Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Everything was wrong.
The revelry of the full moon ball blazed around me. Delighted laughter tangled through the music and filled the air with gaiety. But it could not touch me, not even now I’d been reunited with my maker and we were so close to the end of a reign of tyranny.
No, because Adrienne’s face was pale and withdrawn as she and Lilith entered the ballroom linked arm in arm.
Her cheekbones were hollower, the circles beneath her eyes turned from merely shadows into bruises.
A soft vee was etched between her brows and, though Lilith smiled widely as we approached, Adrienne’s attention fixed on Seth instead of me.
Lilith initiated the greeting. Adrienne did not repeat the phrase, but she did curtsey and finish the ritual.
I welcomed Lilith, pressing my mouth to her forehead and following it with a touch of my thumb to indicate to all here that she was a member of my household.
But agony pierced my heart at the sight of Adrienne’s hands trembling into fists in her skirts, her eyes shut as she braced herself for my touch.
I slid one hand to the back of her hair, cradling her head as I brushed my lips across her brow.
She pulled away but I held fast, kissing one cheek and ghosting my mouth across hers as I went to the other, lingering at the spot near her jaw that used to make her melt.
Her sorrow was a tangible creature in the room, climbing up my arms to weigh upon my shoulders until I pressed my lips to her furrowed brow in an effort to smooth it.
Finally, she opened her eyes. The crystalline blue of her gaze pierced my heart and just for a moment sharp words pierced my mind.
You are only as good as what you can provide, the voice shrieked.
I froze, hand tightening on her neck before sliding away to graze the spot on her cheek that held no remnant of that night she’d returned to Oylen.
With a sigh, I leaned forward again, onlookers be damned, to kiss her lips, to try to bring that fire back to her veins.
But she only held very still, even if her eyes did close.
A flash of blonde hair caught my attention as I drew away. Though my heart ached with each bit of space I placed between us, I turned from Adrienne. “Lilith, there is someone I’d like you to meet.”
I guided her from Seth toward Callum, who’d approached the dais with Mateo and Henry.
Callum’s eyes shined with anticipation as they looked her over, the silver in them swirling with the power Seth had bestowed.
With that blood exchange we were now more like brothers than anything else.
Seth had all but claimed him as a fledgling.
I gestured toward Callum. “I do not believe you have yet been formally introduced to Lord Callum Auguste.”
A flicker of deep feeling passed over Lilith’s face and I had to look away as she curtsied low. “It is an honor, Lord Auguste.”
I took a step back, turning to Adrienne only to find the place where she had been empty. My eyes widened in surprise and I scanned the room, searching for any hint of her in the deepening crowd.
Toward the music room, Mateo supplied helpfully.
With a nod I slipped from the dais, sticking to the edge of the crowd and moving fast enough I was all but unnoticed.
She was there, making her way down the hall and to the only place she had claimed as her own within my house.
Silently I followed as she took the final turn and all but fell through the door.
I stopped on the threshold while she splayed her hands across the closed lid of the pianoforte, head bowed.
“Tell me what is wrong.” I said the words carefully, each one measured, in fear I might spook her.
Even so, she whirled in a swirl of cream silk. “Nothing is wrong.”
“Do not lie, my heart, not to me.”
Her eyes squeezed shut. “Do not call me that.”
“Call you what?” Ice-coated dread crackled through my veins.
When they reopened, her eyes were dead, all the life leached out through the tears standing in the corners. “‘My heart.’”
I took one step forward. “But that is what you are.”
She shook her head, circling to the other side of the instrument. “I cannot do this anymore.”
That same voice pierced through the room, so loud in her mind I wondered how she did not cover her ears. You will be thrown out like the trash you are.
“Adrienne, talk to me.”
Her shoulders shook, fingers tapping against the wood. Another crack in her mental wall: the memory of pain across her cheek, the pressure of her lungs struggling for air. Her mother’s face.
“I cannot do this,” she repeated.
“Yes, you said that.” My voice rose in volume. “But I do not understand what you mean.”
Her nails dug into the wood, leaving behind small half-moons. “I cannot continue to wait around for you to tire of my company. It’s killing me, Eamon.”
I blinked in surprise, reaching out only for her to shy away. “Tire of you? You are my mate. I will never tire of you.”
Some of her hair went flying with the next shake of her head, loosening from her ornate twist. “Do not lie.”
I almost stumbled back at my own words flung in my face. “I would never lie about such a thing. You are my mate.” When I took another step toward her around the pianoforte, she circled to the other side.
“I am your blood mate.” She spat the words. “It is not me you are mated to, but my blood. I am merely the vessel.”
My stomach twisted while acid danced across my tongue.
It was my turn to shake my head as my hands balled into tight fists.
“Adrienne, I would never drink another drop of your blood for the rest of my existence if it meant you would believe me when I say that it is you I am mated to. It is you I desire, you I dream of when I find my rest and you I see when I wake. There is no other but you.”
“No, you’re wrong.” The words were so soft that even with my preternatural hearing I barely heard them. “It is the blood you want. Vampires will say anything in order to get what they desire.”
For over a year I’d struggled to understand her reticence to our mating bond and the way she distanced herself.
But now, as that voice shrieked through her head again, I thought I could.
I’d thought she’d been a shell of herself these last few weeks, but now I realized that instead she had been filled with so many lies they now spilled over.
Those words were not her own, but taught to her like others were taught nursery rhymes.
“I can prove it to you,” she rasped, tugging the pin from her hair until it fell down in waves over her shoulders and chest.
My brows drew together. “Ther—”
Before I could finish the words, she brought the sharp end of the pin to her wrist and dragged down until blood flowed over her palms and dripped onto the floor.
I stood, frozen in horror, as she repeated the action.
Her eyes were wide, a wildness clinging to the corners as she stood bleeding onto the music room floor.
“This is what you want, what you are mated to. And when you have found another, you will leave me as they all do. I have seen it happen time and time again and I cannot bear another second of wondering when the end will come.” Her breath rattled with her tears.
“I do not think I can survive it. I do not want to be her.”
Her voice broke on the last word. This time when I circled around the pianoforte she did not move.
My knees buckled at the sight of the blood splashed across her skirts and pooling on the floor, but it was not from thirst. It was rage and shame that I was the one to blame that made my muscles seize.
I had told myself that it was kindness to be steadfast—through patience all would be well. Had I not been thinking about Mael only the other day? How I’d enabled him and failed him and now the world paid for that failure?
Here was the evidence of that same failing hurting the one I loved above all others.
“If it is proof you are looking for then it is proof I will give you,” I growled. Fear sparked across her expression as I took another prowling step forward.
Too long I had been content not to push, to tell myself her choices had been taken away and I would not be another one to do the same. Too long had I contented myself with whatever she would give me, grateful for any scrap of attention or affection her fear would allow her to offer.
Where is your courage, Eamon? Seth had asked me.
In one swift movement, I brought my wrist to my mouth, teeth slicing through the flesh until blood dripped as hers did. Any color drained from her face and, though she twisted to run, I caught her by the nape of her neck. She whimpered, hands slapping against my chest as I pulled her closer.
“I am not the man you think I am,” I rumbled low, repeating the words I’d said in the woods over a year ago.
Adrienne struggled against me as I brought my wrist to her mouth, but I ignored her as she shrieked, as her nails scratched my flesh she could not tear and she tried to push my arm away.
I pressed my bleeding wrist against her mouth, pushing enough to part her lips and force the truth to slide down her throat.
Her eyes grew so big I could see the entire ring of blue around her pupils before they dilated.
Her lids fluttered shut and a soft moan slid across my skin as my blood worked through her system.
We were both covered in blood—hers and mine—but I did not care as she grabbed my arm, holding it to her mouth.
In an instant the wounds she’d opened in her wrists closed and I slid my hand from her neck to curl my arm over her shoulders, tugging her close.
“Do you see now? Can you feel it?” I whispered hoarsely.
She moaned again, arousal perfuming the air and cutting through the harsh scent of her fear.
I nipped at her ear, pressed my mouth to her temple, watching as rivulets of her blood and mine slid down her breasts, seeping into the fabric until it was more red than cream.
“I would rather throw myself upon a pyre than leave your side. Each morning I go to my rest is agony, each night I rise is empty until you are in my arms. You are my mate, Adrienne Valois, my other half, my soul match, and I would fight Keryes himself before I ever let you go.”
She blinked as I withdrew my wrist. The temporary connection flared between us and an onslaught of feeling rushed through.
I hadn’t given her enough for the connection to last long—no more than a few days or so—but it was enough for there to be no more secrets between us. Fear. Pain. Grief. Loneliness. Hope.
I touched her cheek, running my thumb across her lower lip. “Do you understand now, my heart?”
Her breath was slow, but there was so much relief flaring through this blood link that it was as if she had not had air for too long.
“Yes.”