“Don’t play dumb with me, Jason Gabriel Knight. I want the secret, now, or I’m not signing this.”
He looked at the paper, then at me, and his eyes narrowed.
“I’ve got you by the proverbial balls now, Jase. You have to tell me.” I laughed.
“Fine.” He scratched his eye, clearly stalling. “The human has to have a mix of blood and vampire venom in their system in order to turn. It’s not enough just to bite them, they have to drink it as well.”
I swallowed, thinking back to the night of the masquerade, when Jason’s lips touched mine and he spat copious amounts of what I thought was saliva and my own blood into my mouth while I was dying, the confusion I felt—the thoughts I went over repeatedly after that night—all surfacing for a moment.
“Please don’t do that.” He put his hands on the sides of my head gently. “I can’t stand to see those memories, Ar.”
“Sorry. It’s just…”
“Yes, that’s what I did to you,” he said. “I made it look like a kiss so David wouldn’t know I tried to turn you.”
“Wow.” I stared at nothing for a second, reliving it. “You know, you tried to turn me to save me, right?”
He nodded. I was looking down at the page now, so I didn’t see it, but I knew he nodded.
“But, I couldn't be turned because I was Lilithian?” I added.
“Yes.”
“Well, technically, by spitting your own blood into my mouth, you gave me a real fighting chance to survive,” I said, and felt the energy in the room change. “If a Lilithian gets hurt, what’s the first thing you give them?”
“Vampire blood,” he said, and I heard the smile in his tone.
“See?” I turned my head with a flick and grinned at him. “You saved my life that night, Jase.”
“I also nearly took it.”
“Details.” I waved a hand and signed the dotted line.
Jase laughed, scooping the document up. “Thanks, Ara.”
“No worries.”
“Hey, before you go.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back toward him. “I wanna say hello to my baby.”
“
Your
baby?” I said, looking down as he knelt and lifted my top.
“Yes.” He kissed my belly so softly I barely felt his lips. “I told you, I’m claiming her.”
“And what if David suddenly decides to come back and play daddy again?”
“He can be Dad Number Two. I—” He stopped talking and looked up quickly with a twinkling grin. “Did you feel that?”
“What?” And then I felt it. It was a sharp, quick tap from inside me—like a bubble had popped right next to my skin. “It kicked.”
“Hello, baby,” he said, his hot breath wetting my skin. “Hi.”
“She kicked,” I said to myself. “I can’t believe it.”
“You haven't felt one yet?”
I shook my head.
“So
…” His hands froze an inch away from my skin. “No one else has then?”
I shook my head again.
“Oh.” He stood up, drawing my top back down. “Might not wanna mention that to David.”
“No,” I said, running my hands down the bump. “Could be cause for another sore spot when it comes to you.”
Jase laughed softly. “Well, on the bright side, I think our baby approves of me.”
“Scientists,” I scoffed playfully, turning away. “Altering facts to fit their own theories since time began.”
***
The last time I saw David was as he disappeared behind a slammed door. We never talked again after that argument we had outside his room and, frankly, I didn’t much want to. Over the past three weeks, everything he said or did to hurt me had boiled up like a hurricane inside me and, now, the only thing I felt for him was a kind of stormy rage. I didn’t want him to come home next week. I didn’t want him in my life anymore, and while that didn’t mean I was ready to move on with Jason, I sure as hell did not want David back. Not even my heart could convince me otherwise. The thing about time for reflection is that it gives you perspective. I cried my eyes out the day David left for Paris, but after a few days I realised that the only change with him being gone was that I didn’t feel so scared, like I was gonna run into him and he’d say something to hurt me again. I was glad he was gone. I could handle his absence better than seeing the hatred in his eyes every time he looked at me. But Mike was right. Despite what I felt for David now, I should find some way to let him know things between Jason and I had moved forward.
I grabbed my phone to call Paris and at least leave a message with the butler, but when I saw an empty inbox—saw that neither Vicki nor Dad had responded to my messages—I called Dad instead and then dumped the phone back in my pocket a second later. Clearly, I had poor service right now.
By the time I finally wandered into the Great Hall, everyone was already seated. They stood as I took my seat, going back to their private chatter once my butt was on the chair. There weren't as many people at the table these days, now my reign had been properly established. We had the regular food-consumers, like the Lilithian Upper House members, and the blood-consumers who sat at the table for good measure, but the Lower House and the old Rune Readers no longer joined us. They’d all gone back to their own little corner of the island, leaving a table fit to seat fifty with a bare and scattered twenty mouths. David was gone. Morg had followed him before I could stop her, and Jase now sat where she once did. Arthur occupied the seat at David’s right hand, and Walt on the left, with Margret beside him. And I liked it this way. The fewer heads made the distance from my seat to the evil king’s seem that much further away.
“Hey,” Jase said.
“Hey.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“Mm. Why?”
“It’s not like you to be late for dinner.” He nodded once at my fork, hinting at the many times it’d been to my mouth and back to the plate in the last ten-seconds.
“Oh. Um.” I shovelled some more food in, not self-conscious of my ravenous behaviour at all. “I was trying to leave another message for Dad.”
“He still hasn’t called?”
I shook my head. “Today marks three weeks.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed and he sat back, taking his blood goblet with him.
“I’m sure they’re just busy, Ara,” Mike assured me. “I can take a trip down there and drop in on them if you want. I need to make an appearance at your old house anyway—it’s been two weeks since I checked on the place.”
“If you could, that’d be great, Mike,” I said. “Maybe get a few pictures for me, too. I haven’t seen them in so long now I’m starting to forget what they all look like.”
“Well, last time I was in the neighbourhood, I ran into Sam, and all I can say is—” he shook his head with a breathy laugh, “—he’s bloody-well as big as me now.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Remind me never to pick a fight with him.”
I laughed, sitting back then. And my calmer, now more relaxed gaze went across the room and onto the last seat at the table—the empty one.
Walt and Arthur spoke to each other across the plates and candles, muttering something about a new plant Arthur had created, and all the other vampires and Lilithians carried on about unimportant things—movies or books they’d read—but not once, not at any point as my wandering thoughts moved from conversation to conversation, did I miss David. Until I realised I didn’t miss him. And that made my heart sink a little.
How had it gotten to that? How had I let his anger hurt me so deeply that I never wanted to see him again?
“Clean slate?” Jase said, placing his hand on mine.
“Huh?”
He motioned to David’s chair. “Maybe you should offer him a clean slate.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate seeing you hate yourself for hating him.”
I smiled a little, looking away from Jase. “He won’t want a clean slate. He won’t even want to talk to me.”
“I know.” He nodded. “And he’ll outwardly deny any need for forgiveness from you, Ara, but everyone says things they don’t mean when they’re hurt—my brother is
definitely
no exception.”
“For once,” Mike said, saluting with his glass, “the vampire has something of value to say.”
Jase laughed to himself, choosing to take that as a compliment.
“I know he’s right,” I said to Mike. “It’s just … it’s not so much
what
David said to me that makes me want to stay away from him, but more … that he
meant
it.”
“Yeah.” Jase winced, scratching his temple. “Guess that kinda does sting, doesn’t it?”
“What’d he say to you, Ara?” Mike asked, looking from Jason to me.
“It doesn't matter.” I sat back. “I’m sure, in time, we’ll start talking civilly with each other.”
“Well, you’ve only got eternity to sort your issues out,” Jason said.
“Yeah. I guess.” I looked into my lap, wishing I could tell them about my eighteen-year deal with Drake.
***
The study once belonged solely to Arthur—to the vassal of the lands—but since he handed Loslilian over to a new master some forty years earlier, it had fallen into a state of such disrepair that my people had just barely managed to patch it up before I came.
It was a grand room, really, much like the library, but the size of my sitting room. An old oak desk sat facing the windows, framed by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, warmed by splashes of orange firelight as it darted past the circle of winged armchairs and made patterns on the rug. I’d spent enough time in this room since I became queen to know every little chip or dent in the oak shelves and every detail in the droll-faced paintings that stared back at me from between them. And I’d spent enough time signing important documents today to make the room feel like a four-walled cell.
I capped my pen and slid the documents and parchments aside for the evening, then wandered over and folded the great French windows outward. The steady breeze brushed in off the ocean, fluttering the edges of my documents
. When my eyes adjusted to the inky black of night, I counted each intermittent blink of white, calling out to sea from the lighthouse. But a smaller flicker of yellow suddenly caught my attention. I wrapped my sweater tighter around my ribs and leaned out the window a little, narrowing my eyes to get a better look. There was another flicker, followed by two more, until a stream of yellow orbs left the forest and hovered in a curvy line across the field toward the lighthouse.
“Falcon?” I called.
The door swung open and he appeared at my side. “Everything okay, my Queen?”
I nodded to the eerie hovering lights. “What is that?”
He considered it for a moment. “Oh, of course.” He shook his head with relief. “It’s The Sacred Walk—those are lanterns.”
“The what?”
“It was a ritual your people used to carry out to worship the Mother Lilith before they were all locked away. Every year, on this day, they take to the sea, strip down to their “natural state” and say their prayers, asking for wealth and prosperity, etcetera.”
“Lilith? The Mother of Nature?”
“Yes. But our people refer to her as the Mother of the Earth, which I think is more accurate. Although, some do refer to her as the Mother of Life. I’m pretty sure it all means the same thing in the end.”
“How come they didn't ask me to come then? I speak with her nearly every day, and—”
“Because you’re a holy entity, too.”
“A what?”
He laughed, leaning his elbows on the windowsill beside me. “To your people, you are the ruler and a goddess, and one day, as the Book of Carmen reveals, you will step up from Auress to rule a realm of your own.”
“What, as in
, I’ll be trapped in some forest like Lilith is?”
“Lilith isn’t trapped, from what I know. More like bound to it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask her.”
“Well, what realm will I rule?”
“I’m not sure. I just know that it’s the honour of all Lilith’s descendants—the first Lilith—to accept a place among the gods and guard a realm of infinite power.”
“Honour?” I scoffed. “But what if I don’t want to accept a realm of my very own?”
“No one will force you. I’m pretty sure it’s optional. Hang on—” He turned his
head to face me then, frowning. “Ara, you should know all this.”
“How could I possibly know it if no one ever told me? And how do you know all this?”
“It’s my job to know
everything
that concerns you.”
“Then how come no one ever told
me
?”
“If you’d paid more attention when Morgaine was teaching you about your people, none of this would come as a shock to you.” He shook his head at me, laughing out of irritation. “I’m beginning to think maybe we should go back to square one and teach you the
basics
—now that you’re finally accepting this paranormal world wholeheartedly.”
“Good,” I said, with my heart on my sleeve. “Teach me. I’ll listen. I
want
to learn now.”