He remained completely still.
Lucius?
At my second, slightly louder call, his eyes opened, and even by the weak light of the oil lamp, I saw so many emotions course through him. Surprise, and disapproval, because I shouldn't be there, both because the law forbade it and because he would think it was risky for me to wander alone. But above all I saw the love that I needed to see.
He didn't move right away. I thought he was too exhausted, and I had to tell him, softly, "I can't come to you. I don't have a key." I stole a glance at the snoring guard. "And I can't risk waking him by hunting for one."
It hurt so much to be separated from Lucius, and it had hurt more to see him struggle in the courtroom. But nothing hurt as badly as watching him fight, hard, just to rise and come over to me. He sat up on the cot and paused for about thirty seconds with his head hanging down, and I almost told him just to stay there. That it would be enough for us just to look at each other.
But I wanted to touch him, and he wanted to touch me, too—enough that he managed to stand and walk the few steps to the bars which were spaced just widely enough for me to slip my arm through and reach him. He leaned against the wall, but soon we both sank to the floor, holding on to each other in the only way we could. Which wasn't half as much as either of us needed.
Still, he told me, "You should not be here, Jessica. If the guard awakens, you will be punished for breaking our laws, too."
I knelt next to him, and for the first time since we'd gotten married, when I'd pretty much let Lucius take control, I reasserted my authority with him. "I don't care, Lucius."
He had closed his eyes, but opened them again, and I saw an incredibly precious trace of amusement there—along with the admiration that had been draining away since our marriage. "You have changed, wife of mine—of whom I often dream as I lie here," he said. "One of us is getting stronger." He managed a smile. "You were very brave to choose to preside at Claudiu's funeral, when you did not have to, and you were a force to be reckoned with today at the trial."
I didn't remind him that I'd had to preside over the funeral, but it scared me that Lucius would forget even a small detail of royal protocol. The books I was struggling to decipher were burned into his mind.
"I dream about you, too, all the time," I told him, shoving aside my worry. I clutched his arm with my hand, and we tried to rest our foreheads against each other's through the narrow gap. "I miss you so much." My voice cracked, but I got control of myself. "It's over tomorrow, though. You'll be free."
Lucius might have been losing touch with reality, but he still chose to face the truth head-on when he recognized it. "I do not think that I will walk free, Jessica. I understand that you and Raniero did admirably today, but my guard reports the rumors honestly. The Elders do not believe in my innocence."
"They will, Lucius. I'll think of something else. I promise."
He lifted his head away from mine and met my eyes. "You have done well, Princess. You took a risk, and you must never regret that. I would have done the same."
"It's going to pay off."
He didn't believe it. "If it does not, know that I have faith that you will be an incredible ruler ... already are an incredible ruler. And always remember that you were the love of my existence."
That was too much for him, and he couldn't say any more. I couldn't seem to say anything, either.
I sat with him quietly, not wanting our time together to end. Eventually, though, the guard shifted, and Lucius mumbled, "You should go now."
"No, not yet. Not before you drink."
He shook his head, seeming confused. "No, Jessica ... We already break enough laws, and there is no way for me to reach you. I will not hurt you or try to drink desperately through bars, like an animal." I saw regret in his eyes. "You could not offer me enough to sustain me for more than a few hours, anyway. It would take weeks of rest and much, much blood before I was strong again." He continued to meet my eyes, and I saw the truth in his. I saw just how close he was to ... disappearing. He was only there because he loved me enough to come back from the place of nightmares long enough to say good-bye. "I do not want you to remember me hurting you, or acting in—fruitless—desperation."
I couldn't accept that. He had to keep fighting, and I pulled back my arm, rolled up my sleeve, and slipped my hand through the bars again. I was being selfish, too. If he really was vanishing from me, I wanted him to take a part of me with him. And I wanted to feel him drink from me again. To connect with him that way. "You can drink like this, Lucius. From where I cut myself at our wedding."
He looked from my arm to my face. "I do not think so, Jessica."
Oh, my frustrating, brave, wonderful husband. I was trying hard to be brave, too, and starting to succeed, but tears pricked at my eyes. "I love you, Lucius. And I'll die without you, and you are going to drink my blood tonight." Suddenly I sounded like Raniero back in the camera di miza. "Do you think I care about a few minutes of physical pain? Do you think I care about law?"
He hesitated, and I added, "Do this for me. Please, Lucius. I can't live if something happens to you. I won't live."
I knew I wasn't playing fair. I was askinğ him to breăk his code of honor using the only temptation I knew he couldn't resist.
Me.
He wouldn't break the rules to save his own existence, but he would do anything to save mine.
"Lucius," I whispered, seeing him weaken in a different way, "if you drift into limbo and never return to me, not only will I join you, but you won't have any chance to create a better kingdom for hundreds of thousands of vampires who need a king like you. So tonight we're going to break one law, in the interest of saving ourselves, and ultimately for our relatives, most of whom probably don't even deserve the life we want to give them."
He paused for just another second. "I forget sometimes how strong your will is. How strong you are."
Yes, because I'd forgotten it, too, for too long. I stretched my hand farther into the cell. "Here ... do it."
"As you order, Jessica." I could've sworn he was smiling faintly—just like he'd smiled with pride at the trial. An almost imperceptible lift of his lips. "As you insist."
Then Lucius took my arm into his cool hands and bent his head over me, and I immediately felt his fangs graze my skin, because he was starving. I was drinking blood sometimes, but I was starving, too, for him. Even though of course I couldn't take a drop from him, my own fangs ached as his lips brushed against the pale inner part of my wrist, and it did hurt when his teeth broke through my flesh. The spot was sensitive, his fangs were much thicker and blunter than the knife I'd used at my wedding, and what we were sharing right then was different from the passion that usually made being bitten feel good. This was a new feeling, and everything about it was painful. Just loving the vampire who was so desperate for sustenance, but trying to be gentle as my blood coursed into his mouth, hurt.
"Drink more," I urged when he started to pull back. "Please. Drink as much as you can."
But of course he was Lucius Vladescu, and while he might have destroyed vampires and rammed a stake through his best friend's hand, he was also my protector, and a prince, and he didn't believe that he could be saved by draining me on one desperate night, and before I even felt dizzy, he raised his head and tilted it backward, eyes closed, like he was satisfied—although I knew he wasn't. His fingers didn't feel any stronger when he wrapped them around my arm, staunching the flow of blood.
"You should have more, Lucius." But I knew he wouldn't.
"I love you, Jessica," he murmured, seeming to get very drowsy. "But you should go now..."
"Yes, Lucius. I'm going. I love you, too." I didn't leave, though. I sat with him, watching his face, while he slept right there on the floor, with his back against the wall and his head resting against the bars.
When the guard finally got too restless, and I couldn't bear to see Lucius's eyes, no longer mischievous and happy, twitch beneath his lids as he returned
to a place of torment, I crept off to my room—and out into the darkness, one final time.
Chapter 112
Antanasia
THE CEMETERY FELT even colder than before, and I knew I really was alone that night. Raniero had done his part for Lucius, and he seemed to have other things to preoccupy his new life now. I hadn't seen him since the trial and didn't know where he'd gone.
Pulling open the iron gate, I went first to my parents' crypt, where I poured my own offering of blood into the small bowl, and said quietly, "I hope that in the end, I've made you proud. And I hope that you'll be happy, and not disappointed, if I'm not laid to rest here next to you—although it would be an honor to be by your side."
Then I left the Dragomir crypt and went to the soaring, spiked Vladescu mausoleum, which I had avoided even looking at for so long, and where I was going to insist that I be entombed.
Chapter 113
Antanasia
I LIT A row of five candles that waited on a marble shelf inside the Vladescus' tomb, and first poured out another offering of blood into the bowl that Lucius used for his own parents.
"I should have come here earlier to thank you for Lucius," I told them, bowing my head. "You can't imagine how incredible your son is, and I thank you, too, for signing the pact that made him my husband, linking me to him for eternity."
When I said that word—eternity—I raised my head and finally faced the thing that had made me avert my eyes from that crypt for too long. I finally faced ... the future.
Unlike the Dragomirs, who left blank spots in their mausoleum—one maybe reserved for me, or maybe not—the Vladescus were realistic about the prospects for even their favorite sons. I read the words, etched in marble.
LUCIUS VALERIU VLADESCU, A.D. 1993–
I stared at his name and refused to tremble. I wouldn't do that anymore. Lucius stood in that same spot and faced this every time he came to see his parents. Maybe that was part of the reason he was able to face the end of his existence at other times, too.
And in that grim, terrible place, I made a new promise to Lucius.
I would be destroyed with him before I took any part in sentencing him to destruction. I would commit treason myself by defying the Elders' ruling, break some of our biggest laws and die with my husband if it came to that.
I had made a vow to Lucius on our wedding day to be with him for eternity, and I was going to keep that, if not in the way I hoped, in any way I had to. I would either be destroyed outright, or if Lucius was somehow exonerated but already lost in that realm of nightmares, I would follow him there, and find him, and we would suffer together, because I would never drink anyone else's blood again, and I would rather spend immortality in torment by his side than five minutes alone in a castle with every comfort all our money could buy.
Snuffing out the candles, I left the mausoleum, and on the way back to the estate, as I walked through the woods filled with wolves, I wondered who would bury me, if it really came to that.
Would it be Dorin, whose whole existence was spent in a shallow grave of fear, batting at shadows that weren't even there yet?
I thought more and more about my own funeral, and as I did, I started to walk faster and faster, and although Lucius insisted that royalty never hurry, by the time I was almost home, I was in a dead run.
I needed to see the Carte de Ritual.
The book that dictated, down to the smallest detail, the way our clans conducted the rites related to birth, marriage ... and destruction.
Chapter 114
Antanasia
MY FINGERS TREMBLED with excitement and rage as I ran them down the proper page of the Carte de Ritual, painstakingly comparing the words I saw on its pages to those in my Romanian-English dictionary, which was finally starting to get suitably dog-eared.
Inmormantarea ... Pentru ... Conducator...
Over the course of three hours, I translated the whole section on funerals for Elders to make sure that there was no way I was wrong. I took special care with the intonation before the ringing of the bells. "Acum vom respecta un moment de tacere pentru a marca trecerea lui Claudiu Vladescu in tacerea vescnica."
And when dawn arrived, I slammed the book shut with a thud that must have rocked the castle's foundations.
Everything I read in there, and other things I remembered, too—a word on a bottle, a cork pulled a little too soon, a shaking right hand...
It all translated to... betrayal.
Chapter 115
Mindy
I TRIED TO find Jess before the second day of the trial, but she didn't even sleep in her bed that night. I waited for hours, like I'd waited for Raniero, 'cause I did feel like I should warn her about what I believed about Ylenia, and Ronnie, too.
I sent texts and tried to call her cell, but she never answered. Even little Emilio didn't know where she was, so I ended up taking my carryon to the courtroom, clutching it like a baby and waiting with everybody else—a bunch of vampires who looked at me like I was crazy.
And maybe I was a little intense. But not as much as the princess who marched into that court in a very unprofessional pair of jeans and a T-shirt, looking like she had gone to hell and back—and was about to drag the rest of us back there with her, just like I kinda planned to do.
I knew in a split second—and everybody else knew it, too, even old Fabio—that we weren't just seeing a princess standing there in a pair of jeans and boots.
We were all getting our first glimpse of the next queen.
Chapter 116
Antanasia
I COULD TELL that everyone in that courtroom knew that I meant business, even if I wasn't wearing a suit and heels. I could've been wearing the nightgown I'd put on when I'd run out of my first trial and the look in my eyes would have been enough to silence the whole chamber.
The atmosphere was tense and nervous and excited as I marched into the room, and I knew that this was how a princess—or a queen, even—was supposed to be received.
Even Flaviu stopped smirking, and I imagine he thought he was going to be the target when I walked not behid the table of Elders to take my place, but in front of all those vampires, who eyed me warily until I found the one I wanted. And when I did, I rested my hands on the table and watched him quake as I announced, without the slightest hesitation—and in the same low, soft, menacing tone I'd heard Lucius use to intimidate so many vampires, making it my own—"Dorin Dragomir, you have betrayed your sovereigns and committed treason, and you will pay with your existence."
Chapter 117
Antanasia
"I DIDN'T ... I didn't do anything, Antanasia," Dorin sputtered. He held up his hands. "Nothing!"
I wasn't having any of it. His ashen cheeks and his terrified rabbit eyes gave everything away.
I narrowed my own eyes and leaned closer to him. "You mistranslated the Carte de Ritual to force me to preside at Claudiu's funeral when I didn't have to, and you made me a laughingstock by teaching me the wrong thing to say, so I would commit his body to a land of rainbows instead of eternal silence. I didn't say 'rainbows' randomly. You scripted it for me. Then you drugged me ... gave me blood that was tainted so I would hallucinate in front of everyone. You wanted to see me fail."
The other Elders were all rearing back in their chairs, and the spectators who'd come to see Lucius's fate unfold rustled and muttered as those who spoke English translated my words for those who couldn't understand.
"Why ... Antanasia ... I wouldn't..." But he was rattling in his seat. "Why would I...?"
"I don't know ... yet," I growled. "But you tried to drug me again before my last meeting with the Elders. You gave me blood that was already opened—and that smelled wrong even to me. You wanted me to hallucinate again, in front of them!"
"Of course I opened it..."
"You called it Siberian, because you were desperate to make me drink it, but that was a lie. I saw the word Franta— 'France'—on the label. For whatever twisted reason, you were panicked for me t
o drink it—scared like you always are—and you made a terrible mistake."
Lucius always said Dorin's fear would be his undoing.
"You've been drugging me all along, making me, and everyone else, think I was losing my mind—and you destroyed Claudiu, too," I accused him. "Raniero said the weakest wounds were made with a right hand, and you are one of the few right-handed vampires in the whole kingdom. You always raise the wrong hand at meetings, although you are nearly one hundred years old. You can't stop using your right!"
Of all the things I'd said, that one really seemed to resonate with the Elders. Vampires were like the mirror opposite of humans when it came to dexterity. A right-handed member of the undead was uncommon indeed. And a right-handed vampire with access to the castle and Lucius's stake...
Even rarer.
I really did have no idea why a feckless weakling like Dorin had done these things, but I knew that he had.
He was such a coward, though, that he still couldn't admit it.
Not until Mindy, the only non-vampire in the room, stood up and said, "Excuse me?"
I turned around to see her clutching a small suitcase that I thought contained makeup and hair spray, which had saved me so many times before, and I didn't understand what she was doing until she said, "I think it's over, Dorin. I got the last bottle of tainted blood in here. The one you sent Jess yesterday."
He broke then. Broke like the pathetic excuse for a vampire—for a Dragomir—that he'd always been and said, with tears starting to run down his face, "Have mercy on me, Antanasia. She made me do everything. It was her plan, and I was scared of her. She's bitter and twisted, and she hates you. Wanted to destroy everything that you and Lucius have! She can't bear that Lucius actually loves you, when she couldn't even keep the Vladescu nobleman she drugged to trick him into biting her. It's her fault that Raniero is damned, and she still doesn't stop!"