The Heart's Ashes

by A. M. Hudson

  Morgaine smiled, chuckling in the back of her throat.

  “Yeah, sorry, not used to the speed thing yet—what’s up, Morg?”

  “I know what’s wrong with Amara.”

  “What?” He looked at her, then at me.

  “She doesn’t want to live…now that David’s dead.” Her eyes widened.

  Mike paled. “Oh, shit. I never even—” He covered his mouth and landed on his knees in front of me. “Baby, I gotta tell you something. I’m such an idiot. Shit.” He looked at Morgaine, his shoulders lifting slightly; “What do I say?”

  “Amara—David’s not dead.”

  “What?”

  “He’s not dead,” Morgaine said again.

  A shaking breath from my ultra-still chest left my lips in a whimper.

  “Oh, jeeze, girl, I’m sorry.” Mike’s wide eyes bore into mine; his hands clasped my arms tightly. “We thought you were upset about the fire.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “I didn’t realise you thought he was dead, baby, he’s immune to Lilithian venom. I thought you’d realise that—you’ve bitten him before.”

  “You…” My words came out laced with white shock. “You…thought I was that upset because he burned?”

  “Yes, because he burned—alive.”

  Chills encased my soulless carcass, my eyes growing larger with every breath of fight that grew in me. Like a rocket had been tied to my feet, I launched from the bed.

  Mike grabbed my waist as I reached the door, then pinned me to the wall. “Ara, baby, listen to me.”

  “No! Let me go!” I yelled, pushing his big confining hands away. “Let me go to him. I have to see him, Mike. Let me go.”

  “Baby, I’ll let you go, just calm down, okay, I just need you to calm down.”

  “No, he’s alive. He’s alive.” I took a jagged breath, which slowed my heart as my eyes widened again. “He’s—he burned. He felt that! He felt that when…when…”

  “Yes.” Mike closed his eyes.

  “Oh God.” My knees buckled and I slid down the wall; Mike held me up by the hips. “Oh, Mike. I was there. I was right in front of him, and I—” I replayed the image of his fingers on the tiles—just out of reach. “I could’ve helped him. I—”

  “No. Ara, you couldn’t, baby.” He bundled me into his arms, squeezing me against his chest. “There’s no way you could’ve helped him. Jason was too strong—he would’ve hurt you more.”

  “You—” I looked up at him. “How could you do this to me? How could you let me believe I killed my husband?”

  “We didn’t know, Amara,” Morgaine piped up. “We thought you were—”

  “You should’ve known.” I pointed at her. “You—with all you’re ‘getting people’ bull crap. You should have felt it in my soul. How can you have been so ignorant? Do you know what I’ve been suffering? You’re monsters,” I yelled. “All of you. I hate you.”

  Mike squeezed me tighter, whispering something in my ear as I screamed—pushing out from his chest.

  “I hate you. I hate you. Get off me. Let me go to him. Let me—”

  “What’s going on!” Emily burst through the door and covered her mouth. “Ara. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Ara thought David was dead all this time, Em,” Mike said, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind as I folded over and kicked against him. “She just found out he’s alive.”

  The world seemed to move around Emily, pulling her backward as realisation washed over her frozen expression. “Ara. Oh my God. I never thought—” She stole me from Mike’s arms; I went willingly, sobbing against her neck. “But of course. Of course you would’ve thought that. You don’t know about immunity. Oh, Ara, it’s okay.” She stroked my hair. “It’s okay, you can scream. You can hate us. You’re right to hate us—we let you suffer because we’re all too stupid to realise what we’ve done.”

  “Where is he, Em?” I howled. “Where is he? I need to see him.”

  “Okay.” She held me out by my shoulders and nodded. “Okay, you can see him. Right now. But you need to calm down first, okay? Do you think you can do that?”

  I stifled my sobs, leaving nothing but a violent quiver in my chest. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, smiling at my poor composure. “We’ll go see him, then.” Emily looked over her shoulder; “Morg. Prepare David. Let him know Ara’s coming.”

  “Emily?” Morgaine folded her arms. “You know David will—”

  “I don’t care what David wants!” Emily said. “Ara is his wife. She’s going to see him—he’d do the same.”

  “You know what—that’s true. So true it’s not even funny how well you know him, Emily.” Morgaine’s humoured grin dropped and her eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Emily can read David’s feelings,” I informed.

  “Really?” Morgaine said slowly, rolling her shoulders back slightly with her tone.

  “What’s wrong with that?” I asked, looking between the two of them.

  Morgaine took a deep breath through her nose and nodded. “It just means they have a special connection.”

  “Morg?” Emily said. “Go get David ready.”

  “Fine. But, Amara?” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “He’s—” She looked at Mike, then back at me. “He burned. You know what that means, right?”

  I took a deep, carefully considered breath. “It was worse to believe he was dead. I...I mean, burned? Mutilated? I can handle that—” I looked at Mike, then Emily, “—but not dead.”

  “Very well.” Morgaine left.

  “Ara?” Mike looked down at his hands, clutched in front of his legs. “I’m so damn sorry, baby. I never, never intended you to be hurting so bad. It just didn’t occur to me that you weren’t in on the plan.”

  “What was the plan, Mike? How did you come to the conclusion that sending David in there to die was a good idea? What was it supposed to achieve?”

  “Not what you think.” Mike looked at Emily.

  “Ara,” Emily started, “Morgaine mentioned a child?”

  “Yeah, freaky-prophecy-child with great power.” I waved my hands around in the air.

  “Well, that child must be conceived of pure blood—which is your blood, and as the prophecy states…” She looked at Mike.

  “The blood of Knight.”

  “Night? As in...starry night?”

  “No.” Em stepped forward, standing closer to Mike. “As in...David Knight.”

  “It has to be David’s?” I asked, my shoulders launching forward into my words.

  Emily nodded. “Drake ordered David dead to stop that prophecy from eventuating.”

  “But, he’s not dead.”

  “Right, which gives us some time, Ara,” Mike said. “We lost most our knights last night, and while we might’ve taken down half the Set, if Drake were to get word that David survived, he’d send an army out for you now. As one, you mean nothing, but together, you have the only weapon that can actually stop him.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” I held my hands up, taking a few steps backward. “Stop him? Stop Drake?”

  “Ara, you’re a pure blood—you can create armies of vampire killers. He’s not going to let you live, he will come for you, whether you care or not,” Emily said.

  “When?”

  “Not right now. You’re weak, and without the possibility of a child, you’re no more a threat than a little girl with a toy gun.”

  “But that will change, and it’ll change quickly,” Mike said. “David had to die to give us time—to give Drake the illusion of safety for a few more weeks until we could get you strong, trained, and on the throne—ready to fight.”

  “Wha—throne?” I gaped. “Did you just say throne?”

  “Yes.” Mike laughed lightly. “Baby, you’re royal blood, and by birth right, you should be on the thro—”

  “Whoa.” I raised my hands again. “No more. Stop saying that. What—what throne? What is this, s
ome kind of monarchy?”

  “That’s exactly what is it.” Morgaine walked back in. “Well, of a sort—not like a human monarchy, though, and yes, you will rule the Three Worlds.”

  “The Three Worlds?”

  “The Vampires, Lilithians and Humans.”

  “Humans? No one rules humans.” I folded my arms.

  “Um, well, actually, vampires do—the humans just don’t know it. But, who do you think has been protecting their species all these centuries—stopping them from wiping each other out—leaving the vampires without food, and then, in turn, us?”

  My hand flew to my head and wiped furiously at the overload of information. “This is insane.” I need to pace the floors; “So, my vampire husband, whom I watched burn after his brother threw him on the fire, is alive, and now you expect me to believe in tales of kings and queens?”

  “And knights.” Mike stood taller.

  “Oh, yes, knights,” I said sarcastically. “That’s right—then men who stormed that castle with swords.”

  “Venom-tipped swords,” Morgaine chimed.

  “This is ridiculous. Where’s David?”

  “He’s in my room,” Mike said.

  I pushed past him, shoving his chest, hard.

  “Ara, wait, you can’t go in there alone,” he called, but his voice stayed where I left him.

  Chapter 26

  The tiles glided under me, moving, I was sure, because my feet weren’t. They stopped by Mike’s door and the hallway closed in around me, the walls hugging my shoulders, while the echo of a tap left dripping in the bathroom dragged me, forcefully, to the memory of my nightmare passed.

  My hand stopped, hovering over the handle, the weight of one push being the fork in the road—the moment that could change things inside me for the rest of my life. If I do this—if I open this door, there’s no going back; what I may see in my husband could haunt me for forever.

  With a breath, I pushed the door open; “David?”

  No one responded.

  “David. It’s me.” I knelt down beside the bed, slipping among the shadows, grateful not to see just yet. A firm silhouette rested like a mound on Mike’s bed, and warm heat simmered off it, the putrid, puss-scented reek of rotting skin making me hold a breath. When a shadow blocked the dim light from the hall, I looked up. “Em. Is he alive?”

  “Yes, but he’s not bothering to breathe—he’s in too much pain, but he is alive.”

  “Pain?”

  After a long sigh, Emily walked across the room and placed her hand on the bedside lamp. “I hope you’re ready for this, Ara.”

  “Wait.” I jumped up and grabbed her wrist. “How bad is he?”

  “Bad?” She almost laughed. “Put it this way, Ara, when we sent him off with the Warriors, he was weak, really weak, and so battered already. Take that and mix it with what we assume was around twenty minutes in a roaring fire, and bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

  “Twenty minutes?”

  “Yes, we think. By the time you told us what happened, it’d already been four hours since we rescued you. When Morgaine’s knights got there, though, David wasn’t on the fire anymore. Someone pulled him out.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know, but they just left him there.”

  “Do you think, maybe, he pulled himself out?”

  Emily shook her head. “The caplet of venom he bit into was enough to put him in a state-like-death for over six hours. There’s no way he pulled himself out.”

  “Caplet?”

  “Yeah. Venom of the Created. He bit into it when you bit him.”

  “But...I thought he was immune?”

  Emily breathed out through smiling lips; “No one is immune to that much venom in one dose. Like drugs—you can a have a little, but too much and you’re down.”

  “So, my venom, in a high enough dose, could still kill him?”

  “Not sure. He was weak when he swallowed Morgaine’s venom, but, are you really willing to test that on anyone?”

  “No.” I considered the mound for a second. “Do you think Arthur pulled him out…maybe he…?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that Morgaine examined him and said, from the looks of his skin, he had to have burned for at least twenty minutes.”

  “Is there anything left of him?”

  “How ‘bout I just turn on the light.”

  “Wait.” Mike swept into the room and wrapped his arms around my waist—linking his fingers in a tight belt of restraint. “Okay, do it.”

  The light spread to each corner of the room quickly, lighting up flash images as I turned my face away, closing my eyes around a hairless head, the skin cracked and charred, like lava simmering on water. “That’s David?” I covered my mouth, inching closer to Mike. “That’s really him?”

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  “Ara, just look—just open your eyes,” Mike said.

  With my hand tightly holding possible vomit in, I shook my head.

  “Ara, will you just look!”

  One eye at a time opened slowly, blurring, focusing on the light in the room before shifting edgily over the twisted, unmoving life form. “Oh God.” I pushed out from Mike’s arms, landing by the bed. “He’s bad,” I noted, my eyes running over the black cage of skin, revealing a prisoner of blood and yellow liquid, seeping out through interlaced fingers of raw, stretching skin.

  “He’s not that bad,” Mike said.

  “He’s not as bad as I imagined.” I wiped a tear from my cheek.

  His mouth was completely melted together; a section of his chin fused to his chest, and one arm stripped of the flesh—all the way down to grey bone.

  “Was he conscious?” I looked at Mike. “You said he burned alive. Did he know what was going on?”

  “Under venom, you’re in a lockdown.” Morgaine appeared in the room. “Its sole purpose is to paralyse the body, but—”

  “Not the mind,” Mike added solemnly.

  “He knew.” I covered my mouth. “When Jason lifted him—he knew he was going to burn.”

  “Yes. But it was always a risk, Amara. He went willingly to that fate, knowing he was saving your future.” Morgaine touched David’s fingertips—the only two fingers on his body that weren’t charred. David twitched.

  “Oh God.” I sniffled, picturing how the flames fingered his skin, dissolving his face, singeing his hair until it curled and shrivelled against his scalp—and all the while, I sat, watched—did nothing. “How can I ever forgive myself for not helping him?”

  “It’s not your fault, baby.”

  Without another thought, I slid my bottom teeth across my wrist until the flesh popped open and a burst of blood spilled out, as I fought tears and sobs to hold my arm steady. He was alive—frozen in pain while he laid there burning. Melting. He felt that. I rested my wrist against his lips. “Drink,” I cried, “David, drink—please?”

  “Ara.” Emily grabbed my hand. “He can’t. He’s too badly damaged. He has no way of swallowing.”

  “No.” I looked at the unrecognisable face of the man I loved. “There has to be a way to get blood into him.”

  “We’ve tried, baby.” Mike lifted me away from David and pressed his thumb firmly against the cut on my wrist. “He’s just too burned.”

  “If he can’t drink blood, how will he recover?”

  “It will happen—in time,” Morgaine said. “We’ll coat his burns with it, and, eventually he’ll start to heal. It’s just going to be a long process—from the outside, in.”

  “But he will recover?”

  “Yes.”

  The breath I took numbed my legs as it travelled through me. I dropped to the floor, snuggling into Mike when he squatted beside me and cupped my face to his chest.

  “I thought he was dead. I thought I killed him—took our forever away. I—” I looked up at the body; supple, still fleshy, not burned to a stiff carcass, but melted like plastic when it’s still warm. “I’m so happy he’
s alive. Is that selfish of me?”

  Emily shook her head and smiled. “He feels the same, Ara, for what it’s worth, okay, and he’s not in too much pain, right now. I know he looks bad, but I’ve injected him with horse-grade tranquilisers and a few other dangerous substances. He’s pretty high right now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he know I’m here? Can he hear me?”

  “If he can, I can’t tell. He has so many other emotions and feelings going on right now. I’m not sure what’s what,” Emily said, then, like the sun warming the room inch by inch, her smile spread across her face. “Okay, looks like he does know you’re here.”

  “David?” I knelt beside him, my hand hovering over the places I wished I could touch.

  “I think he’s wondering where you’ve been,” Emily said.

  “I didn’t know you were alive, David. I…I thought I killed you.”

  Emily placed her hand on my shoulder. “Okay, that’s enough, Ara. You know what he’s like. What do you think him worrying about your emotional well-being is going to do for his recovery?”

  “See? This is why I didn’t want her in here,” Morgaine said. “But you don’t listen to me.”

  “Come on.” Em helped me stand. “I need to give him another blood bath. I don’t think you should be here for that. Go get some rest and a coffee, and I’ll let you come back later today.”

  “Okay.” I wanted to kiss him so badly and tell him everything would be all right. “I love you, David. Please don’t forget that. I love you, and I’m so sorry I—” do I say didn’t or couldn’t help you. The fact is, I didn’t know I could.

  “Ara,” Emily’s tone became urgent, “just go. Mike?” She looked at him. “Just get her out of here, please—I think David can read her thoughts.”

  Mike tugged my arm, and I backed out of the room, not taking my eyes from the miracle of life in agony before them. “I love you, David.”

  The door slammed shut behind us, leaving Mike and I alone in the early morning darkness. “Ara. I don’t know what to say, baby. I’m so sorry, we—”

  “He’s alive.” I stared at the empty space of everything around me. “Mike. It’s okay. I’m just so glad he’s alive.”