by Kristie Cook
“I can’t just let him go, Mom,” I said quietly.
“I know.” She drew me back into her arms, and if I wasn’t so angry about the whole thing, I might have finally cried. It felt good to be held by my mom again. “Trust me, I know. But unless something changes, you’re going to have to. At least make it look like you are. If I can find a way to persuade everyone that rescuing Dorian is in all of our best interests, I will. But so far, I haven’t been able to. Even pursuing Kali or Owen can’t be justified in their eyes. Not when all of humanity need us elsewhere.”
I could tell by her voice, by the way she held me, by the exhaustion in her eyes she truly had tried. And she would keep trying in her own way.
“In the meantime,” she said, “I have to keep you on track. There are too many lives at stake. Too many souls. So please don’t hate me for it.”
“I could never hate you, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too, honey. And Tristan and Dorian. Very much. Maybe . . . maybe we’ll find a way.”
She left us with that bit of hope at the entrance to our wing on the third floor. But after the warmth of the heart-to-heart wore off, I realized there really wasn’t much hope in what she’d said. I was glad to know she hadn’t completely dismissed Dorian, that she loved him and wanted to keep him with us. But she didn’t want it badly enough. Not as badly as Tristan and I did. We would risk it all to save our son. Thank goodness we had others who were willing to help.
I awoke in our suite at the butt-crack of dawn, no longer able to sleep, although it had only been four hours since I’d laid my head down. The other side of the bed was empty—Tristan apparently couldn’t sleep, either. I found his mind signature in the gym behind the mansion, and his thoughts were tightly focused on Lucas as his body beat the hell out of a punching bag. I let him be and felt out for other minds that were awake. Three so far—Mom, Vanessa, and Ophelia, the head of staff in the mansion.
After laying in bed until I couldn’t lie there a second longer, I showered and dressed, then made my way to the kitchen to find Ophelia already pouring coffee for me in the dining room.
“Ms. Alexis,” she said with a curtsy. “Chocolate croissants and strawberries?”
I didn’t feel exceptionally hungry, but now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. “Some bacon, too. Thank you.”
Ophelia inclined her head, then disappeared, only to reappear a minute later with my breakfast. I’d barely begun eating when Mom joined me at the table, followed by Vanessa, who looked considerably calmer than she had the last time I saw her.
“She spent almost the entire night with Rina,” Mom said silently to me. I lifted a brow. “You can talk to Rina about it later.”
Vanessa only stayed long enough for Ophelia to bring her a glass of what might have looked like tomato or vegetable juice to a norm—it even had a celery stalk and a parsley sprig for flourish—but I knew better. The vampire took her breakfast and disappeared. Mom shook her head after Vanessa left.
“It’s still hard to believe, but can’t be denied,” she said quietly.
“Her conversion or that she’s my sister? Because I’m not sure I totally believe either yet.”
“Oh, I sensed the truth about her being Lucas’s daughter decades ago, but he would never confirm it, even when we were together.”
“Seriously?” I demanded. “You knew, and you didn’t bother to say anything to me? To anyone?”
“I said I sensed it, but I didn’t know for certain.” Mom reached across the table and placed her hand over mine. “Until she decided to come to us, there were too many risks and no benefit in spreading possible rumors. She didn’t know for certain until the other day, right? I feared what she might do to you if she knew, and also how it would affect you if I told you, especially if my sense happened to be wrong. She was Daemoni. Our enemy. Things might have been different if I’d known what she really wanted back when I took Tristan.”
“She told you about that?” I asked, somewhat surprised Vanessa disclosed so much. “How she’d wanted to convert when he did?”
“She told us many things. She didn’t think herself ready then, but I might have been able to help her.” She sighed sadly, but then her voice lifted. “But it all happened the way it was supposed to, and she’s here with us now. As I said, Rina will tell you more when you see her.”
I finished chewing my bite of croissant as I watched Mom. “I know it’s how we’re supposed to be, but you sure did forgive easily. Vanessa hasn’t exactly been your biggest fan for the last thirty years.”
“That is how we are,” Mom said with a shrug. “We forgive. But . . . we may not forget. I won’t forget what she’s done to you and me, to other Amadis, and to innocents, but it’s all in the past. She’s not the same person anymore.”
“Hmm . . . ” came my only response.
Mom pushed her chair away from the table and stood. “I need to get some work done before Rina wakes up.”
“How’s she doing, anyway?”
Mom grabbed the back of her seat to push it under the table, and the corners of her mouth twitched, but I didn’t know if she was trying to force a smile or fight a frown. “Not well, to be honest. Not as well as I’d hoped she’d be by now.”
I picked the stem off a strawberry leaf by leaf. “I thought maybe since she stayed up all night, she was doing better.”
“She took a long nap yesterday afternoon to be ready for you and your guests.”
“Oh.” Not the news I’d wanted to hear.
“She did warn us that she’d never fully recover, but I’d hoped she’d been wrong. She tires easily. She has me doing a lot on her behalf for official business and Julia taking care of other tasks.” Mom’s eyes darted around the room as she inhaled an unsteady breath. “I honestly don’t know how much longer we have with her, honey. Although . . . she can be quite stubborn, so who really knows?”
She gave me a quick smile and a hug before hurrying out of the room, as though trying to escape the subject. Mom and Rina had never been very close. Mom had resented Rina and the council after my birth because of the control they tried to exert over both of our lives, but I thought there were lots of hurt feelings between them that went back further. In fact, I suspected their relationship began to deteriorate when they were both norms, before Rina had left Mom to go through her Ang’dora. Now, however, it seemed as though Mom wanted to make up for all of their history. Maybe she wanted to close the gap in their relationship because hers and mine wasn’t as close anymore now that we had separate lives. Or maybe she simply knew time with her mother would be short, as she’d just said.
I pushed my plate away and stood, not wanting to be here alone. Not wanting to think about losing Rina.
I considered releasing some stress by working out with Tristan, but I had the feeling he wanted time alone, and I really didn’t want to spend my energy on beating up a sandbag. I didn’t want that kind of release. I wanted answers, direction, guidance. Since I was stuck here, I figured I might as well make the best use of my time. And I knew the place that might hold the secrets I needed to know. With the house so quiet, it was a perfect time to check out the Sacred Archives.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
Chapter 8
When I rounded the corner between Rina’s office and the hallway to the Sacred Archives, I found the door ajar and my grandmother inside. The room glowed around her in that luminous way it does, and she looked as majestic as the day I first met her, wearing a pale pink ball gown, her chestnut-brown hair tumbling in curls down her back, her skin healthy and beautiful. Although she was over a hundred years older than me, she didn’t look a day over twenty-eight. She, Mom, and I could practically pass for triplets. Until you looked into Rina’s eyes and saw the wisdom of time, or into Mom’s and saw the strength one could only gain from decades of living with heartache. Me—you still saw youth and inexperience. In fact, I did look a few years younger than th
em, more like early twenties or younger. I was practically an infant compared to them, and nowhere near ready to serve as matriarch. Good thing I had a long time. Even if Mom was right about Rina, hopefully we had a few decades or longer of Mom holding the seat of matriarch before anyone had to rely on me.
“Alexis?”
I came out of my thought-trance at the sound of Rina’s voice. She stood outside the door of the Sacred Archives now, and something about her had changed. Without the Otherworldly glow of the room, I could now see the tightness in her brow, the tug downwards at the corners of her lips, the exhaustion in her eyes. Her skin and hair seemed less bright, the coloring in both more sallow. She held her arms out for me, and when I hugged her, her embrace didn’t feel as strong as it had in the past. I couldn’t help but think the Sacred Archives had given her Otherworldly strength, but the Earthly realm drained her of it.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked, the concern obvious in my voice. “Mom said you were up all night.”
Rina tsked. “Your mother exaggerates. I had four hours of regeneration, much of it in the Sacred Archives. That is plenty, considering.”
“Mom worries about you.” Rightly so, it seemed.
Rina let go of me with one arm, holding her other around my waist as she began to walk toward her office. I kept an arm around her, too, and I’d say she pulled me with her, but it was more like I held her up, giving me no choice but to go with her because I was afraid she’d fall.
“A little too much,” Rina said. “There is much else for us to worry about.”
We paused for her to open the door, and although her breaths seemed to come evenly, I could feel the tightness of her muscles under my fingers as she struggled for air.
“Please stop,” she said, her voice sounding firmer than I’d expected with her condition. “Do not worry about me. I am strong enough to do what needs to be done, which is all that matters. When it is my time, it is my time. Only the Angels know when it will be, and there is no use in wasting our energy worrying about what we cannot change. Your mother is strong, and she will be ready to be matriarch when the time comes. As will you, dear Alexis.”
I stifled a snort, but she must have seen the doubt on my face as I helped her sit in the throne-like chair behind her huge mahogany desk. She smiled.
“I know you do not believe it now, but you will be ready when your time comes, darling. For now, however, you are our warrior.”
I let out a small chuckle. Ten years ago I would have never thought such a thing. Actually, three years ago I wouldn’t have believed it. But now I knew warrior was the right term for me.
“A warrior, like Tristan. And we need that right now.” She motioned for me to sit down in one of the chairs across the desk from her. “Sophia is emotionally and spiritually strong, but not physically. Her blood is too diluted. She has her power of persuasion and can often sense the truth, and that makes her a powerful converter. She is just and fair. But physically, she does not compare. She is faster and stronger than Normans, but we do not fight Normans. She can channel water when a large body is nearby and fight for a while against the Daemoni. But she is not a warrior. She is not you, Alexis.”
I’d started to wonder where Rina was going with this inventory of Mom’s strengths and weaknesses, but now she made her point: I may have looked like Mom and Rina, and we may have shared a few other similarities, but I was set apart from them. I was different. As always.
“Sophia and I are meant to lead from here.” She lifted her hands and spread them to indicate her surroundings. “From this desk, this office. You, darling, will one day be here, too, but not now. As much as the council wants to fight me about it and keep you here on the island to ensure your safety and that of our next daughter, I know this is not where you need to be. Whether you believe you are ready to lead or not, your time has come—”
This time I couldn’t hold back the snort.
“Your time has come,” she repeated, “for the battlefield. That is where you belong.”
“I think I would go crazy here on the island,” I admitted. “Especially right now. Please don’t let them—”
Rina cut me off. “I know, darling. I will not make you stay here, regardless of what the council thinks. At least, not until you become pregnant, at which time, we re-evaluate. However, we do need to discuss your current directives.”
Here it comes. The lecture I’d been expecting since we left Florida was about to start.
“First, though, I have other business to address. Preparations to make before I send you and your team away.” She glanced at an antique clock sitting on her desk. “Give me a few hours, then I will call for you and Tristan, yes?”
I understood the dismissal and nodded before I stood and headed for the door. After leaving Rina’s office, I returned to the Sacred Archives. The door still stood open, as though waiting for me, and I basked for a moment in the change in the air, how it smelled and tasted like sunshine, how it felt thicker but somehow cleaner against my skin—the air of the Otherworld, I was sure. But once inside, I found nothing useful. I still couldn’t decipher the swirly lines and images that covered the pages in the majority of the books—symbols I thought the Angels might have made. I called for the Book of Prophecies & Curses, and once again, it floated through the air to me. Although I could read the Latin now, nothing in its pages helped.
I studied the curse about the brothers more closely, but there was no new information to gain. No clear-cut answer on how to break it. An Amadis person must sacrifice themselves to the Daemoni to benefit the greater good, but nothing stated who or when or how. Tristan apparently hadn’t broken the curse when he’d gone to the Daemoni to protect all of us, so it couldn’t be just anyone in the Amadis. It had to be someone specific. A daughter? A son? The matriarch? Or perhaps a certain situation. Lucas had said if he kept me against my will and Dorian tried to save me, the curse would be broken. But I didn’t know if that meant Dorian could break it, or if the fact that he was saving an Amadis daughter would break it, or if Lucas had any clue at all what he was talking about. He could have been bullshitting me, and probably was. He probably planned to lead me down a rabbit hole with such a lie.
I studied the prophecies again, too, and found the one Vanessa had been told belonged to her. But I found no prediction that any of us would break Eris’s curse. No foretelling of Dorian being kidnapped or anything indicating he would ever return to us. The Angels were not being very helpful.
Or maybe I wasn’t ready to understand their messages.
The hours dragged by as I waited for our turn to speak with Rina. I felt as though she was putting all the pieces into place before talking to Tristan and me, and once we did receive her lecture, we could finally be on our way. Until then, I was like a horse in a starting gate, my competitors already halfway around the track while I still pawed at the ground waiting for release.
Blossom and I spent some time in Dorian’s room, and her spell gave us a big push west, but my mind couldn’t reach beyond the Aegean Sea to the mainland of Greece. If the strength of the shove to go west was any indication, Dorian remained much farther away than I could ever reach. Blossom, however, couldn’t make the spell focus beyond that general direction, and Rina interrupted us to request Blossom’s audience. After a lengthy meeting with the matriarch and her second, the witch immediately went to the village on an errand she couldn’t tell me about.
And still Tristan and I waited. Until, finally, Rina silently called out for us.
As we approached her office, I couldn’t believe whom we found coming out of Rina’s door, closing it behind him.
“Jax?” I asked, my eyes popping at the sight of the big, bald were-croc who should have been in the Outback of Australia.
“G’day, princess,” he said with a grin.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He pushed his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans and shrugged nonchalantly, but a frown tugged the scar over his br
own eye, betraying his true feelings.
“Kuckaroo never got to be all right again,” he said, and I knew he spoke of the Daemoni attack when we were there two years ago. “We lost too many mages. Now that hell’s breakin’ loose, those who can’t fight came here for safety.”
I tilted my head as I studied his face and considered this. Jax was mighty and powerful and not someone who’d hide instead of fight . . . unless he worried about being around norms too much, which had been the whole reason he’d isolated himself to the wilderness.
“I’m here for a diffr’nt reason,” he said. His eyes slid over to Rina’s office door and back to me. “Ms. Katerina just gave me her blessin’.”
“Speaking of,” Tristan murmured next to me.
Right. Rina. I didn’t need to delay any longer.
“I wish we had time to talk, but, well—”
“I know, princess. No worries. We’ll have time to catch up later.” He gave me a wink, then strode off toward the main entrance of the mansion. Nothing against Jax, but I hoped there wouldn’t be a later—that we’d be in the air shortly after this meeting.
“Come in, darling,” Rina called out before I could knock.
As soon as I saw her form, sagging as though the weight of the world physically rested on her shoulders, worry crept into my heart.
“Do you need to rest?” I asked, feeling guilty as I secretly hoped she’d say no.
She gave me a soft smile from her seat in one of the wingback chairs by the fireplace. “I can regenerate anytime, but this is an urgent matter. I have someone I would like to join your team, and some things must be said by the matriarch. Your mother may be my second and doing much of my work, but people accept some messages more powerfully when delivered by me personally.”
