Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

  “So the council and the people are pretty solid foundations, you might say, being that they’re represented by two columns on each side.”

  “They are everything,” he said with a nod. “The people are the reason we exist, and the council speak for them. And we must never forget that.”

  “Okay.” I put my bloody hands in my pockets, looking up at the painting above us. “So why do you say that like it’s some great lesson I need to hold onto?”

  “Because you once told me that all life matters, even those that commit great sin,” he said. “The fact that you don’t remember that, and yet you held onto it even when that sin was committed against you, tells me that there is so much more to you than just your memories—that who you are is core-deep, Ara. You’re not like Lilith. You don’t need columns to represent your strengths. You are one hundred percent you, and I don’t ever want you to question your worth because you feel like you should be colder, harder.”

  “But you still think I should have killed Morgana?”

  “No. I wanted to kill Morgana,” he said, stepping into me. “I would have stood there and watched as you did it, and one day, maybe even years from now, I’d have been standing there again watching as you fell to pieces over it.” He gripped my shoulders, letting go for a second and then gripping them again. “I guess, in my own way, I’m saying that I’m so grateful that you are still you in all the ways that matter, because when you do one day remember who you are, you’ll thank yourself for trusting your heart.”

  “Trust your heart,” I whispered to myself, hearing David’s voice in my head. “When nothing else makes sense in this world—”

  “That’s twice you’ve said that now since you came back to us.” He covered my hand and the locket I took hold of. “It’s not a coincidence, is it? You remember me saying that to you once?”

  “I…” I searched my heart, my mind, but the memory didn’t have any pictures. Just a feeling. Just words. “I think so.”

  He laughed affectionately. “That’s good, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “And yet you look like you want to cry.”

  “I just…” I did. “So many things have come back to me since we got here. I’m starting to feel like I’ll miss you when my memories come back.”

  “Why would you miss me?”

  “Because you’ll be someone different to me. You won’t be the ideas and assumptions I have of you anymore because I won’t be me anymore. I’ll be her.”

  “You will still be you.” He cupped both my cheeks. “Isn’t what you just did proof enough of that?”

  I glanced back toward the thrones and to the space behind them where we just came from. It felt like another world. That decision felt like another time, as if I’d moved so far away from it now that years had passed. I wondered how I’d feel right now if I had taken my sister’s life. After all, from what I knew of her, she was just a very lonely girl who felt abandoned in the world—maybe like she had no one to protect her. David had hurt her, she had hurt us, but we had people to defend us, people that fought for our rights. I could see now why she had so badly wanted to resurrect her mother—at any cost. I stopped mattering to her the day I did nothing to punish David for his crimes against her. She should have been defended. Her sister should have protected her, and that’s all there was to it. Had I done that, she would never have felt the need to bring back the one person in the world that would care for her no matter what.

  “Hey,” David said sweetly, taking my hand and turning us away. “Let’s go get cleaned up. I know a great pizza joint and you look like you could use a dose of high calories.”

  “Okay, but should we send someone back for Blade—to make sure he’s okay?”

  “No. The shame would be worse than waking up alone, in pain,” he advised. “Leave him. When he wakes up and sees Morgana is still alive, he’ll think we did him a favor.”

  I laughed. “I should at least apologize for stopping his heart.”

  “Yes. You definitely should.”

  56

  David

  Nothing had changed. I felt no different sitting in the stuffy old boardroom in the chair for the king’s brother than I did in the throne as King. But I was seen as such. Jason had earned the respect of his council leaders and it seemed they hung on his every word, agreeing with him implicitly. Then again, given that he just announced the date of execution for the hated Morgana, who could disagree?

  “My brother and his wife deserve some closure. I expect to make the execution open to the public,” he said, and heads bobbed in agreement, “and I’ll have a stage built to accommodate the guillotine.”

  “Guillotine?” I said. “Do you think that’s the best approach, brother?”

  “Would you prefer a sword?” he asked earnestly.

  “An axe. A blunt one.”

  “Very well,” he said with a warm smile that held just a little too much enjoyment for the subject, but given who we were discussing, who could blame him?

  “And on the matter of David’s return to the vampiric state,” Lily said. “Have you put that past the council yet?”

  “I have,” he said with a singular nod. “The necessary documents have been approved for tomorrow night, but I may take a few extra days to run some tests.”

  “What tests?” I said.

  “Well, we know that you’re under Ara’s curse now after being human, but we don’t know what triggers that curse, how it enters the body or how it takes hold. I do know what it does to the brain once it has taken hold, but it’d be interesting to see what the differences are when I scan your human brain and then do it again when you’re a vampire.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see why vampires seem to be immune. They say it has to do with the heartbeat, but that’s ancient logic from a time when that was the only real differences we saw between humans and vampires; aside from the fact that we’re immortal, of course,” he added with a laugh. “But we might be way off the mark. The reason for falling victim may have nothing to do with the heart, or everything to do with it, and it could hold the key to the cure if Lilith can’t offer any ideas.”

  “So you think you can cure the curse with science?” I asked, or maybe teased.

  “It’s possible. See, curses are just a matter of science, in reality—but we call it magic because we don’t understand that science yet, just as people from the medieval days might say a light globe is the Devil’s work. Just because we don’t know how it works yet doesn’t mean it can’t be figured out. And it was never important before, but it seems to be now, so we’ll start from the beginning, as if we were curing a disease, by first seeing what changes the curse triggers in the body and how those differ in subjects not affected.”

  “Now, we all know that vampires are immune, but several humans that were affected to begin with have remained so after being turned, am I correct?” the New York Set leader asked.

  “That is true. There’s still a lot of research to be done into why vampires are immune to certain diseases and even chemicals that otherwise cause death to humans, but that fact is relatively irrelevant to the cure, I believe. It’s an interesting point for research but I don’t think it holds the key to the cure, so we won’t focus on that for now. Interestingly enough, it is similar in ways to how humans affect vampires when they fall in love and become more compassionate—”

  “Come to think of it,” I added, “it’s also similar to when a human is bound to the vampire, how, even after being turned, we see the strong bonds formed in their original human-to-vampire contact stay intact—”

  “You read my mind,” he said, clicking his fingers into a point at me, “and that was my next point, so there might be something worth exploring there.”

  I studied him with a narrowed eye for a moment, arms folded. He was right. I never made the connections before, but this curse could quite possibly be cured by science. “How the hell did the genius gene skip me—we’ve got the same DNA?�
��

  Jason laughed loudly, his wife sitting proud and awed in her seat beside him.

  “All this aside, we need to wrap this meeting up early tonight.” He checked his watch. “We have a celebration dinner to attend in the Great Hall and preparations to be made for the execution next week.”

  As the meeting adjourned and we filed from the room, I was greeted and welcomed home with warmth and an abundance of handshakes and backslaps. Most of it was genuine happiness to see me, but some, I could sense, were sucking up. After all, I would be their king again in a hundred years and I was not one to rule with an open heart, as my brother did, but with a fist of cast iron and a resolve to match. They needed to keep on my good side. And since life had hardened me more these days, I was somewhat concerned about my return as king, but more so how a return to the vampire state would affect me. With less heart than I once had, even now in human form, would I become everything Ara hated again?

  My heart changed when I fell in love with her, as vampire hearts do when they love a human, but she wasn’t human anymore. Without that human-vampire love connection, would I ever become the compassionate man she loved once, or would I be the cold vampire I hid from her when we first met? I would have to become a vampire if I was to be by her side for eternity, but the possible cost of that scared me.

  * * *

  With my face so close to the mirror that my breath made foggy circles, I brought my tie to the buttons on my collar and snuck a glance at my wife, her dress coming up her thighs as she leaned over the counter in the background. She already looked beautiful in that short red dress and slinky summer heels, she didn’t need makeup or even to do her hair, but she insisted. As I watched her layer on mascara and eye-liner, her eyes became larger and her face more open, as if the makeup were laced with magic.

  “What?” she said, smirking at me through the mirror.

  “Nothing.” I shook it off, fussing with my tie.

  “It’s not nothing.” She turned around and leaned on the counter to face me. “What were you gawking at?”

  “You just look amazing, that’s all.” I turned around too. “You’re always beautiful, but I forgot how much your face changes when you wear makeup.”

  “Ara!” Jason yelled, our bedroom door bursting open.

  We rushed out of the bathroom and stopped dead in the sitting room, a thick pool of worry circling around us.

  “Thank God.” Jason folded over when he saw her, catching his breath. “Are you both okay? Has anyone been in here?”

  A swarm of guards darted in behind him and moved about the room, lifting the bed and checking behind curtains as we stood stunned, staring at my brother.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Morgana’s cell is empty.”

  Ara gasped beside me, slumping down hard on the chair.

  “What do you mean it’s empty?” I said, squatting to comfort her.

  “We’re not sure what’s going on, but we suspect she had help escaping—”

  “So she’s escaped?”

  “We think so.”

  “She either has or she hasn’t!” I yelled.

  “She has,” he confirmed. “But we have no idea how. The cell door is locked tight.”

  “Her Blood Garnet,” I suggested. “Was it in her cell? Did anyone have access to it?”

  “It’s still in the safe, where it has been since she was arrested,” Jason said. “Our conclusion at present is that she used the benefits of the curse to escape—probably entrapping some young inexperienced guard’s heart and then convincing him to set her free.”

  “It wasn’t Blade, was it?” Ara asked.

  “No. He wasn’t on duty tonight,” Jason said softly, as though he was speaking to a frightened child. And when I looked at her, I saw why.

  “Ara.” I brought her hands up to my chest and warmed them there. “It’ll be okay.”

  “No it won’t. What if she goes after our children—”

  “She won’t make it off the island,” Jason assured her. “There is only one road—”

  “And the old road,” I reminded him.

  “It’s heavily guarded, and I’ve got my best witches on a location spell now.” He walked over and sat on the arm of the chair beside Ara. “Don’t worry, okay? You’re safe here.”

  “Like I was last time?” she said.

  My eyes rolled closed as my brother’s did. She was right. She should have been as safe as houses last time—as the queen of the monarchy—but she wasn’t. Horror had come to her door because of Morgana, and now the bitch was loose again.

  I stood up. “We don’t leave this room until she’s found—”

  “And what good will that do? How will that protect our children?” she yelled.

  “Mike has Harry, Ara.” I squatted down again. “You don’t need to worry—”

  “And what about Elora?”

  “Actually…” Jason cringed, looking at me to save him. “Ali mentioned to Elora that she was on her way here to help with the curse, and Elora cut her honeymoon short—jumped on the first plane.”

  “What!” Ara stood up. “No. She’s not safe here! She—”

  “She will be fine.” Jason placed his hand on her shoulder, forcing a supernatural calm through her that even I felt from here. “I will personally meet her at the airport and bring her here, okay? Morgana never was a match for me.”

  “Okay.” Ara nodded, visibly relieved. “And what about Ali? Will someone meet her?”

  “She’s on the private jet with Quaid, so she’ll be fine. She’ll be brought straight here by helicopter. Falcon’s accompanying them.”

  I felt better knowing Falcon was on his way. Despite his curse, or maybe because of his curse, he was the only person aside from my brother that I truly trusted to protect Ara, or Elora.

  “Ara, you have to remember that Morgana has no friends in this world now, not even her father,” Jason said. “Anyone that helped her before is no longer alive or no longer on her side. She has no power.”

  “I know.” Ara nodded, a stiff upper lip. “Just find her, okay? And move her execution up to the moment you do.”

  * * *

  The sun in the distance peeked in on a grey, cold dawn, turning the horizon deep red: a warning. I felt it in my bones. In my soul. Today would be a dark day. But Ara slept peacefully despite our concerns for safety. She slept in the same kind of depth she had with each pregnancy—a kind that came with the sheer exhaustion of building a life—but she was also at ease, knowing our daughter would arrive today, brought home safely by the most powerful vampire in the monarchy. I would feel safer once he returned, too. In my human state, I could do very little to protect those I loved, and very little to exact revenge on Morgana if we crossed paths. But I would see to her death, if it was with my own two human hands.

  The alarm on my watch went off, reminding me I had to be somewhere. I didn’t want to leave Ara like this, sleeping and peaceful, vulnerable. But if we were to find a cure for her curse then these daily tests with Jason’s research team were vital. More important than staying by her side to protect her when I knew damn well that no one was getting in that door, not with Blade standing right outside, flanked by several of our best men. But I’d lost her once before—lost our baby—and to leave my pregnant wife at such dangerous times seemed insane.

  My head whipped up when I heard a small rap on the door. “Who is it?” I called as quietly as possible.

  “Me,” said a familiar voice, and the door cracked open.

  “Ali.” I felt the change in my face—felt the tightness of worry slip backward. “I thought you weren’t arriving until lunchtime.”

  “We had a good tailwind,” she said, stepping in and closing the door. “Are you guys okay?”

  “We’re fine.” I looked at my watch. “I was just about to head down to the lab.”

  “Want me to stay with her?” she offered.

  My chest swam with relief. “Yes. Please. That would be… very
reassuring.”

  She laughed. “Go on then. I just spoke to the team. They want you to bring Falcon down with you—”

  “Where is he?”

  “Waiting outside.”

  I looked at the door. “Why didn’t he come in?”

  “Um…” She brought her shoulders up, scrunching up her face. “Apparently being without her the last week has been hard and he says the surges are worse than ever.”

  “Right.” I moved toward the door. “Perfect reason why he shouldn’t come in here.”

  “That’s what he said.” She nodded, sitting down on the corner of the bed. “So I’ll bring Ara down to the lab later then?”

  “No. Why would you?” I frowned at her. “Are you insane?”

  “Jason’s back today, and there are a few things we need to look at.”

  “Like what?”

  “We need some blood samples from her, for a start, and—”

  “It’s out of the question.” I wiped the air clean. “She’s not leaving this room.”

  “Well”—she folded her arms defiantly—“I think she can be the judge of that.”

  I drew a breath to deliver a cold serving of facts, but the door opened as someone knocked, and Jason’s face appeared.

  “You’re back,” I said, a little shocked.

  “We made good time,” he said. “Lors is just getting showered and then she’ll be up to see you guys. You ready to come to the lab?”

  “Sure.” I looked back at Ali, bringing my hand up to point the demand right at her. “She is not to leave. Got it?”