“I didn’t even realize I was in the running for any beauty contests before I picked up the scar.”
Siri’s giggle was charming and surprisingly childlike. “Considering there are only three elder vampires, you’re bound to win something, even if it’s second runner-up. Anyway—” She released him; the loss of her touch made something ache deep in his stomach. “Nasty scar, but it closed. Your salves are wonderful, Rafael.”
“Now I just need to find something to cure the aconite poisoning.” With terse words, he summarized all that he had learned through Megun’s autopsy.
Siri wore a frown as she paced the breadth of his tiny house. “If the poison was in her blood and her fingernail clippings, it was almost certainly in every cell in her body. Megun didn’t look like she was dying though. Normal injuries did not incapacitate her; Ashra had to kill her in the way one uses to kill the fae.”
“Is that how you think of yourselves?”
“What?” Siri asked.
“The fae. The fairy folk.”
“Of course. What did you think we were?”
Angels. Demons. “I don’t know. I didn’t spend much time thinking about it before. I’ll have lots of time now though in the caverns.”
She sighed. “If it’s test subjects you need, we can capture daevas instead of killing them. You can still work here, in the city, where you’re safe.”
“We need more than the cure. We need answers to questions.”
“What do you mean?”
“Talon and Jaden told me that humans infused with icrathari blood were buried outside the city because the transformation took hours, and because they were likely to go insane.”
“That is true.”
“Why did I transform in minutes?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did I not go mad?”
Siri lowered her gaze. “I don’t know either.”
“We have too many questions, and too few answers.”
“But the answers are not down there in the caverns.”
“Why not? It’s where the questions began.”
She stalked up to him. “You’d be alone.”
“I don’t mind being alone. I don’t belong here. I can’t stay.” Don’t beg. She wants the cure. She doesn’t want you. “I have work I need to do down there.” He held up the vial of Megun’s blood. “We need a cure.”
She stared at him. Her lips moved as if she were about to say something, but two false starts later, her jaw squared. “You’re one of us now.”
“Not by choice.”
Her chin lifted. “What choice did you have in being born here, in Aeternae Noctis? None. What choice did Jaden have when Ashra transformed him to save his life? What choice did Erich have when Tera did the same for him?”
“You could have let me die.”
She stared at him as if he had spoken a foreign language. “Do you have nothing to live for?”
“What do I have?” He swept his hand across his cottage, bereft of life and love. “Ariel’s dead. Stefan might as well be dead. And now, I am dead to the people of the city. What do I see around me—but death?”
She stalked up to his and curled her small fists into his shirt. “What about life? You have eternity at your fingertips—you can succeed or fail beyond your wildest expectations.”
“Then let me go. Let me work on the cure for aconite poisoning. You need it; so do Ashra, Jaden, and all the vampires protecting the city.”
“But why do you have to leave?”
“I’ve told you the reasons.”
“All of them?”
He met her gaze steadily. “All of them. Why do you insist I stay when we both know there is nothing for me here?”
She said nothing. Her expression gave nothing away. Slowly, she shook her head.
She was sending him away. She did not love him. He had never dared imagine she would. That immortali—Erich—had warned him. To love them is to be cursed.
Rafael squeezed his eyes shut. His hands clenched into fists to contain the shards of anguish piercing him.
Cursed.
No, love was never a curse, even if it was unrequited or destined to end. Embrace the beauty, the joy, however transient. Hadn’t he learned to do exactly that with Stefan?
Rafael opened his eyes and looked at Siri. His smile was unsteady but unforced. “How soon can I leave Aeternae Noctis?”
“I can set up a home for you in the caverns within a week. Will you take Stefan with you?”
“No, of course not.”
Sudden despair flicked across Siri’s face, although he did not understand why.
Rafael shook his head. “There is nothing for him there.”
“But you’ll be there.” Desperation tinged her voice.
“I’m not enough, and I cannot keep him safe; we both know it. He’ll stay here with you, in the ark, where he belongs.” He stared at her through narrowed eyes. Why did Siri look as if he had broken her heart?
But she said nothing else. She turned her back on him and walked out of his cottage.
He did not watch her leave. Head held high in spite of the throbbing ache in his chest, he began packing. There was nothing left in Aeternae Noctis for him.
In the end, only Jaden stood at the yawning entrance of Aeternae Noctis to bid Rafael farewell. Jaden extended his hand. “It’ll take a few months to head up north, but we’ll come back around to see how you’re doing and make sure you’re all right. Just hold on to your training.”
Rafael squared his shoulders. “A week’s worth of it.”
“Siri told me you put up a good showing against that immortali. Trust your instincts.”
“The same instincts that told me I was in love with Siri?”
“Are you?”
“She kissed me. She twisted my emotions to serve her purposes. What I feel for her is not real.” Rafael looked down at the ground far below the city, so badly burned that all moisture had evaporated, leaving only fine dust. Welcome to hell. Welcome to freedom.
Jaden’s statement was matter-of-fact. “Ashra kissed me, too.”
Rafael spun around to stare at Jaden.
Jaden shrugged, the motion carelessly graceful. “I have Rohkeus’s soul. Between that, and Ashra’s kiss, I probably didn’t have a chance at thinking straight.”
“Don’t you care that your emotions are not your own?”
“Aren’t they?” Jaden asked.
Rafael sighed. Jaden, as a human, had been a respected leader and warrior. Even if he hadn’t been a reincarnated icrathari, he and Ashra were well-matched. Not so, Rafael and Siri. Rafael shook his head. “I deal in life. She deals in death. We have nothing in common. A trick—a lie—ties me to her. But no longer.” He drew a deep breath and leapt from the city.
Distantly, like a dream, Jaden’s voice followed him down. “Nothing false endures forever. Especially not love.”
Chapter 15
The bustle of the Aeternae Noctis faded into white noise behind Siri as she opened the low gate and stepped into Rafael’s garden. Flowers and herbs, untended for six months, spilled from their pots to trail leafy tendrils across the cobblestones. The overgrown tangle of plants turned his garden into a mystical woodland infused with complex fragrances that tantalized her senses.
The aroma of flowers and herbs almost buried the remnants of Rafael’s scent lingering in the abandoned cottage. She walked through the small building, stopping in each room to take in the layers of dust accumulating over the furniture. She could have swept the dust away, but instead, she let it stay.
Dust represented the inevitable march of time. Rafael had chosen to move on. She could too.
A voice, like silk over a steel blade, cut through her thoughts. “You’re here again.”
Siri jerked and barely managed to keep herself from spinning around to face Ashra.
The icrathari queen walked into Rafael’s cottage and turned to face Siri. “You spend so much time in here, I wonder if you’re obsessed with him
.”
“I’m not.”
Ashra arched an eyebrow.
That cool stare would have made an elder vampire run for cover. Siri only sighed. “I…miss him,” she conceded.
Ashra waited.
Siri’s mouth twisted into a frown. “A little.”
Ashra said nothing.
“All right. A lot.” Something caught in Siri’s chest, making it hard to get the words out. “He didn’t want to stay.”
“I cannot believe he said no to you.”
Siri sighed. Of course Ashra would never believe anyone could say no to an icrathari. “I didn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“How could I ask any more of him? I knew what I was getting into when I fell in love with a human. I was prepared to lose him at some point…only I wasn’t ready to lose him right then. When he was dying, I panicked.”
“Immortality isn’t a curse.”
“It is if you don’t want it. He never wanted it.” Reality tore her apart. “He didn’t love me, not the way I loved him. He was just waiting to die. He wanted his dead wife, his lost son.” Peevish. Self-centered. Shortsighted. “Here I am, focused on keeping the city going, keeping all of us alive; all he can think of is dying.”
“How can he think otherwise? Jaden doesn’t speak much about his time as a human, but I’ve gained new insight from the little he’s said. The humans have a different perspective, and it’s not just because their lifespan is eighty years instead of infinity. The parents in the city don’t think or talk about their child’s future until after the child’s fifth birthday. Life is placed on hold for five years, and then, if permitted to continue, is lived a month at a time. The young children are at risk, but so are adults. Will the vampires take them too?”
“We took only what we needed.”
“I know,” Ashra said. “But for the people in the city, death is a monthly reality. Rafael isn’t any different. He’s been raised with death constantly on the horizon; more so for him than for others in his work as an herbalist. He saves lives, only to see the Night Terrors take them. For him, it always ends in death, and he feels it, every single one of them. He’s not a warrior, Siri. He’s a healer—he fights for life—and what we do, as Night Terrors, undermines his calling.”
Siri sighed. “Even if you’re right, he doesn’t see me as I am. He doesn’t care about the necessity of what I do.”
“Then he doesn’t deserve you.”
“Maybe not, but he didn’t deserve what I did to him either. I was greedy. Eternity shouldn’t have mattered. If the relationship was worth having, it should have been worth it when he was a human with only decades, instead of centuries, of his love to offer me. What difference does time make?”
“You’re right, it shouldn’t.” Ashra smiled. “You see things a great deal more clearly than I did with Jaden. I wanted eternity, not a mere human lifetime with him. I didn’t want to mourn another lover the way I mourned Rohkeus for a thousand years.”
“Ah, but that was because you knew what it was to love with that kind of intensity. I don’t.”
“And mooning around Rafael’s abandoned cottage like a lovesick puppy isn’t proof of intensity?”
Siri sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t disappoint him.”
“I’d say you already have, but just so I’m clear that we’re talking about the same thing, what exactly can’t you disappoint him about?”
“His son. He wanted the children—all of them, not just Stefan—released. Now Rafael doesn’t just not have his son. He’s all alone, entirely alone.” Siri looked up and shook her head. Her chest ached. “When can we release the children? When, Ashra, really, truly?”
“Maybe never.” Ashra shrugged. “We did what we could. We went to Siberia. That we could not find palladium is not your fault.”
Siri shot to her feet and paced the breadth of the cottage. Her wings ruffled against her back. “Without palladium, I cannot build another dome. Without another dome, we can never expand the city.”
“Can you use another kind of glass alloy?”
“I’ve tried everything I could think of, but they’ve crumbled into sand under the heat of the sun. Palladium glass is stronger than steel. It’s the only kind of glass that can survive the sun’s rays.” She spun around. “Don’t you see? I can’t keep the promise I made to him.”
“If you couldn’t keep it before, how is it any different now? Why did you make the promise in the first place? Was it for his salves?”
“No! He would have given his salves to me without any conditions. I made the promise for me. I wanted him to be happy.” Siri’s voice cracked. “His son was all he had. I wanted to give his son back to him.”
“Were you happy together without his son, without palladium, and without a cure for the poison?”
Siri thought back on those hours spent working together in the lab. The easy conversations. The laughter. The ease of being around a trusted friend. The delight of being around the man she loved. “Yes, but—”
“So, to be perfectly clear,” Ashra said. “You are punishing both you and him over something that didn’t even seem to matter when you were together?”
Siri hesitated. It sounded stupid when Ashra phrased it that way. Siri was still mulling over it when Ashra walked out of the cottage and returned to the tower. The night closed in around her as the sounds of the city faded into sleep. Alone, in Rafael’s cottage, it was easy to forget that a city of sleeping humans lay just minutes away—a city he had loved, people he had loved and who had turned their backs on him when she stole his humanity from him.
What hadn’t he lost because of her?
She did not want to live with the knowledge that she had nothing to offer him, except herself.
Yet, when they were together, he had seemed at peace, even happy, with just that.
Siri inhaled deeply. Perhaps Ashra had been right. Perhaps nothing had been needed except each other. She permitted herself a faint smile. If her calculations were right, Aeternae Noctis was finally making its way around to Rafael’s quadrant after its six-month roundtrip to Siberia.
Not quite destiny, or even serendipity. She had thought constantly of him. Perhaps, on the most elemental level, she had never stopped hoping.
It took Siri only fifteen minutes to make her way back to Malum Turris and out of the dome. The glow of the stars was steady in the night sky, although she did not need their light to navigate. She knew the way through the dusty, barren landscape; she had traveled it in her mind night after night. It was easiest visiting Rafael in her dreams; the Rafael who met her had forgiven her and was thrilled to see her.
She soared through the sky, her gaze searching both the horizon and the spread of the earth beneath her. Down on the ground, the polished gray-silver hue of carbon steel doors set in the earth, like the entrance to a tornado shelter, reflected the light of the moon. Her wings flared to slow her descent, and she hovered a foot in the air to peer into the retinal scanner installed beside the doors.
With a metallic hiss, the doors slid open.
The inimitable atmosphere of the caverns rushed out to meet her. The dark was oppressive, and the persistent damp settled into her bones. Her black wings rustled with irritation as Siri stifled a snort of disgust. The caverns were little changed in the six months that had passed since she led a team of vampires down into caves to secure the tunnels leading into Rafael’s grotto.
“Rafael?” She called out a greeting even though she caught his familiar scent. It was never a good idea to catch an elder vampire off guard.
“Over here.”
She followed his voice to the underground river that ran past his one-room home. He had apparently just stepped out of the water and was wrapping a towel around his waist. Drops of water ran down his long limbs. He looked up with a half-smile—would he never truly smile at her again? “How long do you have?” he asked, as if they had seen each other mere hours earlier.
Was that his idea of a greeting? It was probably just as well she had not put any money on a warm welcome. “Just a few minutes,” she lied, matching his coolness.
Rafael nodded. “Come with me. I have something for you.” He entered his house, and she followed, a few steps behind. It struck her once again how limited his home was. Most of the tiny space was taken up by his kitchen supplies and the neatly arranged jars of dried herbs and flowers. A small table and chair was tucked into a corner, and across from it was a sleeping pallet. Several changes of clothes lay folded next to the pallet. The only personal items in the room were an urn that contained his wife’s ashes and the teddy bear that had belonged to his son.
“How can you be happy here, all alone, with so little?” she asked, keeping her gaze averted as he dressed.
“I’ve never needed much, and I enjoy the solitude.” He reached for a flask set on a shelf and handed it to her. “An experiment with reishi mushrooms. It should boost the immune system, and with luck, retard the effects of aconite poisoning. No more than a cup a day,” he said. “If there are any negative side effects, stop immediately. I wrote the recipe on the back of the label.”
“Did you test it on yourself?”
A wry smile flicked across his face. “Not this time. There isn’t much. It wouldn’t last beyond three months for one person. I’ve cultivated more reishi mushrooms, but it will be awhile before they’re mature enough to use.”
Siri shook her head. “Just give me the recipe. I have reishi mushrooms in my greenhouse, growing from the spores you’d gathered. You should drink what you have. I’m safe in the city. On the other hand, you’re living down here and—”
“If the daevas really wanted to attack and kill me, a fully functional immune system wouldn’t keep them from doing it. Besides, the intention never was to live forever.” His smile did not reach his eyes. He took a deliberate step back from her. “I should have more of the potion in about six months, if you’d like to come back then.”
“I’ll be back to visit you before that.”
He shrugged. “No need to put yourself at risk coming down here any more than necessary.”
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