“Now!”
Morg turned on her heel and took off, the manor door swinging in her wake. But David didn’t move.
“David.” My voice shook with fury and adrenaline. “You had no right to do that.”
A smile curled around his lips, wiping away the guarded, angry mask. “To see her practically defecate in her own pants was worth it.”
I rubbed my eyebrow a few times, bowing my head in frustration. “Go inside. I’ll see you at the meeting in ten.”
The rounded shoulders of the relaxed, humoured David rolled back, transforming him suddenly into the king. He angled his head slowly to eye his brother. “Do
not
walk upstairs with him.”
I offered both my wrists. “You’ll have to arrest me to stop me.”
And what happened to tolerating, or was it “respecting” my new relationships?
His eyes flickered, lashes hiding the greens. “Easier said than done.”
“Look—” I moved a bit closer and lowered my voice. “I know it’s hard to see Jason and I as friends—after you spent so long forbidding it. But, I’m not trying to rub it in your face, David. That hug before was just—”
“I know.” He reached up to touch my arm. Then, with less than a gentle breeze, he too disappeared.
***
Splashes of wavering torchlight warmed the ancient cold of the Round Room, charring another layer of black onto the bricks behind the flames and casting lengthy shadows of high-backed chairs in flickers across the round table. The dry scent of dirt that always took me back to the torture chamber at Elysium lingered in here like a bad memory, and the fact that my torturer took a seat just two meters across from me set my hairs on end a little.
“Are you sure you’re ready to bring everyone else into this?” he asked, smoothing a curious palm across the deep carvings in the stone tabletop.
“No. But I’m doing it anyway.”
Jase smiled.
As I planted my butt on the old wooden chair, Falcon stepped in, his warm Lilithian scent and the scuff of his shoes giving him away before I saw his face.
“Ara?” he said softly, almost as if he’d been forbidden to speak my name.
I looked up at him and, noticing the odd look in his eye, stood up again and dragged him by the sleeve to the small nook under the spiralling stone stairs. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He ran a hand like a comb through the front of his blonde hair, his penitent gaze staying on the ground. “I’m sorry I told Mike about Drake—that I betrayed your trust that way, I—”
“Oh, Falcon.” I put my palm to his bulky chest to shush him. “I’m not mad. Not at all.”
He cupped my hand, making me feel small like a child in the wrap of his global grasp. “How can you not be? I—”
“You did what you had to. And I don’t blame you, Falcon. In fact, I should be begging
your
forgiveness.”
“Mine?” He frowned. “Why?”
“For asking you to keep such a secret in the first place?”
He tossed his head back casually, taking a breath before I even finished what I was saying. “Ara. You … I—You can ask anything of me, and I would never deny you. I am your eternal servant,
my Queen, and whatever your will, it is mine, in equal, to see it done.”
My brain, mouth and tongue went numb, but my hand shot up to slap the band of black ink under the arm of his shirt. “Wow, that oath really did a number on you, didn’t it?”
He laughed. “It’s not just the oath. I’ve never met anyone like you, Ara. And while I’ve often wondered if you had what it took to be queen, your actions over the past few months have proven to me that any doubts I ever had were unfounded. You’re still growing and learning, but I’d be damned if I ever found a better or more worthy being to fit your role.” He bowed slightly, touching his heart. “I serve you with
pride
, Ara. And that has
nothing
to do with my oath.”
“All set then?” Mike reached into our private conversation, slapping Falcon playfully on the shoulder.
He turned and nodded, glancing back once at me before walking away. And the room filled with noise then as each of my council members settled into their seats, laughing and joking, but as I glided out from the shadows, Falcon laid his hand firmly to my shoulder and, with a coy wink, whispered, “But I forgive you anyway.”
“Thanks.” I laughed and took my seat beside the king.
***
I
began by stating clearly what I expected of my council—that I didn’t have time for emotional reactions to my coming confessional, and that I could trust they’d all take this new information like soldiers. Blank-faced soldiers.
“
What are you about to tell us?” Quaid asked rhetorically, worry fixing between his thick, dark brows.
“
A few weeks ago,” I said calmly, “on the day I fired Morgaine, actually, I had a meeting with Drake—”
“
What? Since when? Why didn’t we know about this? Did you go alone? Did David know?” was the gist of what I heard under a missile of questions.
I put my hand up to defuse the bomb.
“Yes, I went alone. Kind of.”
“
How can you
kind of
go alone?” Quaid asked.
“
Well,
you
were there. You just didn’t know what I was doing.”
A distant look of confusion clouded his eyes.
“I was?”
“
Yup. Remember the day I went to the Garden of Lilith to practice my sword techniques?”
“
I knew something was up.” He snapped his fingers then pointed to Falcon. “Didn’t I tell you something was up?”
Falcon nodded coo
lly.
“
You were right,” I said. “I met Drake in there that day, and—”
“
How’d he get past our guards?” Blade screeched. “We’ve got guys that can sniff a vampire out a mile off!”
“
I have no idea how he got in here and, honestly, that’s not my concern right now, because the fact is, safety is an illusion, Blade. We’ve never been safe here.”
“
I beg to differ,” he said, and went to continue but I cut him off.
“
Drake has left us alone purely because we were
influenced
, you might say, into doing what he wanted us to do.”
“
What do you mean?”
“
There was never any real threat to me or my kind, nor was there a real war with Lilith back in fourteen hundred. Drake staged a feud between them, lied about his reasons for her death, and—”
“
I call having you arrested and brutalised a threat to your kind, your Majesty,” Blade said, motioning to Jason, who shrunk a little.
“
No. His
Warriors
had me captured and tortured. The plan Drake put in place to
find
my kind just backfired in his face, is all. It was he who set Morgaine up with an underground Lilithian Core—”
“
Why’d he need you found in the first place then, if there was no war?” Em asked.
“
He needed my ancestor, who’d gone missing—kidnapped, actually. So he created a group of specialised hunters to seek out my mind, operating under the illusion that Drake wanted complete extinction of all Lilithians when, in truth, he just wanted someone to help him find … well, in the end,
me
.”
Everyone stared at me, confused.
“When I was arrested,” I continued, “Morgaine had been brought here from the Ninth Order in Paris to punish David for his involvement with a Lilithian. But, she was truly here to raise her Core and rescue us both.”
“Why?” Em asked.
“Because, as I said, Drake never wanted me arrested and hurt in the first place. And—” I added when her mouth opened to speak. “I will get to the reason. Soon.”
“
How do you know all this?” Ryder asked. “Did he tell you this?”
“
Some of it, yes. And some I’ve deduced over time.”
“So
…?” Blade thought for a second. “I have about a hundred questions here.”
“
The floor is yours,” I offered.
“
Did Morg know? Did she know he was using her to—”
“
Morg knew more than she ever let on, Blade,” Mike said flatly.
He looked over at Mike.
“She’s the traitor we've had in our midst.” Mike stood up calmly, continuing his explanation above the gasps. “She’s not a Created Lilithian, guys, she’s better known by her birth name as … Morgana.”
“
What?” Emily was on her feet before her words even reached Mike. “No way! The Original?”
Mike shrugged apologetically.
“Did you know that, Mike?” Em asked. “All those times you had coffee and—”
“No.”
He put his hand up. “It was as much a shock to me.”
“
Then this is what you were yelling at her for half an hour ago?” Blade said to David.
The king moved his head in a cool, kingly yes.
“I was told this morning that her motive here is to see the demise of our queen.”
“Bitch!”
Emily sat down heavily. “I hate her!”
A few people laughed.
“Demise?” Ryder asked. “What could she possibly hope to achieve by killing you? I mean, she saved you from Jason, why—”
“
She saved me under Drake’s orders, but with a motive of her own. He believes, has always believed, that she’s helping him because of his promise to restore her mother when he gets what he wants from me but, in fact, she just wanted to get close to me so she could roam freely around the island.”
Three people spoke then, one asking how Drake
could restore her mother’s life, another asking what Drake wants, and the other asking why Morg wanted free rein on Loslilian. I went with question number two.
“
Drake just wants to fulfil an ancient, I guess,
desire
, of his.”
“
Which is?”
“
To be reunited with his beloved wife Anandene.”
“
And what’s that got to do with Drake saving you?”
“
Anandene was a witch—a born witch, not a practiced witch—and she also dabbled in Dark Magic. But, no matter what spells they cast, witches cannot be immortal,” I said, wishing I had a torch to shine at the base of my jaw so the scene would fit better with the captivated gazes of my “campfire” audience. “When witches attempt to prolong life, Nature steps in and takes action: they become heinous, their souls blackened, as if to allow them immortality is to deny them the beauty of life. But Anandene and Drake didn’t care. They were so in love that the prospect of her death was unbearable for him, worse than selling his soul. They made plans to get her an immortal body—one she could occupy while keeping the powers of her ancestors and all the memories attached to her soul.”
“
And this is why she cast that spell on the Stone of Truth?” Arthur said, half asking, half confirming.
“
Right. And that spell brought a curse on the lands,” I explained to the others. “To rid themselves of the curse, Lilith had to offer the blood of the guilty back to Nature. What she didn’t know was that this is exactly what Drake and Anandene wanted.”
“
Why?” Quaid asked.
“
Because they needed Lilith’s guilty conscience, and her ability to bear immortal beings. From what I’ve gathered based on what Drake told me, the only way to force her into submission was to wage war and threaten her people until she believed that, by giving Drake back the beloved wife she murdered, she was saving her people.” I reached down to grab my glass and took a sip, suddenly parched. “Anyway.” I put the glass down. “Lilith agreed that she would give birth to a child that would, with the help of witchcraft, bear Anandene’s soul. She thought she was merely replacing what was lost in order to restore peace but she was, in fact, giving Anandene an immortal body.”
“Damn,”
Ryder said, sitting back in his chair. “Drake is pretty clever.”
“Yes,” I said. “
And we’d be fools to underestimate him. This is why I warn you we are not safe here unless
he
decides it.”
“
So why has he left us in peace?” Emily asked.
“
Because he was waiting for my child to be conceived.” I patted my belly. “I was never supposed to rise up and become queen. That happened only because the Warriors found me and Drake needed to make up some story as to why Morgaine was rescuing me. Had that event not occurred, David and I would have married, had this child when we saw fit to start a family, and Drake, still king, would have moved in and taken her when the time was right. We’d never have been any the wiser. But, as fate would have it, plans were forced to change and all of our worlds were intertwined in what was a giant and complete accident.” I sighed, half smiling. “He would still be on his throne, the Damned in their cages, and David and I running from The Set had the Warriors not found me.”