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“Good,” Jen said. “That’s fine. I’d be glad to have him there. Daise . . . ?”
I waited. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know which would be worse,” she whispered. “Even though it’s been awful, Bethany’s still my sister. If she didn’t rise, at least it would be over, you know? If she does . . . I don’t know if I could ever consider her family again. ” She paused. “Am I a terrible person for thinking that way?”
My heart ached. “Not for an instant. ”
Bethany’s rising was scheduled for midnight two days from now. Very clever of the House of Shadows to wait until someone was actually freaking dead to send out an invitation to the resurrection.
I spoke to Cody, who readily agreed to attend in his capacity as an officer of the law. He was still pissed off about what had happened with Heather Simkus.
I talked to Stefan, too.
Well, actually, it was Stefan who contacted me, calling to suggest that he evaluate my progress in the art of conjuring and raising a mental shield. “Cooper tells me you think I was holding back on you,” he said to me.
“No,” I said. “I know you were holding back. But I’ve been getting better. ”
He laughed. “Come to my apartment. We’ll spar. This time I won’t hold back . . . as much. ”
Frankly, I was grateful for the offer. I was in a foul mood and sparring with Stefan might help take the edge off it.
True to his word, he came at me harder this time. I’d become accustomed to the wild, surging attack of Cooper’s beast. By contrast, Stefan’s approach was deadly and disciplined. He wielded his hunger like a sword, battering straight at my mental shield, then sidestepping deftly to come at me from a different angle. We circled each other in his living room. I held dauda-dagr in my right hand, and the sunlight sparkling on the river beyond his window gleamed along the edges and runes of its blade. I let it fill me, pouring light and anger into my shield, letting it blaze. Stefan’s pale blue eyes were like sun-shot ice, his pupils waxing and waning as his desire warred with his discipline.
There was a part of me that wanted him to lose control, that wanted to fall into him, to spill my anger into that cool, deep well of stillness within him. And another, darker part that wanted to explore what lay beyond that stillness, to unleash the full extent of the emotions I tried so hard to keep in check, to allow Stefan to unleash the full extent of the ravenous hunger he kept under ironclad control.
Since that was a dangerous, possibly cataclysmic idea, we kept sparring, rotating around each other like a pair of binary stars until Stefan called a halt.
This time, he closed his eyes and took a moment to collect himself. I was exhausted and there was sweat trickling down the back of my neck, but I felt good. Not only that, I realized that although I’d sheathed dauda-dagr, I hadn’t dropped my shield altogether when Stefan stopped pressing me; it had already become instinctive to keep a faint spark kindled in my thoughts.
Stefan opened his eyes and smiled at me. “Well done. You have been practicing. ”
“Yep. ”
As before, he went into the kitchen to pour a couple of glasses of water. I wandered over to the display case with his father’s ceremonial shield, gazing at the dark-haired knight kneeling before his queen, wondering about the story behind it. Stefan returned to hand me a glass of water without comment.
“Thanks,” I said to him. “I really needed this today. ” I smiled wryly, remembering the bond between us. “But then you probably knew that, didn’t you?”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I sensed your unrest. ”
“My best friend, Jen—Jennifer Cassopolis, you met her the other day—her older sister’s been out at the House of Shadows for eight years. ” I took a drink of water. “This morning, Jen got an invitation to her sister’s rising. ”
“I see. ”
I shook my head. “No, see, here’s the thing. I was out there last week. There was an, um, altercation. Under the terms of Lady Eris’s decree, I had a legitimate chance to take down the vampire who’s turning Jen’s sister. And I didn’t do it. ” My temper rose like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of my temporary sense of calm, my anger again directed at my own hesitation. “I mean, I didn’t know at the time that he was turning her. But I didn’t fucking do it, Stefan. ”
Stefan pointed at the couch. “Sit. ”
I sat.
He sat in a chair opposite me. “Do you think it would have made a difference?”
“Well . . . yeah. Obviously. ”
Stefan gave me a look that was hard to describe—rueful, compassionate, maybe a little patronizing without meaning to be. The kind of look that spanned a six-hundred-year gap’s worth of life experience. “Your friend’s sister made her choice years ago, Daisy. Either she would have found another sponsor or wasted away trying. ”
“Maybe. ” I shrugged. “Okay, probably. But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”
“No. ”
I have to say, I appreciated the fact that Stefan didn’t mince words. He turned his head to gaze out the window, and we sat for a moment without speaking. I contemplated the clean, crisp, strongly drawn lines of his profile, his high, rugged cheekbones. I could see the resemblance to the kneeling knight on the shield.
He looked back at me, his pupils steady. “At least she had the luxury of making a choice, no matter how unwise or uninformed. ”
“You had no idea that you would become . . . Outcast?” I asked softly. I mean, I assumed it, but I didn’t really know for sure.
“No one does. ” Tilting his head, Stefan Ludovic regarded the ceiling. “I loved my father,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I revered and admired him above all men, and I do believe he was worthy of my regard. It was a golden age in the history of Bohemia—indeed, in the history of Europe—and my father was a nobleman in every sense of the word—a just and compassionate ruler, a highly educated and visionary thinker, a valiant knight. But he wed a weak-willed woman. ”
I didn’t say anything.
“It was not his fault. ” Stefan glanced at me once, then looked away again. “In those days, the aristocracy did not wed for love. It was a union of political expedience. But while my father was away on one of King Charles’s campaigns, she allowed my uncle to seduce her. And upon my father’s return, my uncle, his own brother, poisoned him. ”
I swallowed. “Um, isn’t that the plot of—”
“Yes,” he said before I could finish. “It is very like it. But although I was my father’s only son, I was no Hamlet. I was a man grown and a knight in my own right, a Knight of the Cross with the Red Star. I was a member of a branch of the order affiliated with a hospital in Prague that specialized in occult afflictions. When my father’s spirit appeared to me in a dream, crying out for vengeance, I knew it was a true vision. ”
I set my glass of water down carefully on a marble coaster, trying not to let it clink. “I see. ”
“My uncle was everything my father was not,” Stefan continued, still not looking at me. “Craven, ambitious, untruthful. But he could be charming, and he knew how to evoke pity. He was born with a twisted leg, which prohibited him from service in his majesty’s army. When I returned to my ancestral home of Žatlovy, I stood in the great hall and accused him of my father’s murder. He denied it. He denied it vehemently. ” He looked back at me, pupils surging to eclipse his irises as his voice turned savage. “And then he laughed and told me I could never prove it. ”
My shield flared from a spark to a buckler-size disk.
Stefan closed his eyes, regaining control. “Forgive me. ”
“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I want to know, of course I want to know, but I didn’t mean to pry. ”
He opened his eyes. “You didn’t. ”
I cleared my throat. “So you killed your uncle?”
“Yes,” Stefan said simply. “
I struck him down then and there, with the very sword my father wielded at the Battle of Crécy. In a fit of pure rage and loathing, I killed my uncle, a defenseless cripple. Acting out of the depths of my profound and abiding love for my father, with the commandment to honor him blazing like a beacon in my thoughts, I exacted vengeance. I killed his treacherous, villainous, murderous brother in cold blood. ” He stretched out his hands, contemplating them. “I have sought to relive that moment a thousand times in my memories. To this day, I do not regret it. Although,” he added, “I can still hear my mother’s screams. ”
I swallowed again, wordless. I wanted to ask what had happened next, how Stefan had become Outcast, but my throat was too tight.
“My uncle’s guards drew their poniards and fell upon me. ” Stefan answered my unasked question in a dry tone. “The very same guards sworn to my father’s service not a month beforehand. ” He touched his chest and his back and sides—here and here and here. “There were many of them. Although I fought, they slew me. ”
I found my voice. “But you came back. ”
He gave a brief, brusque nod. “Yes. On my bier in the chapel. I returned to myself. Alive, awake . . . and Outcast. ”
There were a few thousand questions knocking around in my thoughts, but they were banging up against a pretty strong sense that Stefan Ludovic was gently but firmly closing the door on this conversation. He’d opened himself up to me as much as he was going to today, which, frankly, was a lot.
I mean, seriously . . . Stefan was basically freakin’ Hamlet, only less indecisive? That was huge.
“Thank you,” I said to him. “You didn’t need to tell me that. ”
“I know. ” He held my gaze. “You’ve shared a great deal with me, Daisy, much of it not of your choosing. I wanted to do this. ”
“I’m grateful. ”
“I did not do it to earn your gratitude. ” Stefan’s expression was unreadable, but I could sense the hunger behind it.
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