The long, droll sound of church bells in the distance carried on the breezeless air, bringing with it a grassy smell and the dry scent of cold. I didn’t recognize the square lot below us, resting between four long buildings; didn’t know any of the smells, the cold of coming winter, didn’t even recognize the main building directly across the yard from us, even when Jason told me it used to be the only one here, but yet it all felt familiar, as if maybe I’d dreamed of it.
“The building under us is the main university structure and the ones you see running down the sides toward the manor are the dorms and common rooms, mostly—a few shops and cafés as well,” Jason explained, pointing to the landmarks. “The manor, as you may know, is where the royal family and Set officials live, and where our guests stay.”
I took more notice of the people in the courtyard then. Up here, even with the helicopter gone and with no breeze, it was freezing, but down there, people were reading books and smiling, laying around on the grass without sweaters.
“There’s a seasonal dome,” Jason said with a knowing smile. “It’s magic, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“It’s science magic, you might say. It’s what happens when you get a witch studying science.” He laughed. “They liken it to seeing a rainbow in a spray of water. The ‘magic’ occurs only in that small dome.”
“So in that courtyard it’s, what? Summer?”
“Late spring,” he said.
Well, I knew where I’d be spending all my time. Any self-discovery that needed to be done could certainly be done in the university courtyard.
“Not likely,” Jason said, making everyone else look up as though something had been said and missed. “If you want to find yourself, Ara, you’ll probably be walking naked in the freezing cold.”
My jaw popped and a cough of confusion came out.
David laughed gently, stepping in. “It’s how you once connected with nature—free of man-made restrictions, like clothing—”
“I happen to like those man-made restrictions, thank you very much,” I said, tugging my coat closed.
The boys laughed.
“You don’t have to walk naked, Ara.” Jason laid a comforting hand to my lower back. “We can accommodate you in any way you desire.”
“You accommodate us, huh?” David added in a playfully-challenging tone. “Not forgetting that last time we were here, we were running this place.”
“And for the last time,” Jason said, seeming to grow taller as he stepped in to David, “I’m not just babysitting this role until you two come back. I am the King, and that may be a hard adjustment for you, but you need to take it as an easy-out. Ara never wanted to be Queen anyway. And she is not the rightful queen. My wife is, and that makes me the rightful king.”
“And David will be again.” Lily intervened before David could punch Jason. “As we discussed, Jason and I will retire every hundred years and give you and Ara a hundred years to rule.”
My sudden look of surprise made me feel silly and misinformed. Here I was, past queen of the entire immortal world, and I didn’t know a thing about this world or how it was run.
Jason laughed at me. “Don’t worry, Ara. You have a hundred years to prepare yourself.”
“And you think that’s enough?” I huffed, eyes wide. “I’m gonna need a few more.”
“You’ll be fine, I promise.” Jason put his hand to his brow then and cast his eyes to the far horizon, taking a step back from the edge. “We better move. Drake’s chopper will arrive in a few minutes.”
“Drake’s coming?” I said, my heart working itself into a state of panic. I hadn’t told him what Morgana did to my child yet, because a part of me was afraid he’d try to stop me from killing her. But he clearly found out anyway. I mean, why else would he be here?
“Don’t worry.” Jason rubbed my back soothingly. “He’s just checking in for our monthly meeting.” He knows nothing about why you’re really here, he added in his thoughts.
My eyes shot up to meet his. And you do?
Yes, but Lily can’t know yet. I’ll need time to convince her. She needs to believe you’re only here to cure the curse.
I nodded, but the dread of having to tell Drake what Morgana did, the worry that he would still side with her, was making me feel sick. I just wanted to get to my room and throw up.
* * *
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about that,” David said, throwing his coat onto the giant canopy bed.
I folded my arms, positioning myself by the wall of windows overlooking the rear of the manor. “About what?”
“I felt royal matters, anything political—like running the monarchy in a hundred years—should be left out of the equation until you were at least ready to be you again.” His hands firmly cupped the backs of my arms, body pressing against mine. “I’m sorry. I feel I left you unprepared.”
“Nothing you said could have prepared me for any of this, David.” I could hear the graveness in my own tone, so I looked up to smile at him. “This place is amazing.”
“This was my room, you know”—he backed away with a wide step outward and turned to take in the room—“when we broke up. But it was different. They’ve renovated since.”
“Oh?” I turned to take a better look.
“The decor was darker.” He took hold of the pale blue curtain on the canopy bed, considering it closely. “It was richer, almost. Suited the evil vampire I was then.”
I laughed, walking over to him. “I like this, though.”
“What? The nicer human me, or the lighter decor?”
“Both.” I sat down on the chest at the foot of the bed, smoothing my palm across the white velvet top. The room felt spacious and open, with a fireplace and two cozy armchairs welcoming you as you enter the room, the giant bed all the way down the other end, at least fifty paces right from the door. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that behind one of those doors was a bathroom and the other a closet, our luggage kindly unpacked in there by staff. It was like some grand Victorian hotel, except that, where they’d have fake gold trimmings around the mirror above the fireplace or false portraits of ancestors overlooking, it was all real; real gold, real people that once resided here.
“We did this, you know,” David said.
“Did what?”
“All of this.” He presented the large windows, or maybe the world beyond them. “We created Loslilian to be a place of solace—a rest stop—for all immortals. And witches. We took surveys and asked our community what their needs were, and then we built a large university, teaching all things magic, science, even classes on how to fit in out there in the real world—pretty much any subject you can think up. We’re pioneers in advanced medical and technological research, having developed many of the marvels we now use today.” He turned and paced over to the windows, hands behind his back, looking ever more like a king. “We developed a town where vampires either born in or interested in certain eras can return there, as if nothing had changed. We even have a team of world-class doctors and surgeons here that perform what many of us class as medical miracles. Just take my scars for example.”
“Your scars?” But they were hideous. If they were such marvels, why couldn’t they heal them completely?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, not even needing to look back at me, the blue light from outside cooling his skin at the base of his neck as he held his head high. “But I feel no pain. I healed faster than I would have in a mortal hospital,” he added. “And while they can’t erase the scars completely, they have been researching new ways ever since it happened. One day, soon, they will find a way.”
While he looked thoughtfully out the window, my eyes stripped him bare, seeing every pink, twisted mass on his skin. “Well, you won’t need to worry about that, because Jason said he’d turn you back into a vampire once we settled in, right?”
“Right,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it. I could tell.
“What’s wrong?�
� I glided over and touched his back, sliding my hands up and over his shoulders.
“I’m not sure I want that yet, Ara.” He turned, looping his arms around my waist. “A part of me feels like…” I lost him to a moment of deep thought. “Like, if you truly do get your memories back…”
“You feel like I’d want to experience you human for a while?”
“Yeah.” A soft smile warmed his face for a second, slipping away to the sadness again as he looked into my eyes and saw the new me, not his wife.
I let go of him and stepped away. “Who will feed me then? Because that was your whole reason for wanting to be turned, remember? Or was all that a lie because you didn’t want Cal to come with us?”
David made this grunting-groaning sound and strode away to the other end of the room. “You know, I hate it when you shorten people’s names.”
“I hate it when you change the subject because you know I’m right.”
“You only do it to people you really care about,” he went on, avoiding the truth again. “It drives me crazy.”
“What are you talking about?” I sat down on the chest again. “Everyone calls him Cal.”
“Not me.”
“Yes you do.”
“No, I don’t.” He laughed derisively, shaking his head at me before facing the fireplace, attempting to sever this conversation because he knew I was right. He had always called him Cal. Okay, maybe once or twice he called him Callum. But this was deflection. He hadn’t wanted Cal to come out of jealousy, and that was the truth.
“You know, you can’t be my human husband and feed me as well. I know you want the best of both worlds, but you have to choose.”
His sudden break of laughter was unexpected. I watched him for signs of insanity—any indication of a possible surge—as he sat down on the armchair, the glowing fire making his hair red on one side and giving his grin a devilish flare.
“What’s so funny, David?”
“It’s just… I said pretty much the same thing to you once.”
I stood then and began the long walk to the other side of the room, certain it was bigger now than it was last time I was here. And my steps came to an abrupt halt, my blood freezing me in place.
Last time I was here!
I glanced back at the bed, my eyes readjusting from the red and gold they expected to see to the blue and white there was now. I could see David on that bed, naked, with girls around him. They were naked too, and the hurt in my chest was so deep that the memory stepped out of the past for a moment and turned my lungs into iron.
“Ara. What is it?” David’s hand appeared on my arm.
“Memory,” was all I could spew out. “Memory.”
His eyes moved to the bed too, and then he closed them, groaning silently to himself. “Of all the memories…”
“Why?” I grabbed hold of his arm to pull myself straight again. “Why did you do that?”
“We were apart at the time,” he explained, leading me over to the armchair. As I sat down, the warm fire reminded my limbs that I was here, in the present, where David was mine and we were having a baby. Everything was okay. “I was attempting to move on,” he added, “and you walked in that night.”
Poor me. I felt profoundly sorry for myself then.
“It was a turning-point for us,” he added, squatting down beside me. “It was when I truly started to admit that I still cared about you.”
Which was great, but seeing him touch other women that way scarred me. Clearly for life. I couldn’t get it out of my thoughts, couldn’t stop looking at it, trying to break it down and assess his every move.
“Is this how you felt when you saw me kiss Brett?”
He laughed, coming to sit on the arm of the chair. “Judging by the way you look right now, no. I was angry at him, not at you. And I wasn’t hurt either.”
I rolled my face up to look at him.
“When there is blame to lay, I will lay it where it belongs, Ara. And you always accept responsibility for your actions. Always. No matter how wrong they were. But in this case, you truly aren’t to blame for that, sweetheart. He did manipulate you, and you really are too innocent to have seen it, or understood it. But you do now, and that’s what matters to me.” He swept my hair back off my shoulder, and as he did, another memory flashed in—one I dreamt about.
My eyes opened a little wider and took in the room, seeing a footstool under my fat feet and big round belly. “This is where I was… in my dream.”
“Dream?”
“I dreamed I had a baby in my belly—like, before I knew who you were. And you were in that dream.” I sat back and tried to imagine a big belly. “When I woke up, I was sure I’d lost that baby—”
“That was Harry,” he said quickly, before I could lose my heart again to the sadness of missing the child Morgana took. “And it was in a setting just like this, but on the opposite end of the manor.”
“Huh?”
“Our old room—the royal quarters—it sits in exact opposite of this room on the other end of the manor. That’s where we were in the memory.”
“Oh.” I nodded, picturing it so clearly in my head that when I looked down at my flat belly, it was a shock. I stood up then.
“Where are you going?”
“To the cells,” I said, almost ripping the door off its hinges as I swung it open. “I need to kill Morgana right now, before I take another breath.”
“And I’m with you on that, one hundred percent, but you can’t go yet.” He grabbed my arm.
“Why not?”
“We might be the future monarchs of the Lilithian people, but while my brother and his wife reign, we must have their permission to see any prisoner in their cells.”
“Then take me to Jason—”
“Not Jason,” he said, lowering his head for a moment. “Lily.”
“Why her?”
“Because she is the only person with a key to Morgana’s cell.”
I huffed, my fists clenching. Lily would stop me from seeing Morgana for the very reason I came here: to kill her. “Well, I don’t need a key,” I said, pulling away. “I know how to use my Cerulean Magic. I can shoot her through the damn iron bars if I have to.”
David laughed, following me. “You make it so easy to love you.”
* * *
The cells reeked of pain and long suffering. There was misery down here that could be felt even by the most apathetic being. I pulled my red coat tighter around my chest and ducked my head a bit in the low tunnel, even though I was short enough not to hit my head. David, however… “Ouch!” was not.
“Are you okay?” I glanced back, trying not to laugh.
“It’s too dark for me,” he whined. “I don’t have the gift of vampire sight anymore.”
“Hold my hand,” I offered. “I’ll guide you.”
“Guide me?” he scoffed. “You’ll probably run me into a wall.”
I laughed too. “Be fair now, it’s—”
“Hey!” A bold English accent shot toward us from deep in the tunnel. “Who’s down here?”
“Shit. A guard.” I halted, about to run.
“Wait.” David grabbed my hand and steadied me. “Let him get closer. He’ll realize in a second when he smells us.”
“Realize what?” I listened to the man’s footfalls, gauging his position in case I needed to fight him.
“Just… wait,” he said with a smile.
“You can’t be down he—holy shit!” His tone changed and then he charged at us with a huge smile, scooping me right up off the ground and spinning me around before I even had a chance to see his face. “What are you doing here?”
David moved in and hugged the man around me, while I tried to take in his smell to see if I remembered him. I didn’t. “We’re here for a few reasons,” David informed.
“But I imagine you’re down here to see a certain witch this morning,” he said, putting me down. He cocked his head then, keeping his hands on my shoulders as he st
udied my face. “Man, I never thought I’d see this pretty face again.”
And that was it. The awkward meter was off the scale. “Um… I’m sorry.” I politely pushed his hands off me. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I know.” His smile warmed, eyes shrinking as the dent in his cheek deepened. It was hard to make out all of his features in such poor light—or no light for the mortal eyes of David—but I could tell he had long dark hair and was as cocky as a drunk David. I found I could sum up a lot about this man by that lofty grin.
“Ara, this is Blade,” David said, reaching out blindly in the darkness until he found Blade’s arm.
“I was one of your private guards—on the secret council you formed when you realized most people around here couldn’t be trusted,” Blade said.
“So I trusted you?”
“Until I betrayed Em.”
“Em?”
“I dated her to hide the fact that I was in love with you—under the curse, I might add,” he said, clearing his throat.
Great. I should have known from the way he hugged me. Another one lost to the curse. “I’m here to break that curse, you know.”
“Yeah?” His brows went high. “I don’t see how. Morgana said it wasn’t possible.”
“Morgana is a lying little bitch and she is the other reason I’m here.”
Blade’s eyes shifted onto David, a worried look crossing his face. “You’re not here with permission, are you?”
David shook his head and the worry moved into Blade’s eyes.
“Can you come back later then? I’m on duty right now, if anything happens to her…” He slid his finger across his throat.
Damn it! Why did it have to be a guard we knew? I could handle some random thug being beheaded because I wanted vengeance, but not someone I might one day remember that I cared about.
“Ara?” David tried to tug me away, but I’d become as stiff as a board. I didn’t want to come back. We’d walked fifteen minutes through the dark, the cold, the wet, the stench. I’d be damned if I’d come back!
Bound by Secrets Page 57