Before I could warn him or brace myself, he turned to greet Roxy and Arlonne, immediately catching sight of me. His glacial eyes met mine. Heartburn flared immediately in my chest. He winced, his eyes narrowing.
I hoped my face told him I was sorry, that I wished I knew what was happening to us. He held my gaze, and I knew he understood. The pain flared up worse, but if I hadn’t felt it myself, I would never have known from his face. The room shrank away from me. Sorrow, desire, pain, frustration—I wanted to push the surging emotions away, but they demanded to be felt.
We would have to find out how close Dorian and I could stand to keep the pain bearable. Our predicament was a huge setback, that much was clear. Would I even be able to participate in group decisions? There was no question about who would have to leave discussions. In the Immortal Plane, Dorian mattered most for decision making.
My burning heart sank in my chest.
Would I have to sit out the rest of the mission?
* * *
I rested my back against the wall outside a chamber deep in the center of the Hive, where the council members occasionally met. For privacy, this room had an actual set of doors made of the same soft green wood as the furniture in my room, so there was no hope of eavesdropping. Inside, my group conferred on our next move without me. A pang of frustration settled in my chest, replacing the heartburn from earlier.
It hurt that they had to exclude me, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Things had to be this way right now. I had to think of our mission logically, and if that meant I had to be filled in on developments after the fact to ensure our lead negotiator didn’t pass out midsentence, then that was what we would do.
Still, disappointment swelled.
I stared at the wall across from me, letting my vision drift out of focus. We had treated the curse as a short-term, fixable problem. I had learned to manage the pain, and Dorian had learned to function while hungry for the sake of our physical closeness. But now we were back to square one, and all our strategies were worthless. I had assumed that even if there wasn’t a long-term solution immediately available, we could manage as we were until we found the time to create one. But I had no cure or even hope for one at this point. There was no way for us to be together here in the Immortal Plane.
The only options in my mind were dismal at best. If the trigger for Dorian also feeling pain was being back in the Immortal Plane, could I really ask him to leave his homeland for me? Or worse, let him starve himself for the rest of his days? Maybe that wouldn’t even work anymore. I sighed and leaned my head back. The wall crinkled softly beneath my weight as I closed my eyes.
Sike limped out of the chamber, his white sling in stark contrast to his bruised tan skin and shaggy brown hair. I cringed sympathetically when I saw him catch his injured arm on the doorframe as he shut the door behind him. We had reason to be thankful, though. His collection of broken bones, slashes, missing teeth, and bruises would have incapacitated a human for months.
He smiled when he saw me sitting on the ground.
“Good to see you up and about,” he said and struggled to sit next to me.
I jumped up to support him as he tried not to jostle his arm or wounded torso, earning a wave of lightheadedness as I did. I hadn’t fully healed yet, either.
He sat with a grateful sigh and leaned his back against the wall, waiting for me to join him on the floor before he spoke. “I’ve been asked to come fill you in. Ready?”
I forced myself to offer a weak smile. It hurt to be an outsider, but Sike was trying to make the best of it for me.
“I’m all ears.”
“We’ve determined our next moves. Dorian still wants to do a scouting expedition to Itzarriol, even if the council decides not to help us. Which at the moment seems to be the way things are going. However, he’s hoping that if he can get one or two of them alone and explain his plan more thoroughly—especially the part about moving them to safety in Scotland—the Hive vampires will work with us to gather information.” He shrugged with an amused laugh. “Dorian is good at talking people into things.”
“Too good,” I agreed with a brief smile. Was Dorian overshooting his hopes with this one? The elders had said they would consider his proposition, but things had taken on a somber tone, for sure.
“Dorian plans to spend the next few hours with Kane, gathering information from the scouts about the route to the city and the situation in the capital to figure out tactical details. I think he’s hoping to drum up support with them, too. Laini is planning to canvass the Hive vampires to ask if they’ve had any sightings of Kreya or Rhome.”
It had been a while since I’d thought about Kreya, Rhome, and their kids. I twisted my hands in my lap. Wherever they were, I hoped they were okay, but my experience in the Immortal Plane so far suggested otherwise.
Sike continued. “Roxy will gather supplies. The Hive is somewhat used to her now. Then, if the council decides they won’t help us, Dorian, Kane, Laini, and Roxy will head to Itzarriol as soon as they can manage it. If we do get the support of the Hive, they’ll take scouts along.” He scowled and dropped his gaze. “I need to stay behind because my injuries won’t heal in time. It’s the same for Bryce, I guess. And you. You’re not able to go because of the whole fainting thing…” He trailed off awkwardly, changing the subject. “They’ll spend a few light cycles watching the city, sneaking in if they can. They’ll observe anyone of interest, then head back here to pick us up on their way to the tear.”
“What about Arlonne?” I asked. I was certain she would want to join the stealth mission.
“Ah, yes,” Sike said. “Arlonne volunteered to stay with you and Bryce and me. She wants to gather information about the Hive and try to convince individuals to come with us back to Scotland, even if the whole clan won’t come. And if the surveillance group… doesn’t return from the city, we’ll need her help to get back to the Mortal Plane to inform our allies about what we’ve learned and to raise a rescue group if necessary.”
A sobering but realistic concern. According to rumor, the Immortals had moved on from killing vampires on sight to capturing them, so the idea of a rescue wasn’t absurdly idealistic. I knew there would be plenty of vampires and humans ready to take on the Immortal Plane to rescue our teammates if need be. Bravi would probably lead the charge just so she could kill Dorian for being reckless herself.
“Are you okay with being left behind?” I asked, remembering his stubborn determination to be included on the mission.
Sike sighed. “Not much I can do about it,” he said, resigned. “I’d only slow them down.”
He was right. I drew my legs up to my chest, resting my chin on top of my knees. “Pretty sure I’m in the same situation. My skills are worthless if Dorian passes out every time we have a meaningful interaction.” I couldn’t keep a note of bitterness out of my voice.
He tapped my knee playfully. “Strong human soldier Lyra Sloane? Your skills are never worthless. Not a chance.” But his lips twitched nervously. The humor in his expression drained away. “I’m not sure what will happen next for us.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “That makes two of us.” I paused, noting how wounded his wide eyes appeared. He looked sadder than I’d ever seen him, and it wasn’t just because he was being left behind. “Sike, do you want to talk about anything?”
Sike scratched the side of his neck, hesitating. “I wasn’t quite unconscious when you collapsed beside me. Roxy told me what happened with Dorian, but I saw the pain on your face for myself.” He sucked in a deep breath. “If stuff like that happens to you and Dorian… I’m worried about Louise and how my feelings could cause her that kind of pain. I don’t even know if she cares about me.” A pained smile came over his face. “I’ve never really found anyone who felt right to me, you know? I mean, I’ve flirted, and that’s all it was between Louise and me for a while, but now…”
“Something’s changed?” I guessed, remembering how fast Sike had been to push Louise out of
harm’s way at the press conference.
He nodded definitively. “Yeah,” he admitted. “For a long time I thought it would always just be flirting and a really good friendship. Louise is cute and funny, but she’s a human.” He held his available hand up in surrender. “No offense.”
"None taken… I think?” I replied, feeling a hint of a genuine smile creep onto my face.
“Then the press conference changed everything. She almost died in my arms. It was like the entire world cleared of fog for a moment, and I realized how much she meant to me. How much I would do to keep her safe.” He stopped, caught up in the memory. “I knew things had changed after the hospital. I knew from watching Dorian and you that there would be consequences, but it took on a whole different weight when she told me about the pain. Knowing that my affection for her caused her suffering… it’s an awful thing to see.”
Unfortunately, I now knew exactly what he meant.
“I don’t blame Louise for not wanting to see me.” He shook his head in frustration. “It’s the rational choice. But I can’t turn my brain off. I keep wondering things. Like, how can these feelings, especially when I barely realize they’re there, continue even when it hurts her all the time? Shouldn’t my feelings go away since I hate how much they hurt her? And how can affection have so much power to harm? It makes no sense to me.”
I nodded, familiar with the thought process. “It’s not fair. Crushes should be pleasant experiences.”
He picked at a loose thread in the large cloak he still had draped around him. “You’re right, but Louise made her decision. In a way, I respect her for being able to make the hard choices, you know? It was tough to hear, though. Made me restless, as I’m sure you saw. I came with you guys because I needed to do something, but I’m worried that I’ve screwed things up here, too. Getting hurt and becoming a liability in our very first battle?” He laughed wryly at his own expense, looking down at the sling. It held the same arm that had been broken when we first met.
“Sike, stop.” I couldn’t stand to hear any more. “You gambled in your battle with the hunter, but it paid off.” I stared at his battered face, suddenly protective. “Every single one of us takes risks constantly. What you did was necessary to turn the tide.”
Dorian’s face flashed in my mind. “And you can’t help your feelings,” I reminded him, wishing I could say this to Dorian, as well. “The pain Louise feels isn’t your fault. It’s because of this, this”—I struggled for words, then settled on what felt right—“curse. Not to mention, you can be useful here. You already have been.”
“How?” he asked. His tone simmered with defeat.
“You’re great at getting information. You can make anyone feel comfortable. People feel good talking to you.” My voice grew stronger and more passionate as I spoke. “You could ask the other vampires what they think about Dorian’s plan, maybe even try to recruit more of them to our side. We can do the same as Kane and Dorian, asking about the Immortals and scouting, but it might be easier for us because we’re not the obvious face of the plan.” I paused. “Well, it might be a bit tricky for me, but hopefully some of them will be more curious about a human than suspicious.” We’d both needed pep talks today, and he’d done his part to reassure me. “You’ve got real strengths, Sike, so don’t put yourself down just because your strengths aren’t necessarily on the battlefield.”
Sike beamed. “I learned how to use a cell phone and the internet. I taunted an Immortal hunter to her face. I’m too stubborn to quit. Who knows what else I could do? We might as well start now! Maybe we’ll even find someone here who knows about the curse.”
His sunny change gave me hope. I found myself smiling back at him instinctively, more evidence that Sike was just the person to go with me to track down some information.
Even if I couldn’t stand beside Dorian and help him directly, Sike and I would find our own way to help from a distance. If we asked the right questions to the right members of the Hive in the right way, what we learned might change the mission. I wasn’t going to give up now.
He offered me his free hand. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sike led me down the corridor, away from the room where our team was still conferring. His pace was less than speedy, and I eyed him skeptically.
“Are you going to be okay walking through the Hive like this?” I asked. “You don’t have to power through and make it worse. We can take it slow if we need to.”
“Don’t worry,” Sike assured me. “I’ll be fine. We’ll just avoid stairs because, as it turns out, one of the side effects of getting beaten up by an Immortal is that you get winded easily. Who knew, right?”
Stairs? Wasps didn’t build stairs, so they must have been built by the vampires. I walked alongside Sike as we made our way through the Hive. Occasionally, I thought I recognized our surroundings, comparing the hallways with the ones Roxy had shown me. It was never the case, though, as we’d then take a different turn, or the pattern of lichens on the wall would be wrong, or the windows were on the other side of the corridor.
“How can you tell where you’re going?” I asked as we turned a corner on our current route that immediately led to a dogleg bend.
He clicked his tongue. “I’m pretty good at finding my way around after I’ve been somewhere once. It’s why the elders in the library at Vanim always liked me. I could find a book faster than anyone else in the maze of shelves.”
“Well, more power to you,” I muttered, stepping around a soul-light lantern that stuck slightly farther out into the hall than the others. “I can’t figure out the layout of this place, so I’ll be sticking close to you.”
“You’ll start to notice the differences soon enough,” he promised. “The lichens are slightly different colors in different sections of the Hive, so that can help you figure out where you are.”
“Really?” I asked, trying to recall which colors I’d seen so far and where.
“Really. Decades before the tear, the Hive was established as a secret archive and academic hermitage, and they grew the lichens to be different colors so they could group information together. Like amber was politics and philosophy, which is why the council chamber is lit in that color.”
“The Hive is a giant library?” The sacred silence and simple decorations suddenly made sense.
Sike nodded. “I don’t know all the details, but when I was training at the library in Vanim, we were told a little about it. When persecution from the Immortals began to worsen, the elders at Vanim asked academics to move the most important documents and experiments and histories somewhere safe to protect them. That way if the city was attacked, we would still have a record of our people and our accomplishments.”
“So, everyone here was a scholar?” I watched a group of vampires scurry past. Two of them were barely more than kids, and the other was a pinched- and exhausted-looking man carrying a baby. It seemed things had changed.
“Originally, yes,” Sike said. He paused a moment, wincing as he took a deep breath that pulled on his wounds. “But I guess refugees from Vanim must have found their way here. That in itself is pretty impressive, since the location was kept secret from all but a few elders.”
“Now it makes sense why they blindfolded our team on the way in,” I said, slowing my pace to match his as we continued.
Citrus and musk hung in the air. We passed through a long, wide hallway lit entirely in blue-white light that was simultaneously calming and unsettling. A few steps later, we were faced with a three-pronged fork in the hallway lit in red. Sike took us down the far left path, and we spent several minutes walking under the blood-like shade.
Occasionally, we stumbled across a Hive vampire or two, and Sike always tried to stop them to engage in conversation. Most were friendly, if in a slightly reserved, nervous kind of way. They usually gave me a wary stare and didn’t address me—it was as if they didn’t quite know what to say. As soon as either one of us
mentioned Dorian’s plan to go to Itzarriol, they shook their heads and hurried away, unwilling to discuss it.
“I feel like an ant,” I muttered after a burly vampire passed us, refusing to even acknowledge Sike’s friendly questioning. “Or a ghost. Nobody will look at me.”
We were taking a short rest in a hallway that glowed a soft violet, trying not to feel too discouraged.
“They’ve probably never seen a human up close,” he told me. “If they’ve ever seen one at all. Remember, most vampires don’t visit the Mortal Plane to feed, just warriors and scouts who are trained for it. You’re like a myth brought to life.”
“I guess you guys know what that feels like, huh?” I said ruefully. “Having your existence revealed to the public and all.”
A new voice called, “Excuse me?”
We turned to see a short, stocky male vampire approaching. Under the violet light I couldn’t tell his hair color, but his skin was almost as dark as the onyx wildling who had been herding the velek.
“Hi,” Sike said, giving a welcoming grin. “How can we help you?”
“You’re part of the team from the Mortal Plane, aren’t you?” he asked. His voice was a deep bass that I felt in my sternum.
“What gave it away?” Sike asked. “The bandages or the human?”
The other vampire chuckled, offering his hand to Sike. “I am Kono, a scout of the Hive.”
Sike introduced us as they shook hands. To my surprise, Kono then turned to me. I took his hand firmly.
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