Traces
Gorvin covered me in a cloak and delivered me directly to Rhazien’s chambers.
His rooms were so vast and so grand that the entire hallway was made up of doors leading to his various sitting and entertaining areas.
This part of the Hive was quiet. Before, I enjoyed the distance from the hum of activity.
But now, the absence of sound shackled my steps.
Gorvin didn’t offer me a glance as he held the door open to the regent’s chamber. I thanked him anyway as he stood tall and stoic and something cracked within me. This was the first of many upcoming confrontations and reactions.
In the steward’s eyes, I had been unfaithful to Rhazien. Ungrateful for my position, protection, and most importantly, I had been a traitor to Rhazien’s heart. A villainous miscreant.
Every shred of sense told me that Gorvin’s response—which wasn’t a response at all really, more of a signature emotionless silent treatment—would be one of the kinder reactions to this news.
“I was worried you’d snuck out to that tavern again.” A voice lumbered from behind a large desk. Rhazien looked up from whatever he was writing, his anger suffocating the air in the room.
Dommik hadn’t left a single part of me unclaimed and an inferno of shame and embarrassment blazed through me. Rhazien’s eyes fixated on my mouth. I didn’t completely understand why, but I needed to fight back tears.
I clasped my hands at my middle and licked my lips, ready for his impending interrogation.
“How long has this affair been going on?” He flicked the feather quill at me with the same disdain as the question.
“It wasn’t an affair,” I corrected in a careful whisper.
“Wasn’t? Or isn’t?”
The question trapped me. He wanted to know if I thought it was in the past, or if this was something that would continue. I shifted my weight as I thought it over. But Rhazien wasn’t in a patient mood.
“You’re not sure?” His chair scraped against the stone floor as he pushed himself away from the desk. His mouth twisted into a ferocious snarl. “Fine. I’ll just go ask him.”
Damning desperation ripped through me as my voice cracked, “What will you do to him?”
Rhazien looked down at me in disgust as he passed me. “I haven’t decided.”
I fell to my knees as a lock on his chamber door clicked into place from the outside.
The quiet hour that followed felt like an eternity. I hadn’t moved an inch and my bones ached where they met the stone.
He won't kill him. He won't kill him. He won't kill him.
I gasped with the abrupt clang of the iron lock and stood to find a panting Rhazien entering his room.
My eyes immediately dropped to his healing but bloody clenched fists. His cream tunic was stained with crimson splatter. I wanted to ask what happened, why his hands were so battered, but that would be a waste of breath. I already knew.
“When did it start?” His brows scrunched together.
“Just last night,” I said and he huffed a laugh.
“I don’t mean when did you fuck him, Reyva,” Rhazien bellowed before composing himself. “I want to know, when did your feelings for him start?”
I uncoiled myself from a reactive wince. “I don’t know.”
Rhazien removed his ruined shirt and used the fabric to wipe the gore from his knuckles. “So, you admit having feelings for him.”
Crystal clanked against crystal as the regent fumbled with a decanter of brown liquor. He turned, drink in hand and leaned on the small bar.
I considered lying. But my lids fell closed, pushing a heavy tear into the world, and I admitted, barely above a whisper, “Yes.”
“Is it love?” He looked down at the chestnut liquid in his glass.
My breath hitched. I hadn’t said it. Not even silently to myself.
“Is. It. Love?” he asked again through gritted teeth and protruding fangs.
I couldn’t deny it. The truth was, I was somewhere in between.
Rhazien erupted. “Do you LOVE HIM?!” The glass flew past me and shattered. A gust of his fury circled me before capturing my shoulders and lifting me to my tiptoes.
“I don’t know!” I sobbed through gasps.
Rhazien set me down and my body slumped to the floor again. My form shuddered as wave after wave of emotion swept through me. Fear, shame, embarrassment, confusion.
“And what exactly did I do to earn this betrayal, Reyva? My commander?! Who is like a son to me. The week of Solstice. The week I expected you to accept my offer and become bound to me?! My FUTURE QUEEN!” He knelt next to me as his questions crescendoed.
“And what about your betrayal?! At the Northern Hive?!” Each word became more venomous than the last. Like they’d soured as they’d festered in my body and were rancid now that I finally let them out.
“What I did?” Rhazien asked without even a micromovement to signal recognition or guilt.
“You drained those slaves.” My accusation wasn’t meant to be comical, but Rhazien chuffed and stood, pacing away from me as if he couldn’t believe the accusation.
“I’m a fucking vampire, Reyva! A ruler on a diplomatic visit to a Hive where that kind of behavior is normal. It’s what was expected of me and I warned you of that.”
Rhazien leaned against his desk, arms folded, mouth set into a firm line. His condescending tone fueled enough rage within me to encourage me to stand.
“You’re never there for me!” It was a poor excuse for my poor choices, but it was true. It was the fight we hadn’t dared, chosen at the most terrible time.
Wide eyes considered my response. Through a stilted breath, he asked, “What do you mean, I’m never there?”
I looked up to him, not bothering to wipe away the rivers of tears flowing down my cheeks. “You abandon me. Constantly.”
“You think I prefer being away from you? I would spend every minute with you if I could. But my Hive, my people, need me.”
It was the argument I’d made on his behalf in his absence dozens of times. The excuse I would use to convince myself that he wasn’t just using me for my abilities or to ascend. But there was a reason I had stopped believing the narrative.
“Was it expected of you to fuck those women as well?”
Every muscle in Rhazien’s broad body froze. Only a slight eye flinch gave him away.
“Well, Dommik was there to comfort you, wasn’t he?”
“Don’t do that,” I fired back. “Don’t blame him for your own shortcomings. He did nothing but serve you faithfully until—”
“Faithfully?!” Rhazien erupted and I shrank at the overwhelming volume. “You think I didn’t see he wanted you from the second he delivered you to me? You thought I didn’t know? Couldn’t tell? You think I’m some na?ve fool, Reyva?”
I thought I had an argument. That Dommik had fought his feelings. Had done his best to create distance. But this changed things.
“You assigned him to me.”
Rhazien nodded.
“Asked him to train me, to hone my gift.”
“Correct.” The regent dropped his hands gripping the side of his desk.
“All to what? Test him?” My features twisted into a disgusted snarl. Rhazien knew Dommik’s past, what he’d been through with Kaia. Why would he manufacture the exact same scenario sixty years later in his own Hive?
Rhazien tapped his head when he said, “And you.”
“And me,” I repeated.
Rhazien knew of Dommik's past. And he’d mentioned doing his research on me as well, which meant…
My eyes narrowed. “You know about Beau.”
“I know everything there is to know about you, Reyva.” My skin crawled as I wondered if that was true. Because if it was, he didn’t just know about Beau and my infidelity. He knew about Lydia too.
I glowered as Rhazien retrieved a new crystal glass and filled it with potent brown liquor. The room became darker, heavier. After a long, silent minute, Rhazien swirled the liquor in his glass and sighed. “So, can we come back from this? Or have I lost you completely?”
I sniffled and dropped my gaze to the floor.
“I see.” His gaze turned stone cold. He threw back the entirety of his glass and hissed before he spit out the words, “The Solstice Offering will just be for show then.”
My heart sank. He still wanted to go through with it. He wanted me to still go through with the ceremony. Become shadowbound to him.
“What?” I’d heard him, but my mind needed him to clarify. Meanwhile, my body wanted to disintegrate to dust.
“This is my life’s work. I’ve waited centuries for this. For you.” His eyes darkened. “This is more important than either of us. It’s bigger than any one person. Bigger than any one Hive. And now is the time. Vampires and humans have never been more ready for it.”
He moved to his dresser and pulled out a black tunic to replace the blood stained one.
“But—isn’t it my choice?”
“Yes. And you’ll choose to accept the offer.” Dressed again, he turned to face me.
I could feel my face heating with anger. “What if I refuse?”
Rhazien moved toward me. My muscles recoiled as he gently lifted my chin and calmly said, “You won’t refuse.”
I jerked from his grip. The man in front of me was not the same charming suitor I’d known.
Now, he had the hardened facade of the building we stood within.
Was he hurt? Donning his emotional armor against the woman who had betrayed him?
Or was he simply peeling back the layers of niceties and showing the ruler he’d always been?
Just as he’d transformed into the frenzied blood fiend at the Northern Hive, had the likable gentleman been a different character? Or was he a social chameleon mutating to meet the needs of his everchanging audience? Charisma and charm were traits of Lorana’s descendants after all.
“You cannot force me to accept your shadow.”
“You’re right. I cannot force you. But I won’t have to. You’ll choose it all on your own, just as you chose to relinquish yourself to the Hive rather than going to the axe.” He tipped his head slightly, waiting for me to put it together.
My family. Cova and Lydia.
“You wouldn’t,” I rasped through gritted teeth.
“I wouldn’t. But Dommik would.”
“Dommik wouldn’t,” I countered.
“Dommik has.” Rhazien, descendant of Lorana, regent of the Southern Hive, looked as though he’d just bested me in a game of chess. “Who do you think killed your husband, Reyva?”
Checkmate.