Chapter 10 Rhianelle #5
“Petal called you my prince,” I press. “Why would she say that?”
“I don’t know.”
“They aren’t afraid of you.” I study his profile. “Were you there that same night?”
Arescaine keeps his gaze on the path ahead.
For a long moment, only the forest answers.
Then he says quietly, “Yes.”
“But I don’t remember you being there at all.” I stop walking.
It forces him to stop too. I turn to face him in the darkness. “I remember everything, but you’re just... gone. Erased completely.”
He looks at me. In the moonlight filtering through the branches, his features are sharp and shadowed. I realize now the gaps aren’t random.
They are specific and they all center around him.
I focus on the memory and try to see past the missing pieces. There is something there, just beyond my reach. Something important.
The auction room, the platform, people in the crowd bidding, and among them a figure. I push at the memory. Try to see his face clearly to remember—
Pain explodes through my skull.
Agony rips through me as claws made of fire scratch at my brain. I cry out and stumble. My hands fly to my head.
The world tilts. I am falling—
Strong hands catch me before I hit the ground.
“Stop.” Arescaine’s voice is calm and commanding. “Let it go.”
The pain is too intense. I can’t think past it or breathe—
“Let it go,” he says again, firmer.
I stop fighting or trying to grasp the memory.
The pain vanishes. It’s gone, leaving me gasping and shaking. His hands are on my shoulders, steadying me and keeping me upright.
“What was that?” I stare at him, still trying to catch my breath. “Is it vampire compulsion? Did you make my memory disappear?”
The accusation feels wrong the moment it leaves my mouth. He has done nothing except help me, but the gaps are too strange and too precisely shaped around him to ignore.
The silence that follows lasts a beat too long. When he speaks again, his voice is careful in a way it wasn't before. “I didn’t. Memories can hurt. Let it go.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice comes out weak and shaky.
Arescaine releases a long, heavy breath. His gaze shifts toward the darkness between the trees as he considers his answer, and for several moments, he says nothing.
“Sometimes healers place wards around memories that are too painful for the mind to endure,” he says at last.
“A ward? From what?”
His eyes return to mine. “Monsters like me. Perhaps I frightened you badly enough that someone believed forgetting was a mercy.”
I look at him.
His hands are gentle despite their strength. Worry shadows his face as he watches me, his attention fixed on every tremor I fail to hide.
Arescaine protected me from the fire spell, shielding me with his own body even while his wings burned around us. He gathered evidence against a traitor and carried me safely to Greenvale. Again and again, he has risked himself for me without asking for anything in return.
A monster would not hold me like this. A monster would not watch every unsteady breath as though afraid I might break.
No, a monster wouldn’t do that.
My hands are gripping Arescaine’s arms. I don’t remember reaching for him.
The thought settles somewhere deep in my chest. He isn’t what I’d thought. Whatever he is, whatever darkness he carries from his long life, whatever secrets he keeps, Arescaine Darian Andras isn’t a monster.
Not to me.
After a moment, he releases my shoulders.
“We should keep moving,” he says.
I nod, accepting the explanation though my heart doubts it.
We start walking again. My leg protests immediately. The brief stop has let the muscles stiffen. Now every step is agony shooting up from my knee.
I ignore it and keep walking.
Arescaine notices. Of course he does. He notices everything.
I manage three more steps before he moves in front of me and bends. One arm slides behind my knees while the other circles my back. The ground vanishes beneath my feet as he lifts me against his chest.
“What are you doing?” I grab his shoulders.
“Carrying you.”
“I can walk,” I insist.
“You can barely stand.”
“Put me down.”
“No.” He resumes walking as though I weigh nothing.
“Arescaine.”
“Rhianelle.” His tone mirrors mine exactly.
I glare at him, but he does not even look winded. The moment my weight leaves my injured leg, the pain eases so much that my protest dies before I can repeat it.
“Only until we reach the capital,” I mutter.
“Of course.”
Something in his voice suggests he is humoring me, but I am too exhausted to argue. I settle reluctantly against him, acutely aware that this is the second time I have allowed myself to rest in his arms.
Something has shifted in how I see the vampire. I am not sure what to call it.
Trust, maybe, or the beginnings of it.
But I am not foolish enough to trust him completely. It’s just enough to stop questioning his every move. I believe he has reasons for the secrets he keeps.
I steal another glance at him, and the memory of the cottage returns before I can stop it.
My name in his mouth. His voice rough with want while he thought of me.
Heat creeps into my face. I look away, but the silence between us only makes the memory louder.
“About what happened at the cottage,” I begin.
Arescaine’s jaw tightens.
“Can we forget it happened?” I ask awkwardly.
He says nothing.
I wait, but he simply continues walking without a word.
“You cannot use me in your fantasies again,” I say firmly, scrunching my brows.
The corner of his mouth curves into a faint smirk.
Annoyance flares through me. “This is not amusing.”
His expression remains infuriatingly composed, though the smirk does not disappear.
“I have a mate,” I remind him.
The amusement vanishes. Something sharp and almost angry flashes across his face before he looks away.
I feel guilty now because I did sneak into his cottage.
“Just forget I said anything,” I mutter.
He carries me onward without a word, letting the silence press in around us.
“Can you?” he suddenly asks me. “Can you forget?”
I turn the question over in my mind. I want to say yes. I want to bury the entire humiliating encounter and never think of the sound of my name in his voice again.
But I already know I would be lying.
“No,” I admit. “Probably not.”
Something that might be a smile flickers across his face. “Neither can I.”