17. CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 17
Noa
“Hurry.” My arm tightened around Julien’s waist. The magic was still wavering from the intruder’s disruption; someone else had entered the passage far behind us, but my skin still rippled beneath the chill. We neared the exit, steps from safety and the second passage. Once we reached Sentinel Falls territory, I’d syphon until my hands burned, and I’d do more than send sparks from my fingertips.
“Almost there,” I whispered, helping Julien over a slick patch on the rocks. “A little slog through the snow, then a second passage.”
I meant it to reassure him.
Julien bared his teeth in a worrying smile.
“Planning on biting someone?” I teased, wanting to lighten the mood, but his snarl was low-pitched.
“Ago’s behind us.”
The magic must have recognized someone—or something—with Ago, or they wouldn’t have found the passage.
One more let’s-fuck-with-Noa jab from fate.
I was swearing more now than I ever had, but I found it cathartic. An explosive word instead of an explosion from my fingers. I saved that up for Ago—the explosions. This time, when I got my hands on him, I wouldn’t stop until nothing was left except a vampire husk I would burn. See if the smoke really was red.
More snow as we pushed through the protective magic concealing the passage and aimed for the second one leading into Sentinel Falls territory. Julien worried over our footprints in the snow, worried about the trail we left behind. If Ago found us, Julien wouldn’t have the strength to fight. We’d both end up dead or back at High Citadel. Pinned to a wall.
Concern tightened his mouth. His chest rose each time he breathed, and those actions were always odd to me, making him seem so… human. As if being a vampire hadn’t changed him…
I gave up hoping for concealment and opted for speed. “Hurry.”
Julien worked at keeping up, but with every third step, he grunted, then hissed in a breath.
“Leave me,” he ordered between jagged gasps.
“I’m not leaving you,” I gritted. “I don’t need the bone-crushing guilt.”
“It wasn’t your fault—”
“ Will you shut up?” I swung around, hugged him so hard he grunted. There were only a few things in this world that I would willingly fight for. Julien was one of them. Right behind Grayson. Fallon and Mace. Scratch that. Julien was equal to Fallon and Mace. He was Grayson’s friend. He would not die. Would. Not.
“You’re a sorry-assed excuse for a vampire, you know.”
Julien stroked his hand over my head, down my tangled hair. “I am aware, my lady.”
“Cut the lady crap, please.”
“It’s sarcasm,” he said, “to counter your vocabulary.”
“Nice.” I smiled against his chest. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Liar. I should have asked if you needed to feed. Keep up your strength.”
His mouth curved. “Maybe a little? If you don’t mind. Then I’ll try transporting… enough not to leave tracks.”
I dragged my coat sleeve up to my elbow and extended my arm. “Take what you need.”
His lips pulled back, fangs descending. A drop of venom gleamed at one tip, and I couldn’t help myself. I shuddered in anticipation.
His fangs jolted, retracting as he tugged at my sleeve. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No.” I gripped his wrist. “Not that.” My head pounded. “I was thinking of the venom left in the runes.”
A blatant lie, because if he knew the truth, that I already craved the bite, he’d never take blood from me again. Not even to survive.
I wasn’t sure if Julien believed my excuse or if he was being polite in not challenging it. But he wrapped his arms around me. My palms were against his chest, my cheek above where I willed myself to hear his heart beat. Wishing it was Grayson and holding tight to that wish until my eyes stung.
Then we were weightless, with the wind rushing, a turbulent storm, nothing I’d experienced before. Jagged and uncertain until we crashed down in the snow, both of us gasping in the frigid air.
“Where are we?” I pushed upright, searching for landmarks. Everything was so bright that I was snow blind for a moment.
“I’m not sure.” Julien was flat on his back, laughing. But it was a weak, rasping gurgle that had me clawing at my sleeve again, hoisting him—head and shoulders—across my lap. I pressed my wrist against his lips and bent close enough to hiss, “Don’t be a stubborn ass.”
“Why… not…” he coughed out. “It’s so much fun when you react.”
“Do you post drama queen shit like this on your social media account?”
“Can’t.” He held on to my arm, cradled my hand as his fangs pierced. The tugging surge raced through me, igniting tiny fires—gods, it was no wonder females found vampire sex addicting. Heat was shuddering through me in sensual waves. But the need was for Grayson. His touch, his tongue, his… everything.
“Enough,” I panted. “Turn the sex off.”
“Deepest apologies, my lady. I can’t help it. Don’t tell the wolf.”
“He’ll probably scent you on me. And me on you, so we’d better have a good cover story.”
“Tell him the truth. How you saved me.”
How I’d nearly gotten him killed. Saving was the least I could do.
I recognized our location. With his effort to teleport, Julien had leapfrogged us to the opening of the second passage. Once inside, I hoped the magic would shield me enough to hide from Ago. And while he’d be searching, we’d be running toward the secret refuge, where the Green Man’s magic would conceal us from everything and everyone. Even Aine and her nymphs. Fallon and Mace.
Certainly, that would be enough to hide from vampires.
The one secure place where Grayson would know to look.
Although I had no sense of my mate, where he was or what he was doing, he would come.
He would find me.
An hour later, I called a break, having noticed no disruption in the passage to warn that Ago followed. My legs wobbled. Julien was struggling. Not that he would complain. The wound in his side still pained him. I wasn’t sure what Annora’s healing waters actually healed. Perhaps they worked for nymphs and no one else.
When we got to our destination, I’d try to reach Grayson through our bond. Tell him where we were and get the help Julien needed.
With that plan in place, I helped Julien sit with his back against the passage wall. His legs shook with exhaustion. His eyes slitted closed.
I sat across from him, leaned and squirmed around until no rock edge poked my back. Smooth as an easy chair, Noa. I breathed in, breathed out, searched for a rhyme to soothe my frazzled nerves. Liar, liar… pants on fire … didn’t have the same punch it’d had before. Neither did hush, little baby, don’t you cry.
I breathed in again, ignoring the stuttered way the air moved as I thought about my mom. How she’d drawn pink hearts in a baby book. Saved the last letter from my father.
If you are reading this…
No more. I refused to be drawn into the past, into nostalgia that left me aching with the futility.
“I’m glad you’re still alive,” I said to the darkness. To Julien.
His voice bounced eerily. “One of the many benefits of being a vampire.”
“For a second, when we were at High Citadel… the temptation was strong.” The truth whispered through me, a shudder in its wake. “I wanted it. The chance for revenge that Barend offered. Put things right. The compulsion was… I almost meant it when I said yes.”
“Barend mesmerizes. He finds the one desire that burns darkest in the heart. What we’ll sell our souls to get. The truth we hate about ourselves, dressed up as something to be coveted.”
I moistened my lips. “I wanted it, Julien. Revenge. I didn’t care what it would cost me in that instant.”
“And yet you rejected his offer, turned it into a weapon, and used it against him.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Because you have goodness in you, my lady. Because you carry love like a torch that blazes with an eternal light, and Barend cannot stomach the emotion. He wants to destroy you. Never doubt that is his goal.”
“Why did they try to kill you, Julien?”
He was silent for a moment. “In my human life, I was quite fond of puzzles. Solving secret codes. I worked for a lesser king, and I’d go to the universities known for their libraries, pour through ancient books. I never lost the knack. I was researching for Set. She has a journal, hand-written by Amal.”
“She sent me the same book,” I said, leaning my head against the stone. “Leather-bound, with narrow ties.” Zinging with magic. “How did Set find it?”
“They were friends centuries ago.”
Shock quaked through me. “Set and… Amal?”
“Set’s sire turned her by force,” Julien said. “It was common to the times to abuse the females. She despised him for it, though. Despised her craving for blood. She had trouble adjusting. Rumors of the wolf queen attracted Set—Amal was like her. Turned without a choice. Amal left her journal with Set, said it might help her. But Amal—by that time, her hatred was visceral and not what Set wanted, to hate like that. Black hate, without hope. Life is nothing without hope for some purpose. Some reason for the why.”
I listened to the faint plop of water dripping in the distance. “A part of me identifies with Amal. A part that understands.”
Maybe it was the part that connected to her telepathically. To the part that ached when Amal screamed. The part that suffered from the pain beneath the anger, sensing the loss of a wolf.
Or it was the part that Laura talked about… how I did it to myself, identifying with a myth and thinking Amal was a tragic, wounded woman I could save.
Because I was the daughter of the daughter’s daughters. Descended from the queens, suffering the queen’s curse, needing to give up arrogance. Learn compassion.
Fated to be healed through a king’s curse. Drawn to a dread lord, who was himself cursed to repair what the kings had destroyed.
Did that cycle ever end?
“Amal can mesmerize the way Barend does,” Julien murmured. “She sees the depth of the soul, the kernel of corruption easiest to exploit. Her goal has never changed. She wrote about it in her journal.”
“You found something.” And they’d tried to kill him because of it. “Was it Barend’s assassin? The man with the spear?”
“He carried Amal’s stench, so I doubt he belonged to Barend.” Julien shifted his position, drew his legs up, and wrapped his arms around his knees. “Have you read the journal?”
“Poured through it many times. Along with Laura. We found a design. Amal was obsessed. I don’t know how many times she drew it. Laura said it was runic, so I took the drawing to the witch in the Farmer’s Market. I thought she might know something.” I straightened, tried to rub the feeling back into my numbed legs. “She put a white crystal on the paper. The crystal turned black, then into ash, and the witch said it was because of the drawing, some ancient evil. But I thought it was one of her witchy tricks. Like flipping tarot cards and making up a message.”
The depth of Julien’s sigh should have made his shoulders move. “The rune is ancient, my lady,” he said. “No one knows what it means. But around the drawing, the marks like random scribbles?”
He waited until I nodded.
“Amal wrote in code. I deciphered four words. Repeated like the rune. Like she was afraid she’d forget.”
“What four words?”
“ The nymph queen knows.”