“Careful or I’ll punish you.” He glared, but I knew him well enough now to tell he was only playing. He must’ve seen the impertinence in my eyes, because his narrowed. “You doubt me, do you?”
“You don’t scare me.” I nudged him with an elbow. “You’re all talk.”
I squealed as he grabbed me and pulled me onto him.
“Ah, you make a fine wee lap blanket.” He nestled me into place, and I curled into him with a sigh, overcome by the sensation of safety and comfort I always knew in Carden’s presence.
I began to relax. I was free—the island was at my back. We were on our way. For now, there was nothing to do but sit in the boat and enjoy my vampire’s company.
I tilted my chin to give him a quick kiss. It seemed that, with or without the bond, I really did love the guy.
“So we’ve a boat to a floatplane to another boat?” He adjusted beneath me with a curse. Now that I was on his lap, it was
his
butt that’d be suffering the full brunt of sloshing sea water. “Is this a journey or a test of my affections?”
His words had been playful, but I couldn’t let go of the memory of Alcántara’s last words.
Do not lose her again.
“Affection has nothing to do with it.” I shrugged, my throat gone tight. “It seems to me like you were forced to come.”
“Och, silly lass. Affection has everything to do with it.” He settled me deeper into his lap. “That Spanish bastard hasn’t the power to force aught from me.” He planted a quick kiss on my forehead. “Nae, it’s simply that I don’t want that lovesick pup, Ronan, to get all the glory.”
I laughed, even though my heart twisted to hear his name.
Ronan.
When we’d said our goodbye, I’d been frantic to be on my way. He’d seemed sad, but how could he be when he’d discovered his sister lived? I pushed aside the knowledge of what she’d done to my friends. Family was the most important thing to him, right? More important than me, surely.
Regardless, he wasn’t my
pup
any longer. Honestly, I doubted he’d ever been.
“Did you see him before you left?” I asked.
“Ronan? No. Freya wants him back where he belongs. I’d say the boy has more to occupy him than he can handle.”
The tightness in my throat became a burn.
Focus.
I needed to focus on the task at hand. The island—and Ronan—were behind me now.
I was off to traffic in death. It’d be naive of me to think otherwise. Someone would be killed—me, my mother, or Charlotte. I had to do everything in my power to make sure the only one to suffer was option number three.
Sorry, Ronan.
My throat was burning. Time for a topic change.
I leaned back to catch Carden’s eye. “So what kind of name is Hammerfest, anyway? Sounds like some sort of heavy metal thing.”
He grunted. “Norway. Makes sense. The old ones do like the dark.”
Familiar dread curled through me. It was polar night in that part of the world, which meant over a couple of months of no sunlight. As in, no light…
at all
. Complete darkness.
The undead would be out in droves.
I triple-checked my weapons, flexing wrists and calves, seeking their reassuring pressure. The misericordia I carried in secret seemed to pulse in my boot, making me raw with energy. “Yeah. Polar night. Sounds freaky.”
“Sounds
heavenly
.” Carden stretched till his limbs popped. “No sun for over two months.”
“It won’t matter anyway. The island we’re going to is one giant factory. We’ll be inside, I guess.”
“You guess? That’s your plan for us?” He laughed low. “You guess we’ll wander in and have a look about?”
“We have to deal with the tunnel first,” I mumbled. The island was the endpoint of an undersea pipeline; it was connected to the mainland by Melkøysund Tunnel…a presumably heavily guarded Melkøysund Tunnel. I’d been putting off addressing that bit with Carden.
“Annelise—”
I heard the warning in his tone and quickly cut him off. “It’s my mother we’re talking about. I have to find her.”
“It’s not the tunnel that concerns me. The guards will be a lark. I’ll relish taking down any Synod creature who dares cross our path. It is secrets that concern me.” I felt him grow serious. “I must know. You met Charlotte and waited to tell me. Is this why you wanted the bond broken? There are things you wish to hide?”
Gulp.
And how. But I pushed those very things from my mind. That life was behind me now. Ronan was behind me.
I had to take a steadying breath before replying, “It has nothing to do with the bond. I told you why I wanted to sever it. I didn't tell you about Charlotte because I didn’t want you to worry.” That was close enough to the truth. To
a
truth. For good measure, I added, “Charlotte’s not a big fan of mine.”
He surprised me with a quick laugh. “She wouldn’t be. She’s not a fan of much.” He grew thoughtful. “I believe she’s helping Sonja and the Directorate make an alliance with Jacob.”
“What? Why?” I thought about Ronan, and what I knew of his powerful lineage. That same Celtic blood ran through Charlotte’s veins. “Wouldn’t she be, like, a queen in Freya’s world? A queen among queens.”
“She never liked competition, our Lottie. I don’t think she’d fancy having other queens about.” His expression grew grim. “It remains to be seen how she’ll take to Sonja’s rule.” His head dropped back against the hull. “So, we’re on a boat, off to kill Ronan’s sister.”
“We might not need to kill her,” I said quickly.
He only raised his brows at that.
“We’re going to save my mom.” I gave his chest a little punch. “Positive thoughts, Carden.”
“As you say.” He snuggled me closer, deep in thought.
We sat in silence for some time. Just as I was drifting off, his low rasp cut through my sleepy thoughts. “I feel it, you know. How you’re torn in his presence.”
I stiffened, suddenly wide awake. “What are you talking about?” I’d managed to sound off-handed, even as my stomach was doing flip-flops.
“Not what. Who.” He tipped his chin to catch my eye. “You know I speak of Ronan. Even without the bond, I feel it. I feel your doubts. I know your feelings. I know you care for the boy. Your heart holds no secrets from me. But bond or no, we belong together.” He gripped me tightly, almost too tightly. “You’re mine.”
He growled that last bit, and it sent all my girl parts aflutter.
I gazed up at him. I did care for Ronan. But accidental kisses and a turbulent crush didn’t make a relationship real.
Carden, though, was here. Now. With me.
That was real.
“Of course I care for Ronan,” I said. “He’s my friend.”
There was a pause, and then a smile slid onto Carden’s face. “As long as that’s all he is,” he said with a pinch to my bottom.
I didn’t want to think about how I’d maybe just lied, just the tiniest bit.
I decided it was a great time for me to turn the spotlight around to Carden. “Speaking of Ronan, what did he mean when he said how much you love your cause?”
I’d always wondered what kept my vampire on the island. We’d been bonded, yes, but it had to be more than that, especially now that I knew how relatively easily that bond could be altered.
He was silent, so I pressed, “Why do you put up with Alcántara? You clearly don’t like the guy. You don’t really like any of them. So why not just leave for good?”
He’d always managed to evade my questions about his past, and I expected the same now. And so he shocked me when he said, “It was vampires who saved me long ago.”
I sat up at this. “Wait, I thought it was vampires who’d killed you.”
He tsked and shook his head. “You know Culloden, aye?”
“A battle in Scotland, right?”
“The
last
battle in Scotland. It took less than an hour for a couple thousand men, the clan system, and the heart of Gaelic culture to be demolished. But a wee healer roamed the moor after battle. She found the men who survived and promised them revenge.”
My mind spun with possibilities. “This healer was…Sonja?”
“Och, no,” he spat. “Sonja had already taken over
Eyja næturinnar
by then, done her own bit of ruination. The one who came to me was her sister. Freya. She was building an army. She offered to turn me. I welcomed it.”
I deflated beneath the sudden weight of it all. So much slaughter and conflict—it all seemed so pointless. “Great. You went from fighting in one army to fighting for another.”
“You listen,” Carden snapped, “but you don’t hear.” The scold in his voice took me aback. “Freya turned me, yes, but then she released me. I was able to return to my home. To my mother and sisters, who were alone. I was the last man, see. The last of my family. But Freya let me go to them, to protect them.”
My eyes widened. “You have vampire sisters?”
A sharp crack of a laugh escaped him. “Bloody hell, no. That would’ve…my sisters…” He was lost a moment in memories, a faint mingling of humor and sadness playing across his features. “They’d have torn me limb-from-limb.” He gave a sharp sniff, seeming to snap back into the conversation. “No, my mother and sisters died as old women. All of them. As it should’ve been.”
He turned his gaze back on me. “And so I owed Freya a debt. She gave me the gift of my family’s safety. I watched nieces and nephews born, then grandnieces and grandnephews. I watched a generation grow old and die until the day came when I had to leave.” A sad smile crooked his cheek. “Such a young uncle was too suspicious, see. And so I returned to Freya.” With a finger on my cheek, he guided my eyes back to his. “I see your suspicion, and I assure you, lass, it’s not just my honor that has me siding with Freya. I believe in her cause—it’s
my
cause, as well. To this day, I am hers to use as she will.”
The bolt of jealousy was sudden. I peered at him. “To use…how?”
He chucked my chin. “Not like that, love. I’m useful, well, for the cause Ronan was talking about. We’ve vowed to restore Vampiracy to the old ways. To restore the pure Celtic lines. How it was before people like Dagursson and Fournier and Jacob came sniffing around, seeking wealth and domination. They want to rule the world—”
I stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Wait. Like, the
world
world? As in away from the Isle of Night?”
Carden sneered. “Naturally. The fools. They amassed their armies with no respect for the bloodlines. Why do you think so many Trainees and Acari die? They were not born to this. But such like Fournier have an infinite desire for more beneath them, serving them. They aren’t choosy. They demand more children for more vampires, for more power, and so the blood has gotten diluted.” He sat tall, and with a clap to his chest, declared, “We are creatures of power and beauty, not little Napoleons. But these men have corrupted what it means to be Vampire. Fournier, Jacob and his Synod, they are petty tyrants who don’t understand our old ways. We were creatures of the land. We were truly powerful, living in balance, the men
and
the women. We were magnificent predators. Pure of heart.”
“Alcántara mentioned something about purity,” I said, then paused. “But wait—he’s Spanish, not Celtic at all.”
“True enough. He believes the bloodlines are even older than that. All those books of his,” Carden said dismissively. “Some humans question the meaning of life. Well, some vampires are no different. In his books, his mathematics, Alcántara is seeking the meaning of it all. He believes there’s one pure and essential truth to be found.”
I wanted to ask if it was honestly possible for a blood-thirsty predator to be pure of heart, but I thought better of interrupting this speech. All this time, Carden had been protecting me from vampire politics, and now I was hanging on every word.
“You ask what my cause is,” he went on. “I’m a man of honor, and men of honor pay their debts. I owe Freya, but for me it goes still deeper than that. It’s the principle of the thing, aye? It’s time to right the wrongs and put things back into their proper order. It’s time to overthrow those who’ve installed themselves by brute force—those who turn children not ready for our world into counterfeit warriors so that they might climb up a ladder of bodies in their quest for more and more power. They are whom I fight. And I report to Freya, as a soldier would to his general. It is to her I’ve sworn my fealty. And I’m a man of my word. I would sacrifice it all for Freya to use as she will.”
“So you’d sacrifice…anything?”
“Aye,” he said with a firm nod. “Anything.”
I thought back to the ceremony I witnessed in the vampires’ keep. The chilling discovery of Sonja using the bodies of girls to strengthen her own army. And memories of a conversation overheard between Alcántara and Sonja. Sonja had wanted me. My blood. But the Spanish vampire had—inexplicably—protected me.
Did I have a powerful lineage like Carden or Ronan? Maybe even more powerful? Is that why my mother was being held prisoner?
“What if Freya said she needed
me
?” I asked quietly. “Wanted me dead?”
He planted a hard kiss on my forehead. “Foolish question from a foolish girl. Freya doesn’t want you dead.”
I pulled back, unable to shake the feeling that there was a bounty on my head or something. “Do you mean she wants me to live, or she wants me alive? Because there’s a difference.”
Did Freya want to absorb me into her vampire army? Did
Carden
want that? Because, though he loved me, it sure didn’t sound like he had plans to leave her any time soon.
He peered down at me as though trying to read into my soul. “Stop your fretting. It’s Charlotte and the Synod I’m worried about. And I’d give my own life before seeing them take you.”
He kissed me then. Hard.
He thoroughly kissed the concerns from my mind.
Or at least he tried.
Because a seed had been planted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We’d taken a boat to a floatplane to a cargo ship before we finally arrived at our destination: Hammerfest, Norway, one of the northernmost cities in the world. It was still early evening, but polar night had begun, which meant the sky was the color of a bruise and getting darker by the minute. The sun had set and it wouldn’t be popping back up over the horizon for a good, oh, fifteen hundred hours.