I looked through the darkness and studied David’s face. There were dreams there, in his sleeping expression—dreams that weren’t likely to be good ones. He was restless and clammy to the touch. I just wished he’d hurry and wake up so I could heal his pain.
When my head drooped for the fifth time with exhaustion, I left the chair and crawled onto the bed beside David. The blankets and sheets were still stained with blood and I was sure a few stray pieces of flesh might be among the folds, but I didn’t care. It was David’s blood. David’s flesh, and I’d happily lay in it just to be closer to him. Also, I’d happily lay in
anything
just to get a moment of sleep.
I rested softly on the pillow so as not to disturb the sleeping predator, and rolled to face him, my hand under my cheek. As I lay there for a while, listening to the clock tick and the human heart beat, my breath slowly altered to mimic David’s. Including the quick breath I took when he did.
His eyelids popped open, black and soulless as a night of death underneath, flicking on to me a second later.
I braced myself, reaching back with one hand to get a strong hold if I needed to turn and run quickly. But his eyes focused then and his brow crinkled down the middle as he took in my face, one almost silent word spilling through his dried lips that made me stay put.
“Ara?”
“It’s okay.” I reached for him but didn’t touch. Didn’t dare touch. “You’re safe.”
“No.” He got on his knees and scooped my top half off the bed, crushing my cheek to his bandaged chest. “I killed you.”
“No. I’m okay.” I tried to pull back but he wouldn’t let me. “I was just halfway between life and death. But Falcon found me.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, his cold breath chilling the top of my head in an unnerving way. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I—”
“David. I know. And it’s okay. I’m fine.”
“The baby.” He bent slightly and placed his hand on my pink top. “I felt her move.”
I laid my hand over his. “Really?”
His black eyes closed, a hard, slow breath leaving his lovely dark pink lips. “I’ve never felt that before. It … I felt you slip away and then … there was this tiny, strange little …
bump
from inside you.”
I smiled, catching his eye then. “And … what did you think? Pretty cool, huh?”
“I didn’t know what it was at first. I stopped, took a second, and after what felt like forever…” He smiled down at his hand over the bump, his deadly eyes alight somehow with a sparkling excitement. “She did it again.”
“She was probably telling you to get off her mother.”
He laughed, but it ended short, David folding over and shutting his eyes so tight his teeth formed a cage.
“You’re in pain.” I got up on my knees. “You need blood.”
“No.” He fell back against the pillows, jolting up like they were made of fire when his torn skin touched it. “I can’t drink it, Ara—”
“It’s okay.” I cupped a hand delicately over his bare knee. “It was the spell, David. Morgana undid it. You’ll be fine.”
“No.” He rolled onto his side and pulled the sheet over his nakedness, bringing his knees up to his chest. “I can’t risk it. I can't take anymore.”
“Don’t be afraid.” I curled up just in front of him, not sure if I should touch him but wanting so badly just to brush his hair softly off his face. “Go past your boundaries in thought, David. Think of me in a way you’re not usually able to. You’ll see. The spell is gone.”
He frowned at me. “What do you know of the boundaries?”
“Only that there were thoughts or feelings you couldn’t express. I don’t know exactly what those were. But I need you to trust me.” I risked touching him then—using one finger at first to move a thick lock of bloodied hair from his temple. “Try going past them. Think about something you wouldn't normally be able to think about.”
The look in his eye told me he trusted me enough to risk it, and when he drew a tight breath, I thought for a second that maybe I was wrong. But his eyes opened wider after a second and his lip angled sharply into that secret smile.
“See?” I said, my heart beating again.
“It’s not possible.” He sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes with the balls of his palms.
“What’s not?”
Baring all with no discretion, he threw the sheets back and hopped out of bed, shaking his head against his hands over and over again, saying, “No, no, no.”
“David?” I jumped up too and stood behind him. “What’s wrong?”
“All this time.” He fell into a squat right there on the floor at the foot of the bed, his bare feet holding his weight. “I’ve been in agony. Suffered
unendingly
, and for what?” He stood again, turning to face me, his eyes so black and so squared it seemed the anger had redrawn his features. “How did this happen?”
My eyes subconsciously drifted to the thin line of blood dripping from a cut across his rib. I swept in and cupped it with my hand. “David, please drink. I—”
“Where is it?” He twisted suddenly and charged toward the wardrobe, forcing the door open in a sweeping move and taking straight to the boxes of his personal effects, still sitting packed in piles around the space. Aside from the one we knocked over.
“Where’s what?”
“I can’t explain it to you, Ara.” He stopped for a second to rub his head, breathing heavily through what was very obvious pain. “Every time, even now, as my mind clocks over and I want to say it, I’m drawn up by the fear of the pain.”
I gave a knowing nod. “Morgana said there’s a possibility you might always hate me—that parts of the spell will never fade.”
He broke eye contact to rifle through his boxes again. “Then that’s even more of a reason why I need you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
A small leather-bound journal hit my arm as he spun around and shoved it toward me, not realising I was standing so close. “Just read it. Please?”
“Okay.” I put the journal down and moved in to hold him up when he buckled. “But only after you drink. I can’t stand to see you like this.”
“Just read it!” he yelled in a breaking voice, grabbing the book again and holding it out to me, his whole face pleading.
“No.” I shook my head. “You’re trembling, David—bleeding. I wo—”
“Fine,” he muttered so coldly I squeaked as he grabbed my wrist and drew it away from his waist, using it to pull me unnervingly close, and with that dark, eerie hatred in his eyes said, “Then get out.”
I wanted to protest—to beg him not to hate me after everything he’d suffered, but it was no use. He led me to the door, twisted the handle and shoved me out into the corridor, slamming it in my face before he even knew if I’d found my footing. Falcon caught me by the ribs and turned his entire body away from my room, shielding me in case any attack followed.
“What happened?” he asked.
I couldn't talk through the air stuck in my throat.
Falcon studied my watering eyes for a moment, then pulled me back in to his chest. “It’s okay.”
“No.” I sobbed, hiding it behind my hands. “He hates me, Falcon. You should have seen the look in his eye. We’re gonna go on this pendulum love-hate thing now for the rest of our lives. I’ll never know when he’s going to turn.”
“Aw, come on, Ar.” He cradled the side of my face in one giant hand, and the comforting sound of his heartbeat through his warm shirt made the shaking in my lungs ease. “Give him time. He’s not himself right now. He’ll need a lot of healing both physically and emotionally before you can decide how things’re gonna be.”
“No. He’s conditioned, Falcon.” I wiped my snotty nose on my wrist. “You know, like a dog wearing a bark collar. He’ll never be able to come near me again.”
“I hope—” He kissed my brow and left his lips there as he spoke, “—for Morgana’s sake, that you’re wrong. But there’s no point worrying about it now. We have a festival to attend in less than five hours, and at least one of the royal family needs to be there.”
I nodded, stepping back from his arms, a more composed version of the sobbing mess I was. “Can you send someone in later to get my costume?”
“Sure.” One cheek dimpled in an affectionate half smile. “I’ll wait ’til it goes quiet in there.”
My thoughts and eyes drifted back to my room and the woman I left in there for David to eat. “He’ll kill her, Falcon.”
His caramel eyes went cold and his lips pressed into a hard line. “He already has.”
“Oh God.” My two hands came up and wrapped the back of my neck, rubbing firmly as I backed away.
“Ara?” Falcon called.
“I just need to be alone,” I whispered, already walking down the corridor, so numb I couldn't feel the ground under my feet.
***
Emily bunched her hair on top of her head, pinning it so a few golden curls dangled beside her face and down her neck. “Lighten up, Ara,” she said, throwing a smile at me through the mirror. “He can’t have gone far. He’s probably just run inland to feed.”
“Or he’s left for good.” I turned my delicate green and black mask over in my fingertips. It was made of such fine material, like little coloured branches all joined together in the shape of a butterfly, that it almost looked like something made by the elven. I’d expected Falcon to deliver it and my costume to Em’s room with some good news that David was sleeping peacefully and looked as though he was healing. Instead, I got a dress and a mask thrown at me with a quick sentence about a search party. Safe to say, I wasn’t about to lighten up any time soon.
Emily came and sat beside me on her bed, moving the breezy curtain away from the post. “Just focus on tonight, okay. Our people have worked really hard to make this the best festival since the reign of Lilith. David will come back when he’s ready.”
“What if he’s never ready again?”
“Hey—” She placed her hand softly over my belly. “You said he felt her move for the first time, right?”
I nodded.
“Then he’ll be back, even if it’s after she’s born. He won’t be able to stay away from his own little girl. Just look at how much he loves the Damned.”
My heart softened and a warm feeling of calm sunk through me. “You’re right. Maybe he’s just gone to feed somewhere he won’t be judged for killing.”
“You wouldn't have judged him, would you?”
“No. Of course not. I can’t say I condone it, but he was in a pretty bad state. I wouldn’t have held it against him.”
“Ara, if he’s half as bad as Blade let on, he’ll need to kill more than a small handful of humans before he’s okay again—especially if he’s been starving himself.” She shuddered visibly. “Vampires need the life-force as well as the blood, you know? We can drink it from a cup for only so long before we
need
the death. You can’t let yourself forget that.”
“I know.” I pouted playfully. “Guess I just got used to the idea of vampires no longer killing humans.”
“They still are, Ara.
David
still is.
I
still am. You’re just not as aware of it now because of the Pledge.”
“The Pledge. That’s it! He left because he’d need to kill. Em—” I turned to face her, grabbing both her hands. “He didn’t want to go all ‘fright night’ at the festival tonight and massacre everyone—not when he was the first one to sign that agreement!”
“Sweet Ara, always seeing the good in people.” She shook her head, standing up. “I really doubt David’s that considerate.”
“Well, maybe he left so he wouldn’t kill the children at the Institute.”
“Now
that
sounds more like him,” she exclaimed with a finger in the air. “Pity this didn’t happen
next
week, so at least the last of the Damned would be adopted.”
“If anything ever happened when it was convenient, we would all live very different lives.”
“And nothing bad would ever happen.”
My nose wrinkled in confusion. “Why?”
“Well—” She shrugged, both hands out, looking quite sweet and innocent. “When is it ever convenient to have bad things happen?”
“Very true.”
“Now, come on.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me up off the bed. “Let’s get dressed and go enjoy the festivities.”
I tossed my mask onto the bed among the million pairs of Em’s shoes and scarves and other bits she’d been throwing around in here today. “Okay, but I’ve got dibs on the mirror first.”
“Go for it.” She presented her dresser full of cosmetics. “I’ll get my dress on.”
Determined to paint a layer of makeup so thick across my face it could hide my concern for David, I sat down and opened a dozen different bottles of foundation and concealer. By the time I’d smoothed the last layer of light pink gloss along my bottom lip, Emily stepped out of her dressing room in a whirl of golden sunshine—her yellow dress and transparent wings like nothing nature could have dreamed up, yet almost like something from a dream anyway.
“Emily!” I stood up slowly, my mouth all but falling to the floor. “Blade is going to go to
pieces
when he sees you.”