CHAPTER 13
“Aria! Aria! Arianna!” She groaned softly as she tried to roll away from the incessant hands shaking her, but they were clinging to her, refusing to let go as they shook her again. This time harder. “Arianna!”
She batted at the hands, trying to break free, but she was so tired and they just wouldn’t let her go. “Stop!” she protested.
“Get up Aria, you have to get up!” It was the urgency of the voice that finally pierced through the haze of bliss and exhaustion that clung to her. She cracked open an eye, frowning at the blurry face before her. It was too much effort to concentrate on the face, instead her eye drifted back shut and she snuggled deeper into the delightful bed beneath her. The voice swore loudly, then, before she knew what was happening, she was heaved up out of the bed and tossed over someone’s shoulder. She sputtered in disbelief as she was spun around in a circle and then dumped on the bed once more. “Get up Aria or I’m going to throw you in the tub.”
She blinked in surprise, trying to clear her blurry vision. Eventually her eyes began to focus; she frowned in surprise and disbelief as Jack came into focus. She gaped in horror, bolting upright in the bed as she pulled the comforter tight against her chest. “Jack!”
She was completely disoriented, out of sorts, and lost. She was in Braith’s bed, wasn’t she? But where the hell was Braith and what the hell was Jack doing here? “Where’s Braith?”
Jack had turned away from her, he was searching for something, but she didn’t know what it was until a pile of clothes was dropped in her lap. She stared at the pants and cotton shirt in disbelief. They were similar to the clothes she had worn in the woods, except these were pitch black instead of brown or light green. “He was called to a council meeting with our father. Get dressed. We have to go quickly, before he gets back.”
“Wait! What?” she gasped.
“We have to go Aria! Now!” he snapped impatiently. “Get dressed before he gets back.”
Horror flooded through her. Go? Now? Leave Braith? No, no she couldn’t. Not after last night, she could never leave him after last night. “No Jack, no I can’t.”
“Aria…”
“No, you don’t understand Jack. I can’t leave, I simply can’t.”
He seized hold of her cheeks, thrusting his face into hers. “You don’t understand Aria. This is our only chance at escape, if we don’t leave now then you will remain here, and your father will come for you and he will die. Now get up, and get dressed.”
She gaped at Jack, then at the clothes, then back at Jack. Her mind spun, her heart was thrumming. She couldn’t leave Braith, she couldn’t. She loved him! And though she wasn’t completely sure, she thought he might have said he loved her too last night. But it was all so hazy, so distorted and confusing, and it was all so wonderful that she could barely contain her excitement over it. Until the horror of this situation, right here and now, came surging back to the forefront.
“Aria…”
“No Jack, no. I want to stay. I can’t leave him, I don’t want to.” Jack’s eyes widened in surprise, the blue flecks in them were more clearly visible as he gawked at her. “Jack, please…”
“You cannot stay here Aria, I can’t let that happen. No matter what, your father will come after you.”
“No.” She seized hold of Jack’s hands. “Not if you tell him I’m dead Jack, that I’m gone.”
“Max…”
“Tell Max the same thing.”
Jack’s jaw clenched, his nostrils flared. He was staring at her as if he didn’t recognize her, staring at her as if he didn’t have a clue as to who she was. And truth be told, she didn’t really know who she was anymore either. All she knew was that her heart was with Braith and she could not leave him. “Max is here Aria, he knows you’re alive. He’s keeping lookout right now.”
Her eyes widened, her gaze darted rapidly around the room as she searched out Max, but she didn’t see him anywhere. Disappointment filled her; she wanted to see her friend again, at least once more. She wanted to make sure that he was ok, but she couldn’t leave.
“Then tell them I’m happy Jack, because I am. I… I…” She broke off, her fingers clutched at the blanket. She heaved a soft sigh before she turned back to Braith’s brother. “I love him Jack.”
Jack’s eyes widened, he sat back as his mouth dropped in horror. “Aria…”
She seized hold of his hand as she leaned forward. She was desperate for him to understand, desperate for him to hear and believe what she was saying. She knew what Jack was now, but she was surprised to realize that she still trusted him; that she still believed in him, and he was the only one that could help her right now. “I know it makes no sense, but I do love him and I want to stay with him.”
Jack’s gaze turned pitying. “Aria…”
“Please Jack, I…”
He seized hold of her face, his hands lightly cradling her cheeks. “He has a fiancée Aria.”
Her words broke off, sputtered, and died. Horror curdled through her, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She could only sit there and stare at him, her mouth open, and her heart no longer beating as something within her curdled and died. “No, not possible, he… No.”
“Yes, Aria. They’ve been betrothed for over a year. They are getting married in six months.”
She couldn’t breathe; she was choking on the air she so desperately needed to get into her lungs. Strange sounds were coming from her, they weren’t human. She didn’t feel human anymore as her heart shredded, her chest constricted, and a moan of pain died within her. Jack held her as she rocked forward, unable to fully comprehend his words, unable to function through the agonizing pain consuming her.
“I’m sorry Aria, I am so sorry, but you can’t stay here. She’ll have you killed as soon as the wedding is over and he won’t be able to save you. He’s my brother, but he will never go against my father. It’s the curse of the first born I suppose to be the one reared to one day rule the roost, and to do as expected. Now, you have to pull yourself together, we have to get out of here.”
He pulled her out of the bed, depositing her on her shaking legs. “Don’t make me have to dress you Aria.” She shook her head numbly, tears streamed down her cheeks as she grasped hold of the clothes he thrust at her. She could only gaze numbly, brokenly up at him. She hated the awful pity in his eyes, hated the fact that she looked so weak and pathetic right now. “We have to go, get dressed.”
Jack turned away. Her hands shook as she pulled the slip over her head. She was still wearing the crazy undergarments from yesterday, but she was shaking so bad she knew she would never be able to get them off. He was engaged? He was engaged! They were the only words running through her head, the only thing she could concentrate on. He was engaged and he had never even told her. He had slept beside her, held her, kissed her, and he had fed off of her. He had used her, and all the while he had known that he had a fiancée. She had never kidded herself with dreams of a future for them, but she had never expected this betrayal. If he had told her, she never would have allowed things to go this far, she never would have allowed him to touch her and hold her. And she sure as hell wouldn’t have allowed him to feed off of her.
Tears streamed down her face, she couldn’t get the buttons together. Jack was back before her, his eyes sad, the sympathy in them almost more than she could bear. “You let him feed from you.” Aria blinked at him as he buttoned her shirt swiftly. She was not embarrassed that Jack was seeing this much of her, nothing else could faze her at this moment. He grasped hold of her shoulders, shaking her gently. “Aria, you need to listen to me, and you need to focus on me for a moment, it’s important.”
She managed a nod, and she just barely managed that. “He fed from you.” It was not a question. In fact it was quite obvious that Braith had fed from her as her slip was stained with blood, so was the bed, and she could still feel it against her neck. She winced slightly as Jack brushed at the blood on her neck, rubbing against the sore wounds upon her. “Did he give you any of his blood?”
“Excuse me?” she asked in surprise.
Jack was growing frustrated with her. “Think Aria! This is important! Did you feed from him?” he enunciated clearly.
Aria blinked as she tried to recall the night, but her mind and body shied away from the painful memories. It was too much. She couldn’t think about it. It had all been a lie. A cruel, brutal lie that she had thought meant so much more, when in fact it had meant absolutely nothing to him. She was nothing but a blood slave after all. She didn’t know why he had waited so long to feed from her, and she didn’t want to think about it. There was no way that she could figure out what he had been thinking, or doing, or why. She was not cruel and manipulative like him, she would never understand why he had done this to her. It didn’t matter anymore. It all meant nothing. For the first time in her life she had been a silly fool who had allowed her defenses down, and she had gotten what she had always expected. Nothing.
“Aria!” Jack growled.
She blinked him into focus, shaking her head slightly. “No, I… No. What does it matter anyway?”
“It matters. Are you sure?”
She bit on her bottom lip. There had been dreams, so many wonderful dreams of peace and love and security. There had even been a dream about something sweet and wonderful tasting, but they had been nothing more than dreams. They couldn’t have been anything more, he was engaged after all, and therefore he never would have told her he loved her. Because his heart already belonged to someone else. Dreams, nothing but awful, shattered dreams.
“No,” she whispered. “No, I didn’t.”
Jack heaved a sigh of relief as he nodded. “Good, good. We need to go.”
She didn’t respond as he seized hold of her arm, pulling her through the library, sitting room, and then into the bedroom she had first used upon arrival. Max was standing by an open doorway that she had never seen before. It seemed to have magically appeared in the wall next to the bed she’d slept in. Max’s eyes widened as he caught sight of Aria. For a moment, the sight of her friend was enough to make her forget her pain. A soft cry of happiness escaped her as she raced forward, throwing herself into his open arms. He had lost weight, his face was gaunt, his eyes were far wiser and sadder, but his arms were still warm and secure as they wrapped tightly around her.
“Later, later.” Jack was pushing them toward the open doorway, shoving them into a dark tunnel.
“What is this?” Aria gasped.
“Security tunnels, all the apartments have them. They lead out of the palace. We have to go fast though; they’ll kill us if they find us, and personally I don’t feel like being caught and branded as a traitor. It is not a pleasant death,” Jack informed her.
Aria imagined it probably wasn’t. She kept her hand tight in Max’s, taking strength in his warm touch. She was struggling not to cry as they fled through the dark tunnels with Jack leading the way. She could barely see through the darkness, but Jack moved with unerring speed and sureness. She didn’t look back until they reached the end of the tunnel, and then she only paused for a moment. She vowed that she would never look back after this, never think about anything that had happened within those hated walls again. Though she wanted it desperately to be true, she knew that she was lying to herself.
She stared down the darkened tunnel for a long moment. Her heart was broken; her chest ached with the force of the agony consuming her. She was leaving that palace and that world behind, she would never return to it, but she knew that it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would never escape what had happened within those walls, never be free of the agony inflicted upon her. Though she didn’t want it to be true, she knew that it was. She also knew that she would never be same, knew that the woman that walked out of this tunnel was far different than the girl that had first entered as a captive.
Max tugged on her hand, pulling her forward, tearing her from her melancholy thoughts. She turned away, fighting back the tears of hurt and anger that burned her eyes. She would never look back again; especially not now that she had her freedom, and would soon have her family. They plunged into the wonderful sanctuary of her beloved woods, blurring easily in with the surrounding forest.
***
Braith was shaking; rage consumed him, boiling through his blood, causing his eternal darkness to turn a fierce shade of red. She was gone. He had known it the moment he stepped back into his apartment. He had sensed her absence when he had been downstairs, but it wasn’t until he had returned that the lack of light, and her beauty, confirmed his fear.
Keegan whimpered softly, moving slowly away from Braith’s leg, slinking away into the shattered debris that littered the room. To say he had lost his temper would be an understatement; he had been in a rage, furious at himself, furious with Jericho, and furious with her. He knew that his youngest brother was behind this, there was no one else that could have taken her from these rooms without being seen. There was no one else that would have known when Braith would not be present, and where the tunnel within his apartment was located.
“Your highness.” He turned slowly at the sound of the wavering voice. His hands clenched tightly on the head of his cane, he would need it now that he had destroyed the room. There were obstacles in his way that had not been there before, and she was no longer present to light his way. “There is no sign of them outside of the palace walls.”
“Of course there isn’t,” Braith growled. Jericho was smart, he was quick, and he would be long gone by now. Using his cane, Braith maneuvered his way through the shattered remains of his furniture. His display of temper and destruction could be blamed on the fact that his brother had stolen his blood slave; all of his kind would understand the betrayal, the wound to his pride, and the denial of his toy. But as he stopped in the doorway of his bedroom, he knew that it was far more than that.
The scent of her blood assailed him; it burned into his nostrils, flared through his body, causing an aching hunger to explode through him. She had been so wonderful, so free and giving last night and so delectably satisfying. Her blood was delicious, it had filled him and nourished him in a way that he had never felt nourished or filled before. But even more potent than her blood, had been her words. Whispered words of love repeated over and over again as she had clung to him. Words he had never heard before, but that he had relished and believed in. Just as he had believed her vow to never leave him, to stay with him always.
Lies, it had all been lies, and he had been the fool that believed them. He clutched the head of his cane tighter, fighting the urge to smash it off the wall. He wanted to rip his brother limb from limb, he wanted to shake her, grasp her, make her tell him why she had offered her blood to him, why she had told him she loved him, and then left him the very next morning. It was the betrayal that made him angriest, the betrayal that made him want to hunt them all down and destroy them. And he could, he could find her so easily.
He could track her through her precious woods, seize hold of her, drag her back here, and lock her in a room for the rest of her miserable life. He could make her pay dearly for her betrayal, make his brother pay. He could make both of their lives a living hell if he chose to. He could destroy them, ruin them completely. Arianna may not have known that he could find her whenever he chose, but his brother should have known better. Jericho should have known that Braith would make him pay for their perfidy, that he would come after them, and that he would make Jericho pay for helping her, and make her pay for her lies.
“The other blood slave?” he growled, turning back to the servant.
He could hear the man shifting nervously; feel the fear coming off of him. “Is gone also your majesty.”
Rage suffused him once more; he couldn’t stop himself from smashing his cane off the wall. The impact jarred through his hand, the cane shattered, sending pieces of shattered debris flying. He wasn’t sure if it was Keegan, or the servant that yelped in response. Braith stood for a moment, shaking with anger, barely able to keep his fury under control.
“Get me a new cane,” he snarled.
The servant scrambled away, his feet cluttering over the debris. Braith stood for awhile, trying to regain control of himself and his wildly swinging emotions. It was a long time before he felt calm enough to move again without ripping something to shreds. It took even longer before he could take a new cane from the servant, without fear of killing the innocent man.
“We’ll go after them, we’ll make them pay.” Braith turned at the sound of Caleb’s voice. It was funny that just yesterday Jericho had been his favorite, now he despised him even more than he ever could have disliked Caleb. “There are already men gathering to hunt them down.”
Braith remained silent for a moment, he could hunt her down, he could find her in a matter of hours, but he found himself not wanting to do so. He did not want that traitorous bitch back in his life, did not ever want to see her again. He preferred his world of blackness to the sight of her disloyal, hideous face. She had wanted her freedom so badly that she had lied and manipulated for it, as far as he was concerned she could have it. She could have her starvation and cold, she could have everything that she so badly wanted.
He wanted nothing to do with her anymore, and would not stand in her way.
“Jericho has been labeled a traitor.”
“He is,” Braith said softly.
“There is a large bounty on his head; it shouldn’t be long before one of the starving masses turns him in. I am sure that the other two slaves will be in his vicinity, and I am also certain that he will turn on them as swiftly as he turned on us when we find him.”
Braith nodded, wrapping both his hands around the head of his new cane. “If he is found, I want him brought to me. I want all of them brought to me.”
“Of course,” Caleb murmured.
Braith leaned back, closing his eyes as he tried not to think about the depth of her betrayal. He would not hunt them down, he would not go into the woods after the two people he had come to rely on and trust the most. But if they were captured and brought back here, he would be the one to make sure that Jericho was destroyed, and he would be the one to hand her over to Caleb, one of the most vicious vampires he knew. And then he would sit back, and relish in the sounds of her screams as Caleb did what he did best.
Until then, he was going to gorge himself on as much blood as it took to help him forget this horrendous mess. He moved toward Caleb, finally beginning to understand his brother’s cruelty and hatred as those emotions started to curdle through his gut, move through his chest, and bury him beneath its crushing force. He had never experienced these emotions to this depth before, but he relished in the hatred and bloodlust as it was the only thing that buried his betrayal and hurt. “Clean this mess up,” he growled at the servant.
Keegan whimpered softly as he padded slowly after Braith, following him down to the dungeons. The wolf had never been here, it had been years since Braith had been down here, mainly because he despised it. But now he found himself craving it, needing it, desiring it with a ferocity that left him shaken. He threw the doors to the dungeons open, the scent of humans and fear assaulted him. These were the blood slaves of the royal family, at least until they were drained dry, and discarded to make room for others.
He moved swiftly through, stopping only briefly to pick out three women from behind the bars. He did not know what they looked like, but the scent of their blood was not as repulsive to him as some of the others. “Have them cleaned and brought to me,” he commanded the guards.
He may not have Arianna now, but he sure as hell was going to satisfy his hunger and attempt to ease some of his fury. It was funny; a skinny wisp of a girl had managed to do in one month what his father had failed to do in over nine hundred years. And that was to turn him into a coldhearted, blood thirsty monster.