Lies in Blood

by A. M. Hudson

  I was by his side before my eyes even closed into their next blink, and had the chains torn off, his head in my lap before Arthur noticed I was gone.

  “What have they done to him?” I screeched.

  “Only what was asked, Your Majesty,” the guard said, looking up from the Release Order.

  “Barbarians,” Arthur said, stepping into the cage. “All of you.”

  The man ignored him. He was clearly a vampire and really didn’t have all that much compassion.

  “Is he gonna be okay?” I looked up to where Arthur squatted in front of us.

  He examined Jason and nodded, giving me a reassuring smile. “He’s already done most of the healing himself.”

  “Thank God.” I sat back against the wall and tangled my fingers in Jase’s hair, holding him close to my heart, as if maybe the beat would rouse him from sleep. The wall was still warm where his body had been against it for so long, and sticky with blood. I just didn’t care how gross it felt under my shoulder, though. He didn’t deserve this. I got yelled at—lost my marriage, but my fate was in no way equal to his. And I knew this was just the beginning. David wouldn’t let Jason live now, and he certainly wouldn’t let him stay at the manor and support our cause any longer. This embrace, this moment holding him while he was unconscious was, I knew, one of my last.

  “Ara?” he mumbled, trying to lift his hand.

  “Shh.” I leaned down and kissed his bloody hair. “It’s me. You’re safe now.”

  “Ara, are you okay?” He looked up suddenly with panicked eyes.

  “Yes, I’m fine, Jase.”

  “Did he hurt you? I’ve been so worri—” He coughed, cupping his ribs after—the sound ending in a short whimper.

  “Your ribs. What happened?”

  “I think my lung might be punctured.”

  “Here.” I slid my wrist past my teeth, ignoring the sting as the skin tore open, and pressed it Jason’s mouth.

  He looked at it for a second, then at my eyes.

  I smiled down at him. “Just drink. If David wants to kill me for sharing blood with you, so be it. He shouldn’t have had you beaten.”

  “He didn’t,” Jase said, and started drinking.

  I stroked his hair back lovingly, revelling in the warm rush of blood leaving my veins. “Who did then?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He sat up a bit, shifting rigidly to the wall beside me, not even bothering to wipe my blood clean from his mouth. “I deserved it, Ara.”

  “Why? Because you and I slept together?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed.

  “Jase . . . you did it to save David.”

  He wrapped his arm around me and held me close. “And that still doesn’t make it okay.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It was stupid and impulsive, but. . .”

  “But?”

  I wanted to slide my fingers into his hand and hold it. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t sorry, wanted to say that I loved him, that I jumped off that lighthouse because I couldn’t live in a world where my heart was torn. I wanted to tell him that I could be his now that David didn’t want me. But I wouldn’t have meant any of it. Truth was, I did love Jason—loved him more back then than I did now. And all I wanted in the world was to go back to that night and stop myself from doing what we did, even if it meant David would have to die. Because I could live with that a lot easier than I could live with his pain.

  I rested my head on Jase’s shoulder and just sat with him, the guard, Arthur, and Blade all watching on, until the air cleared and Jason started breathing properly again.

  “Knock-knock,” I said, tapping on Mike’s bedroom door.

  He looked up from the cardboard box on his bed, laying a shirt in it as he turned around. “Ara.”

  “Are. . .” I walked in with my arms folded, eyeing the ten or so staff that were packing things down and closing up boxes, the evening sun setting quickly in the sky behind them. “Are you leaving me, Mike?”

  “No.” He turned away again and added the rest of the shirt pile to his box. “I’m being evicted—moving down the barracks.”

  “What? Why?”

  “These rooms are for the highest ranking members in the monarchy, Ara. David ranks higher than me.”

  “He’s moving in here?” I stepped forward in one sweeping move, my jaw leading the way.

  “Guess so.” Mike rubbed his neck. “Oh, by the way, we’ve called an emergency council meeting—just the private council, to discuss our next move. We’re meeting in the Round Room in twenty.”

  “Oh, okay.” I looked at the clock on Mike’s wall. “But it’s almost dinner time.”

  “Things need discussing.”

  “What things?”

  “What do you think, Ara? How ‘bout that little confession you made this morning?”

  “Didn’t realize there was anything to discuss.”

  “Of course there is.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Look, just let me get this finished, would ya?”

  “Okay, But. . .” I stood back and let him pass with his box. “Well, how’s your neck?”

  “It’s fine.” He dusted his hands off and slid his thumbs into his pockets, dropping his head while he let out a huge sigh. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you sleep with Jason?”

  I closed my mouth and drew a really long breath through my nose. “Honestly, Mike, because I loved him.”

  “Loved. As in . . . past tense?”

  “Sort of.” I bit my lip for a second.

  “So, what, your feelings changed?”

  “Not so much changed for how I feel about Jason, but . . . for how I love David.”

  “So, what? You didn’t love David before you slept with Jason?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I did. I just . . . see, when David and first I met, I came to realise one day, well, to believe, that I couldn’t live without him. Then he told me he had to leave and I could never see him again.”

  “Because he was a vampire and didn’t want you to hate him?”

  “Yeah.” I stepped back so a maid could carry a box out the door. “I was so crushed. As you can imagine.”

  Mike nodded.

  “Then, he told me I could be with him forever, but I had to be a killer, you know, leave all my family and friends behind. Which, you know how I felt about that, right?”

  Mike scoffed, turning away to fold another box as I spoke.

  “But, after I nearly died—you know, with the whole masquerade thing, I decided I wanted to go with him—be a vampire.”

  “But you didn’t have the gene.” He nodded to himself.

  “Yeah. So, he left me for my own good. And it hurt.” My voice broke. “And then he came back, but even then we still weren’t free to love each other because, at any minute, the Set could’ve come for him and taken him away. We’d had nothing but stress and worry, and it wasn’t until he came back from ‘the dead’ and lived here at the manor that we ever had a chance to just be together, as every couple should.” I smiled, thinking about the better times. “Things changed for me, Mike. There were some humps in the road as we figured out how to love each other, but we did figure it out. And I was happy. I didn’t, for the first time since I met him, want anyone else in the world.”

  “But this realisation happened after you’d already slept with Jason?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter what you feel for him now, baby, does it?” he said absently, sealing another box with clear tape. “You destroyed that door when you slept with Jason. He won’t ever take you back.”

  “I do know that. But, it. . .”

  “Hurts to admit?”

  I nodded. “Do you hate me?”

  He breathed out, looking down at both of his big hands, then back up with a sympathetic half-smile. “What happened on the lighthouse, Ara?”

  “I—” I stared out the window, reliving a flashback, blinking against the light when my mind returned to this day.

  “Did you fall?” he asked a
ccusingly. “Or did you. . .”

  “I jumped.”

  He nodded, wetting his lips. “Why?”

  “Because I was mad at myself. I . . . I didn’t think I deserved to live after what I’d done. And I didn’t like the truth I realised when I was with Jase.”

  “What truth?”

  “That I was in love with him.”

  He nodded again. “So you tried to kill yourself to escape it all? To just, what—”

  “Mike, please.” I took an absent step back from him, just needing some air. “Everyone hates me now, okay. Everyone is mad enough as it is. Please don’t be one of them.”

  “What do you expect me to say?” He walked calmly over to stand in front of me. “I love ya, baby, but you messed up something cruel, and then you went and tried to take the coward’s way out.”

  I blinked rapidly, sending the tears back where they belonged, trying so hard to breathe in a gentle rhythm, but the pain of regret made my chest cave. I folded over, holding my breath.

  “Look, don’t get me wrong, Ar.” He placed one hand to my back and the other around my arm, and gently made me stand straight again. “I feel for you. I do. And I hate to see you like this, but—”

  “I did this to myself. I know.”

  He patted my shoulder. “This too shall pass.”

  I nodded up at him, forcing an odd kind of smile.

  The corner of his lip pressed into his cheek and he patted my shoulder again, leaving me to find my own way out.

  ***

  “He can’t move out,” Blade said, and I stopped walking, pinning my back to the wall in the shadows of the rounded stairwell. “We have to keep up appearances or the Upper House will start asking questions.”

  “Maybe they should,” Morgaine said. “Maybe the people should know what their queen did.”

  “Are you insane?” Mike jumped in. “They’ll butcher her, Morg. You know what the punishment for infidelity is.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I don’t,” Emily said. “Mike, what is it—what will they do to her?”

  “She could be whipped, at the very least,” Falcon informed.

  “But the old favourite for Ancient Lilithian times, still in practice today,” Quaid said, “is La Brûlure de la Chasteté.”

  “What’s that mean?” Em said.

  “The Burn of Chastity. It’s where the victim—”

  “Accused,” Morg corrected spitefully.

  “The accused,” Falcon said, pausing after. I heard him swallow hard, even from all the way back here. He cleared his throat and started again. “The accused is held down on a bed, with her legs strapped into stirrups.”

  “Yeah, then they heat this small iron club,” Blade said, his jagged tone suggesting hand demonstrations to go with the explanation. “And they insert it into the vagina to melt it shut.”

  “The accused would often die of infection,” Falcon added.

  Emily gasped. “David wouldn’t let them. There’s no way he’d—”

  “He wouldn’t have a choice,” Quaid said. “Even the king and queen are bound by certain rules. If the House find out, Em, they decide her fate, not David.”

  “But, surely he has some say?”

  “Some, yes,” Falcon said. “But the fact remains. This needs to be swept under the rug like every other act of infidelity in the political history of mankind. There can be no leaked secrets or exposés.” He paused for a moment. “We’re not talking about a media frenzy, here. We’re talking about brutal mutilation.”

  “She’d heal in six weeks,” Morgaine said.

  “Morg?” Mike cut in. “Whose side are you on?”

  “To be honest, I’m neutral. She did wrong, Mike. Maybe, just maybe, this time the punishment fits the crime.”

  I heard a chair scrape out. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna—”

  “Sit down,” Falcon said in a slightly louder voice. “Both of you. This is counterproductive.”

  Everyone in the room sighed as if the day had just been too long and they were all wrought with too many problems. And they were. And I caused it.

  I slid down the wall and sat on the cold stone step, listening while they all decided my fate.

  “She needs to own up to the truth, Falcon,” Morgaine said. “She can’t hide from this.”

  “I get that, Morg,” he said. “I understand that it will eventually come out. All things do, but—”

  “Then, as her council, we should advise her to stand tall before her people and admit her mistakes. They might be lenient,” she reasoned.

  “And what if they’re not?” Blade said. “She needs to lay low until David calms down. Maybe he’ll just forgive her and all this will be over.”

  A few people laughed.

  “I know her better than anyone,” Emily said. “Why don’t we get her out of here for a few weeks? She can pretend to take leave, give David time to calm down, and—”

  “She needs to face this head-on,” Morg said. “David won’t calm down, Emily. That’s beyond ludicrous. I’ve known him for over a hundred years. And the fact that he hasn’t beat her already is a sheer miracle, you—”

  “I know him, too,” Emily yelled. “And he loves her, Morg. If he found out the House performed that sadistic ritual on her, he’d rip every last one of them—”

  “See?” Morg laughed condescendingly. “You don’t know him at all, Emily. He hates Ara. If she wants to avoid such a “sadistic” ritual, then she needs to—”

  “What she needs is to know she’s still got friends,” Falcon said, slamming something down on the table. Everyone shut up. “Because she’s gotta be feeling like just about the loneliest person in the world right now, and she needs to believe that, at least in our eyes, her mistake does not define her.”

  “But it does define her,” Morgaine continued in the same tone, as if Falcon had said nothing. “She cheated on David. Cheated, Falcon. We can’t excuse that because we love her.”

  No one said anything for a few seconds, until, in a very small voice, Mike piped up with, “I can.”

  Blade laughed breathily. “As can I.”

  “And I,” said Ryder.

  “Yeah, same here,” Quaid said. “I got her back. She’s young, impulsive and makes some downright dumb mistakes. But she’s a good girl, Morg.”

  “And that’s just it,” Falcon added. “She is just a girl. Almost every person in this room, aside from Emily, is at least five years older than her. She’s been through Hell and back again. She’s had nothing but tragedy since she turned seventeen, and she’s not had a goddamn second to process any of it. She slept with Jason,” he added, exhaling loudly after. “But I’d bet my life she’d take it back if she could.”

  “Well, that’s the shitty thing about mistakes, isn’t it, Falcon?” Morg said flatly. “There’s no going back.”

  “So we just let them brutalise her?” Blade said, his voice breaking.

  No one had anything to say. Morgaine was right, though; I did this. Not them. I did deserve to be punished. There was no argument to be had. And my council should not have been bearing the weight of my mistake.

  I stood up, dusted my butt off and composed myself into a picture of sovereignty, then walked slowly into the room. They all looked up, their faces changing when they realised I would’ve heard them.

  “David wants to move out of our room,” I said calmly. “I understand that, and I’m okay with it.”

  “But the House, they—”

  “They’ll find out,” I said. “Yes, and I will have to stand trial for my crimes.”

  “Ara, they’ll—”

  “I know what they’ll do.” I walked stiffly over and sat down on my chair. “I’ll be okay, Em. I’m strong, and I’ve suffered worse.” I smiled over at Mike. “But I can’t hide from this. It will come out eventually, and—”

  “But it doesn’t have to be now.” Emily placed her hand over mine. I looked down to where she now squatted on the floor beside me, he
r caramel eyes reaching to the deepest part of my heart where I knew she hoped to find common sense. But this couldn’t be reasoned with.

  “Always do the right thing,” I said. “And let the pieces fall where they may.”

  “Pieces?” she cried. “Ara, you heard what they said, what they’ll do to you.”

  “And I deserve it, Emily.”

  “No.” She stood up. “You made a mistake. You don’t deserve to be brutalised like that.”

  I looked around the room at each of the faces. “David knows what they’ll do to me if they find out. And he knows that his moving to another room will raise questions. This is inevitable, guys.” I shrugged, holding my hands out. “You can only run from your problems for so long. They always catch up with you.”

  “And they will certainly follow you wherever you go,” David said, and we all turned around to look at him; he leaned on the wall in the doorway, one hand in his pocket, his dark gaze cooling the room. “The House will know what you did. But not yet.”

  “When?” Mike asked. “What are you planning, David?”

  The king curled his fingertips inward, inspecting his nails. “I’m not an entirely cruel man,” he said. “When I see even the most heinous beast suffer, I feel empathy. But—” He took a stroll across the room. “I refuse to feel empathy for that.”

  “David? You—”

  “You will sit down, Emily Pierce, or you will suffer the queen’s fate along with her.”

  Emily sat down.

  “I will leave instructions with the Upper and Lower House after I’m gone.”

  “Gone?” Morgaine said.

  “Yes.” David stopped walking and placed both hands on the back of Morg’s chair. “Once Drake is dead—”

  “You’re still going to kill him?” I gasped.

  David’s eyes flicked my way once in annoyance, then he continued without answering me. “Then I will have the guards arrest her and she will bear the full weight of the law. Once she’s endured her punishment, if she does so with grace, she will be reinstated and continue to rule the Three Worlds.”