Chapter 17
Sidney
Zane raised his brow at me. “What did you just call him?”
“It’s an inside joke.”
“Uh huh.”
I tensed. If his anger wasn’t obvious from the tight set of his body, he’d taken a sharp tone I recognized down to my bone marrow. “My quarters are this way. Let’s at least get some privacy if you’re going to do this.”
He trailed after me as I set off for the relief of a real bed. “Do what?” he snapped.
“You know what.” I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders.
He went silent as I navigated the halls of the mansion without trouble. My stride was a fast clip, racing to this next confrontation with my hands balled into fists.
Once I had him in my quarters and the door was locked behind us, I hit the wood with my fist. “All right, here’s your chance. Throw rocks, King Zane.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “King-in-waiting,” he said in echo to Mathias, eyes widening and jaw dropping for a wordless moment. “I didn’t touch your grandmother. Aetherius’s light! I would never. Not willingly…”
I turned to see he’d had a seat on the couch. He rested his face in his hands.
“Let’s not do this. Please. I don’t want to fight,” he mumbled into his fingers. “I’ve dreamed of this moment, when I could have you back despite…everything. And I don’t want to taint it.”
I breathed out some of my tension, sagging without the promise of another battle to prop me up. “We don’t have to fight.”
Zane turned my way. The shadows across his face were stark, emphasizing the grief trapped just under the surface of his skin. They swirled, seemingly at his command, joining the play of darkness in the room. When he crooked his finger to invite me to join him, a shadowy echo beckoned with him.
“We need to talk,” he stated. The four words I dreaded hearing from any partner, never uttered by Zane until now.
I settled onto the couch next to him. We kept a few inches of space between our hips, though our knees pointed square at one another. His gaze roved over my face before he breathed a pointed sigh. “Take that fake face off.”
Wordlessly, I stripped off the bracelet and put it in my pocket. I loosened the ties of my leather armor with relief as it constricted my curvier body.
“Sidney,” he breathed with longing. “I never thought I’d see you again. I hoped you thought I was dead, not worse. Not…this.” He gestured to his mouth, baring his sharpened fangs.
“I’m working on a cure to turn you back. The temple’s spies received a report on what Nemea did to you…” Carlyle hadn’t wanted me to read it, trying to spare me from knowing of my betrothed’s pain. But of course I’d snuck it off his desk and memorized every word of my failure.
Zane shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure…
Listen, if anyone could devise a cure, it’d be you.
But no spy could understand just how much pain that bitch put me through.
” He bared his fangs in a purely vampiric show of his rage.
Anger, pure and bright and wholly not like him, emerged from between his gritted teeth.
“Your preventative saved me from her first bite, I think. She bit me several more times after she kidnapped me. The venom and the curative burned in my veins, head to toe. I thought she’d set me on fire. ”
“Zane, I’m sorry—”
“It’s not your fault. I know you’re going to blame your science for failing, but it just…it was just bad luck.” He reached over and took my hand, squeezing it between his palms. “Nemea targeting me wasn’t part of the future we were building.”
Despite myself, I chuckled dryly. “It sure wasn’t.”
“She died before she could force me into anything. I’m a ‘king-in-waiting’ as a title only. But despite that…I have this bad feeling that her turning me has changed everything. Hasn’t it?”
I found it difficult to maintain eye contact with him. But I breathed, “Yes.”
After everything I’d done to avenge Zane and see him again…this was not how I thought our reunion would go.
“Yes,” he echoed. “It’s changed me too. I’m not the same person, Sidney. I don’t know if I am a person. I don’t know what I am, anymore.”
“You’re Zane.” I reached up with my free hand, brushing the fringe of his hair back from his face.
He leaned slightly into my touch. “The temple always labeled vampires as monsters, but I don’t feel like I am one of those, either. I guess I could be me, still.”
“Be you. Everyone else is taken,” I said, quoting one of the trite posters the temple kept in its youth center. He smiled in return, just slightly.
“There’s something else that bothers me. It’s been months, and you never tried to contact me. No messages, no visits, nothing,” I mumbled. My lips felt numb, like I was airing a nightmare to him. “Anything would’ve been better than that. Than knowing you wanted me to give up on you and move on.”
“And it seems you have.” The weight of jealousy in that response had my gaze snap to his again. “So, Finn is going to be your devotee? You really care for him?”
“I didn’t come here intending to. He’s a friend I made before I ever escaped from here.
We reconnected recently. We have, um, more of a spark than I expected.
The Flask of Dominion wants me to…” Rush into it, I was about to say, but that wasn’t right.
It didn’t feel like a rush at all. “But I didn’t intend to sleep with him…
not when I entered the Trials of Succession for you. I killed Nemea for you. It’s just…”
“Complicated?” he offered with a sigh. “I’d have to be blind not to see the way you two look at each other. And the way you kissed him. Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair, the muscle in his jaw taut.
My cheeks burned. Of course, Mathias and the council had to be watching us after we’d survived our brush with death. “And yet, I have kept this on me like a talisman this whole time.” I took my hand back and retrieved my engagement ring, putting it back where it belonged on my finger.
He lifted my hand and brushed little kisses over my knuckles. “It warms what’s left of my heart that you kept it,” he murmured. “But you cannot wear it. Not while you’re pretending to be a vampiress.”
“I know.” My voice cracked.
“You can put it away. I’ll be your talisman now. Your mate, as a proper vampire.” He kissed the curve of the ring, then bowed over my hand like a gallant knight.
My breath caught. “My mate,” I echoed.
“You were supposed to be my wife, but now you can be my forever.” He inched closer. The heat of his body radiated off of him, and I yearned to tug him closer, to brand my skin with his. But those amber-brown eyes, once so tender, were shadowed, hardened.
“That hasn’t changed. I’m still yours.”
“And I’m yours, even if I have to share you.” Pain cracked through his even tone. “If the Flask decreed it, you have to do it. I won’t hold it against you.”
“You’re still everything to me,” I promised.
He released a jagged breath and reached for the ties of my chest piece.
He paused, only undoing it further when I nodded.
“I’ll share you because you need me to. You’ve entered a fight you cannot win alone, so you must have a Devotion to survive,” he said.
With a few tugs, he freed me of the leather and tossed it aside. “All because of…me.”
“For you,” I corrected. I pulled at his shirt, and he removed it after snagging it behind his neck. His Turning had certainly affected his body, further sculpting his chest with defined muscles. I ran my fingertips over his skin. It was him. Finally, here with me again.
He caught my wrists, holding my palms to his skin. “All this revenge and death because of what Nemea did to me.”
“That part…is not just about you,” I admitted, if only to finally say it aloud. “It’s also a long overdue reckoning for all the bloodsuckers that infest this place.”
A hint of his smile returned and his breathing quickened. “Why is your talk of revenge so hot?”
“Now you’ve met the monsters of my past firsthand. You must agree that death is what they deserve.” I drew my fingers down his toned stomach, sliding my hand further down the line of his body. “And…” I let the thought trail off as my touch skimmed the center of his trousers.
He made a soft sound of denial. “And?”
I tipped my head, heart leaping as I offered it to him anew. “And I love you.”
His mouth collided with mine. Our tongues tangled, breath stolen between heartbeats. In one swift motion, he scooped me off my feet, carrying me to the foot of the bed. He said between kisses, “I love you too. I never stopped, not for a moment.”
A sharp rap on the wood splintered the silence. I stiffened, a hiss escaping my teeth. The interruption jarring against the heat rising between us.
Zane let out a breath that was more of a controlled snarl, though the fire in his eyes died down into a grudging acceptance.
He crossed the room and yanked the door open just wide enough to say “thank you” and accept a steaming clay pot from the servant. He set the vessel on the table, retrieved the wax-sealed vial he had liberated from the safe room, and added a large pinch of its contents to the pot.
“I want you, Sidney.” He poured the dark liquid, the scent of bitter herbs blooming in the air. “But I won’t risk a child you didn’t choose or need right now. This will prevent it.”
I took the cup, my fingers brushing his with a lingering, frustrated simmer. The first swallow sparked on my tongue, a sharp, metallic tang that vibrated through my veins like a dormant spell waking to life. I drained the rest, feeling the magic settle deep in my core.
“How long does the protection hold?”
“A full moon,” Zane replied. He watched the way I swallowed, his gaze tracking the line of my throat. “There’s more when you need it.”
I set the empty cup on the bedside table, the intrusion already fading into a dull memory. “Now, where were we?”
Zane grinned. He leaned in to cage me with his arms loosely on the bed. “You were just explaining my magnificence. I believe the list included my unparalleled skill and something about my deft fingers.”