Saber blinked, trying to make sense of what was happening, and just that quick, he recoiled. Achilles and Salvatore were standing side by side like two merchants on a street corner, holding up their wares; only, dangling from their gore-filled hands, were two beating hearts, the dislodged organs severed from their hosts and dripping blood on the ground.
The corpses of Damien and Dane Alexiares slowly slumped to the ground, their deceased mouths still open in shock, their expired knees buckling forward. Before Saber could react or cry out, Achilles drew his sword from its scabbard, slashed deftly through the air, and both of the male’s heads toppled forward, decapitated from their bodies.
Saber stood in stunned silence, staring blankly ahead.
Watch your back, son of Jadon! Salvatore snarled at Saber, using the house of Jaegar’s private, telepathic bandwidth. You no longer have a home here.
And with that, the entire delegation of Dark Ones simply vanished out of view, leaving the dead in their wake.
Time stood still.
The earth stopped spinning on its axis.
Nothing happened.
Nothing mattered.
Nothing existed.
Saber took two uneven steps forward and cocked his head to the side in confusion. He looked down at his chest and frowned. Why was he still standing? Still breathing? He stared at his breastbone in bewilderment—where was the gash? Where was the gaping hole in the place where his heart should have been? He didn’t see it happen. He didn’t feel it happen. But Salvatore must have removed his organ too—it was the only explanation that made sense.
The only way to account for the pain.
He absently scanned the ground, fully expecting to gape at the gruesome sight of his own blood and guts, intestines strewn beneath his feet, blending morbidly with the dirt, staining his steel-toed boots. Again, his mind could not connect the dots, make sense of what had just happened; but the pain—great Dark Lords of hell, the agony!—was beyond anything he had experienced in battle before, beyond anything he had ever imagined.
Surely there was nothing left of him but skin and bones.
He looked up then. Staring blankly forward at the headless bodies of his father and his brother.
Damien.
Dane.
And eight hundred years of memories—six hundred years of brotherly antics—flashed through his consciousness in an instant.
They weren’t…dead.
They…they…just weren’t.
What happened?
He had to go to them. He had to go home. Dane would go hunting soon. He would feed, and Damien, Diablo, and Saber would await his return so they could feed, too.
Yes, he had to go back to the lair.
Saber took another tentative step forward, but for some strange reason, his legs didn’t work like they should have: They began to buckle beneath him.
He opened his mouth to say something, and that’s when he realized he couldn’t breathe.
He hadn’t taken a breath for hours.
He exhaled, three times in a row, failing to inhale in exchange. His vision grew blurry, and he started to panic.
Air!
Where was the air!
Why couldn’t he draw in breath?
As he continued to pant in desperation, his knees gave way, and he pitched into the dirt. His head fell forward, and he thought he saw his wild hair through his peripheral vision, framing his face in a hideous, matted halo. His hands dug into the earth, and he curled his fingers back, releasing his fangs. Clawing…grasping…trying to hold onto something…so vital.
And then the air came back.
It rushed into his lungs like a cyclone sweeping across the plains, nearly knocking him off balance, and he gasped. “Oh Dark Lords.”
He moaned.
His fangs extended from his gums, and he bit into his lips, tearing at them, trying to manage the internal pain.
Blinking several times in rapid succession, Saber Alexiares finally threw back his head and tried to scream, but no sound came out. He simply shouted noiselessly to the empty skies what should have been a deafening roar of defiance, and his body shook.
His chest heaved.
Over and over…and over.
But no sound would come out.
“Saber, uita-te la mine, fiule.” Look at me, son. Someone was standing next to him, speaking in Romanian. Why in Romanian?
He shouted again; and this time there was sound!
Balls of fire began to fall from the heavens, plummeting to the earth and consuming whatever they touched in a blistering wrath of fury.
“Saber!” A strong, powerful hand on his shoulder.
No! No. “Don’t touch me!”
The ground shook beneath him, and thunder and lightning eclipsed the sky. It was beautiful. Dangerous. Glorious.
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
It would never be enough!
As pain racked his body in violent waves, Saber began to sway back and forth, shouting, moaning, pounding the ground, praying for the fires of heaven to consume him where he knelt.
“Son, you have to stop: Your emotion—it’s too strong.”
That voice. It belonged to Napolean Mondragon. But son? Saber Alexiares was no one’s son. He had no father…
He had no father.
He—had—no—father.
As a keening wail escaped his lips, renting the air with its ferocity, the soul he never knew buckled beneath a grief beyond his reckoning.
And then his eyes focused on Damien and Dane, their decapitated bodies, and he prayed for death. As the world around him rattled and shook with the fury of a thousand dark angels, he began to grow weak.
Fangs.
Venom.
Something being inserted into his neck.
Ah yes, Napolean Mondragon, the great leader of the house of Jadon was kneeling beside him, curiously injecting venom into Saber’s neck. But why?
Why didn’t matter.
There was nothing.
Nothing.
And then, in a few interminable seconds, the world went black.
fifteen
Vanya Demir knew better than to pull the same stunt twice, to risk using her magic once more to slip into Saber’s cell undetected, and what she intended to do this time was far more difficult, way more complex, and wholly deceitful. Not to mention, she wasn’t even sure if she could pull it off.
She had worked feverishly to create an Illusion Spell, an elaborate hoax that created a rift in time, so to speak. If all went well, Saber’s guards would see, hear, and sense everything around them as if it were happening right now, in the present moment, when, in truth, they would be experiencing a holographic image from the past, an illusion. Vanya could slip into Saber’s cell and interact with him, undetected, while the sentinels would swear he was sleeping soundly, through the night.
She shuddered as she thought about the vast array of spells her female predecessors had conjured—indeed perfected—and the way she was now able to revive it through her work at the University. The males in the house of Jadon had no idea just how powerful their ancient female ancestors had truly been: They were completely unaware of the immense fountain of knowledge that had died with the original women…well, almost died.
Vanya still had access to it.
So did Ciopori.
And when one really thought about it, the Curse still inflicted a great deal of it on an ongoing basis.
Vanya wrinkled her nose and cringed, at both the thought of the awful Curse and the idea of what would happen to her if she got caught. The king would surely throttle her if he knew she was using her magic for personal gain, and that was to say nothing of what Marquis would do if he found out: He would string her up by the highest tree and tan her hide with a prickly branch. Never mind how the highly volatile and totally unpredictable Saber Alexiares was going to react to her entering his cell, once again, unannounced. Even if everything went exactly as planned, she might be in f
or the fright of her life.
Vanya struggled to dismiss the thought before she lost her courage. After all, she had already weighed the pros and cons: Of course, she knew it was crazy—by all that was holy, it was stark-raving mad, not to mention utterly foolhardy. But what else was she to do? Ciopori had relayed the night’s events to her shortly after the warriors had returned from the Red Canyons, and the very idea of what had happened in that clearing had made Vanya sick to her stomach.
Made her want to wretch.
The executions of Damien and Dane were a ghastly abomination she could hardly wrap her mind around, let alone simply dismiss. Despite the fact that they were evil, Dark Ones without souls, Saber Alexiares had cared deeply for them, perhaps even worshipped them, and his sense of betrayal had to be immense.
And the way Ciopori had described his grief?
Great Serpens, even for one as dark as he, it had to be horrific. Irreconcilable. For all his faults—and wasn’t that word completely insufficient in light of his sins—he did love his dark family. At least, in whatever approximation of love he was capable of.
According to Ciopori, Napolean had been forced to sedate him just to stop the fallout from his anguish: Saber had unwittingly called down fire from the heavens, and he had been swiftly on his way to causing an earthquake or a tornado. The thought of that arrogant, rebellious male brought to his knees in torment, broken from the weight of his sorrow, kneeling upon the ground in raw, unrelenting pain was even more than she could bear. It was heart wrenching…unimaginable.
Dreadful beyond her imagining.
Yet it was neither Saber nor his pain that drove her to take such a foolish, reckless chance. Plain and simple, it was her dream.
Always…and still…her dream.
All she could think of was the nightmare, the dragon, and the treasure.
Her people.
And what was surely about to be lost forever.
Vanya Demir knew that Saber Alexiares was on the edge of a precipice, and if he fell this time, he might never return. And for some unknown reason, she also knew that she was the only soul in the house of Jadon who could truly get through to him, if it was even possible to get through to a soul as lost as his. In this critical, tortured moment, she was his only hope for salvation.
Was it dangerous? Of course.
It was beyond dangerous—it was stupid.
Would the ones she loved hold her decision against her? Absolutely.
In fact, it might be unforgiveable in the king’s eyes. And yet, she could no more turn away from this challenge…this duty…than she could turn away from Nikolai or Ciopori if they needed her. Whatever it was that drove her to such desperate lengths, the compulsion was greater than her reservations, the obligation stronger than her common sense.
She drew in a deep breath for courage: This was bigger than a lost vampire and his destiny, and she had to see it through.
Staring now at the perfectly constructed Illusion Spell, she watched as Ramsey and Santos peered naively into the cage and saw a troubled, sedated prisoner asleep on his cot—a scene reconstructed from twenty-four hours earlier. They were completely unaware of her presence and totally ignorant of the ruse.
Realizing it was too late to turn back now, she took a cautionary step forward and fixed her eyes on the real crouching tiger in the corner of the cell, the dark vampire, estranged from both the house of Jaegar and the house of Jadon, who was alive, awake, and suffering right before her eyes.
Saber Alexiares was hunched over like a wounded animal. His heavy shoulders were cloaked by an equally heavy cascade of black-and-red locks that gleamed in the shadowy moonlight as it shone through the tiny window above him; and his hard, sculpted muscles were drawn tight and rigid. For all intents and purposes, he looked like a caged feline, cornered and ready to pounce. He stared absently at the floor; he clawed repetitively at the ground; and he swayed back and forth like a kite caught in a circular wind.
Frankly, he looked more than a little bit insane.
He looked dangerous.
Vanya approached the vampire slowly, careful to stay out of striking distance. The dream-image of a fire-breathing dragon suddenly emerged in her mind, and she quickly shoved the picture aside. “Saber,” she whispered softly. “Dragon, are you in there?”
He raised his head slowly—so very slowly. His demeanor was eerily calm…yet not. And then his eyes met hers, and her breath caught in her throat: His pupils were vacant yet fixed upon hers. His face was drawn tight yet absent of lines. His expression was empty yet far too aware.
He was a breathing paradox.
Vanya clutched her hand to her heart and whispered a silent prayer to the gods for protection. “Saber,” she repeated, adding a little strength to her voice.
The top right corner of his lip turned up, and a wicked glint of fangs flashed in the moonlight. “Princess,” he drawled in a mere hiss of a voice. “You come to me…again.” His black eyes were so dull and lifeless that it felt like she was staring into the gaze of a shark.
“I…I…yes.” She cleared her throat for courage. “I heard what happened. And I came to…to see about you.”
He rose so nimbly, so swiftly, and with such lethal ease that her heart almost stopped beating. Oh great Celestial gods, she was a dead woman. The dragon was going to kill her right then and there—it was written all over his face: fire, fury, and finality.
She held a steadying hand out in front of her. “Saber…please. Stop, Dragon.”
He licked his bottom lip and growled deep in his throat, the warning of a feral predator. “What big eyes you have, Red Riding Hood.”
Vanya gulped. “Saber!” She tried to snap him out of it. “This is not a game!”
“Indeed,” he replied. “Death never is.” The meaning of his words echoed loudly in her mind, ricocheting off her soul, and then he did something completely unexpected: He took two healthy strides forward, sank back onto his knees, and knelt silently before her, dropping his head in resignation. He reached up and clutched her hands in his. “Help me,” he whispered in a voice so faint it was nearly inaudible.
Stunned, Vanya bit her bottom lip. She was too afraid to speak, too afraid to move. She had no idea what was about to happen next and could only wait, transfixed by the depth of his emotion.
Seeming to understand, Saber nodded his head in the direction of the watch-room, the space that housed his guards, and the foreboding chamber that sat just beyond the outer walls. “I wish to play no more games,” he said softly. “Take me to the chamber of Sacrifice and Atonement, Vanya. Take me beyond the crossbones and open the hatch.” His cruel mouth turned up in a smile. “I have had my fill of this incessant torture.” He laughed insincerely, the sound rough yet hollow. “I get it. Payback is a bitch, and I had this coming. Still…” His smile turned morose, almost as if he were flashing back and forth between cynicism and sorrow; and his already harsh grip tightened further around her slender fingers. “Still…enough is enough. Isn’t this what you, the king, and all the house of Jadon have been waiting for—what my own treasured house of Jaegar has been asking the dark lords for since the moment my true origins were revealed?” Before she could answer, he added, “Just take me to the Death Chamber now, and let the Blood come for me tonight. For the sake of your gods—and your children—let the Blood exact its vengeance and be done with it.”
Vanya glanced over her shoulders at the thick, ancient walls made of mud and stone, following his morbid gaze. Even as she wrestled with the meaning of his words, struggling to process exactly what he was asking, she knew…and she understood. Saber wanted to die. He was ready to be taken into the cold, sterile chamber of torture to face his final reckoning. Good or bad, right or wrong, redeemable or evil; he no longer wanted to live. She shook her head slowly. “You know I cannot do that, Saber.”
“Why not?” he asked, his voice revealing his angst. “You can put guards to sleep, create magical rifts in time, slink in and out of this cell like
an invisible specter. Why can’t you take me into that chamber and set me free…in a way your people will both understand and forgive?”
She didn’t know how to answer him. There were so many reasons, so many things he hadn’t thought of. “It isn’t time,” she finally said.
He tilted his head to the side and frowned, appearing genuinely confused.
“The Blood,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t come tonight—not even if we wanted it to.” She clenched her eyes shut and moistened her lips. “It is not yet time, Saber. There are still twenty-five days left in your Blood Moon.”
Saber laughed unexpectedly, the sound as anguished as it was derisive. He released her hands, made a triangle with his thumbs and forefingers, and pressed the configuration against her lower stomach as if framing her womb. “And so, what? You’ve come to give me the needed sacrifice then?”
Vanya drew in a quick intake of breath. “No!” She pushed his hands away in revulsion and fought not to squirm. Realizing that a defensive reaction was not going to help the situation —if anything, it would probably make it worse—she purposefully softened her voice and tried for a gentler tone. “No, that is not why I’ve come. I’ve come to…I’ve come to…” Oh heavens, why had she come?
Suddenly, she felt incredibly stupid.
And more than a little lost.
Whatever had she thought she could do for him?
He suddenly jerked upright and his back grew stiff, almost as if someone had forced a rod through his vertebrae. His eyes flashed a deadly crimson red. “Why are you doing this?” he snarled, clearly escalating.
Vanya shook her head vigorously. “Doing what?”
“This!” he roared, pounding a clenched fist several times against his chest.
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“This spell. This vitriol! It doesn’t become you, Princess.” He looked down at his chest and grimaced, grinding his teeth together as if in terrible agony. “It is something I would expect from someone in the house of Jaegar.”
Vanya blanched, her mouth falling open. What in the world was he talking about? By the look on his face, one would have sworn she had just thrust a dagger into his sternum and twisted it 360 degrees just for the pleasure of doing so. Had he gone utterly mad?