by Sara Thorn
I sat in Quinn’s room for a bit, unsure what else to do, knowing that Athan was here. After a few minutes, Cassius returned. As soon as I saw him, I wanted to kiss him again, and it was difficult for me to focus on anything else.
“What was he doing here?” I asked. “Sen already told me that he threatened to kill me if you didn’t comply with him.” I hadn’t meant to be so blunt about that, but I didn’t see any reason not to be upfront with each other.
“Yeah, he did. I’m not sure why he was here now. He said he was looking for a lost slave, but there’s no way that was the truth. Athan never loses anything or anyone. He’s gone now, though.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Cassius answered. “I’m sure. Are you well enough to do something physical?” he asked.
My mind immediately flashed to the moment we had a few minutes ago. “Physical?”
Cassius nodded. “I want to train you in combat skills,” he said.
Not what I had envisioned at all, so I was really glad I hadn’t said anything that would have embarrassed myself.
“I don’t know what Athan has planned, but I don’t trust him. He may have promised not to hurt you if I adhere to being his lapdog, but I still don’t trust that he will keep that promise, regardless of what I agree to do or not. You need to be able to defend yourself in case I’m not around.”
“Where would you be going?” I asked as I tried not to sound worried.
“Nowhere,” he answered. “But there will be moments that I can’t keep a constant watch over you. You need to be capable of protecting yourself for at least enough time for me to get to you.”
“I agree,” I said. “I don’t trust Athan, either, and Dregon really freaks me out. I’m well enough to start training.”
“Good,” Cassius smiled. “We’ll have to do it in secret, but I should be able to have people cover for us enough to make it work.”
“Okay. When do we start?” I asked.
“Now.”
Chapter Sixteen
The first training session was admittedly rougher than I had expected. Sen had helped me bind my chest so that I wouldn’t rebreak any more ribs, which in itself hurt like hell. I was beginning to find out that the fae and Cassius actually had a pretty amicable relationship together.
Granted, most of the fae still hated all of the vampires for keeping them in servitude, but Cassius’s servants seemed to respect him as a person, and in turn, he seemed to treat all of them like people and not property. I still got the feeling that the fae would break free from any and all rule, once given the chance. But at least there didn’t seem to be the hatred and animosity between Cassius and the fae that there did between Athan and the fae. Which was why the fae were ready and able to help Cassius create a place for us to train that would go unnoticed and remain hidden from Athan and watched over by the fae in case of any breach in security.
After I had pulled on a long-sleeved black shirt and a pair of black jeans, Sen braided my hair to keep it out of my face during my training with Cassius. Then, she took me into her own bedroom, which had a large aperture in the stone wall that the fae had cloaked with a glamour to look as if nothing were abnormal at all.
The aperture led to a hidden tunnel, which then led to a secret indoor courtyard. It was beautiful and fragrant and sparkling with both the light of glamoured stars and fireflies. But it wasn’t the serene beauty that made the space an appealing place to train; it was the size of it in addition to its concealed location. The center of the courtyard was only slightly smaller than the main hall, which left plenty of wide-open space for practicing combat.
Cassius was already there when we walked in. He looked as though he had been working on some fighting skills and had beads of sweat forming on his brow. He was wearing a white T-shirt that clung to his skin, and only the front part of it was still tucked into the front of his torn black jeans. He looked up as we came into view and nodded at Sen, who left to go tell the others to keep guard over the entrance now, even though it was glamoured. Fae magic, as I remembered Quinn having told me before, was sometimes unpredictable with vampires. Cassius didn’t want to take any chances of our being discovered.
“Ready?” he asked as he eyed me up and down.
“Should I be scared that I’m getting ready to fight you?” I asked teasingly.
“Only if I win,” he grinned.
I didn’t even know where to start, so Cassius began with teaching me fighting stances. It was difficult to concentrate on what he was saying as he stood behind me with his body pressed against mine and held my arms in the correct positions. I gently pushed back against him a few times, both because I wanted to feel his body against me, and because I liked the reactionary tremble that my movement caused him. After we had finished with the stances, he started to teach me a few beginning moves and sequences. I found the kicking and things that involved using my legs to exert the strike to be much easier for me than anything involving the upper body. Even before I was injured, I wasn’t the physically strongest person. I mean, I was strong and lean and had a dancer’s body, but there was just no way I would be able to go up against someone like Dregon in hand-to-hand combat. After hours of working at it, I began to get frustrated, and my chest injury began to ache.
“This isn’t going to work,” I said as I slouched over my knees to catch my breath. “I’ll never be as strong as you, or Athan, or Dregon, or any of the vampires here. Mostly because I’m not a vampire,” I said sarcastically.
“It will work,” Cassius said. “You just have to keep practicing. You can use other things besides brute strength—technique, cleverness, speed, and with the right weapon, you could stand a chance.”
“There’s no way,” I said completely frustrated and exhausted.
“Okay, here,” Cassius said. “I’ll show you that you don’t need strength in order to gain the upper hand.”
I stood up straight and watched as he went to his bag and took out a handful of daggers. He set down the daggers on the ground for a minute and lifted his shirt over his head. I immediately felt myself start to breathe harder.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he wrapped his the fabric around his face, covering his eyes, and tied into a knot behind his head.
“Come take all the daggers but one,” he said. “Trust me.”
I did what he said and left a single dagger on the table beside him.
“Now, I want you to take just a few steps back from me and then throw the daggers at me one at a time, as hard as you can.”
“I’m not going to do that!” I said in disbelief. “I may not be a good fighter, but I have fairly decent aim. I’ll end up stabbing you to death with all these daggers.”
“Do it,” Cassius said.
“No.”
“Mara,” he said with a lowered voice. “Do you ever want me to trust you again after you betrayed me and tried to run away from me on your world?”
“Of course I do,” I said. The pang of that still packed a punch to my stomach.
“Okay, then you need to trust me in return.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “This could kill you.”
“And what you did at the theatre nearly killed me, too, in more ways than one.”
Ouch, that one really hurt.
“You need to trust me. Throw the daggers as hard as you can. Aim for my heart and my head. If you don’t, then I’ll do it to myself, and I guarantee that I won’t miss.”
“This is ridiculous,” I grumbled begrudgingly as I took a few steps backward and got ready to throw the first dagger at him. I would aim low, at his thigh or something just so I wouldn’t accidentally hit anything vital.
In the few seconds that it took me to loose the dagger from my hand, Cassius had grabbed the single dagger off the table and used it to precisely deflect the one I had thrown toward his thigh.
“I told you to aim for my head or my heart,” he scolded.
I made a huffing sound. I still coul
dn’t bring myself to do that, so this time I aimed more for his abdomen, which still made me nervous.
Again, he deflected the incoming dagger with a perfectly accurate swipe of the blade in his hand.
“Mara….” he scolded.
“Fine,” I said stubbornly. I threw a dagger aimed right at his heart, and again he deflected it. How in the world was he doing this?
“Throw several at once.”
I threw two at a time—one toward his head and one toward his heart, and with a quickly executed move, he managed to send them both clattering to the ground.
Cassius turned around to face away from me. “Throw all that you have left as fast as you can.”
I was now exhilarated with excited energy as I watched him outsmart every dagger that I launched. I hurled the last six daggers, one right after the other, toward the back of his head and the middle of his spine. Before any of them had a chance to get close to him, he had spun around and sent them all ricocheting to the floor. Then he pulled the shirt off from his eyes and grinned at me.
“See? No brute strength at all required for that.”
“How did you do that?” I asked in amazement.
“Lots of practice,” he answered.
“I didn’t think you had to practice to be the drunken half-brother of a cold-hearted tyrant,” I teased.
Cassius laughed as he took a swig of water from a pitcher sitting atop the table. “You’re correct there. That didn’t require any practice at all. But being a warrior did.”
“A warrior?”
“Yeah, my father had reared me my whole life to someday take over his rule. He always used to say that you couldn’t be a ruler until you could be a warrior. So he taught me everything he knew, and once his skills and knowledge were tapped-out, he sent the best warriors and combat trainers in the world to teach me further.”
“Did he do that for Athan, too?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?” I had gotten comfortable enough with Cassius to ask him the questions that came to my mind.
Most of them he answered, and some he still held silent to. The questions about his past seemed to be the most difficult for him to discuss. I understood that as well.
“Athan worshipped our father, but our father favored me over him. As wicked as our father became, he still saw that not only was I a more formidable fighter than Athan, but I also was tempered by a conscience that my half-brother lacked. He knew that to give Athan his rulership would be foolish. So our father pretended to favor Athan, but all the while, he raised me up to be the perfect ruler instead of him. Just before our father died, he decreed the rule to me. But I couldn’t take it. I had watched what it had done to my father, and in turn, what he had done to my mother. My mother was the only true person that I loved in this world. I will never forgive my father for her death, and I will never turn into the monster that he became.”
I walked closer to Cassius and placed my hand up against his chest. He lowered the water to the table and looked at me without moving.
“What happened to your mother?” I asked.
The look on Cassius's face resembled that of a gutted animal. He quickly turned his head away, and I knew this was one of those questions that he couldn’t answer, at least not yet.
“I think we’re done for today,” he said. “You did well for it being your first day of combat training.”
“Thanks,” I said. I felt bad about prying about his mom and bringing up a pain that he obviously tried hard to bury.
“Can I ask you something else?” I said. Cassius looked as though he were bracing for another intrusive interrogation.
“Sure,” he said.
“Can I sleep in your room with you tonight?”
He hesitated. I could tell that he wanted to say yes.
“No,” he answered. “It’s too dangerous.”
“But you’d be there to—”
“I said no.”
I didn’t ask again as he picked up all of the daggers from the ground and threw them back into his bag. We walked together out of the courtyard and back through the hidden corridor to Sen’s room. When we got to the opening, we waited for her signal that it was okay for us to walk out through the glamour and into the bedroom as if we had been there all along.
“How did the training go?” Sen asked.
“Good,” Cassius answered as he pulled his shirt back over his head. “She’s making progress already.”
I laughed. “That’s a lie. I totally suck at it.”
Sen giggled. “Well, I’m sure you’ll improve with time.”
“Speaking of time,” I said. “How much time do we have?”
“For what?” Cassius asked.
I looked at Sen and then back at him before I answered. “We need to get Quinn freed from Athan’s imprisonment.
Cassius sighed. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Quinn is one of my own house members. I wouldn’t have left him there by choice. I’ve already spoken to Athan about it, and he has refused to release him.”
Sen looked down as if her hope had been shattered.
“You have to try again,” I pleaded with him. “Please. If you don’t, then Sen and I will have to figure out another way to get Quinn out.”
“Another way, like what?” Cassius raised an eyebrow at me.
“Just another way,” I repeated. It wasn’t even that Sen and I had a plan yet, but I wanted Cassius to think we did. It might motivate him more to believe that we were already up to something.
“Fine,” he said as he exhaled slowly. “I’ll talk to Athan about it again and see what else I can do. Just don’t do anything stupid until I get back, okay?”
“Deal!” I said.
“What am I going to do about you?” Cassius said as he rolled his eyes. He stepped close to me, and Sen turned her head away as if she thought she might be intruding upon a private moment. “Here,” he said as he slid one of the daggers into my hand. “Only use it if you need to.” His hand lingered next to mine as I took the dagger from him and our fingers stretched to touch each other. When he let go of the blade, the hunger in the air between us was palpable.
“I’ll come to find you when I get back,” he said before he turned and walked out of the room.
“I have to admit,” Sen said once she had heard Cassius leave and turned back around. “He has more restraint than any vampire I’ve ever seen.”
I laughed. “Most men have very little restraint when it comes to women to begin with.”
“True,” she laughed. “But he’s got it double-bad. It still amazes me that he was able to carry you all the way back here after you were shot with that arrow, without killing you himself.”
“Huh?” I was totally confused and somewhat disturbed by what that could have meant.
“Mara, he’s half-vampire,” she said as if I should have already known what she was talking about.
“Yeah, I know that,” I said. “Still don’t get what you mean, though.”
“Vampires drink blood, all of them, even the Dhampirs. They have a bloodlust for humans that usually drives them to go into a frenzy at the first sight or smell of fresh blood. But couple that with another desire as well, and that’s a lethal combination of both physical lust and bloodlust. I’m not sure if you remember much about how you got here; I think you were pretty unconscious and delirious for most of the way back. But when Cassius came walking through the door to the fae quarters, he was holding you in his arms, and he was soaked with your blood. If it had been any other vampire than him, you would have never made it back alive. I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he managed to resist his urge to feed on you, even though you were bleeding out in his very hands.”
Chapter Seventeen
That night I dreamed of him again.
I dreamt that Cassius was carrying me back to Mystreuce after I had been shot by the arrow. He carried me back into his bedroom and laid me down on his bed. Then, he reached his fingers inside of my chest a
nd pulled out the arrow tip and tossed it to the floor. I felt the warm, wet gush of blood gurgle out of my chest and soak the blankets that I was lying on. His voice again told me that I would be okay, and I opened my eyes to see him.
When I looked at him, I saw Cassius licking my blood from his fingers. When my eyelids flung open, I sat straight up in my bed. It was a night like this one, which made me wish I weren’t alone in this room. My chest was throbbing, likely from all of the training that I had done with Cassius, but also because my heart was pounding furiously against my ribcage. I raised my knees up against my chest and lowered my head against them. Never in my life had I had such unapologetically conflicted feelings. I was scared to be with Cassius, and I was terrified to be without him.
I got up from the bed to search out some water for my parched throat, and I wondered what time it was. I still hadn’t gotten used to not having clocks or natural light to help me keep track of time. When I walked out into the common area of the fae quarters in search of a water pitcher, Cassius was standing in the entrance to the corridor.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise. I may not have known what time it was exactly, but it had to have been in the middle of the night. And I knew, despite all the vampire books I had read, that Cassius did indeed sleep at night.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He looked exhausted, and the dark-purple circles under his eyes stood against his pale skin like graffiti on a blank, white wall.
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” I said as I walked toward him. As soon as I was standing in front of him, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my head against his chest. For a moment, he held perfectly still, and I felt him stop breathing.
I didn’t care if anyone was watching, or if I shouldn’t be doing it. I just wanted to hold him. I felt his arms slowly wrap around me and pull me into him as he exhaled and started to breathe again. I listened to the barely audible, slow beat of his heart. It made me think about all the things in the world that were so quiet you could barely hear them, but yet they still existed; like maybe the sound of butterfly wings, or the sizzle of rain when it hit the hot pavement on the city streets.
