The Heart of Arima
Emma V. Leech
THE HEART OF ARIMA
By Emma V. Leech
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Published by: Emma V. Leech.
Copyright (c) Emma V. Leech 2014
Smashwords Edition
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.
Acknowledgements
As always there are too many people to thank for helping me produce this book, but I couldn't possibly not mention the following...
My best girls are, Alys Arden, (check out her book The Casquette Girls on Amazon, an amazing read) without you I couldn't see the wood for the trees. My wonderful editor Gemma Fisk for polishing until it shines. The beautiful Beta readers, Linzi Clark, Kim Brown, Ell Tucker, Melissa Lucas, Jo Hall and Kala Rae, your comments were invaluable. For my stunning covers I have to thank the incredibly talented Caoimhe Coleman for her hard work.
Last but not least the fabulous Dark Addicts, you are the best readers ever and I'm so grateful to have you and your amazing support. Emma (La Dame Blanche) xoxo
Other works by Emma V Leech and reading order.
(For those of you who have read the Dark series, please remember that chronologically The Heart of Arima precedes The Dark Prince)
The Key to Erebus
The Heart of Arima
The Dark Prince
The Dark Heart
Short Stories: A Dark Tale, A Dark Desire, A Dark Design
A Dark Collection.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Prologue
I knew it was a dream but that didn’t stop my heart from beating so hard I thought it might crack a rib.
He was there, in the darkness. I could feel his presence, his heat, it burned me, even though I couldn’t see him. His voice had been haunting my dreams, taunting me, for months.
“I know you’re there!” I yelled into the deep black that cloaked me. I was rewarded with a masculine rumble of laughter that seemed to swirl around me in the darkness .
“So cross, little one, why do you not stop fighting and come to me?”
I swung around in the direction the voice had come from, my breathing harsh and loud against the following silence. “Who are you?”
“I am yours and you are mine, and that is all you need to know.”
“No!” I backed away but suddenly he was behind me, I could feel his hot breath against my neck and I stopped dead, paralysed by fear and recognition.
“You will remember me, lover.”
I felt his lips brush my shoulder with a touch that blazed through me. I was enveloped in his scent; spicy and decadent. It fogged my senses like wine and desire and I shook my head in an effort to clear my mind.
“Please, you must tell me, who are you?” I pleaded and tried to step away from him, but his hands found my waist and pulled me close.
“You know my name, little one. You need only let yourself remember.” His fingers gently traced up my arms, the curve of my neck, and with one hand he tilted my head back and brushed his lips over mine. “Do not tell me you cannot remember my touch.”
No. No. No! I didn’t want to remember, but I couldn’t deny it, his scent, the feel of his hands, his lips… I knew it, I knew him. Oh God, I knew him!
“Yes, little one, you are mine, and I will come for you.”
Chapter 1
On reflection, spell practice in a pine forest wasn’t such a good idea.
The spell missed me by a hair’s breadth and exploded against the tree trunk I’d been sheltering behind. Blue sparks and great gobs of sap rained down and I screamed at my attacker with justified fury.
“You are so dead, Cain!”
Thankfully I was wearing a hat which saved my hair from the worst of it. The sap dripped off the peak however, and ran in thick, sticky lines down my face and neck. Just to make my day complete, the sawdust created by the explosion stuck to the sap.
I’m not what you would call a violent person, not on a day to day basis anyway, but sitting in the mud, in the pouring rain - I was ready to murder someone. I was wet, cold and very hungry, and my newly discovered brother was top of the list of people I hated most in the world.
Muttering obscenities, I crept from behind the tree, trying cautiously to line myself up in the direction the spell had come from. Just in time, I dived into the dirt as another spell came whistling past. I rolled to cover and flung a volley of spells in return.
I heard some impressive swearing, some of which I took note of for the next time, and with the schedule Cain and Corvus had set between them, it would be in about half an hour… if I was lucky.
Cain stumbled out from his hiding place, furiously slapping his arms and legs to extinguish the blue flames. I noticed with satisfaction that I’d also singed his right eyebrow.
“Ha!” I was never at my most eloquent when I was tired and hungry, but I figured he got the point.
“I have no idea why you’re looking so pleased with yourself, Jéhenne; it’s taken you all day to score a direct hit. If I’d really been trying, you’d have been toast hours ago!”
Yeah right.
“Really been trying my ar--”
He shot me a warning look.
“Well you’ve got a bloody nerve! You’ve been throwing everything at me since stupid o’clock this morning and I’ve just about had enough.”
I stomped off back towards the chateau, tripping over branches and brambles while Cain strode easily beside me, all the while listing every mistake I’d made from the moment I woke up. Frankly, waking up had been the biggest.
By the time we got to the chateau doors I’d completely lost my temper and we were indulging in a full-on sibling spat. My fingers sparked with barely restrained magic and blue flames had begun creeping up Cain’s wrists; apparently it was a family trait.
“Ahem!” Somehow the polite cough made itself heard above the noise of our bickering and we turned to see Cyd glaring at us with her arms folded.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s been mentioned, possibly once or twice, that if you must argue - you take it outside. I believe Corvus would be just a little bit upset if you burn down the bloody chateau again!”
Again was a bit of an overstatement, but a fair point. A few weeks previously we’d caused some serious fire damage in the guest room that Cain had been allotted since his arrival. He was by no means Corvus’ favourite person before this incident, and now he was lucky he wasn’t sleeping in the barn. Not that I thought he would be bothered, creature comforts didn’t seem to be high on his list of priorities. Making my life a misery however, that was way up there.
I glared at Cain. “Don’t worry, Cyd, this conversation is over.”
I turned my back on him and forced my aching limbs to climb the stairs, my footsteps echoing as they trod the ancient stone steps. I opened the heavy oak door to the apartment to find Corvus was sitting on one of the big leather sofas, with various ancient-looking maps and scrolls laid out on the coffee table. He looked up with a smile, opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Smart vampire. But I saw his lips twitch.
“Don’t,” I said, glowering at him.
He walked over and looked down at me with humour lighting his eyes.“I would kiss you, but I’m not sure we’d ever get unstuck.”
He picked a twig out of my hair and found that it was glued to his fingers.
I sighed. “Sounds good to me.”
“Bad day?”
“Is there any other sort?”
He chuckled and planted a kiss on my chin, clearly the only available spot.
“Go and get clean and then I’ll see what I can do to cheer you up.”
I smiled, instantly mollified, and headed off to the shower. Corvus was very good at cheering me up.
Cleaning up was harder than I imagined. The clothes and the hat went straight in the bin. Happily there wasn’t much in my hair that had to be cut out. The stuff on my face … Cyd provided cooking oil and peanut butter. I didn’t ask.
Corvus sniffed me as I sat down beside him with a groan.
“It’s the best I can do.”
“You know I’m not a fan of perfume, but this is … interesting.”
“Ha, bloody ha.”
He grinned and reached for a big plate of roast beef sandwiches. I snatched the plate from his hands and stuffed one in my mouth. With an amused expression Corvus left me chewing contentedly and went back to perusing his maps.
“What’s that?” I mumbled through the sandwich.
“A work of fiction, most likely.”
“Huh?”
“I paid a great deal of money for what are supposed to be maps of the underworld.”
“Don’t tell me someone ripped you off!”
He gave me a look. The likelihood of someone stitching Corvus up was laughable; no one would dare.
“Well why don’t you think they’re real then?”
“People go into the underworld, Jéhenne, very few come out again. These come from a very reliable source, but they don’t tally up with the areas I’m familiar with.”
As guardian of the gate to the underworld Corvus was one of the few. I was another. I put the empty plate down and sighed heavily. Corvus looked up at me and raised his eyebrows.
“Didn’t you say something about cheering me up?”
An innocent face. “Did I?”
“Yes you did, and planning our little trip into hell isn’t doing it for me.”
I tried not to whine, but I was tired of thinking about all this crap. I wasn’t even twenty yet; life should not be this stressful. He chuckled and pulled me up onto his lap. Wrapping my arms around him, I buried my face in his neck. Corvus always smelled wonderful, I could never pinpoint exactly what it was, but I’d narrowed it down to frost and midnight.
He held me close to him. “What did you have in mind?”
“This is good for starters.”
“Hmmm, I was rather hoping you were going to be the main course.” My heart picked up and began the usual attempt to escape my chest. He smiled at me. “Such a pretty sound.”
“What is?”
He trailed a finger down my neck, sending shivers flickering over my skin.
“Your heart as it races when I touch you.” His hand paused at my top button, and with deft fingers undid three, his cool hand sliding under the material to rest over my heart. I felt my mouth go dry. Our evenings together had become something of a battle of wills and I wondered if he had any idea how close I was to losing.
“Come to bed.”
He leaned forward and kissed my neck and I closed my eyes as the breath seemed to leave my lungs in a rush.
“I ...”
I was saved from replying as someone chose this moment to knock at the door.
Corvus sighed. “What is it, Rodney?”
As Master of a vast family of vampires, Corvus was always in demand, and I was certain nine out of ten times were on the rare occasions we got to be alone together. A dirty blond head poked around the door.
“Alright, luv.” Rodney nodded at me with a sheepish grin. “I’m really sorry to interrupt.” He caught the deeply unimpressed look he was getting from Corvus and quailed a little. “Right, well…er Cain and Lucas…”
“Are trying to kill each other again!” Corvus finished. I could see a muscle ticking in his jaw line – never a good sign. “I’m well aware of that fact, Rodney, I was just hoping there was someone else who would deal with it.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry but no one’s willin’ to get between em. Knockin’ seven shades of sh-- hell out of each other they are.” Rodney smiled uneasily. “Should I just leave them be?”
Corvus muttered something under his breath. “No.” He stood up, picking me up as he went and then placing me gently back on the sofa. “Don’t move,” he instructed and I grinned at him.
“Yes, Master.” I smirked. He snorted in amusement and went to referee Lucas and Cain.
Rodney sat down beside me. “Sorry I interrupted.”
“Never mind that, just tell me you found something? Please, Rodney. I’m getting desperate here.”
He shook his head. “Nothing, it’s just not possible. You guys are bonded now, the only thing left to do is seal the deal. How long you think you can hold out, Jéhenne? How long before he loses the plot if you do?”
“Shit!” Tears prickled at my eyes while flames erupted at my fingertips. Rodney snatched away the cushion I was hugging before I could set it alight. A few weeks back Corvus and his family had fought a battle with me against a vampire called Tacitus and his fanatical followers who wanted vampires to come out of the closet and declare war on the human world. Corvus and Tacitus had been made vampire at the same time and had spent most of the last two millennia trying to kill each other. When Tacitus had discovered I held the key to Erebus, the key that could wield the power of the underworld, all his Christmases had come at once. He wanted the key and he wanted me dead to punish Corvus. The goddess Hekatê had given me the key in the first place as her daughters were trying to usurp her position of power in the underworld by stealing it from her, with help from Tacitus. We’d won the battle, barely, and in no small part du
e to the angel Sariel who had agreed to keep me and those I cared about safe-- for a price. The fact he would be coming to tell me exactly what that price was at some point wasn’t helping me to sleep. That and the fact that I needed to return the key to Hekatê, meaning another trip into the underworld.
Ridiculously enough however, this wasn’t my main cause of stress. During the battle things had gone badly for us and Corvus had been forced to kill me. He obviously hadn’t, but to make it look as if he had, he had joined us, bonded our lives together in a ceremony that, for a brief time, made me appear to be dead and, in vampire terms, meant we were married. I had a set of tattoos at my wrists and ankles that marked me as his property, and for the supernatural community, I really was that; property. Except there was one tattoo missing. The first time we slept together the bond would be completed, I would get the final tattoo around my neck and Corvus and I would be together ... for eternity.
I was nineteen and he was nearly two thousand years old. I had known him for barely ten months and for the first few of those he’d hated me, even threatened to kill me. Things had obviously changed but was I willing to commit everything to him? Forever?
The problem in part was that he remembered every moment of the first time we had met, when he was still human, a General in the Roman army. It had been my first lifetime and we had been very much in love, we were going to be married but I had been killed, burned as a witch. He remembered me as I was then though and he wanted things to be just as they were before but I didn’t remember, and I wasn’t the same girl I had been then.
I was Jéhenne, not Jéhnina.
That was far from the worst of it though.
“I’m really sorry, luv, but I think you just got to accept the situation. I mean ... it’s not like you don’t love him is it?”
“It’s not that simple, Rodney.”
“Seems pretty simple to me. He loves you, you love him.”
“Eternity is a long time,” I said softly.
“Yeah.” Rodney nodded. “Be even longer if you’re not with the person you love though.”
I was silent for a moment. “What if it isn’t him I’m supposed to be with?”
The Heart of Arima. Page 1