by Sara Thorn
“So,” I said after I had guzzled down half of my second glass of wine. “Any idea where you two would like to have the ceremony?”
Cassius and Bree both looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“The ceremony?” Bree asked.
I could tell that she was hoping I would elaborate in some kind of coded way to show her that this was all just a rouse.
“Yes, your wedding ceremony,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about it.” I pretended to laugh, but it came out in a much higher pitch than usual.
Now Cassius definitely knew something was up.
“I thought that maybe you could have it in the ballroom?” I suggested. “I could dance at the party afterward. I always love to dance at parties.”
“I am glad to see that you are no longer upset by this arrangement,” Lithius said. “But I have to admit to being surprised and suspicious at your change of heart.”
Shit, shit, shit.
Quinn jumped in to save me from drowning in a deep lack of thought on how to respond.
“There was no change of heart here,” Quinn said as he reached up onto the table and wrapped his hand around mine, which had been just getting ready to reach for my wine glass again. “There was only the opportunity to find our way back to our hearts.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Cassius asked as he glared at Quinn’s hand on mine.
Quinn said that Bree and Cassius would be able to figure out what we were doing and know what was really going on. But at the moment, it didn’t seem like Cassius had quite caught on yet. I looked nervously at Quinn and hoped that he would have something else clever to say. But instead of saying anything, he kissed me.
At first, I almost pulled away as a reflex. But then Quinn’s other hand beneath the table pinched my thigh. This was part of the charade, and if it weren’t believable, the whole opportunity would be blown. I had no choice but to kiss him back, so I did. Not only did I kiss him back, but I really kissed him back. Since I knew Cassius was already mad and Bree was simply and utterly confused, the only point in all of this now was to make sure that Lithius believed us and that the plan worked. So I kissed Quinn, letting my mouth open just enough for everyone to see that our tongues pulled around each other. I could feel the table shaking against my hand as Cassius clenched it with an enraged grip. When the kiss was over and our faces moved away from each other, I looked first at Lithius to see if he had believed our act of a rekindled love due to the imposition of the wedding situation. Fortunately, it looked like he did. I let myself get my hopes up that this plan was indeed going to work. I shouldn’t have.
As Lithius held his wine glass into the air for a toast to a successful arranged marriage with no further interference, and Quinn raised his glass as well, Cassius sat, fuming across the table and looking like he was about to do something rash and stupid. I knew that look. It was the same look he had during those frivolous parties in which he would lose his cool and lash out with jealousy. I also knew there wasn’t anything that could calm him down once it started, except for me.
And trying to calm him down now, as I was also trying to act like I no longer loved him and had gone back to Quinn, was an impossible situation to be in. Bree raised her glass, too, only because she didn’t know what else to do. But I didn’t raise mine. I knew that something awful was about to happen. I saw it coming as soon as Cassius had finally picked up his glass and was holding it by the stem as if he were prepared to use it as a weapon instead of a goblet. There was the small clinking of glass-on-glass between Lithius and Quinn, and then just as Quinn and Bree held their glasses up to Cassius, the goblet did indeed become the weapon.
Cassius smashed his glass into Quinn’s so violently that both glasses immediately shattered. Then Cassius flipped the broken wineglass stem around in his fingers until he could hold it out like a razor-sharp tiny sword that he held tightly pressed between his fingers as he jumped up onto the table with both feet and lurched over the side of Quinn’s chair with the glass shard pressed between Quinn’s eyes.
“Give me one good reason that I shouldn’t give you my special version of a lobotomy right now,” Cassius hissed at him.
“Cassius, no!” I shouted as I stood up and tried to pull him off.
As much as I had gotten stronger, so had Cassius. He was so powerful now that a simple shove with his shoulder sent me halfway down the table and tumbling off my feet and onto my rear-end against the stone floor. Bree came running from the other side of the table to lift me up, and then we both lunged at Cassius, who held a look of murderous intent in his eyes.
Lithius bellowed in laughter as he watched the show play out. I didn’t think he even cared if any of us killed the other. He was just in it for the punishment and the entertainment. Just as Bree and I were getting ready to try to grab Cassius again, Quinn called out to him as Cassius pushed the jagged glass stem up against his forehead enough to pierce a drop of blood through his skin.
“This was just a hoax, you fool!” Quinn shouted at him with a look of contemptuous anger. “We had a plan, and you’ve ruined it by being a cocky, jealous prick!”
Cassius’s hand stilled, and his grip on Quinn loosed. He looked between Quinn and me and suddenly realized what he had done. There was no way to take it back now, and Lithius had heard every word. Lithius stood up and hovered over the head of the table. He no longer looked amused. Now he just looked angry.
“Sit down,” he bellowed. “All of you.”
Everyone did as they were told as if we were unruly schoolchildren sent to a time-out. Quinn blotted his forehead with a napkin to keep the drops of blood from dripping into his eyes. I looked across the table at Cassius, who was already wearing a substantial look of regret. He knew that he had let his jealousy blind him again. It was a fatal flaw that he seemed to never truly be able to shake.
“I am going to be making an adjustment to our deal,” Lithius said.
Great.
“Not only have you shown me how deceitful and untrustworthy you all are, but I’ve also seen something else that definitely warrants some concern. Cassius,” Lithius said as he looked over at him, “your power and strength seem to have increased, have they not?”
Cassius didn’t say anything. It almost looked as if he had been just as surprised by his own strength as the rest of us had. He had leaped onto the table as easily as if it had been just taking a step. He shattered the glass in his hand even before it had touched anything else, and a small shove that I didn’t think he had intended to hurt me with had sent me flying several feet across the room. It didn’t seem like he had even been trying to be that strong, but he just was.
“Your prophecy is unfolding. It has already begun, and you just haven’t realized it yet. The stronger the prophecy becomes, the stronger you will get, and I’m afraid I just can’t allow that to happen. The deities are not fond of challenges to our power.”
Bree looked over at her father anxiously as she waited to see what sort of “changes” he was going to make to the agreement they had. Cassius didn’t seem to be paying Lithius any attention at all. He seemed much too busy, staring at me and begging me with his eyes for forgiveness.
“The wedding ceremony will be moved up to tomorrow,” he said.
“What?” I shouted. “You can’t do that. You can’t just force people to marry in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Why not?” he sneered. “I can do whatever I want to do.”
“How does that change anything?” Bree said. “It’s a wedding no matter what day it’s on.”
“Oh, it changes many things,” Lithius answered. “It will give your friends less time to meddle in things they should not be. It will also curb Cassius, something you will need to learn how to do if you are his wife. His power grows stronger by the minute. I can’t allow it to strengthen further. As soon as the two of you are married, the prophecy will be over, and Cassius will cease to gain any additional power.”
“How do you k
now that?” Quinn asked. “Why would their marriage end an entire dhampir prophecy?”
“Really, you don’t know?” Lithius asked as he looked around the room to see all of our blank faces.
None of us had the first clue what he was talking about. There was nothing in the prophecy about marriage.
“I don’t want to spoil the ending,” Lithius laughed. “So I will just tell you this much. Cassius is not the only one the prophecy pertains to, and if he marries the wrong woman, the prophecy will never be able to come true. That is why this entire thing is such a clever bargain for me.”
He looked directly over at Quinn and stared him down as if Quinn were some sort of despicable subspecies.
“It also kills two birds with one stone. My daughter said she loves you. Do you know how disgusted I was to hear of that?” Lithius face turned sour as he shook his antlers from side to side as if to purge the disgusting thought from his head.
“Your issues with inter-species relations is not my problem,” Quinn said as he stood up to Lithius. Quinn had had just about enough. “Your daughter can love whoever she pleases.”
“It’s not your species that I hate, you small-minded peon. It’s you. You are the cursed fae, and I knew of your parents well before you were born. Your father blamed Mystreuce and all of its mighty power for your mother’s death. But it was not the world’s fault that she died. Humans are fragile and weak.”
“So, you hate me simply because you disliked my father?” Quinn asked. His jaw stuck out in anger, and he looked like he was about to snap, too.
“No, I hate you because your father imbued you with a curse, a power, more powerful than any non-deity should possess. My daughter will not go near you again; I will make sure of that.”
Lithius walked over to the other side of the table where Cassius and Bree were sitting.
“Come,” he said. “It is time for you two to go to your room and sleep before tomorrow’s big day.”
Both Cassius and Bree stood up and followed him out of the room. When I got up shortly afterward and peeked my head out into the hallway, I could see Lithius standing against the doorway, ensuring that no one came in or out. He wasn’t taking any more chances, especially since the wedding was now tomorrow.
Quinn and I sat for a minute at the table and looked at the shattered glass.
“It would have worked,” he said disheartened. “If only he wasn’t such an impulsive fool sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed as I nodded. “Sometimes it works for him, and other times it blows up in his face.”
Wait a minute.
“Quinn, I have an idea,” I said suddenly.
“I don’t think our ideas tend to work out very well,” he said. “I’m afraid that another bad idea or two is going to end up in us meeting a very tragic end.”
“Yeah, I know, but listen. What if we were cocky and impulsive, too?”
“Huh?” He looked at me with both eyebrows raised high enough to crease his entire forehead.
“What if we did something so reckless and crazy and distracting that it gave us the chance to go up against Lithius and gave Cassius the chance to use that new strength of his to get Lithius out of here.”
“I don’t know, Mara. Out of all the ideas we’ve had so far, that one sounds like the most likely to blow up in our face.”
“Think about it. Think about what a distraction Cassius made tonight without even meaning to. I think it will work,” I said.
“You do remember when I said those same exact words, right?” he teased.
Chapter Twenty
There was no time to waste.
With the wedding just a day away and no way to communicate with Cassius and Bree before then, Quinn and I had to do all that we could to make sure our last-ditch attempt at stopping the vows was successful.
Something inside of me told me that Cassius wouldn’t go through with it no matter what; he couldn’t bring himself to say wedding vows to another woman. That brought me a little bit of peace, but not much. If he refused to say the vows, then who knew what would happen. Lithius would most likely get enraged, and the wedding ceremony would turn into a bloodbath.
Quinn and I went to find Sylva and Norr. We needed help, but not too much help. We couldn’t draw attention until the last moment, or else it would end as poorly as the dinner plan had gone. We found Sylva and Norr contentedly cuddling up together in one of the rooms of the castle. Since they were too frightened of their families finding them in either the fae forest or the vampire caverns, we had told them they could stay here inside the castle and have sanctuary. Because of this, they were all too happy to help us. We were going to crash the wedding.
Technically I thought that “crashing a wedding” referred to attending a wedding that you weren’t formally invited to. But in this case, it took on a more literal definition. We would all be at the ceremony, as would Lithius and several other onlookers, I was sure. But right before the vows, there would be such a chaotic eruption created that Lithius would be distracted, and that would be our time to strike.
All four of us would attack him; it was just that Cassius and Bree didn’t know about it yet. They would have to figure it out on the fly once they saw what we were doing. There was a chance it wouldn’t work, a big chance. Lithius might catch wind of it before we pulled it off, although the chances of that happening were slim. He might be too strong for the four of us to take down, even with all of our combined power and effort. If that happened, then the expected result was that he would probably kill us all. But it seemed like that was what would happen anyway. If Cassius and Bree defied him, Lithius would kill the five of us anyway. And if they went ahead and said the vows, it would kill us all in a different and probably much more horrible way.
There was no way that I wanted to live without Cassius, and I knew he felt the same. If there were ever a time for a final attempt at insurmountable odds, it was now. Sylva and Norr would slip in and out of the crowd of guests, instructing them in nearly silent whispers about what to do when all hell started to break loose. Then, Quinn and I would create the hell.
“I don’t know about all of these weapons,” Quinn said as I walked into the armory with him. “It seems like a bit of overkill; don’t you think?”
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “You have seen the giant antler-headed deity that we are about to go up against, right?”
Quinn chuckled. “Yes, of course, I have. But I think our powers and magic would work better against him than blades and axes.”
“Oh, that’s definitely for sure,” I agreed. “But it won’t hurt to have some backup. I already gave both Sylva and Norr a blade to slip beneath their clothes. Sylva has a second one to stick inside of her boot, too. And I have all of these.”
I pulled up my shirt to show Quinn the various daggers that were tucked inside against my skin. I thought that I heard him suck his breath in when my shirt lifted. I also showed him the ax around my waist and the knives tucked beneath the bottom of my pant leg. I was pretty equipped to take down anything, except probably Lithius.
“You should have at least one, too,” I said as I shoved a small, curved dagger into his hand. “Look, this one even has an emerald set into its hilt to match your eyes,” I teased.
He pushed it away. “I’m going to be using my magic,” he said.
“Okay, and that’s exactly what you should be using,” I said as I grabbed the waistband of his pants, which caught him completely off guard. That was my point.” I slid the dagger inside pants and tucked it against his waist. “But you can take this, too.”
Quinn stood perfectly still for a moment as I let go of him and proceeded to look around to see if there was anything else from the armory that we would need. Nope, we were laden with enough metal to carve through an entire crowd, which still probably wouldn’t be enough.
When we walked out and into the hallway, everyone had already gone to bed in preparation for tomorrow’s big event. Quinn got ready to
leave and go back to the forest until morning.
“Quinn,” I said as he was almost to the castle door. “Will you stay here with me tonight?”
He stopped and turned to look at me. “You want me to stay with you through the night?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t get all weird; it’s not anything sexual or intimate. I just want you to stay.”
“Hmm,” he said as he rubbed his chin with his thumb and pointer finger. “I don’t know. If I can’t get all weird, that might be a deal-breaker.”
I giggled because I knew he was teasing. Then he turned away from the door and walked back over to me. He put his arm around my shoulders, and we went to find a bedroom to spend the night in since I didn’t want to go back to Cassius’s room without him.
“I suppose since Cassius and Bree are hanging out together tonight, then it’s okay for us to do the same, right?”
“Right,” I said.
When we got inside the room, Quinn closed and locked it behind us, and then I watched him curiously as he wedged a chair up against the door handle. He saw me staring at him.
“I don’t trust that guy,” he said.
“Which one?” I asked jokingly. I already knew he meant Lithius.
Quinn rolled his eyes at me. “Feeling funny tonight on the eve of our demise, aren’t you? If I had meant Cassius, I would have definitely put more than just a chair there. That man goes completely catatonic if he so much as suspects that I am glancing in your direction.”
I crawled up onto the bed, and Quinn came to lay down beside me. Cassius would have a fit if he saw me lying in bed with Quinn, but when he laid down next to me, I curled up onto his shoulder and placed my hand on his chest. He reached his hand over mine and held it.
“Do you think this is going to be okay?” I asked.
