by Liz Schulte
Lorelei sighed and turned back to me. “Her taste in companions has always been questionable.”
“It has not.”
“Hush. Drink your tea. I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I finished it.” Selene sat the cup down beside her.
“Good. Have another,” Lorelei said, refocused on my ribs. “Well, Sebastian, I believe that you will live.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said. “Am I free to go?”
“I can’t keep you here, but I think it would be best if you rested for a few more hours at least. After that, take things slowly and listen to your body. You’ve been thoroughly beaten, but I don’t think there will be lasting damage.” She stood up and went back to Selene. “As for you, bed rest and drink the tea constantly.”
“Has anyone gotten ahold of Corbin?” Selene asked.
Lorelei shook her head. “No. You cannot depend on the vampire either. You need to care for yourself.”
Selene agreed with a smile that was a little tight. In the years I had known her I found she had certain tells. She tended to use her looks and sense of humor to mask what she didn’t want other people to see, but if you watched closely the signs to what she actually thought or felt were always there. The smile that tightened around the edges and the carefully blank expression meant she was worried about something, something she didn’t want to talk about yet.
“I’m going to make a salve for the cut on Sebastian’s head. Do either of you need anything?”
When we both assured her we were fine, Lorelei left.
I smiled at Selene. “So that’s your aunt. It makes perfect sense now.”
Selene refilled her cup and took a drink. “What does?”
“How you became…you.”
She laughed. “I’m not entirely certain I want you to explain that.”
“It’s not bad. Actually, I think it is quite wonderful. Both you and Sy have an amazing amount of confidence and independence—”
“For a half-elves,” she supplied.
“For any elf. And I fully believe that had everything to do with the woman who raised you. She’s fantastic.”
Selene leaned her head back against the pillows and stared straight ahead, chewing on the side of her lip. “I didn’t always appreciate her, you know. We butted heads a lot.”
I didn’t doubt that either. Selene wasn’t the type to follow orders and Lorelei didn’t appear to be the type who was easily refused. “Just as your daughter will with you.”
Selene’s mouth tightened again. She didn’t speak for a long while, and the worry only increased across her face. “If they don’t find Corbin, I don’t think I’ll survive.” She looked down at the cup in her hand. “The tea helps, but,” she shook her head. “It’s too little, too late.”
“Why do you need the vampire?”
Her eyelid twitched. “Since we’re still bonded, he can give me part of his strength.”
I let the information sink in. “How often does he do this?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t like that. The last time I had an episode, he rebuilt my strength. That was the only time we purposefully did it.”
“When did you not purposefully do it?”
“Well, in purgatory was really the first time. It was how we bonded. Then it happened again when I was exhausted and he picked up the Pole of Charon. It was able to heal me through him and our connection. Those are the only times I know of.”
I pressed my lips together. “Does Cheney know?”
She looked at me with serious eyes. “Yes.”
There were so many things I wanted to say, but none of them would help the situation. When she let the vampire pass her strength, no matter how indirect the action was, it made her no different than him. Whatever life he stole from the people around him was the life she was taking. “But you don’t normally need it to live?”
“No, only when I’m weak and even then it’s probably not critical. I could heal with time like I normally would. But now … for this … I don’t know if I can.”
I nodded. “What’s the cost?”
“What?”
“You know as well as I do there is always a cost. When you cast a spell, there is a cost on you, right?” She nodded. “Nothing comes for free. You are taking this energy he’s offering, but what is it doing to you, to both of you, in exchange?”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Consider this. What if your bonding wasn’t an accident?”
“It was. Neither of us intended for it to happen. We were in purgatory. I can’t really explain it, but it was different there.”
“Yes. But while neither of you may have intended for it to happen, bonds aren’t formed accidentally. They are formed through mutual or forced willingness and acceptance. Had you been forced you would know it.” I considered my words carefully. “You are a survivor and so is he. You were in purgatory and you needed him. And what do all vampires need to survive?”
“A food source,” she said. I waited for her to come to her own conclusion. “So you’re saying we bonded because I needed him to survive and he needed someone to keep him alive. Even if that is true, what does that have to do with now? What’s done is done.”
“Needs change.” I waited for her to meet my eyes. “He can’t be happy you married Cheney. He can’t be happy about any of this. And with the birth of the child you will be even more lost to him than ever before.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“It just seems to me that right now when everything is about to change you’re suddenly needing him more and more. You are a constant food source to him. He may not be doing it consciously, but what if part of your weakness at the moment has less to do with the pregnancy or Jessica. What if he’s feeding off of you more than before? Draining you?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Creating a need on my part.” I nodded. “To what gain?”
“It could be any number of things. That’s why you need to know more about this bond. Have you noticed it changing at all?”
“I can feel him now. Before I couldn’t. After we first bonded he could feel me, but I couldn’t feel him, at least that was what I thought. Then I realized I was having some personality changes that were more him than me. However, once I was aware of it, they were easier to dismiss.”
“And bonding with Cheney, did that change anything? Does it feel different than it did last time?”
She ran a hand over her forehead. “It’s just… I’m used to being bonded this time. Of course it feels different.”
I shook my head. “Bonds don’t feel different, Selene. They don’t get easier. Ask Cheney. He was bonded to you for years, even when you weren’t to him. It never lessened for even a moment. It was something he carried with him always. He carried you with him and he does again. Even through resentment, mourning, and believing he had lost you forever, he never stopped aching to be with you.”
She didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to. We both knew she had gotten off easy the first time. As a changeling she didn’t feel the weight of the bond and it appeared she didn’t feel it this time either.
“I love Cheney,” she said.
“I know you do,” I responded because that was also the truth. “Do you love the vampire as well?”
“Cheney is the only one I want,” she said stubbornly.
As an elf Selene had been ambitious and wild and always put herself first. As a human she was focused, introspective, and aware of those around her. It was almost as if when she became a changeling she tried to fix the things she liked least about herself—or perhaps just the things that always got her in the most trouble. Now she was falling somewhere in the middle. Her elf tendencies hadn’t vanished nor had the human ones. But what she couldn’t see was she had never been all one or the other. All of these things always lived in her, but through different portions of her life she chose to ignore half of who she was.
“You c
an’t conquer your feelings by ignoring them,” I said.
“Then how?”
“Only by accepting them.”
Selene looked at me. “Corbin loves me. Part of me would like to love him and maybe given time I would, but right now, I can honestly tell you I don’t.”
“I believe you.” Her face relaxed slightly. “And perhaps that is also your answer to what Corbin has to gain by making you need him. The more you need him, the harder it will be for you not to love him back.”
“So I shouldn’t let him heal me?”
“I’m not saying that. There are a lot of different versions of this world I can imagine, but all of them require you to be in it. I just want you to be aware of the situation around you.”
She traced her forefinger back and forth across her bottom lip. “I love you, Sebastian.”
I stood in spite of the pain and went to her, pressing my lips against her forehead. “As I love you,” I said.
She took my hand. “No matter what happens, I know you will be here to take care of everyone.”
“Always.”
Her eyelid twitched again. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my situation and what I will do if Corbin doesn’t come. I have a plan.” Her jaw tightened. “But no one will like it. The least of all Cheney.”
She didn’t have to tell me. I could read it in the stress on her face. It was the same way she looked when she asked me to kill her. I didn’t want to hear it, but I asked anyway. “What’s your plan?”
“If things look bad, like I’m not going to make it through labor, I’m going to break the bond with Cheney. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.” She swallowed a couple times. “But I have to do it before I’m too weak to cast.”
I shook my head. “That will assure your death. You may survive if you don’t.”
“But if I don’t and I’m not strong enough, Cheney will die too.”
I didn’t know why we were even discussing this. Selene would fine. Selene was always fine. “And that’s his choice. He knew the risk going into this.”
“Well, this is my last request. He’ll need you more ever if that happens. So will the baby.”
The door opened and Cheney came through with a smile. “And how are you feeling, my lovely wife?” His eyes flickered to our joined hands then to me. “You look like hell. Are you ready to stop being lazy?”
I tried to pull away from her, but Selene held onto me. “I feel like I was trampled by horses,” I said, giving Selene a slight nod and she let go. “But I’m always ready to work.”
“Good. I’ll meet you in my office.”
I went to the door and looked back at them once. They were smiling and laughing with each other, his hand resting on her stomach. This was how I would always remember them. No matter what happened.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Cheney as soon as Sebastian left. The two worry lines on his otherwise smooth face terrified me. Had he heard us talking? Would he be able to stop my plan?
“It’s nothing to worry about. You rest. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“If you let me stew over whatever is worrying you, it’ll be so much worse than if you just told me.”
He sighed. “There have been death threats made against everyone in the election. I have invited all the candidates to the castle to discuss the situation, but…” he shifted his gaze to the door, “I don’t know if this is the safest place for any of us anymore. Holding Jessica’s partner here means she’ll keep trying to get in and you saw what happened to Sebastian—but I don’t want to abandon the castle either.”
It seemed like death threats were a part of everyday life here. “Has the other witch spoken?”
He shook his head. “It is only a matter of time, but time is exactly what we don’t have. And these latest threats couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
“I’m sure that was on purpose.”
“Without a doubt. Everyone except us received one.”
I laughed. “No one can honestly think we would send out death threats. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. If I was going to kill someone, I certainly wouldn’t warn them I was going to do it. And if I didn’t intend to kill anyone, I wouldn’t have left myself off the list.”
“Agreed, but it has brought the Tahlik issue back to the forefront.”
My elven father, Tahlik, was murdered by no one knows who. The obvious choice was one of us, but neither of us were anywhere near him at the time of his death. Sy had been following him and even he didn’t see anyone do anything to him. However, when the man who is blackmailing you turns up dead, people talk.
I rolled my eyes. “Will that man ever not be a thorn in my side?”
“Who?” Aunt Lorelei asked, coming in then stopping. “Where did Sebastian go?”
“Cheney put him back to work,” I told her.
Aunt Lorelei looked down at a bowl of gooey-looking liquid in her hand.
“He should be in my office,” Cheney said.
Aunt Lorelei smiled. “Make sure she’s drinking her tea. I’ll be back once I give this to Sebastian.”
Cheney refilled my cup. The tea tasted like shit. The more I drank of it the worse it was. “I think she’s poisoning me,” I said.
“Well, you’re looking pretty healthy for someone who is being poisoned,” he said. “Much better than you did last night.”
“What are your plans for today?”
“We need to prepare for the candidates’ arrival as well as figure out what to do with the witch. They should be here by this evening and I would very much like to have a handle on the Jessica situation by then.”
I took of a sip of the vile tea. It made me feel slightly better, which was literally the only thing that kept me drinking it. “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing. Stay in bed so I don’t have to worry about you. That would be great.” He wrapped his arms around me and I nestled against his chest, breathing in his smell that would always be home to me. “I wish I could stay here with you.”
I wished that too. “But they need you and you can’t be everywhere. Do you think they’ll be in danger coming here? Why don’t they come now?”
“I offered guards to everyone. All of them except Kalan accepted the service. They’re campaigning and it’s too close to the election to lose a day. They’ll come tonight and hopefully then we can work out a solution.”
“Should you be campaigning too?”
Cheney rested his cheek against the top of my head. “There is no where I should be that takes me away from you. I don’t care about the election. I keep saying it, but none of you will believe me.”
He said that, but how would he really feel if we had to leave the castle? If he no longer had a say in how the future of the fae would turn out? He had been born to do this job, shaped and molded his whole life. It was part of who he was, but this was well-covered ground so I let it go. “Why didn’t Kalan want a guard? That’s sort of suspicious.”
Cheney shook his head. “Speaking of him, if we’re going to release a statement about your past, now is the time to do it.”
“Anything, if it gets me out of bed. My butt is falling asleep from sitting here.”
His finger hooked under my chin and tilted up. He kissed me softly then a little harder, making my heart swell with warmth. “No such luck. I’ll give the statement. If we have to strap you down, you will stay in bed.”
There was a knock on our door and moments later Sy came bounding through. “Did someone order a babysitter?”
I rolled my eyes and Cheney kissed me one more time, a slow lingering kiss. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“And you will tell me everything that happened today?”
“Absolutely.”
After Cheney left, Sy climbed up onto the bed beside me and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a prisoner in a body I hardy recognize as my own.”
“Do you a
lways complain this much?” He gave me a crooked grin.
“Yes.” I elbowed him in the side. “Will you tell me a story, Sy?” He could never resist the chance to entertain someone.
He laughed. “Of course. What kind of story do you want?”
I waited a couple beats. “What happened to my dad?”
He gave me a too innocent look. “I told you.”
“Yeah, I know what you told me. I also know that’s not the truth. At least it’s not all of it.” I studied the muscles in his jaw as they clenched and retracted. “Come on. Tell your dying cousin a story about her father. I think I deserve at least that.”
“You’re not dying,” he said flatly as if he could somehow control it.
“I might be. We can’t find Corbin because he doesn’t want to be found to help me. And even if we do, now I don’t know if I want his help.” I recapped Sebastian’s theory to him. “So I would say my odds are getting worse by the moment.”
Sy shook his head. “You aren’t dying, but if you take a nap and rest, I will tell you a tale.”
I squished down into the covers and rolled over on my side facing him. I hadn’t pressed Sy for what really happened to Tahlik before. I chose to accept his version because the truth was I didn’t really care what happened to him. He had never shown an ounce of interest in me until Cheney and I took the crown—and then his interest mainly had to do with blackmail. Father or not, he wasn’t someone who inspired much loyalty from me.
“Once upon a time there was a young half-elf who was all alone in the world. Her mother had died and her father, the heartless cowardly charlatan, left her for dead.”
I blinked. “He gave me to Lorelei. He didn’t leave me for dead.”
“Shhhh. Are you telling this or am I? Now close your eyes.”
I obeyed, waiting for the rest.
“Her lovely aunt discovered her brother’s dastardly plan and went to retrieve the child because even if her brother didn’t want the baby, the aunt did. Lorelei also had a child of her own. A far superior male-child named Sy who was handsome, intelligent, and modest beyond compare.”
“Now I know this is fiction,” I grumbled.