“If you do not first trust yourself, you cannot know if you are to be trusted,” Drake said, winking at her.
Ali’s shoulders went back then, and her chin lifted, eyes going onto the box as her courage grew. She laid the gem to the outside of it and spoke words in another language, closing her eyes.
I shuffled forward onto David’s knees to get a better view, the blue light surrounding the chest before my eyes, making a character glow as it burned into the wood. Ali moved on from that spot, leaving behind what I imagined was a rune, and started drawing another one on the opposite side. Four runes later, she opened her eyes and smiled expectantly at Drake.
He gave her an approving nod and picked up the cursed hand. We all stood up then as he laid it inside.
This was the moment. I could feel it in my gut, making me excited. I couldn’t wait to see Falcon, and Mike—see how different things were with them once they were free of the curse. And we were so close now I could feel it.
Elora handed Ali a large brass lock as they closed the lid, shutting away the ugly hand. I waited, expecting to feel different once the lock snapped shut, but nothing had changed.
“What’s happening now?” I pestered.
“Shhh,” Drake said softly, giving me a smile before turning back to his work.
Jason and Lily came over then, baby Beth cradled safely against her father’s chest, all of us watching on intently as Ali brought the stick and gem up to the lid. She repeated the same incantation as before, and as the rune burned bright red and then settled into a mahogany scar in the old wood chest, a wave of energy blasted out from around it. It felt like two hands clapping loudly right beside my ear, but as it moved past me, past David and to a place beyond the reaches of my soul, Beth let out a mighty scream.
I looked away from the box for a moment to see if she was okay—guessing the noise scared her as much as it did me—a quick flood of dread filling me when I saw Lily’s eyes, wide and fixed on David.
“I can’t breathe.” He sat down hard on the chair, clutching his chest.
“David! Are you okay?”
“Stand back.” Drake stepped in, shoving me out of the way, Jason falling in a second later to tend to his brother.
“I’m okay,” David insisted. “I’m okay.”
“Are you hurt, son?” Drake asked, touching his shoulder. “Do you feel dizzy?”
“It was just a moment,” he said, looking past them to me.
I forcibly wiped the worry from my face when he smiled, and though Jason and Drake didn’t move away, didn’t even give him space, it seemed like they evaporated into thin air, leaving David and I alone. It was all I could see—just the shining green eyes, brighter now than they were before—of the man that loved me. Still loved me, even though I could feel the absence of the curse in my lungs, in my blood, in my bones. It felt like a weight had been lifted, like someone came in with bad news and then said they were joking. And David felt the same.
He moved toward me, still clutching his chest, as if a block had been removed from inside it, leaving it empty. “I told you,” he said simply.
“Told me what?”
He hooked his arm around my waist and jerked me closer. “That you had nothing to worry about.”
The others laughed as he bent to kiss me, turning a few simple words into a loving act, a promise—a bind stronger than a kiss. I felt it in his touch, in his lips. He was changed, and nothing now would ever be the same. Our love was real, and everything I had feared up until today just fell away, leaving me free and lighter in a world without pain.
“We must celebrate,” Jason said, clapping his hands once loudly. “A ball.”
“Oh yes,” Lily breathed, excited. “We must have a ball. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” I looked over at them. “Can you plan a ball that quickly?”
“Of course we can,” Lily said.
“It’s kind of a tradition,” Elora added. “They have balls for pretty much any reason around here.”
Lily smiled, and I could see the planning diary slip outside of her mind and start decorating the Great Hall before I even agreed to it.
* * *
While the others prepared for the ball that was set to take place at eight tonight, I scoured the manor and the university looking for Falcon. He wasn’t nearby when the curse had been broken and I needed to make sure he was okay.
“Still looking for Falcon?” Elora said, passing me in the manor entranceway.
“Yeah.” I winced. “I need to see if he’s okay.”
“Me too.” She linked arms with me, leading me toward the corridor where the kitchen and staff quarters were. “Without the curse to distract him and make him justify all his actions, he’s gotta be beating himself up right now for the things he’s done.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Shit.”
“Yeah, but it’s okay. Blade said he saw him in the kitchen earlier.”
“And how is Blade—without the curse?”
Elora laughed, shaking her head. “A new man.”
“That’s good.”
We reached the kitchen, but no one was there. Well, at least we didn’t think there was, until we heard a rustle in the pantry.
“Falcon?” I called.
“In here.” The pantry door opened, and his square face popped out, smiling at us. “My two favorite girls.”
Elora and I looked at each other, not expecting that.
He stepped out of the pantry and brought a cake with him, walking right past us to put it on the wooden table between three steaming coffee mugs. “Sit down,” he offered.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting beside him while Elora sat across from us.
“We have a lot to talk about,” he said, cutting the cake. “First, I owe you both an apology.”
“Falcon,” I started.
“No.” He put some cake on a plate and handed it to me. “No matter what you say, either of you, shit went down between us all and I won’t have it ruining things any longer.”
Elora grinned, taking her cake, her bright green eyes filling with tears.
“Lors.” He reached over and laid his hand on hers. “What happened with that potion was neither of our faults, and I’m so sorry I let it get between us.”
She nodded, but she didn’t believe his apology would change things.
“I feel different about it now,” he continued. “Without feeling the wrong kind of love for you, without this curse, I see the whole thing through the eyes of a more… sane man, as if some of the cloud has been lifted.”
He looked at me then and took my hand. “Ara. I know you forgive me for what I did on the wedding day.”
“What did you do?” Elora asked.
“He kissed me—convinced me that Dad’s love wasn’t real.”
When she looked at him, horrified, he ducked his head.
“It’s over now,” he said, squeezing both of our hands. “And I can beat myself up for the rest of my days, blame myself for it all, but I love you both. Still. A different kind of love now,” he added, “and I feel like enough time has been wasted on this bullshit. I want us to start fresh.”
We were both relieved to hear him say that. I had thought this would be a long and painful journey, where we had to convince him that we still cared for him no matter what he’d done, so I was happy with the way things turned out.
“We’re family.” He held my gaze. “I am sworn to protect you, Ara, and I want to remain in your service—”
“Really?” I thought he’d leave now for sure.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he stated, meaning it. “And Lolly.” He looked at Elora. I thought I misheard the name he gave her, but then she cried, covering her mouth to hide the ugly quivering I knew she hated.
She looked at me then. “He hasn’t called me Lolly since…”
“I’m sorry.” He nodded once at her, his kind face pulled tight with remorse. “I know you don’t believe me. I know you don
’t think things can go back to how they were, but… what happened between us… I’ve put it all aside now. You were a grown woman then. And while my mind still believes it was the most amazing sex I ever had”—Elora laughed—“I’m not disgusted by that admission anymore. You were like a daughter to me, Ara was a daughter to me for the last two years, and no one can be to blame for what damage magic did to our lives. So, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to go back to calling you Lolly now.”
She nodded, sobbing into her hand.
“Hey, what are you doing to my wife?” Eric said defensively, stepping into the kitchen.
“It’s okay.” Elora waved it off, touching his hand as it rested on her shoulder. “Happy tears.”
“Okay then.” He kissed her cheek and sat down beside her, looking at Falcon. “So how’s it feel to be a curse-free man?”
Falcon laughed, sitting back and letting go of my hand, then Elora’s. “Like I can breathe.”
We all laughed.
“And how’s David?” Eric asked me.
“He’s tired,” I confessed. “Jason says it’s because he’s human—that the weight of the curse would’ve been very heavy on a human and, apparently, in his words not mine, to suddenly lose it is like dropping six pounds of bodily fluid in one piss.”
They laughed.
“I wonder how Uncle Mike is doing?” Lors said to herself. “Should we call him?”
“I tried.” I wriggled my butt to make sure my phone was still in my back pocket. “He’s not answering.”
“Maybe he’s asleep,” she said, looking at her watch. “It’s night time over there.”
“Yeah. He would be.”
“So?” Eric looked at the cake, raising his brows. “Let’s have some of this cake then.”
“I’ve been thinking that for the last few minutes,” I said, glad someone around here had some sense.
60
David
Without the curse, I could see her. Once, she was like a blockage in my eyes, in my head. Maybe even my heart. But with it gone, it was like removing a windowpane and finally feeling the breeze on my face again. I wasn’t sure when, but her hair had grown out since I last noticed it, falling in soft, curled waves just above her bottom. She wasn’t as thin as I remembered either, thinking back to when we first met this year. It was like she’d changed overnight, but I knew it was just that my eyes now saw her—saw what they’d been missing ever since I fell under the curse. Maybe I’d noticed the changes, but I hadn’t really ‘seen’ them.
“What?” she asked shyly, shrinking a little where she stood by the window.
“Nothing.” I moved over and wrapped my hands around her waist from behind, taking my gaze out to the darkness of the manor grounds. This place had changed too. I’d been here for many of those changes before returning to Perth to live with Mike, but I was so fogged by grief that I hadn’t really acknowledged what those changes meant. My whole world was different now and everything it had once been about—saving Ara, winning her over, making a safe environment for our children by vanquishing all the enemies—no longer existed as a problem. Ara’s curse was cured; the evil hand locked away in a spelled box for eternity. Our enemies were dead, including Sam, while Vampirie was no longer the threat he had been when Ara was alive. Our monarchy was safe in the hands of others for at least the next hundred years. And I had the girl I’d fallen for when my life was so messed up more than twenty years ago.
All I ever wanted was a safe, peaceful life with her, and after all we’d been through, I knew that this was it. I knew that we would go on from here and live the way we had always wanted to: safe, free, together. One day, her memories would return and she’d either be a changed version of her old self or she’d once again be my Ara, but no matter what, our love could withstand it all. She’d stayed with me even after learning that my love was possibly only a curse all this time, and she did that because, in her heart, she loved me too much to leave me alone in my feelings, even if it wasn’t real. She did it because she was a good, kind girl, and it gave me an endless supply of faith in her.
“You wanna know something funny?”
“Mm-hm.” She nodded, brushing her face against mine as she did.
“I’m pretty sure that, without the curse, I love you more.”
I felt her cheeks move in a smile. She turned in my arms and looped her hands behind my neck. “Really?”
“You thought it could ever be otherwise?” I said, taking in her face, the way her eyes went to my dimple when she was looking for the truth. She slowly rose onto the balls of her feet then and our mouths touched, connecting us in a way that surprised me. I felt the kiss within my soul, as if it moved through my skin and trickled into every cell, casting a spell on me. This girl owned me: she owned my heart, my eternity. She always would.
I cupped the sides of her face, my thumbs making impressions just in front of her ears as I held on tightly, the pressure and the pain in my soul deepening as hers connected to mine. We would make love tonight, and it would change the way I saw the world for the rest of my days.
Ara drew away from the kiss with a quick breath then, her head moving in the direction of the ringing phone. “Who would that be at this time of night?”
“Probably just someone in Perth—forgetting the time difference,” I assured her, trying to bring her attention back to me.
“No.” She gently took my hand down from her face and walked away. “I have a bad feeling.”
“Don’t say that.” My own stomach dropped whenever she said that. She was never wrong.
“I’ll just make sure everything’s okay.” She picked the phone up off the hall-stand by the door, and when she saw the caller ID, quickly slid her thumb across the screen to answer it. “Mike! What is it?”
Without my immortal ears, I couldn’t make out what was being said. But the eyes of ages saw the worry shadow her face, saw her arm fold in protectively across her stomach, and I knew instantly that something was wrong. I knew it was Emily.
Ara’s hands were shaking by the time I walked over to take the phone. Mike was still talking as I put it to my ear. “Mike?”
“David.”
“Hey, man, what’s happening?”
“I need you guys to come back. Emily’s…” He took a long, jagged breath and let it out right into the mouthpiece of the phone. “She’s having some complications. Vicki’s here with me, so I’ve sent Harry to his mate’s house, but I could use some support—”
“Say no more.” I took Ara by the arm as if to ready her. “We’re on our way.”
“Thanks,” he said, and hung up the phone.
I looked at Ara, her eyes coated with thick tears just waiting to spill. “He said she woke up bleeding last night, and when they got to the hospital, they were told…” Her chest shook, voice stuttering to nothing. “They told her the baby was dead.”
“What?”
She hugged me, talking into my chest. “They told her she had to deliver it…”
“Stillborn.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “But four hours into labor, they picked up a heartbeat,” she said, and my own heart flipped with hope. “She was rushed into surgery, Mike said, and that’s when you took the phone.”
“It’s okay.” I kissed her head. “They’ll be fine. We’ll leave right now—”
“But what if they’re not?” Her teary eyes fixed mine, holding back so much pain that it altered her face. “What if their baby dies?”
“Then we’ll be there to help them through it.”
Ara sniffed, wiping her nose on her wrist. “Whatever happens, it’s going to happen without us there. It takes days to get home.”
Yes, it did. And there was nothing we could do about that. But as I went to nod and tell her it was just life, just the way things were, I recalled a certain memory. “Drake.”
“What about him?”
“He transported you once before—using his magic. I wonder if he can do it that far.”
/>
“I…” Her tight expression dropped. “Maybe.”
“Come on.” I placed my hand on the small of her back and opened the bedroom door. “He’s in the library with Jason. We’ll go ask him.”
* * *
“I can’t travel that far,” Drake said apologetically, looking at Ara as he did. He was letting her down. Again. He knew that, and I could see how deeply sorry he was. “Amara—”
“No, it’s okay,” she said, backing away. “We have to go. We don’t have time for this.”
“Amara, wait,” he called, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even glance back. I ran after her, feeling Drake close behind. He caught up using vampire speed and grabbed her arm, making her jerk back unexpectedly. “I’m not a miracle worker, Amara. You shouldn’t expect this of me.”
“I don’t.” She pushed his hand off her, tilting her head up to look at him, so much shorter and so small yet so powerful in front of him. “But I don’t have time to waste on apologies either.”
“And yet you will give me two seconds of your time,” he demanded, holding her in place. “You are my daughter. I love you. I care for you, and I want to help you in any way I can. So when I can do nothing to help, it leaves me feeling hollow, Amara—”
“I get that, but—”
“No. You don’t. I can feel it in your energy.” He held on tighter. I almost stepped in and told him to get his hand off her, but he didn’t seem to be hurting her. “Now, I cannot get you home in time to be there if Mike’s child dies tonight, but I can help.”
“How?”
“I’ll come with you. If we make it there within twenty-four hours of the child’s death, you can bring it back.”
“What?” She paled, and as I remembered that fact myself—something Ara hadn’t done in years and never with an infant, only with adults—I paled too.
“I can teach you. It is your gift, Amara.” He picked up her hands and showed them to her. “It started once with a leaf in the forest, and you learned over the years how to bring conscious beings back.”
Bound by Secrets Page 67
