“Good luck with that,” I said. “Not too many worthy female counterparts around here.”
“Anything’s gotta be better than you.” He nudged me with his elbow, flashing a toothy grin.
“Yes, considering I may be destined for death-by-evil-vampire.”
He leaned in and peered at my sheets. “Hm. Tricky stuff, huh?”
“Yeah.” I dumped the pages on the desk again and rubbed my face. “You got any ideas what all this means?”
“A few.”
I turned my head to look at him, but he sat there, his face straight, hands in his lap, looking distracted or maybe bored. “Blade?” I said loudly, slapping his wrist.
“Okay.” He laughed, snapping out it. “Couldn't resist torturing you a little.”
“I think I’ve had enough torture for one lifetime.”
“Ah ha!” He laughed, pointing at me. “Funny.”
“More like distasteful.”
“Nah, it was actually funny,” he said in that well-articulated English accent, drawing his chair a little closer to the lip of the table. “Right. So, prophecy or contract? What is the answer?”
“I think it’s a contract.”
“As do I, pretty queen,” he said distractedly, his eyes moving over the words. “But, for what, exactly?”
“A child.”
“Yes. A child conceived with a firstborn nobleman and a pure Lilithian.”
“Yes.”
“And then again, we could be wrong.” He looked up at me.
I sunk back in my seat. “Yes.”
“So, why the big deal about all this?” He held up the scroll in question. “I mean, what does it matter if we find the truth or not, really?”
“It doesn’t.” I took the scroll and rolled it up. “I guess I just don’t like questions being unanswered.”
“Well, Princess Sherlock—” he stood up and pushed his chair in, “—you won’t find the answers by looking at the same sheet you’ve been looking at every night since David arose from the dead.”
I frowned at him, tucking the scroll under my arm. “You’ve been following me?”
“It’s my job.” He spread both arms out and took a small bow.
“Not at night.”
His lip curved into a sharp, sideways smile. “I am your eternal servant, My Queen. I am never off duty, especially when I know that you know you don’t have a guard on at night.”
“Why should that matter?” My lip turned up. “What did you think I was up to down here?”
“Nothing bad. That’s not why I followed you.”
“Then why did you?” I pushed past him and walked into the storage room; the musty smell of lonely pages was stronger here, closed in by the narrow aisles at least two vampires tall and twenty meters long, the shelves crammed tightly with scrolls and parchments.
Blade leaned his forearm on the doorframe above his head. “I was worried.”
“Worried?”
“Yes. About you—about how you’re feeling right now.” He folded his arms. “I actually thought you might be coming down here to cry in privacy.”
I gave a mock pout, grabbing a pile of scrolls. “How sweet. But I’m not that into you, Blade, not enough to cry.”
“Ha-ha.” He stepped aside to let me pass. “But, seriously, I thought you might be upset about David.”
“What about him?”
“About the way he’s been treating you,” he said suggestively.
I stopped walking.
“Yeah,” Blade added. “I notice everything.”
“He’s just trying to stamp his seal, if you know what I mean.”
“I get that.” Blade walked over and pushed in the chair I’d left hanging out. “But he’s all high and mighty about it this week. He’s even hurt my feelings.”
I laughed. “He’ll get over it. I’m giving him a gentle period of adjustment. Then, I’ll kick his ass if he snaps at me in public again.”
“Is he. . .” Blade lowered his face but looked up with his eyes. “Is he like that behind closed doors?”
“No,” I said, laughing the word out. “He’s still the same sweet David.”
“M’kay.” He nodded. “Well, I’m just lookin’ out for ya, is all.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Any time, Sherlock.” He saluted me and grabbed the stone column beside the stairs, using it to sling his body around the corner and out of sight.
“Morning, My Queen.” Edgar bowed, placing a tray on the edge of my bed.
“Morning, Edgar.” I sat up a little to look at David. “Where’s the king?”
“In the crypt, Majesty.” Edgar wandered over and opened my curtains. “He’s given permission for you to dine in bed this morning.”
“The crypt. What’s he doing in there?”
“I believe he is carrying out the sentence he passed on the four men from New York this morning.”
“What!” I shoved the covers back. “I sentenced those men yesterday at Court. They were to be put in the cell block.”
“My apologies, Majesty.” Edgar bowed. “Perhaps I am mistaken.”
“No, you’re not, Edgar.” I slipped my robe on and tied the belt around my waist. “David’s gone behind my back.”
I charged forward, ignoring Falcon’s line of questions as my feet moved over carpet then tiles then stone steps, following my memory down through the cell tunnels and the dark, chilly corridors that led to the crypt below the manor.
Row upon of row of caskets lined the walls like bars of gold in a vault, each one containing an ancient skeleton of loved ones passed, or victims of Lilith’s hunger in the days she was alive. I’d been down to the crypt only once—walked into the open cavern of the Main Tomb, and my blood had run cold. It reminded me of a great underground cave, the walls rising high into the air above, almost blue-grey, turning black where the cave went too deep to see. But you couldn’t walk through it. The cave went on forever behind a small brick wall placed as a partition between the floor and an endless drop into nothing—the same endless drop they lowered prisoners into when Drake ruled.
My steps slowed slightly as I reached the end of the tunnel, seeing the orange glow of firelight flicker across the dirt floor, while a hammering sound echoed off the drop. And right where Edgar said he’d be, my husband was fastening the last nail into a coffin—the other prisoners nowhere to be seen.
“David.” I reached down and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done.”
“No.” I placed my hand over a soldier’s as he and another lifted the coffin. “I made a ruling. I sentenced these men to twenty years in The First Order’s cells, away from their homes, friends, everything.”
“Take him away.” David waved a hand, standing up, and the soldiers shrugged me off, hooking chains under the casket.
“How could you go against me like this?” I stood back.
“Ara?” David drew a long breath, pinching his brow. “This is my ruling, and when you sit in that Court, day after day, and see no more cases like this, you’ll thank me.”
The men hitched the chained coffin to the hook hanging over the depths of the sixty-foot hole it was destined for. I watched on, holding my breath, until David walked toward the crank that lowers the chain. “David, stop.”
He paused, his shoulders high and stiff. “Ara, please don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
“Hard? Hard for who?” I cried, listening to the man inside the box banging the lid, screaming for all the mercy of the gods. “Please, don’t do this. You talk about showing ourselves to be strong, a force to be reckoned with, yet you go against your own queen. How can my people respect me, if even you don’t?”
“They don’t need to respect the queen, Ara,” he said, then nodded to a soldier near the door. “They need to love her.”
“What are you doing?” I struggled against the man as he pulled me away from David. “Let go of me.”
“You are the heart of this nation, Ara.” David placed both hands on my arms. “I am the fear. They will not cross me again, nor will any other vampire, for that matter. And in my doing this, you’ve not had to sentence men to tortures you’ll lose sleep over.”
“But I’ll lose sleep anyway, David,” I cried. “Please?”
He wandered over and wound the crank, sending the last man slowly to the burrows of Hell.
“David, this is madness. Please stop, I’m begging you.”
“This is how things have always been done, Ara.” He turned to face me. “They tested our resolve, and this is their reward.”
The man’s screams hollowed out, his scratching and clawing becoming an echo as the box hit the earth and the darkness of the past—the darkness David had become accustomed to, grown up in, desensitised to—rounded out around me, drawing me into both his world and his past. And I didn’t want to be a part of that.
I watched him shovel a heap of dirt and toss it ceremoniously into the hole, and I loved him and respected him as much as I hated him right then. I knew he was right. I knew if those men were allowed to escape with easy punishment, they’d be back here in thirty years having done the same thing, as would many more over that time. David was the rightful king, the man who had the heart to get things done, even if those same things would break mine. But he wasn’t my David, right now. He wasn't the boy I fell in love with. This David was something else entirely.
I dropped to my knees as the last heap of dirt covered the vampire’s cries, and David came to squat before me. “My love?”
Tear streamed past my lips, making my nose run. I wiped them away with my sleeve, refusing to look at him.
“I’m sorry, Ara.” He stood up. “I hope one day you’ll come to understand why I had to do this.”
I nodded, pushing up off the ground to stand. “I understand. I really do.”
He stroked my cheek once. “But I’ve hurt you.”
My tears salted the air on my lips. I looked up into his loving eyes, and the hatred I had for him a moment ago trickled away, taking the anger with it. “Like I said, I understand why you did.”
He kissed my brow and stepped past me, nodding at the guard before leaving the crypt, his shadow flickering on the walls under firelight until it disappeared.
***
“Blade?” I met him on the stairwell toward the eastern quadrant.
“My Queen. How are you?” He touched his chest, bowing. “I heard what happened.”
I stopped on the stair below him, hearing the screams of that man echo throughout my soul. My tears had dried, but I knew my face was still red. “Look, I know we shouldn’t be talking alone, given the curse of Lilith and all, so I’ll get straight to the point.”