I almost sighed. He is so protective. I so want a guy like that!
Jess looked up at Lukey and nodded. "Okay." Then she told me, "Good night, Min. Thanks again for coming—and staying." She gave me a private look. "And please don't worry about that stuff I mentioned. I'm just tired and saying stupid things."
"Sure, Jess," I told her. But I wouldn't forget any of what she said. In fact, I was gonna look up "stakes" at DreamSymbol. com as soon as I found a computer. "Night, you guys."
"Sleep well," Lucius said. "And tell Emilian if you need anything."
"Definitely," I promised him. I mean, I always wanted a servant, even if Jess didn't.
Then I picked up my cupcakes and licked the plastic wrapper and watched Prince Lucius and Princess Jess go out the door, and I knew without even a teeny bit of doubt that I'd been right to tell Jess that Lukey was innocent. 'Cause, just from the way he kissed her head and held her hand, I knew for sure that Lucius would never risk ruining what they had together.
But somebody was causing trouble for both of them, and it was starting to piss me off.
Chapter 32
Antanasia
"LUCIUS, YOU WANTED to talk?" I prompted him as we made our way—so far in silence—through the dark castle, hand in hand. He's too quiet...
"Soon," he said softly. He still sounded preoccupied, and I got more worried.
This is going to be a bad conversation. And why did I tell Mindy that I was hallucinating? I don't want even my best friend to know that.
We kept walking through the corridors, which were lit only by moonbeams coming through the occasional window, and as usual I let Lucius lead. I assumed we were going toward our bedroom, though, and hardly paid attention to the route.
But after about five minutes of turning blind corners and stumbling down the tiny, seemingly pointless steps that were everywhere in our house, I realized we weren't headed to our room, which shouldn't have been more than two minutes' walk from Mindy's. And even though I didn't think there was any reason to whisper, I asked quietly, "Where are we going?"
He didn't answer but squeezed my hand. His fingers felt tense around mine.
"Lucius?" I ventured again, after about three more minutes of twisting and turning, during which I got the sense we were descending, although those little steps were so random that it was hard to tell for sure.
I didn't want to be scared—I was with my husband, who would protect me with his very existence—but it seemed to be getting darker in the halls, and mustier, too, like this was an area where few vampires ever ventured. "Where are...?"
Before I could finish, though, he stopped us both, and I could just barely make out, in front of my nose, a very narrow door. It looked almost like a black slit in the stone. Like the lid of a coffin, nailed to the wall. The faintest light seeped out at our feet, as if Lucius had been there earlier and illuminated whatever waited inside.
Something about that pale glow was ominous, like the hellish flames in the courtroom, and I actually tried to disengage our fingers and take a step backward.
He held on to me, though, and said, "I have something I need to show you, Antanasia." He paused, then added with what seemed like reluctance, "Something I should have shown you long ago, perhaps before you even married me."
Then, before I could say anything more, he reached out, opened the door, and ushered me through the tall, thin portal with a reassuring hand at the base of my spine, which didn't stop me from gasping and stepping back as I cried softly, "Lucius ... what is this place?"
Chapter 33
Antanasia
AS AN AMERICAN who couldn't even name her great-grandparents with any certainty, I still found it hard to grasp just how far back Lucius's vampire lineage dated. Even though I'd signed, at my wedding, the thick genealogy that he so prized, adding my name to a roster of undead that dated back thousands of years, I never really got the idea of a family that measured time in millennia and that included living members who might have rubbed elbows with Aristotle, or Henry VIII, or Hannibal as he crossed the Alps.
No, the vampiric concepts of history, legacy, and birthright didn't really hit home until I saw that heritage measured out in stakes.
"Lucius, this is..." Amazing? Unbelievable? Disgusting?
"Yes, the camera de miza—the room of stakes—is all of those things," he agreed, no doubt reading my mind, like I sometimes thought he could do. "It is all of those things and much more, to me."
The room was small, just big enough for two or three occupants and a table at its center, but what that chamber lacked in size, it made up for in weaponry. Almost every spare inch of wall held a bracket that in turn held a stake, point down, so the entire room looked like the upper jaw of a great white shark. Maybe scarier. I sort of felt like I was being eaten alive as I ventured a step forward, unnerved but curious, too.
I'm in a museum of destruction.
"Each of these stakes belonged to a Vladescu male who has been destroyed," Lucius explained, stepping up behind me and resting a hand on my shoulder. "At one time, each weapon was a prized possession." He reached past me and pointed to a tiny slip of yellowed paper under one of the stakes. "See—the name of the owner, and the date of his destruction."
The room was lit by only two candles, and I leaned closer, trying to read, but the name was inked in some long-lost precursor of Cyrillic, and I couldn't even come close to deciphering it. I recognized the number, though: A.D. 53.
I also recognized the distinctive stain that ran halfway up the weapon, which told me that whoever had owned that stake had used it—probably more than once.
Mesmerized, I stepped out from under Lucius's hand and began to look more closely at each artifact, following the dates as they slowly climbed—358, 765, 822...
Although wielded in different eras, the weapons themselves showed no evolution. Each was nothing more than a crude, sharp piece of wood. It was like the design was so effective that there was no reason to update it. I flinched, staring at a row of stained points.
Any of those would get the job done.
Then I stopped and peered more closely, comparing a group from the Middle Ages. Yet there were small distinctions. Designs carved in what served as the hilt. Inlaid initials. Grooves worn by ancient fingers, back in even more violent times, when vampires would have kept their stakes with them constantly.
Lucius stood still and silent, allowing me to explore, and I moved clockwise, not sure how I felt to be in the middle of so much history—and so much old blood.
And then, when I was about at the end of that bizarre collection, just after I read, with a sharp intake of breath, Valeriu Vladescu, next to a date close to Lucius's first birthday, my eye was caught by another familiar name, next to the only stake encased in glass.
What?
I turned to Lucius, baffled. "Why is Raniero's stake here? He's alive. He was your best man."
Lucius stepped toward me. "That is a story for another time. A long story, which I will relate when we have a few hours to spare on some equally long winter's night."
I cast another glance at the name Raniero Vladescu Lovatu— and at the pacifist's stake, which was covered with blood—and opened my mouth to insist that I get that story now.
But when I turned back to Lucius, he was reaching for my hand again, and the expression on his face made me decide to wait. And even though I'd guessed by then what he really wanted to show me in that room, my heart pounded harder as he led me to the table, which held a shiny black container that looked like a little coffin inside the coffin we'd stepped into.
I knew what was under the lid of that box before he opened it, and I looked up at my husband. "So this is where you always keep it?"
He nodded, his glossy hair gleaming in the candlelight. "Yes, Antanasia. It is usually here."
His using my "official" name even though we were alone struck me as odd—as did his emphasis on "usually"—and I cocked my head, getting even edgier. "Why, Lucius?"
; Why are you showing me this now? What does it have to do with whatever mistake I made at the meeting?
"It is unusual for a female vampire to use a stake," he continued, answering my half-finished question in his usual roundabout way. "If you could read Cyrillic, you would know that there are no feminine names upon these walls." He rested his hand on the box. "But these are new times, and you are my equal, Antanasia. You may be called upon to act as such, in a way that your predecessors—with the exception of your birth mother—would never have dreamed of doing. Mihaela was the first to rule as a true queen, and you have her strength inside you."
I shook my head and backed away again, not liking where the conversation was headed. "No, Lucius. I really couldn't dream of doing anything with a stake, no matter what my mother did."
But Lucius was nodding, contradicting me. "Yes, Antanasia. If something should happen to me, you need to know where this is—and get used to the feel of it in your hand. If you ever need it, you will not want to flinch or hesitate." He paused, then added, "And there is another reason you need to see this now."
Then, when I was still processing what he was trying to say—Why am I suddenly going from princess who can't even attend a trial to lessons in stake wielding ?—he lifted the lid of the box, and my nose wrinkled under assault from a very powerful—and recognizable—odor, which caused me to gag for more than one reason.
It was the smell of decay. Of rot.
Of Claudiu's blood.
Chapter 34
Antanasia
"LUCIUS, YOU'RE SURE you have no idea how Claudiu's blood got on your stake?" I asked for at least the tenth time. I felt like those jagged shark teeth were closing in on me, pricking at my skin. "You're sure you don't know who did this?"
Of course we had discussed the possible suspects, chief among them Flaviu and other disgruntled Elders, which included most of those old vampires. But I couldn't seem to stop asking that same question over and over.
Am I afraid he's hiding more stuff from me? Not telling me everything?
"I promise you, Jessica," Lucius said again. "I came here shortly before the meeting to plan Claudiu's burial and made the discovery. I know nothing more than you do."
But he had known more than me, at the meeting, and I stared at him, feeling not just scared that someone was obviously trying to frame him, but a little ... betrayed. "Why didn't you tell me about this? And why did you come here in the first place?"
Lucius raked his hand through his hair, like he felt guilty. "I believed that you had enough to worry about, with the threat of chaos at the meeting. If I had told you that my weapon was tainted with Claudiu's blood—"
I flushed. "You thought I'd freak out—and maybe do something stupid."
"Please, do not make it sound as if I didn't trust you," he said. "I only wanted to spare you knowledge—and pressure—that I didn't think you needed at that moment."
"Because you couldn't trust me with the truth." My indignation faded and my cheeks got exceptionally warm for a vampire as I thought about how I'd so willingly followed Ylenia's advice without even talking to Lucius. "And I did something stupid anyway, by insisting that everybody produce their stakes."
"No." Lucius shook his head. "You thought the idea was a good one—that it would vindicate me. This problem is my fault for withholding information from you. If I had told you about the stake right away, you would have known that I wished for time to investigate." His eyes projected misery. "The mistake was mine."
Lucius and I stared at each other, and although he was accepting blame for the crisis, he had also admitted that we really weren't equals yet. Will we ever be? Did I force him to keep a secret? I thought of the stake I'd seen in our bed, which had seemed as tangible as any of those around us. And he doesn't even know how I'm really cracking up...
"Why did you even come here after Claudiu's death?" I asked again. My voice sounded tight in my throat. "What were you checking? Or getting? "
"One of the Elders was destroyed in our home." Lucius crossed his arms over his chest, like he was challenging me to dispute his logic. "I thought it best to arm myself, the better to protect you, until I could teach you to protect yourself."
Again, I need protection.
I studied his face by the light of the small candles. His strong jaw, with the scar I couldn't see in that dim room. His high cheekbones, shadowed by the firelight and stubble, like he needed to shave. And his eyes, which were so sweet and tender ... and so well trained to conceal things. "Were you going to tell me that you were carrying around the stake..."
...that you nearly used to destroy me? That I hadn't seen since that night?
"Yes," Lucius promised. "I would have told you."
We faced each other for a long time, in a very strange silence. Like we were trying, with our eyes, to smooth over a fissure that had opened up at our feet. It was like the stake— that awful stake, which was still visible in the open box—had been plunged down and created a chasm in the floor between us.
Would it always be between us?
"Why didn't you ever show me this room?" I finally asked. "Why did you hide this from me, too?"
"Look around you," Lucius said, without taking his eyes off mine or uncrossing his arms. "You are already plunged into a world of violence. You married violence. I did not wish to shock you with an unnecessarily graphic lesson in just how brutal your new family is, and the extent to which we Vladescus have enshrined aggression. Not yet."
Oh, the million thoughts and emotions that ran through me when I heard Lucius's pained explanation of why he'd kept me out of that chamber. Family was incredibly important to him. And yet he had also come to learn in America that violence was not the only way to maintain order. He was struggling, too, to understand a new way of life, and I felt bad for him. I was ashamed, too, that he'd once again judged me too weak to handle my new life—even if I was too weak.
Yes, we had a lot of challenges ahead of us.
I stared at the stake, which presented the greatest problem.
How would we explain it to the Elders? Why had I jumped on Ylenia's idea, which seemed so horrible now, because the older vampires would smell the blood, too, and believe that Lucius was responsible?
"Jessica?" I looked up to see Lucius reaching for my hands and felt his fingers wrap around mine. Felt the X that marked his left palm and that helped to connect us again, as it had at our wedding, when we'd both cut our hands and commingled our blood. "I had other reasons for not wishing to show you this room," he confessed. "Selfish reasons." His eyes clouded with apology. "Do you think that I am eager to remind you of what I once nearly did to you? Do you think that I was in any great hurry to revisit that night, in the shadow of all my ancestors' darkest moments?"
"Lucius..." I held his hands tighter and struggled for words, because I thought about that night a lot, too. I could still feel the way the point of his stake had pressed up under my breastbone—and how his fangs had pierced my skin in a very different way, just minutes later. "Don't forget that that night was also one of the best of my life. You said it was the best for you."
"And the worst," he reminded me.
"It was both," I insisted. "Both."
It was the first time I'd ever thought of the two events that had taken place that evening—the terrible way Lucius had threatened to destroy me, and the beautiful moment when he'd first made me his for eternity—as one seamless whole, instead of two jarringly separate occurrences. For the first time, I saw them as indivisible, like the yin-yang symbol that Raniero wore on his arm. "Maybe it all just had to happen the way it did, for us to be together," I told him. "Maybe the stake is a good part of our story."
Lucius smiled grimly. "You will forgive me if I have difficulty, right now, seeing a bloodstained weapon that I almost used upon you—and that has been turned against me, now—as any kind of harbinger of happy endings."
Then he released my hands and blew out the candles, and I heard the snap of the lid of the box
and the scrape of wood against stone as he lifted his stake off the table to carry it back to our bedroom. And even though he'd initially wanted to retrieve it to protect me, I knew I wouldn't sleep any easier with that thing in the room.
It wasn't a harbinger of anything good. It might even be the instrument of Lucius's destruction. His own weapon, used against him.
My throat tightened, and I almost couldn't breathe as I suddenly remembered our law as outlined by Lucius. "Destruction must be answered with destruction," and "The destruction of an Elder must be answered by the highest-ranking member of the clan..." Which meant, if Lucius ever really was found guilty for Claudiu's destruction, I would be expected...
STOP, JESSICA! It will NEVER come to that. Lucius won't let it happen!
Yet I felt very sick as I followed him to the door, knowing that I'd been fooling myself, moments ago, about the stake. That I'd started fooling myself months earlier, when I'd promised Lucius that I was ready to be a vampire, and his for eternity.
Chapter 35
Mindy
I HONESTLY DIDN'T feel scared about being in Jess's castle—until about midnight, when I was totally alone in my bed, and completely out of Tastykakes, and the fire was getting less bright, and I started wondering if the cute little vampire named Emilio was really still right outside my room, 'cause I did not hear him making a sound.
Tossing off the covers, I tiptoed to the door, undid the lock, and opened the door up, just a crack.