Blood Ties Page 15

  “They did it because they’re afraid of you,” Robin murmured, watching the horizon.

  Lucidia nodded, slipping into her thoughts once more.

  Moments passed, both of them enjoying the company, the silence, until Robin broke it. “He’s a monster, I know, and Lord knows I’m not advocating to trust the guy, but Darian made the decision to bring you here. He took off his magical protection and let me draw from him so there’d be enough to revive you. I could have killed him, or at least turned him human, but he did it anyway. I’m not saying it was good or bad, or that he had wholesome intentions and absolutely no agenda, but I just thought you should know that without him, we wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

  Lucidia nodded, her eyes turned downward. “Thank you, Robin. You risked your life, too. And your sanctuary.”

  She gave Lucidia a wry smile. “You’ll make it up to me. Besides, I’ve always wanted siblings. That’s what family’s for, right?”

  Lucidia

  It started raining a few minutes after Robin left. Lucidia turned her face upward, letting the drops roll down her face, her hair, letting the water soak her entirely. It was calm, quiet. She didn’t blame Reykon and Robin for staying here, hidden, away from the fight for so long. They’d gotten out. And they’d thrown it away to save her, just as she’d thrown her life away to save theirs, and she’d do it again in a heartbeat, even knowing everything that had ensued after. Her mind rolled over the past two months, everything that had happened to them that she hadn’t had time to think about. It wasn’t long after that that she knew he was there. Lucidia opened her eyes, little droplets of water streaming down her face, clinging to her eyelashes. “You gonna stand there all night?”

  He moved silently to the log and sat next to her. Lucidia was painfully reminded of the bench, at the mountaintop garden of House Albus. It felt like a blink ago, but so much had happened, all the same.

  “The pledging ceremony has a long and sordid past,” Darian murmured. “I knew that one day, someone would dispel the information, but I did not anticipate a rebellious young caster to be the one behind it.”

  She nodded silently, her eyes trained on the horizon. She knew that Darian was watching her, waiting for her to look at him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her foundation was fragile, her sense of belonging, her honor, her own identity, ready to disintegrate if she took one step further.

  “It was a decision made after the insurgency. Many of the masters were in favor of eradicating your race entirely, but those of us with more even temperaments chose to diminish your powers, that we would keep you close.”

  “It’s always that black and white, isn’t it?” she murmured.

  He turned, quirking an eyebrow at her.

  “Either you own us, or we have to be killed.”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  A grimace formed on her face. “Yes.”

  “I regret Chadwick’s decision to remove your bindings,” he said with a long sigh.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it puts your position in jeopardy with the other vampire masters and royals.”

  “My position…” Lucidia echoed bitterly.

  “Your position is your life,” Darian said in a flat voice.

  Lucidia let her icy gaze swivel to the vampire next to her. “And now all of our positions are jeopardized.”

  Darian nodded. “But we will recover from this.”

  “Will we?” she asked with dismal ambivalence.

  He turned, putting his hand on her shoulder and piercing her with his gaze. “I will do everything in my power to ensure our survival and reconstruction. For you, for every creature in danger, and for those like Indigo, refugees of this tragedy.”

  Lucidia’s eyebrows twitched together ever so slightly, thinking of all the children, all the strongbloods and purebloods and the dizzying number of creatures that had no knowledge of the human world, that would flounder in the presence of the laws, the customs, and the society that existed outside of their controlled bubbles of life.

  “Was it all so horrible?” he asked quietly. “That you resent me this much?”

  She laughed softly, a wretched, bitter sound, like acid. She didn’t care that she sounded like an asshole, and she didn’t care that she was really kicking the guy when he was down, after he’d just risked his life to save hers. Lucidia knew it was stone cold, but stone cold had always been what she did best. They were alike in that manner, Lucidia and Darian; stone cold, calculated, and careful. “It wasn’t all horrible,” she said with a distant expression, thinking about her triumphs in missions, her holidays celebrated with her strongblood brethren. “But prisons come in many forms. Some of them have nice little bows to distract you from your position in the grand scheme of things.”

  “And was your life in the east wing, surrounded by those who cared about you, such a horrible sentence? I do not think Kenzo would agree with you.”

  “Do not even speak his name,” she said sharply.

  He froze, stopping mid-sentence, watching her, studying her face. He didn’t need to say anything for her to know what he was thinking. Darian let out a long breath and let his shoulders slump slightly, the usual façade of his greatness, his holiness, gone. “Do you know how difficult it is to do this job?”

  “Woe is you,” Lucidia muttered.

  “Age comes with a price, I tell you this,” he said with a bitter nod. “When you are young, everybody is eager to give you counsel, to advise you on your decisions and dilemmas. As you get older, those who guided you are either too afraid or too invested to risk angering you with things that are difficult to hear. But you… you never cared for such politics. You have never been afraid to be truthful with me. You have no problem putting me in my place, and that is a treasured thing to someone like me. You make me a better leader, Lucidia, and you make me a better person.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel bad for you?” she asked numbly.

  “I am trying to help you understand why I do the things that I do. Why I forced you to retrieve your father, why I had to send Adonis to retrieve you from Cain...”

  Lucidia’s eyebrows crunched together. “What?”

  A bitter, resentful smile spread on his lips. “Adonis was never meant to succeed in his mission. I knew this. You knew this. The only person that didn’t know it was Adonis himself.”

  “Why…” she said, her own voice rising in intensity. “Why would you send him to his death?”

  “He was so unhappy, Lucidia,” Darian uttered, his eyes closed as he relived it. “He kept it from you, from all his pupils. You did not see it, but I did. It was not where he belonged, shut up in the castle, with professors and administrators.”

  “So because of that he was expendable to you?” she fired back.

  “Because of that I gave him the freedom he desired!” Darian retorted. “But you will not accept that my motivations were wholesome. You’d rather blame me for all the sorrow in the world. This, Lucidia, this is why I wish for you to listen to my reasons, to try to understand. I wish you could walk a day in my shoes. Maybe then you and all the others would not be so quick to judge.”

  “You’re the Grand Master Darian Xander, keeper of locks, the storm breaker, the great navigator, Polaris in the dark…” she said, ticking off as many epithets as she could remember from their big book of history. “Nobody needs to understand your reasons, as long as they respect your ruling.”

  “But what if I want them to understand?” he asked. “What if I need them to?”

  She looked at him, studying the flicker of concern on his face. She realized in that moment that she wasn’t the only one harboring a mask of stone. Darian’s was constructed far better than hers, over decades, centuries of time on that throne. Lucidia shook her head once, a tight, controlled motion. “You don’t.”

  His eyebrows pulled together.

  “You want me to tell you all the hard things? All the things that others won’t, all the th
ings that’ll make you hate me…” she muttered. “Fine. Here you go: you think it’ll make it easier for you to keep going if they understand, you think it’ll give you the strength, or encouragement, or whatever, but it won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  A bitter, loathing smile pulled the corner of her lip up. “Because I told myself the same thing before each rogue den that I was sent to raid. I told myself that if they could just understand, if they knew why I had to kill them and everybody they’d ever known and loved, then it would be better. It would be easier. And I did, with one woman. A human servant, begging for her life, the last one living in a whole house of dead rogues, who was screaming at me, begging to know why I was doing this. So, I told her,” Lucidia said, memories bubbling up like bile. “I told her all the reasons why I had to enforce order, why we couldn’t have people that knew the layout of the compound, the guards’ codes, and the nature of our world living with the humans, putting us at jeopardy. I thought that if she knew, it would be easier.”

  “And was it?”

  “No. She asked me where the hell I got off deciding that my life, that the vampires’ lives, were worth more than hers. And for that… I didn’t have an answer.”

  Darian turned forward, watching the waves that she was fixated on, thinking about her words. The sky darkened entirely, the rain giving way to a thick fog, and when Lucidia could no longer feel her fingertips, she pulled her knees up to her chest and traced the beach with her eyes.

  “Do you resent me, Lucidia?” he asked after a long silence.

  “I threw my life away to save yours,” she said softly. “Without even giving it a second thought.”

  “You will never know how thankful I am for your valor.”

  “I regret it, Darian,” she whispered.

  “Your feelings about what you did do not overshadow the immense bravery that you showed, both then and even now.”

  “How can they not?”

  “Words, thoughts, and emotions are like a tangled forest, but actions are the true windows to the soul, for better or for worse.”

  “But how could I not have thought about it?” she asked, a self-loathing scowl on her face. “In a split second, I decided that my life was worth less than yours, and I... I just threw it away.”

  “It would not be called sacrifice if there were nothing at risk.”

  She nodded slowly, watching the horizon, deep in her tumultuous thoughts.

  “Was it worth it?” Darian asked after a few moments, still facing forward.

  She knew what he was really asking. Was he worth it? Her eyes traced the sand in front of her. She respected him too much to lie to his face, but she didn’t want to admit the truth to herself or say it out loud. She was locked, thinking silently for a long time before responding. “I don’t know.”

  After another silence grew heavy in the space between them, Darian rose in one fluid movement, facing her. His eyes were sad, resigned as they fixed on the sand in front of him. “What you told me in the restaurant so long ago holds true. You have much to be angry about, Lucidia Draxos.” He turned, slowly making his way across the rain-spattered beach, back to the house. Lucidia watched his shadowy figure, until she could no longer see his silver hair, and was left alone, staring at the roaring ocean, surrounded by the icy rain.

  Chapter 8 Unexpected Allies

  Megan

  “How are you holding up?” Todd asked, letting out a long breath and sitting up from his place on the couch. Fausta and the other vampires were attending some ceremonial something or another in the grand hall, and it was a ‘vampires only night’. Not that Megan had any desire to see the grand hall ever again.

  Megan nodded, eyes on the windows. “Okay.”

  “You’re a crap liar,” he said with a small smile.

  “Remind me not to play you in poker,” she muttered.

  Todd stood, going over to the large dining table that seemed to always have a feast on it. He poured two cups of coffee and brought them over, taking a seat on her bench and forcing her to scoot over.

  “Thanks,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the cup.

  “Where are you from, Megan?”

  “I was born in Montana, but I grew up in Minnesota, until… well, about five years ago.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “All over the board, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said with a light laugh. “What about you?”

  “I grew up in a nonexistent rural town in West Virginia.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have… I mean,” she trailed off, not wanting to be rude.

  He smiled widely. “No, it’s fine. I got out the first chance I could get. I was the valedictorian of my high school, and I got a full ride to Yale for business.”

  Megan’s eyes widened. “Then, how…?”

  “How did I end up here?” he asked, gesturing to the luxurious room around them. “My grandfather built a horse ranch and passed it onto my father. When I was twenty-four, my father died of a heart attack, and someone had to take on the family business. My younger brother is a pot head, so it fell on me, unless I wanted to kill my mom of another broken heart. That damn ranch… it was his baby, through and through. I had one year left on my MBA, but I had to drop out, and move back to the humble abode. My girlfriend dumped me, too, but that was for the best. Anyway, I ran it for a few years, and not particularly well. I drove us into bankruptcy. My mother remarried and moved to Nevada, and I just kept circling the drain. I got into drugs, a bit of gambling. I even got engaged, but looking back on it, it would have been a horrible fit. I was miserable, giving out horse riding lessons to spoiled teens just to stay afloat. Next thing I know, my horses are killed by some freak animal attack. I have nothing, and I’m spiraling down. Then, one day, there’s a knock on my door and I open it up to find the most stunning woman I’ve ever met. I mean, just… breathtaking. She was part of a group that was hunting down the rogue vampires that apparently took out my horses. Anyway, we spent the night and she saw what a dope I was, so she offered me a place with her, at her home. I was so enchanted that I said yes.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Her name is Clarabella. I spent about a year with her, until I started branching out, mingling with the other vampires. Last I heard she was stationed in upstate New York, at our satellite house. But who knows what happened to them.”

  “So, wait… the vampires didn’t take you?” Megan asked, her eyebrows crunching together.

  “No,” he said with a light laugh.

  “But you didn’t know what she was,” Megan scowled.

  “I did. The night she came to my ranch, she showed me, and told me all about what she was. I agreed.”

  Megan’s confused scowl deepened as she tried to wrap her head around it. “Why?”

  Todd gave a little shrug. “I like it. Ever since the first night, I was blown away by them. Now, it seems like a ridiculous thing to say, but I really enjoy what I do. The vampires amaze me, and I’m never concerned about getting married, about updating the insurance on my car, about my 401K… I know that not everybody has the same experience as me, but this life’s been far better than my previous one.”

  Megan raised an eyebrow, nodding. “I just… I mean, I’ve never met anybody that’s gone to a vampire willingly.”

  “Oh, there are loads of us.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” Todd said with a laugh. “We’re like a bunch of bourgeois addicts. It doesn’t help that the higher up you go, the nicer the quality of life. Here, we’re living in luxury, sipping wine and laying on chaises all day. Out there, we’re nobody, working nine-to-fives. That’s how pureblood families are started, I guess. I’ve been begged by some vampires to pledge myself to them, but I’ve always turned them down. Who knows… if it keeps going on like this, I might pick one.”

  “Wow,” Megan hummed. “Where I’m from, the whole slavery thing is really looked down on.”

  “You grew up with the wolves?”

>   “Sort of.”

  “How do they work? My knowledge is mainly on vampires and strongbloods.”

  “We have packs,” Megan said, taking another sip of her coffee. “They used to be based on blood, but now they’re voluntary.”

  “The wolf wars, right? I bet you guys were happy for that change,” he said.

  Megan’s lips pressed into a thin line, but she didn’t say anything. She was used to concealing her true identity and position in the war, at all costs. “Yeah. More freedom, you know?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “So is it true that wolves just kind of live with the humans?”

  She gave a small smile. “Yeah.”

  “I could’ve passed any number of you guys, then.”

  “You were probably in line next to one at the grocery store, at some point.”

  “Wild,” Todd said, his eyes flashing.

  Megan nodded, downing the rest of her mug and setting it on the table next to her bench.

  “Do you mind if I ask how it works?” he asked.

  “No,” she said with a smile. “Anywhere from fifteen to eighteen you start feeling jumpy around full moons, and then, you have your first shift, which lasts for hours. For a few years, you’re commanded by the moon, and you don’t have any control over yourself, but then, around twenty one or so, you start to remember your time as a wolf, and your time in transition goes down to around ten seconds. Then, you’re a fully grown werewolf and you can do whatever you want, according to the pack’s needs, anyways.”

  “And you all just, what, change?”

  She nodded. “Yep. It’s just something we can do. Well, not me, yet.”

  “You’re sixteen, right?”

  Megan nodded.

  “It won’t be long, then.”

  A growing sense of angst rose in her gut, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. “Nope.”

  “There are signs, though. Like the pacing, and itching, huh?”

  Megan quirked an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t know about wolves.”