Revelation

by Tanith Frost

  Bethany raises her eyebrows at me. “He’s taken an interest in you.”

  She sounds as if this is good news, but my stomach has turned to ice at the thought of meeting Lachlan again.

  Lachlan, who doesn’t tolerate opposition. Lachlan, with his great power.

  Lachlan, who will know if I lie to him but who might let me do it just to see how far I’ll go to hide my true intentions in coming here.

  I want to shake Bethany’s hand and tell her this was nice while it lasted. I hope I at least get that meal before he murders me.

  Paige leaves, and Bethany looks me over. “I shouldn’t interfere,” she says, “but I’m going to give you a bit of advice. Don’t lie to him. He’ll know.”

  A fact I was already aware of, but my surprise is genuine, as is my appreciation. She didn’t have to tell me that. “Thanks. So what should I wear? How do I act? What do I say?”

  “Fewer questions would be a good start.” She measures my waist with her hands, and her touch reveals her power more fully to me, an electric shock in its intensity. “I’ll have something appropriate sent up for you to wear.”

  “Thank you.”

  There’s a tightness around her eyes that I don’t like, but she forces a smile. “There’s no need to be nervous unless you have something to hide. Think of it as an audition. Natural power will take you a long way, but no one achieves any sort of position in this clan without first gaining Lachlan’s favour.”

  I can only imagine what it takes to gain the favour of someone like him—the kind of vampire who would casually order two others to tear each other to shreds to prove themselves.

  “Will you tell him about the fire in me?” I ask.

  She rests her fingertips against her lips as she considers the question. “I won’t bring it up. It’s not going to hurt him, and I do think it will cease to be an issue in time. But if he asks directly…”

  “I understand. I’ll do my best to keep it quiet. Anything else?”

  Bethany leans in closer. “In my experience, the secret is to prove you’re necessary. Show him that keeping you around is in his best interests.”

  “And Tempest’s?” I ask.

  Her expression relaxes, but it does nothing to calm my nerves. “They’re always the same thing. Lachlan is Tempest. Be honest. Impress him. And by the end of the night, we’ll know whether you truly belong here.”

  9

  Bethany’s definition of “something appropriate” is very different from mine.

  I tug at the bottom hem of the skin-tight black dress, trying to make it cover more of my thighs. It’s no good. Pulling the bottom lower only exposes more at the top, where the deep v-neck and structured bodice have already put my breasts on display like ripe produce at an upscale farmer’s market.

  I can think of situations where I’d jump at the chance to wear something like this, but tonight’s meeting with a dangerous enemy is not one of them. I look good. Strong, even. I’ve been walking around in these heels for twenty minutes, practicing lengthening my stride and moving with perfect confidence. But I don’t look like the warrior I want to be, and this dress isn’t going to focus anyone’s attention on my mind or my gifts.

  What was Bethany thinking?

  Or what does she assume Lachlan was thinking when he sent this invitation?

  Paige helped me get ready, adding shadow to my eyes and pulling half my hair back in a clip shaped like a massive scarab. She’s gone now, though. That’s for the best. It was getting too tempting to ask her for a taste of blood just to keep my strength up.

  I’m practicing using my gifts without letting my fire show, and I feel my escort before he has a chance to knock at the door. I open it, standing poised and confident—faking it, but Daniel doesn’t seem to notice that. He freezes, fist held up, as his gaze rakes over my body. To his credit, he brings it back up to my eyes quickly. His mask falls back in place as he chooses what he wants to believe, but I saw it.

  Desire. At least that’s something, even if he claims to feel nothing else for me.

  “We should go.” His voice is gruff, overcompensating for what he knows I saw.

  He walks quickly and makes no effort to shorten his long stride, but I keep up easily. I head in the direction of the dining room when we reach the bottom of the stairs, but Daniel goes the other way.

  “You’re meeting in his private chambers.” No hint of emotion in his voice.

  “What should I expect?” I ask once I’ve caught up.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been invited to dinner with him.” He lowers his voice. “Just remember what I told you.”

  “What, don’t drag you into it if I fuck up?”

  He glances down at me, then quickly away. “Don’t even let yourself think about fucking up.” His steps slow, and he leans in close as we reach the top of a tight stone staircase that spirals downward. “And remember that truth he doesn’t like is better than any lie.”

  His breath against my ear makes me shiver. At least some things haven’t changed.

  “His quarters are in the basement?” I ask.

  “Lower is better,” Daniel says. “Farther from the sun. It’s like a mirror image of the human world above-ground.”

  And we are going deep. We pass a corridor off a landing and continue down, passing a vampire who stands guard at the bottom of the stairs. He waves us on, but only after giving each of us a warning glance and a once-over. Beyond him, a short corridor with arched stone walls leads to a door standing open at the end.

  Lachlan himself appears in the doorway and watches our approach. He’s dressed in fine clothes again, though his suit looks more modern tonight—black as the void, tailored to show off his impressive physique while maintaining far more mystery than my own clothing manages.

  “Our guests from Maelstrom.” His dark eyes sparkle with amusement. We must look like an odd pair. Daniel’s standing as far from me as he can without bumping into the wall.

  Lachlan steps forward and places his hand on the small of my back. I stiffen involuntarily. “You may leave us, Daniel.”

  I don’t want him to go. Even if we’re not a team, I don’t want to walk into this alone.

  Daniel looks into my eyes. For a second, maybe less, he seems to be struggling. And then the ice returns as he nods and walks away.

  Lachlan ushers me into the room and closes the door. My legs are obeying his touch, but I can hardly feel my body. Nor can I properly appreciate our surroundings—a lavishly decorated sitting room. Dark, full of wood and leather, but comfortable and probably inviting under other circumstances. A stag’s head over the empty fireplace leers down at us from glass eyes.

  “You seem nervous,” Lachlan says. I release a shudder the moment his hand leaves my body.

  “I am.” No point lying. “I hope you’re not offended by that. This is unfamiliar territory for me.”

  “Indeed it is. Tell me, Ava, what brings you to mine?”

  Bethany’s told him about my name. That, at least, might help me avoid a lie or two.

  Like a fly trapped in a spider’s web, struggling will only get me more tangled, but there doesn’t seem to be much chance of escaping no matter what I do.

  Tell the truth. Ava’s truth.

  In this room, Aviva does not exist.

  “I’m a wanted criminal back in Maelstrom. I escaped custody. If they caught me there, I’d have been executed on the spot.”

  “For what crime?”

  “Murder. Self-defense, really. She attacked me, but I couldn’t prove it to anyone’s satisfaction.” Before he can ask more, I hurry to fill in the details I’m choosing to share. “They might have given me another chance if I hadn’t been a nuisance in the past. I, um…” I rub the back of my neck. “I pissed off the elders too many times.”

  Lachlan chuckles. It’s surprisingly warm, as if he’s genuinely amused. “However did you manage that?”

  This is where I have to tread carefully. The truth but not the whole trut
h. “I asked too many questions about the way they’ve always done things. The implied criticism didn’t go unnoticed.” He’s watching me carefully now, judging. I look away. “I never meant to cause trouble.”

  “Hmm. Would you like a drink?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  He heads to a heavy wooden cabinet in the corner and pours an amber-hued beverage into a cut crystal glass. He watches me over the rim as he sips, as he lets the drink sit on his tongue, as he swallows.

  “I’ve looked into inter-clan records,” he says, and sits in a wingback chair by the fire. He motions toward its mate, and I sit. I’m not used to short skirts, and it feels awkward to cross my legs at the ankles. “There were no claims on you before your death. You certainly weren’t on our radar. So tell me, how did you end up in Maelstrom?”

  “It’s a bit of a mystery to me.” Truth again. On a cosmic level, I have no fucking clue why things happened the way they did the night I died. God, Fate, or whoever set that up, has a sick sense of humour. “I was shot. I died. Someone was there to see it, but that information wasn’t in my file and Miranda never saw fit to tell me who decided to make me what I am now. I got the impression they were ashamed of their impulsiveness.”

  “No,” Lachlan says softly, and I have to fight the urge to bolt out the door. He can’t have found me out this quickly. Not unless Daniel already spilled everything I thought it better to hide from this character I’m playing.

  “No?”

  Lachlan swirls his drink in his glass, watching as the liquid catches the light from the lamp’s dim incandescent bulb. “I believe that’s what they told you, but…” He shakes his head.

  I lean forward in spite of myself. “What?”

  “You have extraordinary power.” He looks to me again, and this time, I don’t turn away. Though he looks like a kid in a toy store who’s just spotted the thing he wants most in the world, his attention isn’t on my well-displayed physical form. It’s on what lies beneath the pretty packaging Bethany has wrapped my gift in. “I don’t feel it exactly as Bethany does, but I’m learning to sense the void more selectively in my subjects—not only its quantity but its quality. That’s what interests us in so many of Maelstrom’s vampires. Yours is unlike even theirs, though. Has anyone told you that before?”

  I lick my lips. My mouth has gone dry. He can’t possibly feel the direct infusion of void power Gideon gave me, which has been long since used up. And he can’t feel the fire, either. “I’ve been told many times I had potential. And someone once told me I caught his attention in ways others didn’t when I walked into a room.”

  Bless Ryder for giving me a truthful answer to pass along. Still, Lachlan’s not satisfied. “Your elders, though. Those in power over you.”

  I don’t know what he wants me to say. “If they felt what you do in me, they never thought to let me know. Potential was all they ever told me.”

  Lachlan rests his chin on one fist and stares into the blackened depths of the cold fireplace, frowning.

  “I’ll tell you what I think.” He drains the rest of his drink and sets it aside. “I think they knew even before you died.”

  I bite my tongue. Not because it would be improper to correct him, but because I want to hear this.

  He smiles to himself even as the fingers of his right hand curl into a fist. “Miranda knew that if Maelstrom laid claim to you before death it would draw our attention and we’d take you for ourselves—turn you, send you to be trained in the clan of our choosing so you would return to us when the time was right. So instead she remained quiet, then made it look like an accident when you ended up in her hands.”

  His voice is rich and smooth, strong and confident. It makes me want to believe every word. Or maybe it’s not his voice that does that but my own need to be valuable and important. I know better, of course. No one but Daniel saw potential in me at first, and I certainly wasn’t any kind of void-filled prodigy. Still, the idea of being a coveted treasure rather than a shameful mistake is appealing.

  “If that’s true, she never told me,” I say. More bitterness has crept into my voice than I intended, and Lachlan clearly picks up on it.

  He leans forward, and his eyes are so sharp I nearly flinch. “Which means that perhaps she only wanted you because you’d be of value here. Either way, she stole what rightfully belonged to Tempest.”

  He doesn’t say to me, but I hear the implication. As Bethany said, Lachlan is Tempest.

  “Is this a fairytale, then?” I ask, only half-joking. “If I’m the princess who was stolen at birth and raised by the enemy queen, what comes next? I’d prefer it if you didn’t lock me in a tower.”

  Lachlan’s lips pull into a sly, conspiratorial smile. “A tower? No. When the princess returns home, it’s to escape her bondage, to reveal herself to her rightful subjects, and to become everything those who raised her tried to keep her from being. Once she proves herself worthy, of course.”

  His words are like arrows to my heart. I try to smile. “Nice story.”

  “You didn’t belong there, did you, Ava?”

  Fuck. Why do I suddenly feel as if I’m going to cry? “Only on the edges of society, if anywhere. And that’s where they seemed determined to keep me.”

  It’s exactly what I need to say, but I hate my traitorous tongue for speaking the truth so easily.

  He nods. “Did they despise you for that? For finding your gifts and becoming a threat to them?”

  Viktor certainly did, but I won’t tell him that. “I guess they did. Some of them, at least.” Before he can ask another question, I offer one of my own. “Forgive me, but Paige mentioned a meal when she brought your invitation? I wouldn’t ask except that I haven’t fed since I entered Tempest’s territory. I might be a better conversationalist if I had more energy.”

  I expect him to rebuke me for my impatience or to tell me I won’t taste blood until he has enough answers to satisfy him. Instead, Lachlan rises and offers me a hand to help me to my feet. I accept though I’m capable of standing on my own.

  “Of course.” He smiles down at me and offers his arm. I take it and find my resistance to touching him has all but vanished. “In fact, I have something very special planned.”

  The space around the waterfall is busy tonight, and every vampire present makes some show of respect as Lachlan passes—a nod, a slight bow or curtsey, a step back to make room for us to pass. I get many curious looks and a few threatening ones. Lachlan doesn’t seem to notice. I can’t say I appreciate any of the attention, but I feel safe with him, even if it’s the way a gazelle would feel safe walking through a pride of lions because she stood in their king’s shadow.

  All is peaceful enough until a vampire ahead of us crosses his arms across his chest and gives me a particularly sharp look. He elbows the vampire standing next to him. “Look, a new toy. Wouldn’t you pay to be a fly on the wall when he breaks her in?”

  His friend looks horrified, but the vampire who spoke continues to leer—and at the same time look at me as if I’m a piece of dog shit he’s just found stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He stands straight-backed and haughty, though his jeans and t-shirt tell me he doesn’t belong with the finely dressed vampires that surround him any more than I do.

  Again, Lachlan pays no attention.

  “It’s fine,” the asshole says when we’re well past them. I only hear because I’m still eavesdropping. “You’ve got to be dominant around here. If some foreign sow just—”

  I’m glad when we’re out of range of his nasal voice.

  Lachlan and I follow the sounds of classical music, through doors that were closed when Daniel showed me around, into a massive ballroom with a mirrored wall that visually doubles the space and its population. Everything in the room, from the chandeliers to the wineglasses, seems to be gold and crystal, but it somehow stops just short of becoming garish in its opulence. Maybe it’s the fact that the central chandelier is shaped like a massive octopus with its tentacles frozen mid-
wave that does that.

  Lachlan and I stand just inside the doors and watch as vampires and humans dance together as a group, pairing off, breaking apart, finding new partners. We could have stepped back in time. Our modern clothes seem out of place among the tiered skirts and high collars.

  “Tempest isn’t what you thought it would be, is it?” he asks.

  “Not at all.” I look away from the dancers for long enough to see that Lachlan isn’t watching them, but me. “Your clan doesn’t have the best reputation. I haven’t heard much about you except that you’re cold. Cruel.”

  “Go on.”

  I draw my next breath slowly. Be honest. “I’ve heard rumours of you dealing harshly with weaker members within your ranks and torturing vampires from outside. Starving them. Breaking them.”

  A smile plays at his lips. “And you thought you’d come here to find a Hellscape of some sort?”

  “I don’t suppose I’d have wanted to come if I’d thought that.” I’m choosing my words carefully so as not to lie, but it’s actually not as hard as I expected. No part of me wanted to come at all. “I certainly didn’t expect to find beauty, though. Culture. Art. Music.”

  Lachlan stands up straighter and looks out over the dance floor. “This isn’t our whole world. You saw another part of it outside—the vampires who recruit the humans we keep to feed us, monitor the territory for threats, and take care of other clan business. They work hard and are well rewarded for it, but this isn’t their place. The vampires you see here have risen on the basis of their void-given power and gifts.”

  “Vampire aristocracy,” I murmur. The rank isn’t bestowed by family here but by whatever powers the void gifts us with. It’s still not something anyone here has earned. Though power tends to increase with age, most believe our potential is set at the moment of our creation.

  And here I am, being told I’m unusual even among this crowd. A vampire could get a swollen head if she weren’t careful.

  “Indeed,” Lachlan says. “We’ve made this place for ourselves over the course of more than a century. The members of my clan are loyal to me and to Tempest. The void prevails over all other energies save for light, and even there we’re making progress. And soon enough the world will understand our power.”