Ashra closed her eyes against witnessing the death every vampire most feared. She reached for Jaden, but he pulled back, his eyes wide with disbelief, his face twisted with anguish. “No. My mother.”
Large wings beat through the air behind her. Tera soared overhead, blocking out the sun. Siri swooped low, snatched Dana’s body up, and raced back to Aeternae Noctis. When Ashra reached for Jaden again, he did not resist.
She took to the air. Her black wings smoked beneath the unforgiving light of day. Faster. She swept from sunlight into the shadows and cool underside of Aeternae Noctis. The city accelerated away from the sun, but the icrathari were faster, despite their heavy burdens. Siri disappeared into the opening that led into the tower. Ashra soared after her.
The room was cluttered with bodies in motion. The heightened emotions and low murmur of voices grated on her nerves. “Out!” She flung the word like a curse.
The vampires huddled around Dana’s burnt corpse scurried from the room, but Siri and Elsker held their ground. Ashra gently lowered Jaden to the floor. He rolled to the side and pushed up on one elbow. His motions were slow and pained, but he was still moving. His skin, where exposed, had bronzed to a deep tan, but as a human, he did not possess a vampire’s acute sensitivity to sunlight.
He dragged himself to his mother’s blackened body. He curled over it, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Tera soared through the slowly closing doors. Ashra closed her heart to the quiet sounds of Jaden’s grief and spun around to face the icrathari warlord.
Tera’s wings snapped to their full ten-foot wingspan before folding against her back. The scratches Ashra had marked on her face were already fading, but her jaw was tight. She threw a glance at Dana’s body. Sorrow flashed almost imperceptibly over her features, but the softer emotion vanished in the heat of her anger. “You forced me to risk my life for a dead vampire?”
Ashra’s jaw dropped. “Forced you?”
Tera’s voice was quiet but it vibrated with fury. “It was too late. I told you it was too late, but you struck me, and you went out there, risking your life, risking all our lives…and for what?” She flung her arm out at Jaden. “You are so infatuated with him, you can’t think straight. How can we possibly trust you to lead us when all you’re focused on is saving the life of one human?”
“How dare you! Where were you when we were fighting for our lives a mile outside Aeternae Noctis?”
“What?” Tera’s eyes widened.
“Fifty daevas, enough to darken the sky. They attacked us, quartered Harrod. I looked to the city for aid, but no one came.”
Tera glanced at Siri; Siri looked at Elsker. He shook his head. “The sensors picked up nothing.”
“Nothing?” Ashra’s upper lip curled into the hint of a snarl. “Fifty daevas a mile from Aeternae Noctis, and you saw nothing?”
He held up his hands. “I can only tell you what the sensors reported.”
Ashra turned on Siri. “You said there was enough energy in the capacitors to maintain the city’s defenses and keep its sensors running while I was out.”
Siri’s brow furrowed. “Yes, there was.”
“Then what happened?” Ashra demanded.
“I don’t know.” Siri frowned and folded her arms across her chest. “Are you implying that—?”
“The capacitors are destroyed. The sensors failed.” Ashra stalked up to Siri. She gritted her teeth against the pain pulsing through her torso. “You’re responsible for running this city. What the hell is going on?”
Siri retreated until her back hit the wall. Her wings twitched.
Elsker placed himself between Ashra and Siri. “Ashra, don’t let him do this to you.”
“What?” Her gaze darted to Elsker's face.
“Don’t let him turn you against us. If anyone’s the catalyst, it’s him.” Elsker pointed a finger at Jaden. “Don’t you see? It all started with him. At the last full moon, the city functioned perfectly; our defenses were intact. Now, scarcely a week later, we’re fleeing from the sun with mere seconds to spare. For a thousand years, we have sustained and protected this city, and in a week…just a week, ever since the human came into the tower, we’ve teetered from disaster to disaster.” His face tightened. “In a week, he’s turned you against us—against the three of us who have labored beside you for a millennium in the service of Aeternae Noctis.”
Tera, grim-faced, nodded.
Jaden pushed to his feet, his slow movements betraying hints of extreme pain. “You overestimate the kind of damage I can do in a week.”
“Your sister is the chosen one, is she not?” Elsker demanded. “The one prophesized to end the eternal night and the reign of the Night Terrors? What have all these events been if not a step closer to the end of the night?”
“We can’t survive in the day, not any better than the vampires can.” Jaden looked down at his mother’s charred body. His voice shook, cracked by grief. “Why would we end the night?”
“It’s all you humans have been trying to do for hundreds of years.”
“Because we didn’t know any better. You didn’t give us a chance to see you as anything other than a captor.”
Elsker’s mouth tugged into a sneer. “And you think that you humans, so insular, so superstitious, will give up your long-held beliefs.”
“Yes, because more than the vampires and icrathari, we understand the transience of life and beliefs. We can change.”
“You’re human. For centuries, you’ve tried to destroy what the icrathari and vampires have fought to sustain. Ashra, surely you must see that he is not one of us. Tera?”
Tera inhaled. “He has influenced you, Ashra. He commands; you obey. If not for him, you would never have considered a human army.”
Shards of cold shot through Ashra, radiating outward from the injury the large daeva had inflicted. She pressed her hand against the still-open wounds on her abdomen. “We can’t defend this city, Tera.”
“We’ve defended it for a millennium, and yet, after this human begins whispering in your ear, you doubt me. You doubt my army.”
“I don’t doubt your courage. I doubt your numbers. The daevas number in the thousands. You have twenty-three vampires and none of them can fly.”
“There’s no evidence that the daevas number in the thousands,” Tera said.
Ashra’s brows drew together in the hint of a frown. “He’s seen them.”
“And he’s the only one who has,” Tera pointed out coolly.
Icy talons clawed through Ashra, inching toward her heart. What was wrong with her? Why was the injury not healing? She sagged against the wall. “The daevas attacked us when we went for the capacitors.”
“In tens, not hundreds, let alone thousands. There’s no evidence of the threat, and we cannot take the word of a human.”
“Why not?” Jaden asked. “I have no need to undermine the city.”
“Your sister—”
“Forget my sister. Forget the prophecy. I have seen what lies outside the city, and I know there is no future for humans out there.”
Elsker walked up to Jaden. “The only threat I see here is you. You’ve turned Ashra against all of us.”
Ashra snorted. “A week ago, I ordered him killed, but the three of you stopped me, and now you’ve decided he’s a threat? What changed?”
Siri swallowed hard. “Ashra, something’s wrong. You know it. We all do too. The number of accidents that have happened in the past week cannot be coincidental.”
Siri’s words blurred into an incomprehensible jumble. Ashra closed her eyes to shut out the world that spun around her. She wrapped her arms around her stomach to fend off the chill that penetrated to her extremities.
Vertigo seized her. Darkness swept in.
She lost consciousness before she hit the ground.
“Ashra!” Jaden lunged forward, but Siri was closer to Ashra and broke her fall.
The icrathari pressed her fingers against Ashra’s open wounds and shook
her head. “Something’s wrong; her injuries aren’t healing.” She gathered Ashra into her arms and pushed to her feet. “Lucas may be able to help. I’m taking her to the infirmary.”
Jaden’s head spun, the sharp ache of his injuries crashing through him, but he followed Siri as she carried Ashra from the room. He could not leave Ashra alone with Siri, not if Siri was the traitor.
Elsker caught his arm, jerked him back, and swung him around before slamming him against the wall. The male icrathari’s face twisted with anger. “Haven’t you done enough damage? We should never have allowed a human inside. We put those laws in place for a reason. Nothing good can come out of our relationships with the humans.”
Jaden ground his teeth and forced himself to speak through a head throbbing with pain. “What are you afraid of, Elsker? A mere human, or the sliver of Rohkeus that lives in me?”
Elsker turned his head and spat onto the floor. “You are not Rohkeus.”
Tera nodded. She shifted her weight, her wings rippling against her back.
Jaden swallowed painfully. “No, I’m not, but like Rohkeus, I have a stake in the survival of this city, and I love Ashra. In your eagerness to cast blame for the events of the past week, perhaps the most important question you need to ask is: why would anyone conspire to end Ashra’s reign?”
His question silenced them.
Confusion flickered across the female icrathari warlord’s face. Tera broke the quiet with a sharp inhalation. “You have a way of seeing to the heart of the matter, human.” She spit the word out like a curse. “But I can’t give you free run of the tower while I search for the answer to the question. I’ll take you to a holding cell.”
Elsker cut in. “I say we kill him.”
“Release him into my custody, Elsker.” Tera’s voice was pitched low, each word clearly enunciated.
Elsker spared a glance over his shoulder at the narrow-eyed icrathari warlord. He loosened his grip on Jaden’s arm and took a single step back.
Jaden straightened from his exhausted slump against the wall and walked to the door. His muscles ached. His skin chafed beneath his leather armor, and his head spun from overexposure to the sun. What little energy he had left he focused on putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, always moving forward. He was vaguely aware of the icrathari following him, but he paid Tera no attention. He did not need her direction. He knew the way to the elevator and down to the holding cells.
He walked past the sealed door of the cell where his father and his other human companions were imprisoned, and into an empty cell. The walls were bare and the only piece of furniture in the room was a steel-framed bed.
“Get down.” Tera shoved him to his knees beside the bed, unbuckled the straps that held his scabbards to his back, and stripped off his leather armor. She kicked his armor and weapons into a pile before looping a pair of handcuffs around the bedframe and locking the cuffs around his wrists. “Don’t bother trying to break free. The bed is anchored to the floor.”
Jaden did not have the strength or will to look up. Apparently, Tera did not consider him enough of a threat to care to remove his weapons from the cell. Perhaps she was right. He slumped against the wall, grateful for the chill that seeped through the thin cotton shirt, offering relief to his heated skin. Weary and heartsick, he closed his eyes and waited to be left alone.
“I don’t understand.” Tera’s voice drew him from his fractured thoughts.
He raised his gaze to her. “What don’t you understand?”
She stood by the door, a hand on her leather-clad hip. “You love her. Why aren’t you fighting to stay beside her?”
“Because my staying beside her undermines your perception of her. We both know that in a time of crisis, Ashra cannot appear weak. If she doesn’t have the unquestioned loyalty of the icrathari and the vampires, she cannot protect the city.”
“And you’d step aside for her?”
“I’d step aside for the sake of my people,” he said. “The icrathari and the vampires are all that stand between the humans and the daevas.”
She ground her teeth but said nothing.
Jaden released his breath in a quiet sigh. “Take care of Ashra. Keep her safe.”
Tera’s brow furrowed. “Of course. She’s safe in the city.”
“Is she?”
She grabbed his wrist. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m not the one sabotaging the city, Tera. You know I have no reason to do so. Someone else is, and until you find the traitor, Ashra’s in danger.”
“And you’re convinced I’m not the traitor.”
“You’d challenge Ashra to a fight to the death if you thought she was leading the city astray, but sabotage isn’t your style. You’re much too direct.”
She stared at him.
“Protect Ashra, please.”
Her face tightened. She nodded, spun around, and stalked out of the room. The steel door slid shut behind her, abandoning him to the silence of his cell and his thoughts.
Chapter 16
Ashra ignored the knock on the door and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her white skin had a gray pallor, though Siri had assured her that she was well on the path to recovery.
How much had she missed in her week of incapacitation? According to Lucas and Siri, she had been unconscious for three days while they worked feverishly to drain the poison from her body. The remaining time had passed in a haze of pain and restless sleep.
She had not seen Jaden in all that time.
A dull ache pulsed through her, but she pushed him out of her mind and focused on the immediate crisis. The balance of power had tipped to favor the daevas. How had the daevas developed a poison toxic enough to overcome an icrathari’s accelerated healing capabilities?
Lucas was apparently working hard to isolate the poison from samples of Ashra’s blood. She did not harbor high hopes for his success. He worked for Siri; she was no longer certain she trusted him, or Siri.
Siri, too, would have known how to develop a poison.
Ashra knew Siri sensed her apprehension. The icrathari who spearheaded Aeternae Noctis’s medical, scientific, and engineering functions had been unusually quiet as Lucas explained Ashra’s prognosis. She had not met Ashra’s challenging gaze.
What could it be if not guilt?
Ashra trusted her instincts. Instinct did not equal evidence, yet waiting for evidence could prove deadly.
Could she afford another betrayal? Could the city survive another crisis?
Soft laughter echoed from behind the closed door of her antechamber where Marion, a vampire, watched over Khiarra and the infant daeva.
The soul that resided in Khiarra’s body was not unimportant, but it had become irrelevant. Ashra had far larger challenges to worry about.
A second knock broke through her distraction. The door opened and Tera entered, uninvited. The warlord leaned against the door, perhaps sensing that she was unwelcomed. “He’s in cell three.”
Fresh from the shower, Ashra tugged a white dress over her slender body before dragging a brush through her still-damp hair, teasing through the knots that tangled the slight waves. She nudged her chin at a pile of discarded leather on the floor—Tera’s borrowed armor. “Thank you.”
Tera knelt down to gather her armor. Her steel-gray eyes lingered on the rents in the studded leather. “You’re all right?”
Ashra shrugged. “I am now.”
The wounds in her abdomen had finally healed. The exhaustion would pass. Physically, little, perhaps nothing could hurt her. Emotionally…
She swallowed through the lump in her throat. Why did he not fight to stay beside me?
Or did I abandon him?
“He told me to protect you.”
“What?”
“He told me to protect you,” Tera repeated, her voice gruff.
Ashra lowered the hairbrush and stared at Tera’s reflection in the mirror. “Why would he do that?”
&n
bsp; “He thinks you’re in danger. Are you?”
She shrugged again.
The icrathari warlord’s eyes were narrow slits. “You believe it’s one of us, don’t you? Elsker, Siri, or me.”
Ashra did not reply.
“That’s insane.” Tera paced the length of Ashra’s suite, her arms laden with armor. Her silver braid swung, the tip brushing her waist. “We would never turn against you, never destroy anything we’ve fought so hard to sustain. Elsker’s right. It’s Jaden. For a thousand years, nothing has gone wrong, and now, in under two weeks, everything falls apart.”
“Two weeks? You lost your vampire army over seven months, not two weeks. Besides, we can account for all of Jaden’s movements in Aeternae Noctis. He was either in a cell, in the infirmary under Lucas’s watchful eye, or with me. He didn’t damage the capacitors either; he and his sister are the only ones in the tower without claws.”
“But he and Talon are the only ones who had contact with the daevas.”
“Are they?”
Tera froze. She stared at Ashra. “What are you saying?”
Ashra did not take her gaze off Tera’s reflection. With her back to Tera, she was at a disadvantage if the warlord attacked, but the time for playing safe was long past.
An army of daevas—she did not doubt for a moment that they numbered in the thousands—had damaged too many charging stations. Someone was sabotaging the city. One of the icrathari was a traitor.
She had no intention of being caught unaware. Not without Jaden watching her back.
Tera’s face was pale. Her lips moved. “You’re saying that it’s more than just sabotage. You’re accusing us…one of us…of high treason, of allying with the daevas.”
I’ve seen an icrathari parley with daevas. “Tell me what I should believe, Tera.” Ashra turned around. “Where were you and your vampire army when I was attacked? Who was monitoring our perimeter?”
“I was in the training arena with Talon and Yuri. Siri was supposed to—”
“But she wasn’t. She was at the entrance with Xanthia when I returned.”
“Elsker then—he and Siri take turns running the city from the chamber—but I went up and checked the security logs. The external sensors never picked up the battle. Elsker didn’t know about the battle, or he would have alerted me.”
Eternal Night Page 16
