her shoulder. She guessed he’d gotten over his pique at her for biting him. “I will get you back for it later,” he thought at her.

  “Yay.”

  She felt, rather than heard, him chuckle.

  Dante pinched the bridge of his nose for a few seconds before dropping his hand to his side. “I spent years studying the ones with colored eyes; this makes sense. It couldn’t be something too obvious.”

  “Studying us?” Elle’s skin prickled.

  Dante eyed her like she was a snake about to strike. “Uh, watching you?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “So, what are these powers then?” Anton asked, defusing some of the tension. Doubt laced his every word.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Elle said.

  “Well, telepathy is definitely one,” Dante said at the same time.

  Anton looked from Dante to her and back again. “So you really can read minds?” he asked, then paled.

  Lie, lie, lie, she thought. But Dante was staring at her and something made her say, “Yes.”

  The bloody bond.

  That had been his plan all along, she realized. Choose her and then get all the answers afterward. The cunning little bastard. Even though she wanted to rip him apart for his deception, part of her admired him for it.

  “Great,” Anton said hollowly. “What am I thinking now?”

  She didn’t want to, but she lowered her mental shields. She’d had to rely on them a lot since moving to Greystoke House. The people here were actually genuinely nice. She’d worked that out without the benefit of her new ability, but had used it to confirm her knowledge. Beatrice and Darla were happy to have her here. They thought that Dante must have loved her—to some extent; they’d settled on like a daughter—to Choose her. And so they loved her. That simple. She felt like she was eavesdropping when she heard Beatrice’s and Darla’s thoughts; she didn’t like it.

  They didn’t know that Dante hadn’t wanted to marry Anton, or that Anton certainly hadn’t wanted to marry his former fiancée’s murderer. There were so many lies and undercurrents running through this house—mostly between Anton and Dante—that sometimes she listened into their thoughts just for fun. Which made her feel horrible. It was sick of her, she knew.

  It was made even worse by the fact that Anton secretly lusted after his husband, and hated himself for it. She didn’t like hearing those thoughts, either.

  Remembering that she was meant to be reading Anton’s mind, she focused on him and his unique mental signature. Whenever she looked at his thoughts, she was reminded of the scent of brandy and the fragrance of sandalwood. Strange.

  Images began swirling from him to her. Pictures of Annabel—she fought a sneer—and of his family and then finally, the one he tried not to think about; Dante three-quarters naked. Even though she still didn’t like Dante much, her mouth went dry at the image, because she could feel Anton’s desire for all that pale, smooth skin coated over firm muscle.

  Feeling a little nauseated, she quickly slipped from his mind.

  “You were thinking of Annabel and your mother and sister.” She decided not to mention Dante—Anton had already been embarrassed enough. She’d seen that in the red-purple tinge of his outer thoughts.

  Anton’s mouth dropped open and then he flushed, sending her a grateful look, as if he knew she’d deliberately kept her mouth shut about his last thought.

  “I take it you were thinking those things, from your expression?” Dante asked.

  “Uh, yeah, he was,” Elle said.

  Anton nodded.

  Dante really was an oddity in comparison to his husband, Elle reflected. Or, well, to anyone. He wasn’t as much of a creep as she’d originally thought, and he did actually seem to feel some emotions, although his range was limited. He also didn’t understand facial expressions and had no social skills. No wonder Annabel had had no luck with him; no luck escaping him, anyway. You can’t manipulate a person’s emotions when they had next to none.

  “So, what other things can you do? Can other people with colored eyes do other things?” Anton asked her, drawing her away from her thoughts.

  “I can just read minds,” Elle said, hedging.

  “Yes, but anything else?”

  “No, not really.” Not that she knew of. But she did have a little Gray in her eyes, which meant she might be able to move things with a flick of a thought. One day.

  Dante stared hard at her. “What do the colors mean?”

  “Mean?”

  Even though her shields were up, she could hear his mind ticking away. Adding this, changing that, sorting this, deducing that. It was almost giving her a headache.

  “Yes, what can green-eyed and blue-eyed humans do?” He was sitting forward on his chair, eager almost.

  “What makes you think that the colors mean anything?” Elle hedged.

  “Because they have to,” Dante replied.

  Elle wanted to hit her head against a nearby wall.

  “Greens are telepaths,” Clay said from behind her shoulder.

  Elle swung around and glared at him. “Clay!”

  “What? He may as well know. It will help us, I think.”

  She didn’t lower her glare.

  “That’s all they can do?” Dante asked.

  Clay nodded.

  Elle turned back to face Dante and Anton, growling low in her throat.

  “What about blue eyes or gray eyes?”

  “Grays can move things with their minds. Blues are empaths,” Clay answered.

  “What’s an empath?” Anton asked.

  Elle shut her eyes. Oh boy, she didn’t want to go where they were about to go.

  “They can control emotions,” Clay said.

  “C-control emotions?” There was a slight tremble in Anton’s voice.

  Dante reached out and took hold of the other man’s hand. She doubted he knew he was doing it. For some reason, the vampire didn’t like it when his human was upset. Elle had a feeling it was because somewhere deep inside the murky nothingness of Dante’s existence, there actually was a something for Anton.

  Lucky Anton.

  “Yes, Blues control emotions.” Elle met Anton’s eyes.

  “Annabel had blue eyes. Beautiful, bright blue eyes,” Anton said, but he didn’t seem to appreciate he was speaking out loud.

  Since Elle had hated Annabel, she didn’t feel any guilt about saying, “Annabel was very strong. She could…control people with her ability.”

  Stricken Brown eyes met hers. “Control people?”

  “She could make them love her. Could make them lose their minds for her. It was like an addiction for them.”

  She’d always assumed that was how it worked, but she’d seen the confirmation in Anton’s mind last night. His recent withdrawal from nothing, which reminded him of the time when he actually had been addicted. She hadn’t wanted to see it, but she’d stumbled on him musing about Annabel and his betrayal of her through his lust for Dante.

  “No,” Anton said.

  “No?” Elle wondered what the no was in response to.

>   “No, Annabel wouldn’t have done that.” Anton almost moaned the words, but Elle had a feeling he was consoling himself.

  “She was a whore,” Dante said, something sharp in his voice.

  Elle quickly speared a thought his way and grasped that the Creep was feeling something, but he didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t identify the rolling sensation that was whirling through his mind, but she could.

  Jealousy.

  Wow, Elle thought, Dante really likes his human.

  He looked at her. “No, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do.” She really had to learn to shut this bond-link thing off. She didn’t like Dante hearing her thoughts.

  “I know plenty of whores who don’t control people,” Clay said. “Nice women.”

  “Of course you do,” Elle muttered.

  Clay chuckled again.

  “But why would she do that?” the baron asked, almost whispering, his face ashen.

  Tightening her mental barriers a bit more, Elle decided she wasn’t going to announce the real reason. She’d already failed her heritage as much as she was willing to do in a single day. “Why wouldn’t she? You’re a baron,” she said instead.

  “She made me love her for my title?”

  “Don’t you aristos marry for titles every day?” She looked at them both and Dante nodded. Anton appeared numb. “Plus, Annabel was a mercenary bitch,” Elle said, trying to be helpful.

  Anton spluttered.

  “So that’s why she kept wondering why I didn’t feel guilty or upset for her,” Dante said.

  Elle froze. “Why would you have needed to feel like that?”

  A faint red tinge crept up his cheeks. “She, uh, didn’t exactly say yes to being Chosen.”

  Anton leaped to his feet, his bad leg nearly buckling under him. Only quick use of his cane seemed to keep him upright. He spun to Dante and then poked the vampire in the chest, hard. “You did it against her will!”

  “I thought she would have wanted it!” Dante said, arms raised, as if to defend himself.

  Elle shook her head. “She wouldn’t have, because she knew she wouldn’t make it. Graceds don’t.”

  Anton raised his cane, as if to bludgeon Dante with it.

  Go Anton, she thought.

  “You’re upset with me when she made you love her? Your relationship wasn’t even real.” Dante almost snarled it, his voice lower than his normal almost-monotone.

  Anton’s cane didn’t waver. He brought it down hard on Dante’s shoulder. The vampire recoiled and stared up at him in shock. “That hurt.”

  Elle knew that Dante was fast, that he could have avoided that bashing, but he’d sat there and taken it. Which meant he hadn’t actually believed Anton would do it, or that it would be painful.

  Her shoulder twinged in sympathy.

  Dipping into Dante’s mind, she figured out that Dante felt that he deserved the wallop. He didn’t like the fact he’d upset Anton and took the caning as punishment.

  “I loved her anyway!” Anton yelled, raising the cane again.

  Deciding that enough was enough—which was odd, her being the one to normally incite violence—Elle stood and quickly stepped over to grab the raised cane. “Anton, you didn’t really love her. She made you.”

  He looked at her, eyes showing the broken and bleeding man just as well as his thoughts did. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do,” Elle said softly, lowering the cane.

  “Get out of my fucking head.” His shoulders dropped. Almost everything about him did.

  Dante stood and went to touch Anton, to offer him comfort, but the man shrugged his hand away. “Don’t touch me, murderer.”

  “I didn’t know she wouldn’t survive! She never said anything.”

  Anton looked at her.

  Elle shook her head. “Dante didn’t know. He really did think she’d make it.” As he’d hoped she would, she realized. As he’d been convinced Elle would. It was only his father and her gran that had almost resulted in her being burned alive.

  Her gran owed her so fucking much. Emmie was at the top of that list, though.

  “I should report you to the king,” Anton said, but there was no heat in his threat.

  “If I’d known she wouldn’t have survived, I wouldn’t have done it,” Dante said.

  Would have been a waste of my time, she thought she heard Dante think.

  “Sounds to me like he saved your life,” Clay said, the first time he’d spoken in a while.

  “What?” all three of them blurted simultaneously.

  “I have heard of people being strong enough to control others—Greens and Blues doing it,” Clay said. “Rarer for Greens, because they have to force someone to think in a certain way, rather than feel. But eventually, their will takes over the person. The…subject…becomes addicted to the high, the need for that stimulation. A love that isn’t love, one that turns to obsession, and then sometimes, hate. But they need that person, that stimulation. Love so strong that it can never be replicated in real life. Greens and Blues can turn people into puppets.”

  Elle’s jaw dropped. She snapped it shut. She’d been doing that enough lately.

  “You’re saying Annabel was like that?” Anton asked, his expression still ravaged.

  Clay shrugged. “Sounds like it.”

  Yeah, Elle thought, staring at the broken man in front of her. Annabel had been like that.

  Dante looked at her, as if he’d heard her thought. Then he gave her a smile, a small one, but one that looked like he was pleased with himself.

  Why?

  Dante’s voice entered her mind, low and calm and creepy. “Completely by accident, I managed to save someone’s life. Can’t say I’ve done that before.”

  “What, too busy taking them?”

  “No,” he replied. “Too busy not caring about it one way or another.”

  Wasn’t that the truth.

  Chapter 51

  Melissande didn’t know what to do. Emmie was barely eating and she had nightmares every single night. Screams were heard more often than conversation. As Melissande set a plate of bacon and eggs down in front of her youngest daughter, she was stunned by the purple marks under Emmie’s eyes. They were like slashing bruises, as if someone had got their fingers and dug them in deep.

  “Emmie, what’s wrong?” Melissande asked. She felt useless, a pathetic excuse for a mother.

  “I miss Elle,” Emmie said, her baby voice a whisper.

  Melissande slumped down at the kitchen table, her butt hitting the seat hard. She gripped one of Emmie’s brown hands in a pale one of her own. “I do too, baby.”

  Emmie looked at her, those bright Teal eyes almost glittering. But not with tears, with something else. “Gran doesn’t. She’s happy Elle’s gone.”

  Since Elle’s death, Melissande hadn’t really tapped into her empathy; had shut herself away from everyone, not wanting to feel their pain, greed and lust. She had enough of her own anguish to deal with. But Emmie needed her, and she needed to know what was wrong with her daughter.

  Opening herself up, she exposed herself to the world and encountered…anger. Rage, even. No sadness, no grief, just burning, white-hot fury. And it came from Emmie, her seven-year-old daughter.

  Eyes wide, she looked at Emmie, letting her hand drop.

  “You don’t feel any grief.” Melissande couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from her voice.

  “Elle’s gone,” Emmie said, her sharp little chin jutting. “But she’s not gone for good.”

  Sincerity beat through to her. Emmie truly believed Elle wasn’t gone forever. “Wh-what?”

  Didn’t her daughter understand the concept of death?

  “You know how Graceds can’t be Chosen or Bitten?” Emmie asked. The little girl picked up a fork and stared down at the mound of food Melissande had cooked. She still wasn’t used to preparing for just two.

  Melissande nodded.

  Emmie jabbed the fork down and brought up a pi
ece of egg, yolk running over the tines and dripping onto the plate. Emmie looked at her. “Well, what if you’re not fully Graced?” She popped the egg into her mouth and chewed.

  “You die,” Melissande said.

  Emmie put her fork down and looked at her, hard. “Do you?”

  “I’ve always been told that—”

  “By who?” Emmie asked.

  “Everyone.”

  Emmie scooped up another forkful of egg. “Who is everyone?”

  Melissande wondered when her youngest had become so cynical. So bitter.

  “Well, Mother said so.” Her eyes tracked Emmie’s eating.

  In between mouthfuls, Emmie said, “Gran is a mean old hag.”

  Melissande nearly choked on her own saliva.

  “What—”

  “Gran wanted Elle dead. She was an embarrassment.” Emmie jutted that chin out again. “I heard her say so.”

  “Because she was a Hazel,” Melissande agreed. How many times had she been railed at for wasting her reproductive abilities on Elle? It was why she’d agreed to birth Emmie. For her mother. She’d hoped that meant Olive would allow her to marry Simeon, but that hadn’t happened. He’d moved on, was married now to a Brown woman, although they had no children of their own.

  But Melissande loved Emmie, no matter what. No matter that she’d almost vomited from the act of conception; that she’d felt forced into it by her mother. That she’d almost been compelled, even.

  “But Mom, Elle was a Hazel…she had a lot of Brown. Not much Green or Gray. She could have survived.”

  Melissande rubbed at her cheek, feeling worn out, washed out. “She couldn’t have survived the cremation.”

  Something like satisfaction burned through her from Emmie. “Not unless she got out before.”

  Staring at her daughter, deep into those unusual eyes—eyes that she’d had to whore herself for—she began to feel a small spark of hope. Her own hope.

  “Do you think she did?” Melissande asked, whispering.

  “We will have to wait and see.” But Emmie was smiling, a small, secretive expression.

  Chapter 52

  “Whatcha doing here?” Anton asked. He was lying in bed, worn out, feeling like he’d been beaten all over with his cane. Which he may have been, he couldn’t really remember. The afternoon was a nice fuzzy blur, and he intended to keep it that way.