Winning the Legend (12 page)

“And it’s safe?” Devin asked from the
shadows with Thomas and Turner right behind him. Devin somehow
always knew exactly when he needed to be somewhere, and Thomas and
Turner were not far behind.

“Yes,” Andrew replied. “Rhys won’t harm
Arianna.”

Arianna looked to each of her keepers and
saw that they trusted Andrew completely. No one moved to stop her
as she watched Rhys’ blood flow inside the veins. It was close to
impossible for Arianna to drink blood from someone that did not
love her. Rhys wasn’t emitting love, rather camaraderie. He was
feeling the same way, trapped in the night human world, just as
Arianna felt. Arianna hoped that would be enough. She closed her
eyes before biting down and beginning to drink his blood.

The blood wasn’t as repulsing as most blood
seemed to be in the past for Arianna. Maybe it was the pathadh that
needed to be satisfied, but she could actually drink Rhys’ blood.
Maybe there was love somewhere that Arianna couldn’t feel, but
something made her able to drink it. Arianna closed her eyes as she
drew back from Rhys’ wounds. After she pulled back, she waited in
her day human form. Counting to ten, the blood rushed through her
body and energized her in a way that she had not felt since before
she had fasted. Her senses completely stabilized. Arianna opened
her eyes to stare shocked at Rhys.

“I think we need to move this conversation
inside the room now,” Gabriel added, joining the group and ushering
them into Arianna’s soundproof bedroom to keep the conversation
that would follow completely confidential in case there were any
spies in the house.

“He’s a she?” Arianna asked, looking over to
Andrew for a confirmation as her keepers stared at Arianna like she
was crazy.

Chapter 13

Rhys had promised an explanation, and it was
obvious that Andrew knew part of it. Everyone waited while Rhys
collected his thoughts. Turner and Devin sat down in chairs next to
Arianna and Andrew, who were on the couch in Arianna’s sitting
room. Thomas preferred to pace as they waited for Rhys to explain,
and Gabriel stood behind Thomas, watching everyone anxiously.
Gabriel had suspected something was off with Rhys when he first
arrived, but he couldn’t say what, as he had never met the other
leader before. Rhys relaxed, sitting in the chair across from
Arianna.

“Then it must be true,” Rhys explained. “You
can see me, can’t you?”

“You, as in Rhys McKinny, leader of the
sidhe; or you, as in the girl whose name I don’t know,” Arianna
asked. She stared at both at the same time. The man Rhys was a
blurred shell outside the unknown girl.

“What exactly do you see?” Thomas asked,
trying his best to analyze the situation. All he beheld was an
overly happy man smiling at Arianna.

“I see a girl. Dark curly hair, green eyes,
about my height, maybe a little taller, and around her is a fuzzy
haze that is the shape and look of Rhys,” Arianna replied,
describing the scene before her. Andrew didn’t see that, but he’d
seen inside Rhys’ head to know that he wasn’t the leader of the
sidhe, but was, in fact, a girl.

“Impossible,” Thomas replied.

“Not impossible,” the imposter Rhys replied.
“She can see beyond my illusion.”

“She’s not a sidhe,” Thomas replied. He knew
how sidhe magic worked, and only another sidhe could see through an
illusion if the caster allowed them to.

Rhys smiled and nodded, acknowledging
Thomas’ logic but not verbally agreeing. Even Rhys was in awe of
the situation.

“Who are you?” Andrew asked. He had seen
inside her head already and knew she was a sidhe who was somehow
closely related to Rhys. Devin was waiting for this answer as he
was ready to pounce on the imposter, while Andrew relaxed. Rhys
wanting Arianna as his wife was not likely, but to lie and pretend
to be someone else did not sit well with Devin.

“Nessa…Vanessa McKinny,” she replied,
shaking her head of curls and dropping the whole illusion by
allowing everyone else to see her. “Rhys is my older brother.”

“And why are you here, pretending to be your
brother?” Devin asked, starting the interrogation and still viewing
her as a threat. Anyone who willingly deceived them was a threat.
Even Molina wasn’t completely forgiven in Devin’s eyes for the
betrayal they discovered a little over a month ago.

“To avoid the princess’ fate over there,”
Nessa pointed to Arianna. “If I agreed to compete as my brother,
and make it through the first round, I’d be granted the option to
not get married in three months to the fool my parents picked years
ago. I’m not marrying someone I don’t love. I play pretend, and I
get to go free. I wish it was that easy for her.”

Nessa sympathized with Arianna, and that was
what Arianna had felt all along: compassion. They were both stuck
being females in a male-dominated world that had yet to decide how
to handle powerful females. Nessa had grown up in the night human
world and had known about the rules her entire life. She pitied
Arianna being thrown into everything like it was a cold bath.

“And you made it past. Now what?” Devin
replied, knowing that Thomas was analyzing the situation while Mori
was listening in and checking on everything the girl said. He
didn’t need to be thinking of how to prove or disprove her answers.
He needed to know exactly what she wanted. He wasn’t a fan of
attacking girls unless they attacked him first, but this one rubbed
him the wrong way.

“Now I get to be his retainer while my
brother returns and competes,” Nessa replied.

Arianna couldn’t help the frown beginning to
form. Rhys had been the one actual competitor that she wasn’t
worrying about. Now that the Rhys she thought was safe was gone,
she would have one more contestant to worry about. She didn’t want
to have one more man actually trying to win.

Nessa noticed and hurriedly added. “I only
agreed to come here as long as he agreed that if he won, my brother
wouldn’t make you marry him.”

“And your father was fine with that?” Thomas
added his own questions, trying his best to get the information
they would need to change the game if needed.

“Yes. And so are the sidhe people. We don’t
want to be part of the merger of night humans. The sidhe are more
ancient than all the current night humans in North America, and we
wish to keep our independence,” Nessa explained, but sounded more
like she was pleading with Arianna to believe her.

“Merger?” Arianna asked. Nessa was one more
person talking about things Arianna was never told about. Arianna
looked over to the men in the room, but at least this time they
seemed just as confused.

“You guys don’t know what this is really
about? I thought Arianna was just the one that didn’t know.” Nessa
looked to Devin, Gabriel, and then Thomas. No one understood what
Nessa was talking about.

“What is what about?” Arianna turned to
Devin and Thomas. Neither replied. Nessa was correct; neither
understood what she meant.

“Didn’t Randolph collect the complete
legend?” Nessa asked Devin.

“Not the complete legend. We only had
parts,” Devin replied, still eyeing Nessa. Something about her
didn’t sit well with Devin. She was too relaxed, sitting amongst
enemies.

“Then you don’t know the true purpose behind
Arianna?” Nessa said as a question to Devin, but a statement to
everyone else. “Arianna is special because she carries the blood of
two types of night humans. No one else can do that. Her blood
wasn’t just made to carry her parent’s night human blood, but all
of the night humans. When the clans divide enough like we are now,
a night human is born to bring them together. She isn’t a bridge to
peace by marriage like all the brutes that will gather back here
again think. She will literally merge the night humans in her
blood. We are too diverse and need to become one species
again.”

“Is she really the one to bring us together
again?” Andrew asked. He had seen it in her mind what was to happen
and what was being foretold of Arianna. Andrew already believed
Nessa, but the other men were not so sure.

“And you know this how?” Thomas asked what
everyone else was thinking. Nessa could be telling the truth, or
she could just be a very good actress sent by her brother or the
sidhe people to win their trust. No one at the competition could
truly be trusted as they all had something to gain: Arianna.

“Every few centuries one that is born is the
bringer of peace or war,” Ness looked around the room. “That was
our line of the legend. I guess your races must all be too young to
understand what is happening. My grandfather told me that no one
would remember, but that someday I would need this knowledge.”
There was a bit more acceptance from the men in the room. They had
all heard of the bringer of peace or war.

“He told me that the special night human
will bring war first as the various tribes will fight to own the
night human. This night human will be more powerful than could ever
be imagined, and each tribe will want it as their own to dominate
over the others.”

“Meaning?” Arianna asked. The past few
months had taught Arianna to ask more questions, especially if
someone was talking and willing to answer.

“They don’t want you for marriage like they
all say. Every single competitor came here with the intention to
bring you back to their own home, lock you up, and bleed you to
bring power to their own people. With your blood they will be
invincible.”

“Bleed me?” Arianna questioned as Andrew
tensed under her grasp. He too didn’t like the sound of that.

“I think most of them plan to keep you
alive, a few may not. If they do keep you alive, you will be locked
away forever, never to be released again for a day of your life,”
Nessa explained, trying to get the reality to sink in for Arianna.
This was never about marriage. Not one clan here cared about
marriage. All they wanted was the power she had.

“The other option is that you’ll be the
bringer of peace.” Nessa waited for the anger to die down a bit
from around the room. Not a single man in the room was happy to
hear of the other clan’s plans to treat Arianna as an animal. “But
to bring peace, you have to be more powerful than everyone
here.”

“Which I am not,” Arianna whispered.

Arianna still couldn’t beat Andrew in a
fight, and even though he was a high-level night human, so were all
the competitors. They were each a clan head and the most powerful
or the next in line being trained to be their future clan leader.
Alone she stood a good chance against them, but there were ten men.
Together, she would never be able to beat them. Arianna shivered at
the thought of ending up with any of those men. Actual marriage was
repulsive to her as it was, this was even scarier.

“No one will ever touch you,” Andrew
replied, wrapping his arms around her to stop the slight shaking in
her hands.

“You need my help,” Nessa explained as if it
was the only choice they had left.

“We don’t trust the sidhe,” Devin replied.
He had had a few encounters with the sidhe and never walked away
happy. They were as tricky as they were powerful. Nessa, no matter
how she spun her tale, was still a sidhe.

Nessa nodded to Arianna as she disappeared.
Arianna could still see her as she stood and walked across the
room. The men were all growing frantic as they looked around for
signs of her. Nessa reached Arianna. Arianna looked to the men
around her. None saw or felt Nessa’s presence. Nessa wasn’t going
to harm her, and when she reached down and pricked Arianna’s finger
to draw blood, the room erupted into full panic. Nessa instantly
moved across the room and hid against the wall. All five men were
instantly on alert and Turner, Andrew, and Gabriel in their full
night human forms.

“Stop,” Arianna said to the men to get them
to freeze. “She was trying to make a point.”

Andrew growled, followed by Turner who was
fully transformed also. Arianna reached up and touched Andrew’s
pale night human skin. Devin and Turner began to pace around the
room with Thomas. None of their anger simmered down. Arianna caught
a glance between Gabriel and Devin, but neither moved near Nessa.
Her guards were good as always. She had a feeling they knew where
Nessa was.

“Please stop,” she begged the men. Devin
stopped his pacing with his back to Nessa. He turned and threw a
knife that grazed Nessa’s upper arm, slicing a fine line and
causing it to bead up blood. Arianna moved in front of Nessa before
Devin continued his attack. The knife had dropped Nessa’s
illusion.

“How did you?” Ness asked, unfazed by the
cut to her arm. Devin tried to get around Arianna, but Arianna kept
her defensive stance.

“I said stop,” Arianna used her authority to
keep Gabriel, Andrew, and Thomas from joining Devin. “She was
proving a point. I need to be safe enough to protect myself as you
guys are not prepared for everything that all these other night
humans can do.” Arianna reached up and placed her hands on Devin’s
chest, since he was the only one still not obeying her.

‘Please Devin. She was
never going to hurt me. I could feel her intentions. It was just a
demonstration,’
Arianna tried to calm him
with words, but it was her touch that brought him back from killing
the girl that was only trying to help them.

“Everyone sit back down,” Arianna told the
men. They all returned to their seats with Devin the last to move.
He didn’t trust Nessa.

“If you ever draw blood on her again, she
won’t be able to stop me,” Devin threatened. Nessa still stared in
awe at him. She had never met someone that saw through her sidhe
magic. She could never have imagined a day human with so much
power.

Thomas leaned against the window as tension
filled the air. Nessa had very much proven her point, and all the
men were being extra cautious, afraid that she would do something
more. It was a reality check for Thomas. He’d only been able to
plan their moves based on what little everyone knew about each
clan, yet he had never met anyone outside of Arianna’s clans. Most
hadn’t either. It wasn’t common for clans to mix. Devin was the
only person that had ever met the other clans, and only Arianna was
relaxed in front of the stranger. Clans didn’t make a difference to
her since she hadn’t been raised in the night human world.