Vanya rolled her glorious eyes. “What, Dragon?” she snapped in annoyance.
Saber laughed out loud. He actually laughed. “Are you kidding me?”
Ciopori shot him a murderous glare. “Does anyone in this room seem to be kidding, or laughing, other than you?” Her words were sharp and surprisingly welcome.
“No,” he said, as the realization finally sank in. Vanya—was—alive. Serpens had actually heard his prayer, or rant—whatever—and he had somehow spared her life. “The conversion?” he asked, finally coming back to his senses.
“She’s through it,” Kagen said.
“Through it?”
“Vampyr,” Kagen clarified. “The conversion is complete.”
“And…and our son?”
Vanya raised herself to one elbow. “The pregnancy is still viable, Saber. And Kagen assures me that, while there are still twenty hours left to go, the children will be born in the usual way…once they’re ready.”
“The usual way?” Saber repeated, certain that he was beginning to sound like a ninny. It didn’t matter. He wanted to be sure that he understood.
“You will call them from her womb when they are ready,” Ciopori chimed in. “And then you will fulfill the demands of the Curse as required.” Her voice was still clipped with anger.
Saber nodded solemnly. “Of course.” He took a few more steps forward, daring to approach the gurney once more. “And you, Princess—your pain?”
“I am no longer suffering, Dragon,” Vanya said matter-of-factly. “And Kagen has healed my wounds.”
Saber met the Master Healer’s gaze then, studying the deep reflective centers of his otherwise dark brown eyes. He didn’t have a vocabulary for thank you any more than he had an understanding of the true sentiment, but he hoped his expression conveyed at least something of his relief.
Vanya cleared her throat then. She struggled to sit up beneath a massively protruding belly and regarded Saber with a sidelong glance. “I trust you will see me through the rest of this ordeal?”
“Of course,” Saber said, not sure if he understood where she was going with this.
“You need to block her pain and keep the discomfort at bay, vampire,” Ciopori said crossly.
Saber nodded at the prickly princess. That he could do. “And when our son is born, I’ll take care of the…sacrifice.” He eyed Napolean for confirmation. At this point, he wasn’t quite sure if the god Serpens had accepted his trade or not: if he needed to trade his life for Vanya’s, turn himself over to the Blood, or butcher a dozen cows, perhaps perform a pagan ritual…or two. Again, he just wanted clarification.
“I will walk you through the sacrifice,” Napolean said.
Saber reached out to place his hand on Vanya’s belly—he was ready to move forward with the process, to begin blocking her pain, and gods be merciful, hopefully, get it all over with without further incident, when Vanya grasped him by the wrist to stop him. “Wait,” she said resolutely.
He met her gaze.
“You need to understand something first.”
He nodded, waiting.
“You keep saying our son…” She looked away as if to gather her courage. “Dragon, when this is all said and done, I plan to raise my son in peace.” She sighed, and her eyes betrayed the slightest hint of regret, although the set of her jaw reinforced her resolve. “The gods spared me today from my own foolishness, and I am grateful to you for pleading so mightily on my behalf, our behalf, but I cannot forget or forgive the suffering I have endured these last twelve hours. Every time I come near you, I get burned by your fire. I am wise enough to know when enough is enough. I cannot save you, Saber; nor do I wish to try. Please know that I wish you no harm, but when this is finally over, you will not see us again. And I need you to respect that. To leave us alone.”
Saber pulled away from her grasp. He wrapped his right fist in his left palm, and held both to his chin as he struggled to process all he had heard.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t lash out.
And he didn’t argue.
Hell, less than one week ago, perhaps just one day ago, he would’ve tried to murder everyone in the room, taking Vanya out as a mere casualty of war. But he didn’t have the strength to fight the world right now.
He didn’t possess the resolve.
There was no place in this valley for him—dark or light—and that was simply the way it was: If Napolean let him live, and that was still to be determined, perhaps he could find a place of his own. Perhaps he could still reach Diablo.
It didn’t matter.
Eternity was a very long time, and his immortality was looming very large at the moment. He knew better than to make any decisions right then, whether to submit, strike back, or disappear. For now, he would get through the pregnancy and the sacrifice, and live to decide another day.
“I don’t respect that,” he finally said, coldly. “But I won’t challenge it, either. At least not today.”
twenty
Saber pressed both palms flat against the rough mosaic tiles in front of him. He shifted his weight onto his rear leg, arched his back, tilted his head, and closed his eyes, as the warm water rained down on him, the large, circular showerhead providing a steady stream from above. It had been seventeen hours since his son was born, sixteen since he had made the required sacrifice, and this was the first chance he had had to reflect on the day’s events. The water felt incredible, better than anything he had experienced in a long time. Blinking several times to rinse the soap from his eyes, he watched as foamy gobs of shampoo and body-wash rolled off his chest, fell to the shower floor, and snaked in haphazard streams down the spherical drain.
What in the world was he supposed to do now?
He let his head fall forward, allowing the water to wash away his stress, if only for a moment, while he replayed the sequence of events in his mind.
Vanya’s pregnancy had proceeded in a normal, uneventful manner, at least as far as pregnancies in the house of Jadon were concerned. She had chosen to remain asleep for the duration of the ordeal—perhaps it was a reaction to the conversion, or perhaps she couldn’t bear to spend one more moment than necessary with the fire-breathing dragon she had come to despise.
Saber.
Saber took in a mouthful of water, rinsed the remaining residue of toothpaste out of his mouth, and spit it on the shower floor. What did it matter why she had chosen to remain unconscious for the birth of their son? The outcome was the same. Saber had sat alone in the dark, beside the princess, as she slept on the gurney. He had kept one hand firmly on her belly in order to block the discomfort of her pregnancy, hold it in his own body, instead, while she had remained unconscious, no doubt, dreaming of better days.
Days without Saber.
As if that had not been degrading enough, Napolean Mondragon had coached him telepathically throughout the entire process; and while the king was at least judicious enough to wait outside the curtain, allow them some small measure of privacy, his overwhelming presence had felt like an iron fetter around Saber’s neck.
He had not even been allowed to catch his own son as he materialized.
Kagen had done it for him.
Saber shifted his weight from his left leg to his right, stretching the opposite calf. Kagen Silivasi had cradled Saber’s newborn son in his arms, while Napolean Mondragon had stepped beyond the curtain to receive the Dark One, keeping him securely tucked in his ancient arms. Saber had followed behind like a servant, accompanying the implacable king to the Chamber of Sacrifice and Atonement in order to relinquish the child to the Blood. In order to recite the required supplication.
He didn’t even know if Vanya had named the Light One.
He ran his hands through his hair, combing it out with his fingers, his thumb and forefinger working through a particularly thick mass of black-and-red tangles. Had Vanya been excited when Kagen awakened her? Had she reached out for the babe, or turned away in disgust?
Saber had no idea.
br />
He only knew that he had left the room like a banished specter, cast out into the night, with the unwanted, unnamed one to fulfill the demands of the Curse. And wasn’t that just the most contrary, offensive experience of his life.
Saber had been raised in the house of Jaegar—not the house of Jadon. His whole life, he had expected to see two dark sons emerge from a tortured soul, a human woman who would be no more than an incubator for his future, should he have ever chosen to pursue that eventuality. He had simply accepted that the demands of the Curse were inevitable: The firstborn child would be relinquished to the Blood, while the second born would return with him to the colony, to be raised as his own cherished offspring. Never, in eight hundred years, had he expected to see two distinctly opposite twins: one born with coal black hair, absent of even the hint of red tendrils; the other bearing the signature crown of the cobra, a brand identifying him as dark, soulless, and damned. It had seemed impossible, wrong, and foreign to every cell in his body to take that child of the Curse to a platform, exalting a granite altar, and place him in a smooth, rounded basin while a dark, inky fog swirled eerily around him. To watch as the Blood shrieked, gloated, and claimed the evil offspring…until the child was no more.
For a moment, Saber had struggled against his own impulse to oppose Napolean and the whole damn Curse, to snatch the child from the basin, return him to his rightful home in the Dark Ones’ colony, and to go back to life as it was supposed to be. As he had been raised to believe it one day would be. But for the first time, he had known that he had to submit, allow fate to unfold against his will, acquiesce to the vilest of revengeful omens.
After all, the truth was no longer deniable: Saber Alexiares had been born to Rafael and Lorna Dzuna, into the house of Jadon. He was ruled by a celestial deity—not a dark lord—Serpens, the god of transformation, to be exact. And that same god had heard his plea for mercy in a moment of absolute confusion and desperation. He had spared Vanya and his rightful son.
Saber shook his head briskly, wishing he could just wash it all away. Wake up from what surely had to be a never-ending nightmare.
But it wasn’t.
And he couldn’t.
He reached forward to turn up the hot water, aggressively adjusting the spray until it was nearly scalding his skin. The heat felt stimulating on his back, cleansing, somehow purging in light of all the recent events.
Saber could not have saved that child without condemning himself to die.
Not only would the Blood have come for him at the end of the thirty-day Serpens Moon; but after his agonizing and vengeful death, he would have spent all of eternity in the Valley of Death and Shadows, having forfeited his immortal soul. A soul he didn’t even know he had a month ago.
And beyond that inescapable truth, the dark offspring would have been like him, a son without a home, a being without a people. Even if the house of Jadon had let the creature live, which was doubtful, what would he have grown up to be? A murderer? A rapist? A dark cauldron of hatred and base instincts who sought only to destroy and procreate? Would he have turned out like Salvatore Nistor?
Saber slammed two fists against the tile wall, immediately checking to see if he had broken any bones. He then scanned the mosaic to see if he had damaged any of Napolean’s rare, expensive tiles. Nope, they were still in place: Thank the lords for little favors. It was just that he couldn’t wrap his head around all this darkness and light. Saber believed that his sons, both of them, deserved to have life; but that was because he was viewing the world through the lens of his own existence. As much as it pained him to admit it, he had always had a soul; and that meant that even in his darkest hour, he had seen the world differently than the other males around him. There had been something, however small, redeemable in his heart. How could he understand, then, the type of monster his dark son would grow up to be? Sure, he had lived with them—in the case of Damien, Dane, and Diablo, he had even cared deeply for them. Loved them. But that was because in his own demented way he could love.
“Shit,” he whispered beneath his breath. It was all just too much to consider.
And it was all water under the bridge anyhow, too late to go back and change things.
Saber bit his bottom lip so hard that he drew a trickle of blood, wishing he could call on his father—on Damien, that is—and just talk to the male. Try to understand why he had done what he had.
Ask him for advice…
Punch him right between the eyes and pummel his smug face until his jaw caved in.
And wasn’t that really the crux of it?
Damien had made the most selfish, destructive choice imaginable when he had taken Saber from Rafael and Lorna, and what the hell had he been thinking, anyway? Did he really believe it would never come out…be discovered? That the two distinctly different fates, those awaiting the males in the house of Jaegar versus those awaiting the males in the house of Jadon, would never rear their inevitable heads?
Gods…Dark Lords—whatever the heck he was supposed to pray to now—what had the fool been thinking?
As the water began to turn cold—he had been in the shower so long his skin was beginning to shrivel up—Saber couldn’t help but wonder what if. What if Damien had never made that ill-fated choice? What if he had left him in the house of Jadon? Sure, he would’ve grown up surrounded by a bunch of arrogant, sanctimonious, jackasses; and he would’ve probably been sporting some ridiculous title like Master Wizard or Master Warrior about now—although he had to admit, both Nachari and Marquis Silivasi were a couple of bad-ass vampires—but at least he would have been prepared for his Blood Moon. He would have known what it meant; and he might have approached Vanya differently.
He might still have his son.
As it stood, what did he have now? He had lost the house of Jaegar, his father, and his brother.
And he had lost his child. And the princess.
He winced at the realization: What did that mean, anyhow? Saber knew about as much concerning relationships and love as a fish knew about a bicycle. The two articles were simply diametrically opposed: Saber and love. Still, he did know something about family…and loyalty. He knew how to hold onto what was his and how to fight for his tribe.
He knew…something.
He knew…nothing.
Not a damn thing.
Unable to withstand the cold, frigid water that was now pouring out of the spigot, he turned off the spray, reached for a large white towel, wrapped it around his waist, and stepped out of the shower. He had to stop thinking. His head was going to explode.
He regarded a pile of fresh new clothes, stacked neatly on a knee-high, folding table beside the bathroom door, and almost smiled. Almost. It would take a heck of a lot more than some fresh duds to raise his spirits at this juncture; but still, the idea of a fresh pair of Jockey shorts, some clean cotton socks, and a new pair of smooth black jeans to cover his neglected body with, at this point, sounded pretty good. The crisp red shirt and the sturdy Timberline boots were a welcome sight for sore eyes in their own right.
He dressed quickly, ran his fingers through his hair one last time to remove any remaining tangles—at least push it away from his face—and then he stepped outside the door into the clean, night air.
Napolean was waiting as expected. “Saber,” the monarch said, taking Saber’s full measure with a subtle, almost indiscernible, sweep of his eyes.
How was he supposed to address him now? Saber wondered. Ah, hell… “Milord,” Saber replied. The word would never fit nicely on his tongue, but Saber was just too tired, too emotionally exhausted, to fight the whole free world this night.
Maybe tomorrow.
“You look better,” Napolean commented halfheartedly.
Saber smirked. “Yeah.”
To Napolean’s credit, the king did not try to fill the silence with words. He simply stared off into the distance at a large grouping of pine trees, and Saber followed his gaze. The night was quiet, peaceful. The sky was a de
ep, midnight blue, and there were stars shining as far as the eye could see. How ironic, Saber thought absently. He watched as a blazing torch shot across the darkened canvas at dizzying speed, a shooting star, a meteor, burning out in the earth’s atmosphere in real time, maybe milliseconds, after possibly existing in the cosmos for millions of years…or more.
Saber couldn’t help but find the omen appropriate. “So what now?” he finally asked.
Napolean shrugged. “Indeed, that is the question.”
Saber restrained a smart-mouthed retort. He wasn’t in the mood for posturing. “So am I free then?”
Napolean shook his head slowly, his deep, dark eyes, always brimming with silver light in the centers, growing even darker with intensity. “Are you?”
Saber sighed in frustration. “No riddles, Napolean.” He caught the disrespect and tried to rectify it. “Please, milord, not tonight.”
“No riddles,” Napolean agreed. “Only truth.”
Saber waited, not entirely sure if he was ready to hear this new truth.
“If you’re asking, are you going to be restrained, taken back to the cell? Then the answer is no. So, I guess, in that sense, you are free,” Napolean said. “But no one is going to hold your hand, or try and lead you back to the light, either.”
Saber squared his shoulders, facing the powerful monarch directly. “You trust me? To move freely through Dark Moon Vale?”
Napolean chuckled then, the sound utterly absent of humor. “Trust you? No. I don’t think you even trust yourself at this juncture.” He brushed a seeking mosquito off his arm. “But the thing is: I don’t have to trust you, Saber. I took your blood. I can feel you, sense you, no matter where you are. And unlike any other vampire walking this earth, I possess a unique ability.”
When the king did not elaborate on the statement, Saber decided to just bite the bullet and ask: “And that is?”
“I can kill from a distance.”
Despite himself, Saber shuddered. Although his curious mind wanted to inquire how, he thought better of it and simply nodded instead. “So if I mess up, I’ll just, what? Drop dead?”