Or maybe I didn't really fall asleep, because as I was drifting off, I started to have a dream that was almost as vivid as the hallucinations I'd suffered. Except this time—maybe fueled by Lucius's e-mails—I had a good dream.
It was a memory, really. One that started on the night I got married, when Lucius closed the door to our bedroom, so for the first time since we'd spoken our vows, we were alone.
Chapter 102
Antanasia
"I WOULD HAVE taken you anywhere in the world, you know," my new husband teases, pulling me close. "We did not have to stay here, in our own home, on our wedding night!"
I smile at him. "I didn't want to travel. I just wanted to be here with you.
He smiles, too, and kisses my throat, then says, "I have no objection to that, wife of mine. I would much rather carry you to our bedroom than drag suitcases around airports!"
I laugh—but a little nervously. I've waited for this moment for so long ... but suddenly I'm also keenly aware of my inexperience.
Lucius is experienced.
It shows in the way he shrugs out of his jacket without stopping the gentle, insistent brush of his lips against my throat. And a second later, he undoes his cufflinks behind my back, so I hear them clatter to the floor.
I don't even know how cufflinks work. Am I supposed to help him? Undress myself?
Of course, Lucius senses my tension, since I've gotten stiff in his arms, and he says softly, "Do not be nervous. I love you."
"I love you, too." I pull back slightly and reach for his bow tie, yanking on it—which does nothing but make us both practically fall over. I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to catch us. "I'm sorry. Shoot!"
I didn't mean to say that lame, juvenile half-curse or almost drag us into a heap on the floor. I'm embarrassed and ruining the most special night of my life...
"Let me, please." I expect Lucius to laugh at me, but he doesn't. And with one quick tug, the tie is undone and hanging around his neck. Then he kisses me, his lips hard but tender against mine, and shifts to whisper in my ear again, murmuring one of the sweetest things he's ever said to me. Words I'm sure I'll never forget, any more than I could ever forget his proposal or the vows we've just spoken.
"Someday, Jessica," he says quietly, "you will stand before me in this very room, as we prepare for some function which we both dread, for we have been to so many in our years together, and you will smile and reach up to adjust my crooked tie, as you always do. And one of our children—perhaps our first son—will tug at your dress, demanding our attention. Then I will kiss you, and reach down to lift our child, thinking, How did I come to be so happy?"
I love this little story. The warrior prince I've married has imagined this scene of a family. The family we will create. He sees us long after this first night, together and happy and familiar with each other, but still thrilled, like we'll always be...
And suddenly, I'm not nervous at all. "And if we only have daughters?" I tease him, because I know that his comment about a son wasn't just offhand or a joke. He's been raised to believe that having a male heir is incredibly important.
I wrap my arms around his waist, feeling his crisp white shirt under my fingers. I've had dreams, too, of having his children—someday. I'm only eighteen, and I've never told anybody that. But I do think about it sometimes. "And if we only have girls, what then, Prince Lucius?" I ask again, laughing.
He grins and presses his mouth closer to my ear—and my body closer to his, so I can feel all of the power, the good tension building in him, because although we're talking about our future, we're falling more and more under the spell of the present. "If we have only daughters, I will be the happiest vampire alive," he whispers. "For I have come to learn—from you—that a princess can be as powerful as a prince!"
Then he sweeps me off my feet for the second time that evening, and carries me to our bed, and I can't imagine why I was nervous for even a second as we are together—completely together—for the first time, and soon the fangs that I've felt brushing against my skin again plunge deep into my throat...
I woke up in the middle of the night and rubbed my neck like the dream had been true. Not like it was another hallucination. Just a vivid, wonderful dream that would come true. He'd seen our future, and it would happen.
I would make it happen.
I wanted to be the one who adjusted the king's tie, and went to boring functions, and watched him swing our children up to his shoulders. And I wanted more than that. I wanted to regain that power Lucius had first seen in me, and which I'd lost, and use it to lead a kingdom of vampires with the same strength my birth mother had shown. I wanted all those things, deep, deep in my gut, more than I'd ever longed for anything in my life. As I lay in Lucius's and my bed, the desire to rule, which I'd started to feel when I'd first used the stake and experienced that power in my hands, hardened into a fierce resolve. A craving.
I didn't just want to be just Mrs. Lucius Vladescu, or a princess, even. I wanted to be queen.
I suddenly understood how Raniero must have felt in that moment when he'd been tempted to seize power. But I wasn't about to pull my hand away and step back, afraid to give a final thrust to take what was mine.
I had just hours left, and I would make the most of them, to get everything I had to have.
As I swung my legs off the bed, I thought about Lucius and the image of the stake that was always so important to our life together, and I could still feel the strength and authority in his hands, left over from the dream—and something else clicked into place for me. Something that was again a combination of rational math and the irrational sphere of vampires—and so glaringly obvious that I couldn't believe I'd never realized it before.
Hurrying to dress, I left my room, not even bothering to say anything to Emilian.
I felt him trailing behind me while I raced to Raniero's room, which I entered without knocking. Closing the door behind me, shutting out my guard, I went to the bed and shook Raniero awake, jolting him, so he sat up fully alert, and asked, "Raniero ... Have you ever exhumed a body?"
Chapter 103
Antanasia
THE NIGHT WAS very cold but the moon was bright, and we didn't even need a flashlight when we got to the cemetery, where there were no trees to block the light. Through the bars of the iron gate, I could already see the mausoleum where my birth parents were buried—and where maybe someday I would rest—like a gray smudge on the expanse of white. And in the distance I could see the Vladescus' much grander crypt, where a place waited...
I looked at Raniero, who was hanging back, a shovel balanced on his shoulder like a surfboard, while I shoved up the latch.
"You are certain that we need to do this?" he asked.
"Yes. I remember something from the day Claudiu died. Something I didn't even think about until you taught me how to use a stake." I stepped inside and quickly found Claudiu's grave again. The brand-new marker gleamed whiter than those around it, and the snow was higher on top of him, because the earth was still freshly turned and mounded under the drifts.
I took a few steps forward, then turned back, because Raniero still wasn't following me. He was standing at the gate, seeming edgy, like the first time I'd met him there. "Don't tell me that you're nervous to be here?" I asked.
He shifted his feet. "No, I have told you before that I am lazy. The ground will be hard."
"If you don't want to help me, I'll do it myself."
"I merely try to make a joke, Antanasia." But he still didn't move. He took a moment to survey the cemetery, and even by moonlight I could see that his jaw was tense. "I do not like to be here. I am responsible for more than one of these graves. To walk in here is to step into a minefield—and to wonder if the sight of one headstone will be enough to make me explode. I only joke to fend off darker thoughts."
I wrapped my coat tighter around myself. "I'm sorry. I didn't think about that. I only want to help Lucius."
He gave me a skeptical look. "An
d you think that raising the body of Claudiu Vladescu has the power to help anyone?"
"Yes."
His fingers flexed around the shovel's handle. "I still do not understand."
"And I don't understand why vampires still investigate crime like we live in the Middle Ages, relying on torture and whispers and one vampire's word against another's," I told him. "I want to bring evidence to Lucius's trial." I scanned the expanse of snow dotted with gray headstones. Somewhere under the ground lay a vampire I hadn't been able to sentence. "There were eyewitnesses, but no real evidence, when Ylenia's father's killer was tried." I met Raniero's eyes. "And did anyone besides Lucius try to defend you at your trial?"
"No. No one." He shuffled his feet again. "So you wish to make vampire justice like that on American television shows, yes?"
He was still sort of joking, but I was deadly serious. "Exactly. And while we might not have liquid chromatography equipment or even a fingerprint kit, we can collect facts. The Elders can be compelled to make more rational, measured judgments."
Raniero nodded more thoughtfully. "Lucius says that your logical American way of thinking will benefit our clans."
We stared at each other across a few feet of snow, then I said quietly but firmly, the way he'd spoken to me now, several times, "If I can get out of bed and face the things that terrify me in the future, you can face your past."
The wind gusted, and I glanced at the Vladescus' crypt again. Am I a hypocrite...?
When I turned around, I found that Raniero had stepped closer. I hadn't even heard the gate swing shut or the snow squeak under the heavy boots that had replaced his flip-flops. He jerked his head toward the new marker. "Let us go, Antanasia, and be done with this."
Without another word, I led the way to Claudiu's grave. When we reached the plot, Raniero lifted the shovel off his shoulders, tossed Lucius's coat to the ground, then bent and jammed the blade into the snow and earth.
While the dirt probably was hard, it was still loose in the shallow hole, and Raniero was strong. He didn't even breathe heavily as he worked, and it only took a few minutes before the blade struck wood. Within a half hour, he had the casket cleared.
Kneeling beside the narrow hole, he wrapped his fingers under the lip of the ebony lid and raised his face to mine. "Are you ready, Antanasia? It is cold, and not much time has passed, so there will not be much decay. But the sight will not be pretty."
I knew that. And I knew what had happened the last time I'd peered into that coffin. But I needed to make sure. "Go ahead."
His hand jerked hard, and I jumped, because the lid gave easily, opening to reveal the body. Leaning over, I forced myself to look inside. "Undo the shroud so we can see the wound," I directed.
Raniero wordlessly began the awkward process of uncovering Claudiu's chest, and I turned away—not because I was too freaked out to watch, but because, although I'd despised Claudiu, it seemed disrespectful to look at his bared, bony shoulders. I was almost embarrassed for him. "Tell me what you find."
Raniero's voice was muffled because his head was bent into the grave. "Perhaps you can tell me what you wish me to look for." But I didn't even have to answer. Before I said anything, I heard him mutter, softly, an Italian expression of surprise. "Mavalà."
About an hour later, we had reinterred Claudiu Vladescu, and Raniero put his coat back on, concealing the freshly carved stake he still had tucked in the back of his jeans.
We tromped through the white drifts, and as he swung the iron gate shut, I glanced at the sky, hoping that it would snow even more, because I wanted the grave to look like we'd never touched it ... just in case I needed to open it again.
Chapter 104
Antanasia
"WHY ARE WE HERE?" I asked Raniero. I felt for the stake in my coat pocket, where I was trying to get used to keeping it. "I thought my lessons were don e."
We had headed directly from the cemetery to the camera de miza, and Raniero had been quiet the whole time. As I lit the candles, he paced, but not like he'd done the first time I'd met him there. This time, he still looked like a lion, but in the way Lucius did when he strode back and forth while deep in thought.
Raniero looked like he was on the prowl, with his prey in sight.
"Raniero?"
I woke him out of a reverie that seemed even deeper than the sleep I'd interrupted earlier. "Si? Yes?"
"Why are we here?"
"I need to see..." He moved to the box that held Lucius's stake and flipped open the lid with fingers still dirty from digging up a corpse—and probing Claudiu's wounds. "...this."
He lifted Lucius's weapon and held it up to his face, then ran one finger along the layered bloodstains, like he was testing them. Or measuring them.
I could still faintly smell the stench of Claudiu, and like always, I wanted to back away. But the assassin who knew so much about wounds and stakes and blood didn't avoid the rank odor like he'd avoided the cemetery. He wiped his hands on his jeans, cleaning off some of the filth, and held the stake closer to his face, breathing in the scent from point to hilt.
Then he turned to me and declared, very solemnly, "This stake is stained with Claudiu's blood. But it is not the weapon which destroys my uncle."
My heart skipped at least five beats. "How do you know?"
"Claudiu's blood, which is pungent, is only upon the very tip of this stake."
"Which means..."
"Someone weak has used it—and failed to penetrate deeply enough. Or the blood was added later, by someone who does not understand how deeply the point must enter to pierce a heart. It is either a forgery or part of a failed attempt—and we have established that Lucius would not fail."
My heart started adding beats. "This is good news. Right?"
We'd already established at the cemetery that my memory had been right. Claudiu had been stabbed three times, while Lucius would have destroyed with a single thrust. Moreover, Raniero had determined that the first two blows had been struck by a right-handed vampire. He didn't need any special lab or equipment. Just his personal expertise in how wounds were inflicted in fights to the death.
"So you're saying not only that the number of wounds, and their angles and placement, help to exonerate Lucius, but that his weapon didn't even cause the fatal wound?" I asked for confirmation, because this was so important.
"Yes—but do not get too excited, Antanasia," he cautioned. "It was still a left-handed vampire who pierces Claudiu's heart."
But I was excited. "Lucius would never need help in a fight," I reminded Raniero. "It will be obvious to the Elders that he wasn't involved at all."
"Si." Raniero wasn't really listening, though. I could tell that the wheels were spinning in his head—and there was something he wasn't telling me. I knew that guarded expression. He was getting angry, too, for some reason. "I am sorry that I did not look at the stake, and the body, earlier."
"It's okay. We know more now, and that's all that matters."
He shook his head, though, seeming even more preoccupied. I didn't press to know his thoughts, because he was like Lucius and wouldn't reveal anything before he was ready. "I have lost some of my instincts, after leaving this place." He met my eyes. "I am sorry."
I wasn't sure if he was sorry for not thinking to check the stake earlier—or for what he did next. Which was walk over to the case that held his own, even bloodier, weapon and bring his fist smashing down on the glass so it shattered and liberated the stake, which he lifted up with incredible assurance and tucked into his jeans, in the valley of his spine, after taking out the other, smaller, newer one and tossing it to the ground.
"It is almost dawn," he noted, when he saw me watching him, speechless. "You should go to prepare for the trial, for I believe this will be a long day."
Chapter 105
Mindy
I GOT TO Jess's room real early with my whole makeup kit, thinking I'd need to do one more makeover before I put my scissors away forever. After getting Jess throug
h this trial, I was done with doing hair. I was sick of beautiful people—and vampires.
When I knocked and opened her door, though, Jess wasn't there.
Princess Antanasia Dragomir Vladescu was.
"I guess you didn't need me today," I said. "Wow!"
She had looked beautiful at her wedding. But she looked powerful now.
That was, like, the only word for it.
"I'll always need you, Min," she said—and somehow, even though the love of her life was about to go on trial for his life, she smiled. "Always."
But she wouldn't need me. Not the same way. Something had changed inside her, like, overnight. We would always be best friends, but something was different. It didn't make sense, but it felt like I was letting her go when we hugged. "Good luck, Jess. I'll be watching."
"Thanks." She grabbed my hand before I could go. "And when this is over, I'll be there for you, too. You know that, right?"
I guessed she saw I was hurting pretty bad right then, too. Not as much as her, maybe, but enough, in my own way. "Yeah. I know."
I thought about telling her that I was confused about Raniero, and didn't know if she should trust him, and that I was a mess about Ylenia, too, but in the end I just shut up. Today was her fight, and I could see in her eyes that she was determined to win it, and me confusing her about vampires she probably saw way clearer than me wasn't gonna help at the last minute. I might just shake up everything she'd somehow managed to pull together. And I knew from a million articles I'd read about confidence that believing in yourself was half the battle.