"I didn't though. I mean, I don't think there was really any threat of me dying," I said casually, hoping to erase his fears, but remembering how I had longed for death in those torturous moments.
"Yes, that's right, the invincible Eden," he smiled again, but his eyes remained serious. "When I said before that I couldn't lose you, I meant it. Losing you would be the end of me."
"I love you," I whispered,
"I love you, too," he leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips, my magic found his, tangling the two together in a rapturous web and I felt his words to the very core of my being.
"So, is there any chance that I can convince your father-"
"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed suddenly, pulling his phone out of his pocket and answering it roughly, "What?"
He had withdrawn his hand and I reached for my wine, watching him grow more and more frustrated with the caller. He argued for several minutes before growing completely quiet, and that's when I assumed his father got on the phone. He listened for a few more minutes and then hung up without saying another word.
"Would you mind terribly if we finished dinner with my parents?" he asked quietly, clearly annoyed.
"Thank you for the offer, but really, it's fine. You can just drop me off at home." I shuddered at the thought of having to sit around another family dinner pretending not to be in love with Kiran and hoping it wasn't the night Lucan decided to throw me in prison.
"I would love to under different circumstances, believe me. But your presence has been specifically requested." Kiran's scowl said all that it needed to; my heart dropped into my stomach and I took a big drink of wine, trying to drown my nerves.
"Why?" I asked, when I could find my voice again.
"I don't know what my father is playing at." Kiran replied, gesturing to the waitress and handing her a black plastic card from his wallet to pay for the wine.
I poured myself another glass of wine, rather unladylike, and forced myself not to just down the whole glass in one sip. I didn't understand the dinner invitation or the mystery behind Lucan's obvious interest in me. If he was going to use me against my parents, I wished he would just get it over with. He wasn't the only one interested in whether they were alive or not.
The waitress came back with Kiran's card and I finished my wine while Kiran signed the receipt. My magic was still recovering from the last remnants of the King's Curse, so if I was in real danger I might also be in actual trouble. I didn't have much of a choice, though, and surely Kiran wouldn't let anything happen to me. I didn't know much about the relationship between father and son, but I believed he meant what he said and that he wouldn't let anything come between us.
33.
Kiran drove the sports car abruptly up to the valet. I braced myself with one hand on the arm rest and the other gripping my seat belt, and watched the poor attendant jump out of the way. Kiran was at my door before the valet could recover. I was charmed by his chivalry, but the Titan in me fought against the idea that this was a trap and screamed at me to be careful. Despite the dull but still painful stabbing feelings I felt every time I used magic, I released as much as I could to keep my instincts sharp and warm up my intuition. Hopefully, dinner in the penthouse suite of Omaha's Magnolia Hotel would be exactly that, just dinner.
Kiran led me through a narrow but stylish lobby, trimmed with gold and accented with red velvet furnishings, past the front desk and elevators. We walked through a marbled hallway out into a courtyard filled with snow and up salted stone steps into the presidential suite. He was silent the entire way and did not attempt to touch me or even offer me his elbow. I was thankful he had decided on caution as well.
The suite was magnificent, two stories with a full kitchen and dining room. I was assaulted by delicious smells before any of my other senses could react. The Magnolia Hotel had been remodeled out of one of the older buildings in Omaha. The taste wasn't modern and definitely not as high tech as some of the newer hotels downtown, but the old world feel was comfortable, and the luxury and class still obvious.
"Ah, there he is," Lucan stood from a rich, dark wooden round table that sat nine other guests, including Kiran's mother.
"Yes, Father. Here I am," Kiran said good-naturedly, as if a switch had been turned and Kiran was suddenly happy to be there. "Hello, Mother." he said more quietly, bending over to kiss her on the cheek, while I hung awkwardly back, afraid to leave any proximity to the door.
"And you've brought a guest, I see," Lucan announced happily, as if I was a surprise, and not there because of his specific command, "Please join us Eden."
I curtsied clumsily, before removing my hot pink scarf and handing it to a maid that appeared out of no where. I looked down at my disheveled clothes I had wanted to look edgy, feeling more rock and roll than royalty; cringing at my fury boots and wishing someone had run this turn of events by me as an option for the evening before I had left the house.
"I believe you know Amory, your headmaster." Lucan gestured two seats to his left, on the other side of his wife; I nodded solemnly. I was thankful Amory was there, but still afraid to look him in the eyes. "Next to him we have Victor and Thora Dane, Victor is the Minister of Foreign Relations for the kingdom. And then, of course, is my darling sister, Princess Bianca and her husband, Jean Cartier, the Grand Duke of Canesburry; they are in town for Kiran's birthday. You have already met Amelia; next to her is the Advisor to Military Affairs, Petru Beklea. Next to him is the Counselor for Military Maneuvers, Constantine Tirlia. For everyone else, this is Eden Matthews, a friend and schoolmate of Kiran's. Thank you, Eden, for joining us."
"No, thank you, your highness. The pleasure is mine," I replied, shakily, taking my seat in between Kiran, who was sitting at his father's right hand and the grey haired, bull-dog looking man, Constantine Tirlia, who was apparently the go-to man on all things military in action. I swallowed the lump in my throat and pulled my shirt over the exposed shoulder I had thought was so sexy just a couple hours ago.
The first course was brought out by an overwhelming number of servants, I would have thought impossible to fit in the posh but small kitchen. I waited like everyone else until Lucan took the first bite of his fish drenched in some fragrant white sauce and everyone else followed his example. I had never been one to appreciate the taste or texture of seafood but I found the courage and forgot about being finicky for now.
The adults eased into grown-up conversations about different high ranking officials that were either doing phenomenal jobs or awful jobs and should be imprisoned. I didn't recognize any of the names and got lost quickly between the extensive fancy titles and hard to pronounce names, representing every region of the world.
I focused on my fish, looking forward to the next course. Kiran was an ice sculpture next to me, frozen in place, except to move his fork to his mouth. He joined in the discussion, giving those that might have been in trouble hope, by testifying of some obscure great thing they did for him. I kept my eyes on Amelia, who despite the glossed over expression dimming the usual brightness of her deep chocolate eyes, still exuded the warmth and gravitational pull I had noticed in India. She was still the magnet all eyes turned to and the spark of life in an otherwise dreary dinner conversation.
"I know now how I recognize you," the Minister of Foreign Affairs stared me down from across the table during a lull in the conversation and middle of the third course. I cleared my throat, afraid of where this was going. "You're the girl from the trial last October."
Every head snapped to attention, facing me directly. Eyes made of stone, accusing me silently, stared me down, daring me to deny it. I couldn't deny anything; it was the truth and I could hardly convince anyone here otherwise.
"Yes," I cleared my throat. "That was me," I glanced at Amelia hoping to find solace in her warm eyes, and she did not disappoint. At the mention of the trial, her glossy eyes flickered to life and she stared at me as if encouraging me to speak my mind.
"The girl that tried to save the Shape
-shifter?" Princess Bianca asked in a delicate English accent. She had long golden blonde hair, the same color as Lucan and Kiran's. It fell in endearing waves down her back, a little messy but glorifying her porcelain skin and perfect bone structure. She had the deep blue eyes that Lucan had and was his perfect mirror in female form. She seemed to be older than Lucan, the creases in her smile more pronounced and the corners of her eyes turned up in the smallest of wrinkles. But the signs of age did not diminish her beauty in any way, they only enhanced her elegance.
"Yes, that's right," the military man to my right agreed.
"I wasn't there darling, but I heard you caused quite the uproar," Bianca addressed me straight on, her deep blue eyes as unsettling as Lucan's, when holding my full attention.
"Well, I, um, she was my friend," I tore my eyes away from the princesses and turned them to the basket of bread, untouched but sitting in the middle of the table.
"Your friend?" scoffed Victor the minister. "That is blasphemy child."
"You'll have to excuse Eden," Lucan spoke up, clearly amused by the change in subjects. "She was abandoned as a child and a human raised her. She is still learning all of the different customs of our people," his smile turned wicked, and I knew he was enjoying watching me squirm. "How can that be?" gasped the Minister of Foreign Affair's wife Thora.
"I've asked the same question myself," Lucan answered, not giving me a chance to speak. "Really though, Amory should be the one to tell the story. After all, he is the one who found the poor thing, causing quite the trouble in the human world as well. Or so I'm told."
The attention of the table moved from me to Amory who took over the story telling with the melodic, deep tone of his voice and I exhaled. Amory would know what to say, how to walk carefully through the mine field Lucan was engineering for us.
"Kiran," Lucan turned to his son, with a quiet voice. "See if you can track down Talbott and find out what's keeping Sebastian."
Kiran nodded to his father and stood up without acknowledging me or the rest of the table. I suddenly felt very exposed without Kiran blocking Lucan's direct view of me and wanted to run after Kiran and beg him to take me home.
"You are like the wind." Lucan said quietly and I half turned to him, not understanding who he was talking to. The rest of the table stayed engrossed in Amory's retelling of my ignorance of magic and the schools I closed down before Kingsley came into my life. "The wicked and wild wind, Eden. You are sweeping through my kingdom in a melee of destruction, aren't you?"
I snapped my head up when he used my name and sat speechless. His eyes remained amused and the wicked smile still turned his mouth up. I did not know whether to drop down to my knees and beg for forgiveness or pretend like I still had no idea what he was talking about.
I shook my head in quiet desperation, not knowing what to say or how to respond. Lucan's eyes grew more serious, but the mysterious smile did not leave his lips. He turned more towards me, the smallest flash of frustration marring his amusement for only a second.
"The wind, Eden," His voice was quieter still and I leaned in just slightly to make sure I caught every single word. "It can be a deadly force, can it not?" I shook my head, agreeing with him. "So soft at times, the gentle breeze, the refreshing puff of air; one might almost forget the baleful power it's capable of. Isn't that you? So innocent, so naive? And yet you are a tornado of destruction, uprooting thousands of years of tradition with just your simple questions and ignorant interruptions."
My mouth dropped open; I didn't know what to say, or how to react. My mind was reeling, trying to wrap my head around the accusation. I had no excuse, no speech planned, to walk out of this trap. I searched for Kiran from my peripheral, but he was nowhere in sight, so I scanned my consciousness for Avalon but he too was involved and unreachable.
"I'm so sorry...." I began, swallowing my panic and digging deep for courage. "It was never my intention.... Please, forgive me if I've ever acted...." I whispered frantically, the fierce regret completely genuine.
Lucan held up one hand and silenced me immediately. "Relax child. You have won the favor of my son and that is enough for you. But something will have to be done, of course. This will simply not do." He looked me over, amusement replaced momentarily with disgust. I didn't know what to make of it.
"And so here we are," Lucan turned his attention back to his guests without missing a beat. "I could hardly have treated her with the full letter of the law after finding out her unfortunate circumstances." Lucan looked at me with pity while the other guests nodded solemnly as if I truly were the poor orphan. "Thankfully for us, Eden is very talented magically, and so along those lines we have nothing to be afraid of. She won't be burning down Kingsley any time soon. I'm afraid it's just her way of thinking that gets in the way. She has that stubborn American independent spirit I find so annoying."
The guests laughed politely at Lucan, eyeing me over with renewed suspicion. I searched again for Kiran, not even able to imagine what could be keeping him.
"So then, you have befriended a Shape-shifter?" Thora asked me directly, the disgust thickening her tone.
"Well, yes. I mean, I didn't know she was a Shape-shifter when I befriended her," I started and then rushed on, frustrated with how I fumbled my explanation. "I mean, I am still friends with her, she is really the sweetest girl. She's probably my-"
"Actually it was Kiran who saved her in the end, wasn't it Lucan?" Amory interrupted, asking the king a pointed question.
"It was," he replied curtly. "I'm surprised to hear you ask though. You ran off so quickly, I thought you had lost interest in the trial," Lucan did not even pretend to hide his irritation with Amory and I couldn't help but feel like the dinner party was taking a turn for the worse, and that is was my fault.
"I had," Amory sighed, taking a long sip from a tumbler full of scotch.
"Forgive me for boring you with the formalities of our justice system," Lucan snapped. "Next time one of your students is found to be a malicious traitor, I won't bother you with the smaller details of their execution."
I gasped involuntarily and the eyes of the table turned sharply on me. It wasn't a sound that my consciousness would have allowed me to make in such an intense moment, if not for the concrete tone in Lucan's voice, reminding me of why I went to Romania in the first place.
"You wouldn't have really executed Lilly, right?" The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. I felt the panic flood Amory's expression and the wise warrior inside of me scream for caution. I felt Avalon suddenly join my thoughts, the warning bell alerting him to my recklessness, but I couldn't stop it. The words were there and they wanted out. "She wasn't a malicious traitor. You cannot say that." I demanded, full of righteous rage.
"Can't I?" Lucan narrowed his eyes at me, while the rest of the table sat in stunned silence.
"It's not true," I dared to continue, "She fought to save Kiran's life, not harm him. She would never hurt anyone. She's not capable of hurting anyone. She is too good of a person."
"And how would you know what she is capable of? Were you present during all that went on? Perhaps you were an eye witness?" Lucan spoke evenly and with controlled anger. I was too far in to give up now, but I remembered my cover story too late.
"No, I wasn't," I shook my head, but my argument had already started to weaken. "But I know her. I know how good her intentions always are and the purity of her heart. She is a good person," I finished with emotion.
"But that is the thing, isn't it?" Jean Cartier, the Grand Duke of Canesburry and Sebastian's father spoke for the first time all evening in a thick French accent, "She is not a person, she is not human and she is not Immortal, she is a Shape-shifter. And we know that they are all evil. Pure evil." There wasn't accusation in his voice or even a hint of conjecture, Jean Cartier was stating a fact.
"Here, here," mumbled Victor, tapping his stein of beer heavily on the table surface.
I caught Amory's eye for just a moment, but it w
as enough to tell me to shut up. The argument was finished and I had lost. To these people I made no rational sense and to fight the king on such a concrete issue would certainly be a prison sentence, if not more.
"Forgive me, Your Highness. I forgot my place," I bowed my head in humility, hoping to at least see the end of this terrible dinner party without a death sentence being signed.
"That seems to be the root of the problem, doesn't it?" Lucan asked facetiously and without emotion, raising his glass and tipping it towards me before drinking. The rest of the table also took a drink and I had the oddest feeling the toast was to me, but couldn't understand why.
"Excuse me, Father?" Kiran entered the room again, his hair more disheveled than when he had left and Sebastian at his right arm. "Talbott is ready to take Eden home."
My heart leaped with joy, even if going home meant a car ride alone with Talbott. The only thing left for me at the dinner party was the wrong side of a guillotine. I looked to Lucan for permission to leave the table, while trying to remain poised. He gave me a nod of the head. I thanked him again for the lovely meal and all but ran from the room, ignoring both Kiran and Sebastian.
I had said too much and defended a group of people the general population of Immortals accused of being malicious, untrustworthy liars and universal outcasts. Lucan was playing a careful game of cat and mouse, trapping me into situations where I was either vulnerable for attacks or shooting myself in the foot.
My beliefs still held true and I didn't even think I was capable of not treating people as equals; but instead of feeling encouraged that I wasn't losing myself, I felt overwhelmingly lost. I had dreamed, not that long ago, of a scenario where I united the kingdom and set the Shape-shifters free.
Hopeless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series) Page 25