The rest of the evening is spent passing dishes along the table in a potluck style massive family dinner. I’m so surprised that I can actually enjoy human food still that I eat almost half my body weight in perfectly cooked steak and whipped potatoes. Jade stuffs her face at the same rate; and I’m grateful for it if only because it makes me look like less of a pig to the elegant people around us. These vampires are obviously very old, probably just as old as Alina is. It’s the only way their allegiance would be with her rather than the four coven lords.
Anyone with half a brain would follow the vampire family that brought peace between the humans and vampires. Well, not exactly peace, but something that looks a lot like it compared to the constant wars and assassinations of the past. Perhaps they follow them both? The lady of the house, and them the coven lords above all? My skin nearly itches with the need to learn more about the weird dynamic I’m surrounded by right now. There are vital pieces of the puzzle missing right now, and if I could only grasp onto them, I could be seeing the entire picture more clearly. And god knows I need that these days. So I do what makes me cringe inside to even think about.
Lean over and talk to the person next to me.
“How long have you known Alina?” I ask, my voice pitched low.
The man turns his nose up to me, giving me a chastising look. “No one knows our Lady. We simply adore her, follow her, and above all, respect her.”
“Alllright then,” I reply, looking back at my plate in bewilderment.
A woman leans past the man, giving him a good slap on his shoulder as she does so. “What he means is that our Lady is royalty, and we are simply her subjects. None of us know her, not really. Only in name and title.”
“And what exactly is her title besides Lady? Does she rule another coven that I’m not aware of?” I pry, feeling emboldened by this woman’s kind eyes.
She chuckles. “Oh, heavens no! This is not a coven, nor is it a recognized area within the lords’ coven. It is just outside of Scionset, probably by about forty miles or so. This is her castle now; she took it after it was abandoned by the lords’ father after their mother’s passing.”
I nod, looking far away. “That makes sense, but why do you guys worship her?”
This time a man from across the table speaks up, and he’s so old that gray is beginning to grow on the edges of his hair. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire that looks any older than thirty. I’ve been told that they do age, just very slowly. If this man is old enough to have gray hair, he must have been around the block a few times.
“It is not so much that we worship her. We believe in her cause. Personally, I have for many years,” he rumbles out while many of the people around him nod along.
“And what cause is that?”
“Becoming the master race,” he replies casually while sipping from his goblet.
My mouth drops open at his nonchalant way of saying that vampires are inherently better than humans. That simply raises more questions for me, most of which I can’t even fathom that the vampires around me can answer. Like how in the hell has she stayed undetected by the coven lords for so long? And why are these people worshipping the ground she walks on like she agrees with them? She was the one that told me vampires are abominations! That I’ll just have to accept it or die. Nothing in that statement screams that she believes they’re the master race. I glance in her direction to see her leaning into the woman on her right, laughing. She doesn’t look like a dictator or a vampire rights activist. She looks like a normal vampire that might hold a little bit too much power in the palm of her hand.
The man across from me is watching me closely as I process this information, and I do my best to hold back any wayward expressions of shock and disappointment. It’s incredibly hard to keep it at bay. Even Carden seems to be struggling to keep his face neutral as he stares holes into the side of the man’s head. I heave a sigh of relief when we meet eyes and he looks just as bewildered as I feel. At least I’m not the only person in the room that isn’t quite sure about that statement. I open my mouth and close it several times when the man clears his throat, giving me a look like he wants to hear my thoughts on the matter.
Thankfully, Alina standing and tapping on her glass saves me from having to speak.
“Thank you all for coming. Let us toast to some new developments,” she starts, raising her glass. “This woman helped me to break the curse on our four coven lords that had been binding half of their power. In exchange, I agreed to give her the gift of immortality and community. Now she is a part of us and will be forever remembered in my court as my closest friend and confident.”
The room erupts into a frenzy of discussion and questions, all of which Alina listens to like a pro. She tilts her head, closing her eyes and appears to be picking apart the mass of voices in the room. As soon as she lifts her hand, silence falls again, and she opens her eyes.
“Yes, my friends. She was the previous concubine to the coven lords and I successfully extracted her blood mid bonding period. The curse is indeed broken.”
A man stands, the same one I thought looked to be about seven thousand years old. “If I may ask, my lady, how are you certain?”
Alina smiles, and the snake-like look to it makes me cringe. “If you may ask?”
One moment she’s at the head of the table, and the next she’s snapping the man's neck, his body crumpling to the floor. My eyes bug out of my head as I watch him fall. All I can look at is the odd angle of his head and the burst blood vessels in his eyes from the strain. She just killed someone for asking a simple clarification question. The room is deathly quiet after the man spoke out and was killed for it. All the vampires are looking at the ground as I glance from side to side. Will she kill me for not mimicking them? I chance a glance at Carden to see him looking back at me, eyes wide and full of fear. Knowing that he seems to abhor what happened just now just as much as I do makes me feel a tiny bit better.
“Anyone else want to ask me something?” Alina drawls, stepping over the dead man like he’s a piece of trash. When we all remain silent, she grins. “That’s what I thought. But for the sake of transparency. . . I fought them, and Raphael turned into his true form right in front of me.”
Murmurs break out up and down the table, most of them containing excitement. I look around, confusion swirling in my chest. The curse was for the lords to love the concubines year after year only to lose her, right? So what is this other element about their power and true forms being unleashed? None of what she’s saying makes any sense to me, and I have to bite my lip to keep myself from blurting out all my questions, lest she decide to break my neck too. But I do lift my head to look at her. She’s staring back at me; that same wide grin pulling her lips apart.
“Yes, my dear?” she asks, tilting her head again. And for the millionth time she reminds me of a predator always ready to pounce.
“Uh, well, as you said I’m new to being a vampire. . .” I begin, fiddling with my hands. “So I don’t understand how anything above their torment of having to love the women over and over only to lose them is relevant to the curse.”
Nearly everyone laughs at my question, a tittering kind of laughter that’s full of mirth and mockery. I narrow my eyes at the vampires around me, and they back off, cringing when my fangs elongate and cut against my bottom lip. Alina walks up behind me to place two hands gently against my shoulders, a solid presence that would be comforting if hostility wasn’t coming off of her in waves and then on top of it being amplified by my own wayward ability. Fuck!
“That’s a fantastic question, my dear, but you’re mistaken. The curse was to hinder the lords of their power, it was never about love. They’re simply not capable of it,” she replies, laughing again, and the manic tint to it makes a memory flash quickly through my mind.
A head lolling on the ground, blood dripping on the dirt. Melisandre. Melisandre is dead and all that woman can do is laugh.
I jolt in my seat as the memory fle
es my mind, and my hands begin to tremble. So, she did kill that woman. Melisandre. Whoever she is. Maybe Carden will know, but with Alina so close to me, I don’t dare look over at him again for fear that she’d see something in our exchange that would put him in danger. The room is still laughing, still waiting for me to respond to Alina’s claim. Anger burns in my chest and a love so strong and unparalleled rises with it, directed outward. The emotion bursts forth, spreading around the room in a rush. Alina notices it first, going rigid behind me and hissing out a breath as if she’s never felt such an emotion in her entire existence.
“You’re wrong!” I nearly shout before clamping both hands over my mouth, my fangs cutting into my palms with stinging sharpness.
The room goes silent again, almost as if everyone here is waiting for Alina to rip my head off after speaking so grossly out of turn. But she doesn’t, her fingers only curl harder into my shoulders, talons nearly cutting me.
“I am not, I promise you.”
The stillness remains even after she responds. Will she kill me after all? Is that what everyone is waiting for? I glance up and lift my bleeding hands away from my mouth, smearing it across my clothes and the bottom of my face. No one seems to notice even though each and every gaze in the room is directed at me. Their eyes are out of focus with a glassy tint to them, and I wave two fingers in front of the woman’s eyes across from me only to get a serene smile back. Or maybe it was a coincidence.
“What’s happening?” I murmur.
Alina shakes herself above me like an angry wet cat getting out of the bath before leaning down to my ear. “This is your doing,” she starts; her voice soft and lilting in a way I’ve never heard it before. Is she being affected too? “Take a deep breath and expel the emotions. Imagine a hand reaching deep within your chest, grasp them, and then pull them out.”
I do as I’m told, if only because I’d prefer that the vampires around me go back to sneering rather than the foreign looks of contentment on their faces. If there’s one thing that I’m sure of it’s that these people have never felt that way in their life. They’re hateful, ignorant vampires who would prefer to see the world burn before sharing it equally with humans. And while I’m a vampire myself now, I still feel the grasping tethers of my human life clinging to my soul. It gives me a sort of kinship to them, but even if I had no memory of being a human, I still don’t think I’d want them enslaved or destroyed. This earth was created to house all living things, humans included. In fact, humans first before any supernatural was around.
Alina squeezes my shoulders again, jolting me back to reality as my eyes shutter closed. First, I conjure a phantom hand in my mind, shaping it like my own, giving it life in my imagination. Then it dives down into the abyss of my confusion and memory that’s lingering and yet never available to me when I’d like it to be. Moving through it feels like sludge, and my chest begins to rise up and down quickly as panic builds. The farther I go, the slower my phantom hand moves, and I just know that this strong, nearly unbearable wash of love is protected at the very bottom. I grit my teeth and stop, my entire physical body jerking in time with the metaphysical inside my head. Getting rid of it, even delving into these memories feels wrong. Like I shouldn’t be here or shouldn’t be able to be here. So instead if throwing them away like Alina asked, I use my one massive phantom limb and shove it all deeper within myself.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until the feeling pools back into my own chest and out of the air around me. A chorus of sighs blow out around my physical body, but it takes me a minute to rush up and back into my head. When my eyes flutter open, they lock with Carden’s from across the table. His hand is against his chest as he stares at me with a look of loss on his face so profound that the feeling echoes within my own chest. The sight of it puzzles me enough that I tilt my head; wondering why he looks so distressed if he’s in a happy relationship with Jade. Briefly, I glance at her and immediately regret it. She’s staring at Carden, a look of devastation on her face. Clearly he isn’t reacting in the way she had been hoping and a pang of guilt wracks my chest.
I think I just fucked up.
Chapter Eleven
There are way too many ways to end a person’s life, I think as I gasp for air while lying flat on my back, Han standing over me. This is move seventy four that he’s demonstrated on me, and it chills me every time how efficient he is in doing it. How many people, or vampires, has he killed? As Alina’s personal bodyguard and executioner, I’m sure that he’s lost count by now. But despite how scary he is in theory; I can’t help but like Han. Over the past several weeks we’ve warmed up to each other, his icy outer shell thawing due to my constant teasing and stupid jokes about his death moves.
“Move seventy four,” I gasp out between breaths. “Is very effective as usual.”
Han lets out a belly laugh before hauling me to my feet. I wobble a bit once I’m up, so his fingers linger on my elbow for two seconds longer until I’m stable. Flashing him a quick smile, I turn and grab our water bottles, throwing him his. He catches it in his fist effortlessly before downing it in one large gulp.
“You’re ridiculous, peaches,” he huffs, tossing the bottle aside.
I shrug. “Maybe I am, but you’re the one egging me on. And stop calling me that.”
We laugh together at that, and I briefly marvel at how far I’ve come over the past four weeks. Not only is my body as strong as it can possibly be, but I’ve grown mentally as well. I couldn’t imagine enjoying Han’s company when I first arrived here, let alone enough to crack jokes with him. And while it might be a bit too close to Stockholm syndrome; I’ve embraced it nonetheless. It’s hard to resent the people around me when I can barely remember who the hell I was before waking up in Alina’s ornate guest bedroom.
And trust me, I’ve tried to remember.
But despite sitting in front of the fire each night and delving deep into the cavern of my previous memories and feelings, I’m still lost. Whatever’s down there isn’t bending to my will no matter how much I push it to reveal something, anything, concrete. It only shows flashes of things that make no sense. Memories of nearly identical laughing men with their heads thrown back in unison, or a sparkling lake rushing past as I ride a honey colored horse. Sometimes it even presents a striking woman with straw blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes like mine. Every time I see that my heart nearly shatters. The only person that could be is my mother.
I’d love to ask someone for the answers. That would be the obvious thing to do, but Jade and Carden left shortly after the dinner party from hell. Alina asked them to leave now that I had everything from my old life, and Jade was a little too happy to oblige. Deep down I know it’s because of the way Carden looked at me, heartbroken and wanting as if my own painful love had called to something fractured in his own chest. And while it hurts to think that my friend would abandon me so easily, I can’t blame her for wanting to keep her heart safe, if only for a little while longer. So now I’m alone in this place, left to think about just what his look could have meant and how close I came to asking more questions about my past life. It’s no secret that that’s the reason Alina had kicked them to the curb.
“You ready to call it a day?” Han asks, snapping me out of my stupor.
“Huh? Oh, yeah! That sounds good.”
He nods slowly while giving me a strange look. Han clearly picked up on my momentary faraway look. But he doesn’t pry, only turns on his heel and stomps away toward two other vampires sparring in the ring on the opposite side of the room. I pick up my towel from the nearby bench and plop down in its place to take a quick break. Hopefully I can stop sweating in the few minutes I have before Alina comes to collect me for training on my ability. Training with her has been almost more exhausting than the physical side I do with Han. Each night I opt to have dinner in my room before tumbling into bed after a sleepy shower, completely spent. The only time I spend alone is before dinner, sitting in f
ront of the fireplace.
Let me tell you, it is not enough.
“Ready to go, Blair?” Alina calls.
“Coming.”
I lift my head, dabbing the towel along my hairline and loosening a breath. That wasn’t even five minutes! Dragging my tired body up and off the bench, I trudge toward the doors. Alina watches me, just as I watch her. While Han and I have gotten closer to each other as the weeks wear on, my relationship with Alina has taken a turn for the worse. My ability has gotten manageable when it does present itself, but it’s still incredibly unresponsive. I cannot call on it, and I can’t seem to control the emotions I pump into the air. It seems that the ability only unravels from my chest during highly emotional or stressful situations. Kind of like a weird defense mechanism.
So that’s how our sessions start.
Alina emotionally abuses me until something happens, and then trains me to spool the power back into my chest. I’ve gotten that part down by now, taking less than a minute to do so. But no matter what, I can’t change the emotion being projected, and I can’t conjure it unless I feel it first. I’m beginning to think that my power isn’t so similar to the last vampire queen after all. She could manipulate other people’s emotions while I can project my own. But no matter how many times I tell Alina that, she refuses to believe it.
Alina walks two steps ahead of me and opens the door first, motioning for me to go inside. As soon as I cross the threshold, a chill of fear snakes down my spine. I’ve come to hate this time of day, to wish I was anywhere else but here. At first it was a response to the abuse, to become detached and emotionless, but now I push myself toward it. It’s the only time I see what I know to be memories of my past life. Mostly still images of the men I used to love, maybe still love somewhere inside myself. Nine out of ten times that’s the emotion that bursts forth each time Alina badgers me into a response. As if the boundless affection inside my chest could banish her from the room.
Blood Deception: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Royal Covens Book 2) Page 10
