19. Chapter 19
19
G avin’s eyes were bright, shimmering like quicksilver, and his presence felt more potent now that he’d had his fill of mortal blood. His gaze skimmed over me, latching onto the hand Bastian curled around my waist. Onto the silver sigil shimmering around Bastian’s wrist. He clenched his jaw, then blinked, and his focus shifted up to my face.
“Micah is very concerned about you,” Gavin said, his voice carefully controlled. “Perhaps you should dress and return to the living room to ease his worries.”
My eyes opened wide, my lips parting. “Of course,” I said, stepping away from Bastian and rushing out of the shower.
Gavin angled his body to the side to let me pass into the bedroom.
I paused in the doorway and peered up at him, but his focus was locked on Bastian, who hung back in the shower. A quiet rage filled his silver stare.
“Gavin . . .”
He clenched and unclenched his jaw, but he didn’t tear his attention away from Bastian.
Acting on instinct, I raised my hand and traced the lines of the bonding sigil I had branded into his neck mere hours ago. The soft silver glow of the marking flared brighter at my touch. I curved my fingers around the side of his neck and stroked my thumb along the column of his throat.
“Look at me,” I said, my voice quiet but oddly resonant.
Coerced by the power of my will , Gavin dragged his stare from Bastian and looked at me. The corners of his mouth tensed and then ticked higher. “You’re growing stronger.”
“Good.” I studied the sharp angles of his face—his high cheekbones, his bold nose, his sinful, proud lips—and wondered why some other queen hadn’t snatched him up before the Sun uprising. He was stunning and powerful, both as a vampire and as a man. His presence commanded attention, making him a natural leader. Perhaps he had been too young at the time of the attack to have already been claimed by a queen?
“Don’t hurt Bastian,” I told him, my voice still ringing with power. With my will . “The blood bond—it wasn’t his fault. It was mine.”
Gavin narrowed his eyes, his resistance to my command clear in the hard set of his features. But finally, he dipped his chin in assent.
My lips curved, and I moved closer to him until my nipples just barely skimmed the soft cotton of his shirt. The fabric clung to my damp skin. “How was your meal?” I asked, watching his eyes darken with desire.
“Unsatisfying,” he muttered.
His pulse thrummed under my fingers, and I closed my eyes, feeling my heartbeat sync with his. I barely knew Gavin, and it thrilled me to be near him. He exuded might and dominance. Touching him was like holding a live wire and having no fear of being electrocuted. I felt exhilarated in his presence. Emboldened and alive in a way I had never felt before.
“You didn’t fuck her?” I asked, needing to know.
“I told you I wouldn’t,” Gavin grated out.
“Mmm . . . but did you want to fuck her?”
Gavin’s hands settled on my hips and glided around behind my back, pulling me flush against him. “Not even a little,” he admitted, his voice a low purr. “I wanted to fuck you.”
My belly fluttered at his words.
“I should fuck you,” he murmured, backing me up against the doorframe and slipping his leg between mine. He grazed his nose along my jawline. “Punish you for endangering yourself.”
It was all I could do not to rub myself against his leg. If he thought fucking me would be a punishment, he was about the least intuitive person ever. Maybe the punishment was him taunting me with the idea of him fucking me.
“But that will have to wait,” he said, turning his face toward Bastian, who stood statue-still in the shower. “Now that she’s gifted you the blood bond, shifter, I suppose we can trust you. You might as well get dressed and come out.” Gavin looked at me. “We’ll be leaving soon.”
My eyebrows rose. “For the Moon Sanctuary?”
I had no idea where it was or even what it was. The name was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t remember anything about the place from my childhood.
“Yes.” Gavin stepped away, releasing my hips, and retreated into the bedroom.
I followed him and glanced over my shoulder at the sound of quiet footsteps behind me. Bastian headed for his pile of discarded clothing on the floor at the foot of the bed, while I made my way toward my things lying on the floor along the right side. Gavin stood near the door to the hallway, his arms crossed over his chest and his glare aimed at Bastian. The exertion of my will over Gavin might have ensured he didn’t attempt to hurt Bastian, but Gavin certainly hadn’t forgiven him.
As I pulled on my underwear and then my leggings, I thought of Micah sitting out in the living room. What if I entered a bloodfade while we were on the road? How would I feed my body’s needs while he was around? I bent over and picked up the silk tunic and just held it against my chest as I stared at the wall as though I could see through it and whatever lay beyond, all the way to Micah.
Was this my life now? Was I doomed to be a slave to my body’s needs? Was this what it meant to be a vampire queen?
“Soph?” Bastian said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”
I turned and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you dizzy?” Gavin asked, his arms uncrossing as he stepped away from the door. His worried expression told me he feared I was entering yet another bloodfade .
I shook my head. “It’s not that,” I said. “I just—” I paused, organizing my troubled thoughts and feelings into words. “Will it always be like this?” I looked at Gavin, my brows bunching together.
“Like what?” Gavin asked, slowly crossing the room while Bastian sat beside me on the bed, curling an arm around my lower back and pressing a kiss to my bare shoulder. His rough stubble sent a wash of tingles cascading over my skin from the point of gentle contact.
“This need to feed every few hours,” I said and shook my head again. “I mean, shouldn’t the crashes be getting further apart, not more frequent?” I held out my tunic. “At this rate, what’s the point in even getting dressed if I’m just going to have to strip again in an hour?” I let out a despondent laugh. “And don’t you guys want to have a life beyond this?” I asked, sweeping my arm out and behind me to indicate the bed.
Bastian chuckled. “Is that a trick question?” He brushed his lips over my shoulder again. “Because I have zero issues spending every waking moment fucking you, Soph.”
I flushed, my neck and cheeks flaming.
“No, it shouldn’t be like this,” Gavin said, stopping in front of me. He cupped my chin in one hand and tilted my head back, angling my face up toward his. “Your body is acting like you just lost one of your consorts, not like you just gained two new ones.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my brow furrowing.
Gavin inhaled and exhaled, his stare shifting to the window behind me. “When a queen loses a consort she has been with for a while, she goes through withdrawals. It comes on hard and fades over time. She goes into seclusion with her remaining consorts until the withdrawals pass and her body stabilizes. If she loses more than one consort or isn’t able to replace those she lost . . . the withdrawals can kill her.”
I shook my head. “But that can’t be happening to me. I haven’t lost a consort,” I said. “Until you two, I never even had a consort to lose.”
“No?” Gavin asked, refocusing on me. “Are you so sure? Can you think of no other immortal whose blood has sustained you?”
My eyebrows rose. “You mean Javier?” I frowned. “But we never—” I shook my head for what felt like the hundredth time. “It wasn’t like this with him. I was just a kid. There were no communions , not like with you two.”
The corner of Gavin’s mouth tensed. “ Communions are far more innocent when a queen is young, for obvious reasons,” Gavin explained. “They begin when a queen’s powers first awaken at the onset of puberty, but the sexual component is not introduced until a queen is of age and her mature powers burn through her dopamine stores at a faster rate. With an immature queen, a simple blood exchange is all that’s required.” He crouched, resting his elbows on his knees, and angled his head to the side, exposing his neck and the bonding sigil glowing silver on his olive skin. “Do you remember seeing anything like this on Javier?”
I stared at the sigil, studying the glowing phases of the moon and thinking back to the few times Javier’s sigils had been visible. “I don’t think so, but I rarely saw his sigils, and when I did, he was fully clothed, so it could have been hidden.”
Gavin narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, you rarely saw his sigils?”
I shrugged. “He tried to keep my powers suppressed,” I explained. “He believed the only way to hide me from the House of the Sun was to make me appear human. That’s why he created the blood tincture. It kept me alive, but it also suppressed my powers.”
“He must have removed the dopamine,” Gavin mused aloud, his gaze losing focus. “And possibly added a dopamine reuptake inhibitor.” He refocused on me. “We’ll analyze the tincture when we get to the Moon Sanctuary. That should give us some answers.”
Gavin stood and pulled the small, black travel case holding six vials of Javier’s blood tincture that I always carried in my purse out of his pants pocket. “Take a dose,” he said. “If it helps to stabilize you, then we’ll know you do— did share a blood bond with Javier.”
I accepted the case and unzipped it with shaking hands. Javier and all his damn secrets. I freed a vial and unscrewed the cap, bringing it up to my lips. Gaze lingering on the intricate design of the crescent sigil curving along the side of Gavin’s face, I tilted the vial back, pouring the tasteless contents into my mouth. I closed my eyes and swallowed, and when I opened my eyes again, the silvery glow of Gavin’s sigils was already fading, and his eyes dimmed to gray instead of silver.
I watched his sigils slowly disappear until they were no longer visible, then raised one hand to trace my fingertips over the unmarked side of his face. “It’s gone,” I murmured, letting my hand fall away.
Gavin pressed his lips together. “Then we have another answer. He did include a DRI in the formula.” He took the empty vial from between my fingers and narrowed his eyes as he studied it. “If Javier could add the inhibitor, we should be able to remove it.” Gavin’s eyes met mine. “This should be the last time your powers are suppressed. Then we can use the remaining tincture to gradually wean you off Javier’s blood.”
I looked at the vial, all I had left of Javier. “Do you think—” I hesitated, afraid to voice the question. I had refused to believe he was dead for so long; the hope that he was out there somewhere was all that kept me going at times. “Could he still be alive?”
Gavin stared at Bastian. I looked at the shifter as well. If anyone in this loft knew Javier’s fate, he would.
Bastian shrugged one shoulder. “I wish I could tell you, Soph.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know.”
Gavin took a backward step and angled his body away from me. He inhaled and exhaled, slow and controlled. “He could be alive,” he finally admitted. “But if he is, he’s a prisoner of the House of the Sun, and extracting him would be extremely dangerous.”
I nodded slowly, having come to that same conclusion long ago. I looked at Gavin’s neck, where the bonding sigil should have been visible, then at Bastian’s wrist. “You both have your sigils. Do I get any marks like that?” I had never noticed anything like that on my body, but then, Javier had always been quick to suppress my powers whenever they became active.
“There is, but it’s inside you,” Gavin said, pressing his palm flat against his chest. Did he mean that their sigils were branded onto my heart? “When your powers are active, you can do a casting to project your consorts’ sigils around you.”
“A casting ?” I asked, standing. Bastian’s hand trailed down my hip, then fell away. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s what we call it when a queen focuses her powers to achieve a specific end,” he said. “You’ll learn.”
“How?” I asked with a despondent laugh. “How will I learn when there are no more queens to teach me?”
“There are no more living queens,” Gavin said, glancing at me sidelong. “But you have already admitted that when your powers are active, you can see the dead.”
“But I haven’t seen any ghosts here,” I told him.
The corners of his mouth tensed with the hint of a smile. “Ah, but you’re surrounded by protective wards here. The spirits cannot enter this floor.” He scanned the walls, seeing things that were currently invisible to me. “All the High Queens have been laid to rest at the Moon Sanctuary. Their spirits will surely be able to assist you.”
“My mom?” I asked, taking a step toward him, hope rising within me. “Is she there?”
Gavin’s features tensed. “All High Queens, save for the last one,” he amended, sympathy shadowing his expression. “Veris had your mother’s body burned, her ashes scattered to the winds.” Gavin glanced past me to Bastian. “Veris lit the pyre himself. By the time he and his people departed, there was nothing left of her to move. There’s nothing to anchor her to that place.”
“Oh,” I said, my shoulders slumping and my gaze drifting down to his shoes. “Okay.” But then Gavin’s words registered, and my focus snapped back up to his face. “You were there—after.” My chin trembled.
I didn’t remember much from before , just spotty memories, but that night was as vivid as if it had happened only yesterday. Some people’s minds blocked their childhood trauma. I wasn’t so lucky.
With perfect clarity, I recalled hiding on the short ledge of the roof outside my bedroom window while Amaya, Javier, and a few other vampires attempted to fight off seven shifters. I remembered Amaya’s screams. I remembered the sound her body made when it hit the floor. I remembered the light reflecting off the merged pools of blood beneath her and the vampire and shifter bodies scattered around her when Javier retrieved me. I remembered her serene face. Her empty eyes.
“Did you see Amaya?” I asked, my voice small, like I had reverted to the little girl I was during that terrifying night.
Gavin was quiet for so long, I thought he might not answer. “I did,” he finally said.
“She was in my room,” I said, then added, “when she died.” I hugged my middle and closed my eyes, setting free a string of tears. “I hid while they killed her,” I said, admitting my greatest shame.
I searched Gavin’s eyes. “Why were you there?”
“The attack—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Of all the locations that were attacked, why did you come to my home?” I took another step closer to Gavin. “You told Micah your mom was a queen, that your lineage makes you among the most powerful of our kind, so why didn’t you have a queen of your own to protect that night?”
Gavin clenched and unclenched his jaw and looked away. “I was protecting my queen,” he snapped. “Or, at least, I was attempting to.”
“Not my mother,” I thought aloud. “You’re still alive. If you shared a blood bond with her, you would be dead.”
“I had earned a place as Prime Consort to a queen, but she was young, and I had not yet communed with her,” he said, his voice a hushed murmur.
“Amaya?” I asked.
Gavin shook his head. “That was to be Javier’s role,” Gavin said softly, one hand drifting up to his neck to run his fingertips over the invisible sigil. “I was always intended for you.”
I sensed the truth in his words, and the rightness I felt around him made more sense.
“I should have been there,” Gavin said. He turned to face me and bowed his head. “I should have been there to protect you, but I wasn’t, and everything I have done since has been to atone for that failure. And the other night, if I had realized it was you in that club, that you were my Luna, my queen—” He shook his head. “I never would have left you there. Never .”
His gaze scoured my face, lingering on my eyes. “I can see it now. When you unleash your glow, you are unmistakable, but you were so changed then . . . so depleted.” He released a bitter laugh under his breath. “I thought I had found a lesser queen.” He shook his head again. “I certainly never suspected your powers were being chemically suppressed.”
“I—” My voice stalled as I searched for something, anything, to say. Gavin wasn’t the stranger I had believed him to be. He was always supposed to be mine.