He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to resist the feelings he still had for her.
Lost in thoughts of Isla, he barely paid attention as Snow and Antoine laid out a plan. It was only when he found himself standing in a small bedroom on the second floor of the theatre, staring down at a single bed, that he became aware of the world again.
Aware of something other than his mate.
He stripped down to his black boxer shorts, lay on top of the dark grey covers, and rested his hands on his stomach. A twinge shot through his right shoulder. He grimaced and rubbed it, stared at the ceiling as he worked to soothe the knotted muscle, and lost himself again.
The mark on his back warmed, and he didn’t close the connection Isla was forging between them. He allowed it to blossom and thoughts of her to come with it, to fill his mind and steal him away from the world, filling the quiet hours of day as sleep eluded him.
Someone knocked on his door, pulling him away from her at last, and he frowned as his senses warned the sun was setting and he hadn’t managed to sleep at all. He dressed and opened the door, and Aurora was there. She dropped her gaze to his riding boots and twisted her hands in front of the waist of her white dress.
“Snow is ready.”
Grave eyed the fresh set of marks on her throat. Snow was ready and fed by the looks of things. His stomach growled at the thought of blood and he swore he would find some soon. His healing injuries demanded it almost as fiercely as his bloodlust.
Maybe he would drain the mage dry after the spell was done.
He followed the petite raven-haired female down to the backstage room where Snow was waiting, deep in conversation with Antoine. A pretty blonde stood beside him, rocking a small bundle of black in her arms, a contrast against her blood red dress that had Grave’s stomach rumbling again.
An unruly tuft of pale hair poked out of the black cloth.
“Bop.” The female tapped the baby on its nose and it wriggled and laughed. When it stilled, she did it again. “Bop.”
Grave edged closer and tried to get a look at his new relation. The female lifted her head and he waited for her to frown at him or say something to drive him away.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said, surprising him with a bright smile that reached her forest green eyes. “I’m Sera and this little bundle is Helena.”
She tilted the baby towards him and Grave canted his head as he looked at her, into pale blue eyes and at white-blonde hair that were a painful reminder but one he couldn’t look away from.
“It is a coincidence.” Antoine’s voice sounded distant to his ears.
Helena wriggled again, pulled a face of sheer frustration as she tried to escape the blanket, and Grave still couldn’t stop staring at her.
“Sera insisted.”
“I like the name,” she shot back, a touch of malice in her tone now. “You never gave me a valid reason not to call our daughter Helena.”
“It was my mother’s name,” Grave said, his own voice sounding as if he was listening to it from afar. “She looks like her.”
“I know.” She tucked the baby close to her chest and tapped her nose again, eliciting another laugh. “I thought it was an honour to her, like your brother Bastian is named for Antoine and Snow’s father.”
Snow placed a hand on his shoulder, snapping Grave out of his stupor, and he looked across at his cousin where he stood beside him. Pain filled his cousin’s blue eyes and Grave shook his head, silently telling him that he didn’t need to apologise.
After everything they had been through in Hell together, all the missions that had fuelled the rise of their bloodlust, they had a bond that was stronger than blood.
It was that bond that had Snow coming to his aid, just as Grave would always go to his when he needed him.
He only wished he had been home that night when Snow had needed him most, not far away in Hell, bent on taking command of the Preux Chevaliers, caring only about his own life and neglecting his family.
Snow slipped away from him, returning to Aurora, and Grave looked away as she showered affection on him. He was finding it hard to keep his thoughts off Isla as it was. Watching Snow with Aurora would only give his phantom more power over him, until she haunted his every waking moment.
“It is an honour,” he said to Sera, not wanting her to feel she had done wrong by choosing a family name for her child.
In a way, he was glad she had picked his mother’s name, because the babe was beautiful enough to bear it and perhaps it would help her grow into someone as kind and caring as his mother had been.
He bowed his head to Antoine and Sera, and little Helena, and led himself to the main foyer of the theatre. It was quiet, dark and cool, a thousand miles away from the busy palace he called home, where the temperature rarely ventured anywhere near cold.
And his home was a million miles away from the world of snow he had grown up in, a frigid and icy landscape where summer had been mercifully short and winter had been long, and filled with days where the sun refused to creep above the horizon.
“Ready?” Snow’s deep voice transported him back to that world, to a time when he had been young and carefree, and they had been on the verge of venturing forth from their castle for the first time, heading for the mortal villages to find females to feed from, among other things.
Grave nodded and spoke in the old tongue, echoing the words he had said then. “As I will ever be.”
Snow chuckled and walked forwards, and Grave paused to watch him. He wore his hair the same, overlong and messy, but gone were the thick fur cloak, tunic, trousers and fur-lined boots, replaced with a figure-hugging pair of black jeans, heavy soled leather boots, and a black t-shirt.
He still had the gait of a warrior though.
Snow paused on the portico of the theatre. Grave joined him and frowned as he sensed his cousin’s hesitation, the fear that flowed through him as he eyed the mortals coming and going along the street and then the evening sky.
“Don’t get out much?” Grave looked across at him.
Snow shook his head and cracked a smile. “Just a short stint now and then to test me.”
“And how often does it go horribly wrong?” Grave couldn’t resist asking that question, mostly to tease his cousin but partly because he wanted to know just what he had signed up for.
His smile widened. “Seven out of ten times. Aurora is getting good at teleporting me quickly back to the theatre and calming me.”
Grave needed to look into angels more. Teleporting was a handy ability, one he hadn’t realised she would still possess after leaving her home.
“Maybe she should have come with us, if she can teleport and soothe your bloodlust.”
Snow growled, flashing fangs at him. “She is an angel. She cannot enter Hell without suffering greatly and you know it.”
He did know it, and he regretted suggesting it as he saw the pain in Snow’s eyes and the male glanced back over his shoulder into the theatre, a look of longing on his face. He hadn’t considered how difficult this would be for his cousin, not only going to Hell but leaving the woman he loved behind. Vulnerable. A demon was targeting her too.
Just as he was targeting Grave’s mate.
Grave shook that thought away.
Isla had never really been his mate. Everything had been a lie and he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t make himself remember that. Anger began to push to the surface again, fury that he was sure would never die, just like his feelings for Isla. He breathed to calm himself, slowly settling his feelings and mastering his rising bloodlust, pushing it back into submission.
He clapped a hand down on Snow’s shoulder.
“Well, at least if you lose your head in Hell, you won’t be alone. We can go on a bloody rampage together.” Grave flashed a toothy smile at Snow.
Snow let out a laugh.
“It will be like old times.”
CHAPTER 9
Isla couldn’t escape Grave. Whenever she closed her eye
s, he was there. Whenever she let her mind wander for a moment, he was waiting. She stared at the horizon, not seeing the cragged range of black mountains. She saw Grave.
She saw him lounging on his black throne, shirt undone to expose the tantalising ridges of his stomach and chest, tempting her fingers and lips, making her yearn to chart the paths she used to take across his body and relearn them, and all his secrets. She still remembered just where to kiss to make him laugh, or lick to make him moan.
She remembered everything about her vampire.
He was branded on her mind.
On her heart.
Her very soul.
She looked down at her feet and slowly shut her eyes, and heaved a sigh. It only made it harder to see him now, and witness the contrast between the male he had become and the one he had been before she had turned on him.
Isla cursed the phantom instincts that had made her do such a thing to Grave, and to herself.
She had been happy with him, had known true love for the first time and had experienced a deeper sort of love for her too, one that surpassed anything the males she had seduced with her phantom wiles had ever shown for her.
She eased down onto a rock on the gently sloping north side of the valley, stared off into the distance again and couldn’t hold back another sigh.
She hadn’t been prepared for that at all.
When Melia had mated with Valador, Isla had visited her sister and seen her flesh and blood, witnessed the love they shared and watched as they had exchanged tender caresses whenever they had thought no one was looking at them. She had thought she understood what they had, had honestly believed it no different to what she had with the males she seduced other than it would last longer.
She hadn’t realised how wrong she had been until she had been made flesh herself and had gone after Grave.
Had fallen in love with him despite his flaws, and the things she knew he had done.
Isla propped her right elbow on her knee, rested her chin on her upturned palm, and fought the memories of those days.
Those halcyon days.
Lost forever.
She reminded herself that what she had done had been the objective of her mission, and everything else that had happened had been wrong, but her heart reproached her and twisted it around.
Falling in love with him, and making him fall in love with her had been right, and what she had done to him, using those feelings against him, acting like a phantom, had been wrong.
When had she started to hate her true nature?
She closed her eyes again. She knew the answer to that question in her soul.
In her heart.
She had begun to hate it the moment she had started falling for Grave, and she had grown to despise it when she had turned on him.
Now he haunted her, was more a phantom than she was, determined to make her suffer in the name of vengeance.
Gods.
Another flash of him reclining on his throne burst into her mind and she rubbed the bridge of her nose. It didn’t stop a second image from exploding into existence, this one in time with the mark on her back tingling. The mortal realm. A beautiful country house. The image stuttered and faded.
It was always the way it happened. She would see something from her past, something she had witnessed with her own eyes, and then seconds later she would see through his in the present. Heat pulsed along the lines of her mating mark. Not her doing. Grave was in control of the connection between them, and was responsible for the flashes of him in her mind.
Was he aware he was doing it?
He did it to taunt her, to hurt her, normally, but whenever she had seen through his eyes over the past day, she had seen strange things. The world of mortals. A male with snow white hair and blue eyes that reminded her of Grave’s. Then an elegant black vehicle with dark windows. Now a stunning house.
Isla felt certain that he wasn’t aware that he was revealing these things to her, giving her glimpses of a journey he was on.
Where was he?
In all the years she had known him, he had never left Hell. He had even confessed that he hadn’t left it in centuries before the day they had met, had been resolute that his place was here and not there.
What had made him venture forth from Hell to a place he had seemed to never want to set foot in again?
She shook away her curiosity and studied the valley below her. She had her own mission and her own journey, and it was time she continued it. She had rested long enough.
She stood and dusted the backside of her blue leathers down as she tried to focus on her mission to find a phantom mage, recounting the information she had gathered, all in an attempt to push Grave from her mind, but it was harder now that she was tired. Her small breaks weren’t enough to restore her energy, and she hadn’t fed in days, but she couldn’t stop now.
She was close. She could feel it.
Her eyes stopped on the town a league from her that hugged the foothills of the mountain range that formed a border between the free realm and the elf kingdom. Light shone down on it from the realm of the elves, but the mountains partially blocked it, so half of the town was illuminated and the other side was dark, lit by the glow of lamps.
Isla started down the slope, and managed to keep her focus fixed on her mission for most of her journey to the town, mulling over everything she had been told about the phantom mage she was tracking. Several accounts had placed him in this town, all from people spread around the various villages and settlements in the free realm. He had to be here, or at least be known here. If he had moved on, she might be able to find information about him that would point to his new location.
She reached the edge of the town.
Images flashed across her eyes, overlaying onto the dark stone buildings, and she staggered back as a bloody scene played out before her and sudden pain stabbed through her heart like a hot lance.
Not born of her connection to Grave this time.
Isla blinked hard, reeling and breathless as her heart slammed against her chest, blood thundering in her veins, sending adrenaline shooting through her so fast that her legs trembled and hands shook.
Melia.
She broke into a dead sprint, eyes darting around the town as she rushed into it, desperately seeking a portal. There had to be one.
Another series of images blasted through her mind and her heart missed a beat.
Crimson on white flagstones.
The courtyard bathed in red.
She shoved people out of her way as she sensed a portal nearby, ignoring their shouts and curses, hot tears blinding her as she raced towards it. She had to reach Melia.
The castle was under attack.
Pain went through her again, agony that tore her heart apart and stole her breath.
Pain that wasn’t her own.
“Melia!” she screamed as she spotted the tell-tale shimmer in the air just beyond the other end of the small town and sprinted harder, pushing herself past her limit.
Her muscles burned in protest, but she couldn’t slow.
She had to reach her sister.
She skidded on the black earth, sliding into the portal, and chanted the words and her destination.
Darkness swallowed her.
She was running again before it had even evaporated, sprinting through the too-quiet streets of the white citadel, her eyes leaping up towards the spires of the castle that towered above her on the plateau.
The stench of blood hit her hard as she reached the arched doorway in the thick white curving wall that opened onto the steps that swept upwards to the castle, together with another scent that she recognised as a phantom, because it was a smell that seemed to follow her kind everywhere.
Death.
Her hands snagged the two blades strapped to her lower back and she pulled them free of their dark blue leather holster as she took the steps two at a time, tears spilling onto her cheeks as her feet carried her past the broken bodies of the guards. She sho
ok her head and clung to hope in her heart.
Hope that her sister wasn’t gone to the afterlife with those poor souls.
She spared a glance at one of the soldiers near the top of the winding staircase and quickly looked away. Whoever had killed him had torn him to shreds, ripped right through his black uniform to sever flesh and bone.
What beast could have done such a thing?
Isla stopped dead as she hit the courtyard, her grip on the wooden hilts of her curved blades loosening as she stared at the carnage. Blood sprayed up the thick stone walls of the castle, splattered the fountain in the centre of the courtyard, and drenched the flagstones as it pooled beneath the dead demons.
A whole legion. Close to one hundred males.
All of them dead.
A chill raced over her as she walked through their bodies, boots skidding on the blood, despair filling her heart and turning it cold.
Freezing it.
A slow burn began as she curled her fingers around her blades, her teeth coming together hard as she looked upon the dead and a dark hunger began to blaze in her heart.
Vengeance.
Whoever had done this, they would pay.
That black need faltered when she looked at the arched entrance of the castle and she swallowed hard, her blood chilling again.
Melia.
She stormed towards the doors and along the corridor, picking up pace as she neared the arched white double doors of the grand hall. Pain beat through her, agony so fierce that she could hardly breathe, but it also gave her relief.
Melia was still alive.
She ran towards the doors. Towards Melia.
Isla shoved the battered doors to the grand hall open, hitting them so hard that one flew off its hinges, and she stumbled into the room.
Where was her sister?
She had to be injured, badly if the pain Isla could feel through their connection was any indicator, but whatever had happened to her, Isla could fix it.
Haunted by the King of Death Page 10