Crown of Ruin

  In his eyes, I can see that I am not winning. I’m not swaying him.

  “It wouldn’t be for nothing,” Cyrus says. His voice is hard, strained. “Because instead of perhaps sixty years together, we have had lifetimes. There has been pain and separation, yes. But all these years.” His eyes are hard as he looks down at me. “It would not have been for nothing.”

  Once more his eyes harden.

  He turns, and he walks toward the doors. “I am tired, Sevan. After all this time, I’m tired.”

  He pulls the door open.

  “Then I will carry you for a while,” I say, feeling like I’m fracturing into a dozen sharp pieces.

  Cyrus stalls, looking back at me. I can’t quite tell what he’s thinking. But he turns back to the door, and walks out.

  Stab, stab, stab.

  It feels like I’m hit with a thousand little darts. Pricked over and over by the pain of disagreement. But understanding.

  Because I’m tired, too.

  I want to run away together, to just live a simple, normal life with the man I love.

  But now is not the time.

  You have to understand, I tell myself. You have no idea what he’s just been through. Give him time to adjust.

  So I make a deal with myself. Take a breath, give Cyrus some space. And keep doing what I’ve been doing since I arrived in Roter Himmel.

  Chapter 19

  For two days, I give Cyrus his space. I don’t necessarily avoid him, but I wait for him to seek me out. Which he doesn’t.

  So on the sixth day since the invasion of the army, I slip out of the castle during the day. I pull on my darkest sunshades, and I sneak down to the same house I slipped out of before, the headquarters of this plot.

  A guard immediately sticks a gun in my face, demanding to know how I escaped lock up. But Matthias Reiter steps into the building, dismissing the man.

  “I am impressed with your ability to stay so removed,” he says in an unidentifiable accent. “With all that is going on.”

  “I’ve been otherwise occupied,” I say, absolutely zero patience right now.

  “Leave her be, Matthias,” a voice says from the dark. From the hallway steps Malachi. He glares at the general with dark eyes. Matthias doesn’t seem intimidated, but he does head back in the direction he came from.

  “Where is Dorian?” I ask, looking around to see if he’s hiding in the shadows, too.

  “He is assisting with the interrogations,” Malachi explains, walking over to the window. It’s covered with heavy shutters, but he sets sunshades on his face, and opens them to look out.

  “Have we identified any traitors yet?” I ask, going to stand beside him.

  Looking out, I see how they have handled keeping a town full of vampires captive.

  Guards stand outside of every building. They’re keeping the vampires inside, away from the painful sun. They keep them from escaping with their weapons.

  “So far three individuals have admitted to being vampires,” Malachi says with a sigh. “Most are staying strong. They maintain that they do not know that their former leader is anything other than human.”

  I nod. I want to get through all of this now. It’s impossible to be patient with so much on the line.

  “This is going to take some time,” he says, as if he can read my thoughts.

  I sigh. This is going to be the difficult part in all of this for me. These immortals have lived such long lives, what is a couple weeks or months to them?

  But it’s forever to me as Logan. It’s forever when I know my brother is tied up in all of this. When Alivia and Ian are stuck in the thick of it all and I know they’re innocent.

  I’ll extract them at some point. Let them in on everything. Alivia needs to return to her house, and soon.

  But I have to let them all believe this is real. It’s about fooling those who are watching them.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, my Queen?” Malachi asks. “They all fully believe you’re in captivity. There’s no need to prove anything.”

  I nod, steeling my gaze. “I have to. I can’t let there be any hint of doubt that this is real.”

  Malachi nods, a look of deepening sadness in his eyes, and reverent respect.

  He nods, and Matthias steps back out. Without hesitating, which makes me believe that he’s enjoying this, he snaps handcuffs around my wrists, which is laughable. I could break them easily.

  But I couldn’t survive the assault rifle that he places at my back, over my heart, and the pain I’m about to experience when he pulls my sunshades off is very real.

  “After you,” he says with a smile in his voice. He reaches forward, flinging the door open, and pushes me out into the sun with the tip of his gun.

  A cry of pain leaps from my lips as I step out into the brilliant sun. I’m blind, everything a glow of white. It’s like ten knives are stabbed into each eyeball, and they’re all white-hot.

  Through town, I walk with the gun pressed to my back. I make sure to scream plenty, but I also try to make it seem like I’m attempting to be tough. I try to act like I am a queen and that I’m being strong for my people.

  So much fake.

  So many faces I have to wear.

  But it will all be worth it in the end.

  Matthias guides me to The Communal. It’s a hotel with a bar on the main floor. It’s old. It’s been a center for Roter Himmel for hundreds of years. A gathering place for Royals who travel here, a right of passage to some degree. It’s a place where others congregate, to drink and socialize.

  Of course it would be where they’re holding many of the Royals.

  “You’ve found nothing,” I growl at Matthias as he marches me up the stairs to the building. “Take your men and leave.”

  “Not until you give us the answers I want,” he counters, clearly enjoying our little ruse.

  I stumble through the door when he shoves me with the barrel of his gun. But I sigh, relieved that it’s dimmer inside.

  Dimmer, but only marginally.

  A short hallway immediately opens up to the lounge. There’s a bar against the far wall and tables and chairs are scattered throughout the large space. Other rooms break off down hallways. There’s a staircase that goes up from next to the bar, and upstairs, I know there are rooms for guests.

  But all the windows are open. They let in the brilliant summer light, and my head still throbs.

  “Take a seat,” Matthias says loudly and with bite to his tone. He shoves me to a table in the center of the room and I sink into it, glaring up at the man.

  We’re being loud. We’re doing this in a public place. Because we want every part of this conversation to be overheard.

  “I’m not saying a word until you close those shutters,” I snarl. “I can’t even think straight and you expect me to give you honest and true answers in an interrogation?”

  “And why do you need the shutters closed, Ms. Sevan?” Matthias asks, laying his hands flat on the table and leaning in toward me.

  “I’ve got a migraine,” I say, narrowing my eyes and leaning toward the man.

  It really is too easy. I’ve got all this acid in me, and Matthias doesn’t have to fake much. He really is a nasty boss man.

  It’s almost fun.

  “You’re a difficult one to peg down,” Matthias finally says, standing and going to one set of shutters. He closes one, looks over at me, waits dramatically, and closes the other.

  Real relief sighs through me though as the room becomes darker.

  The searing pain in my eyes lessens just a bit.

  “It’s obvious you’re someone important to these people,” he says as he continues going around the room and closing shutters. “The way they talk about you, you being in that castle. It appears you’ve recently returned. From where, I haven’t yet puzzled that out. But these people, they do seem to love you.”

  “I take care of them,” I say. “Loyalty goes both directions.”

  Matthias closes
the last shutter as four more guards step into the room, each wielding a deadly-looking firearm.

  “And what about the man some have called the King?” Matthias questions. Slowly, he walks back to me, and he stands at one corner of the table, looking down at me. “I get the impression that they meant to keep him off their lips, but more than one has slipped. The great country of Austria has no king and hasn’t for over one hundred years. So tell me, where is this King and when can I speak to him?”

  I feel little barbs bristle all over me. I don’t want to pretend that Cyrus is dead. Not when for a week and a half I wasn’t sure if he was or not. I want to scream it out for the entire world to hear, that Cyrus is alive.

  But now is not the time.

  “He’s dead,” I say, letting my eyes drop to the tabletop. “Someone murdered him a week ago.”

  “My condolences on the loss of your husband.” He says it in a way that is supposed to reveal that he’s figured this fact out, that this King is the other half to my Queen. “But tell me, Sevan. Why would they call him King?”

  My eyes rise up to meet his. This really is too easy to fake.

  Roter Himmel has been strong. We’ve been left alone for a very long time. But there has always been fear in the back of my mind. Fear of a situation exactly like this one, that someday we would be discovered and investigated, and I would have to answer questions just like these.

  “Words are just words,” I say. “The people could call him a monkey or a vegetable and he would still only be a man.”

  Matthias smiles, and I wonder: how did he come to be a part of this? When did he learn about our kind, and when did Dorian decide he was trustworthy?

  But if Dorian trusts him in this, I trust him.

  “You say you have a migraine,” he moves along. “It makes me wonder if there is something wrong with the very air here. I’ve heard that excuse a hundred times in the last two days. But surely that is illogical.”

  “It’s been a stressful couple of days,” I say. “We’re all having a bad week.”

  “I’ve never seen group migraines, Sevan,” he says, sitting down in the chair across from me. “I’ve never seen a migraine so severe that it caused anyone to scream like that at the exposure of sunlight. I’ve never seen a migraine make eyes turn so bloodshot it was as if they were bleeding from within. I’ve never seen a migraine instill so much fear at the prospect of being taken out into the sun.”

  I just stare at Matthias. I don’t have any words right now, and I don’t really need them.

  “Tell me, Sevan,” he says, leaning forward and folding his arms on the table. “Why, after some repeated exposures in the sun, have no less than seven of the members of this peculiar little town, confessed to being vampires?”

  I already knew this was a fact. Well, Malachi told me that three had confessed. But even though I was already warned, it still hits me like a slap across the face.

  I feel betrayed.

  There’s a little spike of fear that jumps up in the pit of my stomach that worries over what Cyrus will do to those who betrayed our secret.

  I force myself to chuckle. I smile, and tilt my head to the side just a little. “And you believe them?” I pause, staring Matthias down. “Vampires aren’t real.”

  I believe every inch of that evil looking smile that curls on his lips. He’s so good at this.

  “Thank you for your time,” he says, suddenly standing. “We’ll speak again, very soon, when you’re feeling more truthful and cooperative. Until then, I hope you feel like deepening your tan. You’re looking a little pale.”

  “No,” I say, putting a trace of fear in my voice. “No, I…”

  But I trail off.

  And it has the immediate desired effect.

  “Sevan!” someone yells from inside the building.

  “She’s just a woman!” another person calls from inside. “Let her go!”

  “Please, let us go!” someone else cries.

  It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to look over at Matthias and give a conspiratorial smile. But there’s always the chance we are being watched.

  Roughly, he drags me to my feet and hauls me out to the doors. I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes closed against the burning sunlight, and I scream. Then there is the sound of bodies pounding on walls. There’s screams and I hear my name shouted over and over. Others yell at the guards and I hear furniture being smashed to the ground as a riot breaks out.

  There’s a gunshot that echoes deafeningly through the entire town.

  I whip back, prepared to run inside. But Matthias is there, pressing a hand into my chest, his eyes serious. “All of my men have been instructed to never shoot to kill unless their lives are in immediate danger,” he hisses in a whisper. “You set this up, Sevan, to accomplish something monumental. You have to deal with the fact that there may be repercussions.”

  My eyes are wild and terrified as I look at him. But as my thundering heart comes to accept his words, I know he’s right.

  I have to accept it.

  And I have to remember, this isn’t entirely my fault. I was pushed to this. Because someone else made choices, choices that threatened us all.

  This is for the greater good.

  I nod once, and turn back to the blindingly brilliant road outside, and march myself in front of Matthias, looking like a good little prisoner.

  An hour later, when I get word that the riot has been quieted and no one was killed, I return to the castle, with a dark, heavy heart.

  Chapter 20

  With the sun sunk below the horizon hours ago, I can’t stand it any longer.

  This is enough. Enough with the wallowing in self-pity. Enough acting like a child.

  I set off through the castle, straining my ears for the sounds of Cyrus and his whereabouts.

  He’s not in any of the grand ballrooms. He is nowhere to be found in the lab. The armories are empty. Through each passageway and hall I look.

  I’m really, really disturbed when I stumble upon something I’ve never seen before, tucked way down in the fifth level of the castle. It looks like a club. With private rooms and poles and everything.

  I’m going to kill Cyrus for that. He better have some good answers.

  But further through the castle I explore.

  Each bedroom is empty. He isn’t in the kitchen.

  For a minute, I start to get scared.

  What if something happened to him? What if one of these Born or Royal who betrayed us has found Cyrus yet again and sought his demise once more?

  Or what if he truly meant what he said? That he’s tired. What if he’s…what if he’s left?

  My stomach feels like a sick, hard knot. Sweat breaks out onto my palms and I stand in a central hallway, turning little circles.

  But suddenly, there, in the back of my brain, a dim light bulb flickers on.

  There is one more place, somewhere I haven’t stepped foot in for over five hundred years. But it’s the last possible place.

  There is one lone tunnel that branches off of another on the sixth floor. The doorway is hidden, a series of walls that blend together. You would only find the entrance if you knew it was there.

  I slip between the walls, and set off through the pitch-black tunnel that burrows straight back, into the deep heart of the mountain.

  The path goes on and on for what feels forever. But when light tickles the edges of my vision again, I slow my pace. My feet don’t make any sound, and as I see the opening at the end of the tunnel widen, my insides go cold and still.

  Ice creeps through every one of my veins. I feel my limbs tighten, as if a black snake slithers around them, constricting. Dread drips into my brain, my eyes, my throat. My stomach.

  I can hardly move as I step from the protection of the tunnel, and into the place that encompasses my worse nightmares.

  It’s a cave. A cavern. The space opens up fairly wide, probably forty feet across, and sits in a fairly even circle. The floor
has been leveled out smooth. But the walls jut up high above me. At least three hundred feet. They sail so high that the ceiling is nearly lost in the dark.

  But there, at the crest of the cave, there is a small hole. About three feet in diameter. Moonlight spears into the cave, barely illuminating it.

  Cyrus kneels in the center of the cave, staring at the walls. He’s utterly still, totally silent.

  I want to be sick. I could vomit. There’s the sharp taste of metal in the back of my throat. I’m pretty sure all of my cells are slowly transforming into steel. But I take three more steps inside, fully illuminated by the light of the moon.

  There are seven crypts that surround us. Gorgeous, intricate openings with arches and platforms along the cave walls.

  Resting in each one of them, out in full, plain sight, is a skeleton.

  Emotion pricks my eyes as I look around at each one of them.

  My throat is so thick it’s painful.

  I can’t breathe.

  As if falling back through time, I let my eyes study them one by one.

  The body of La’ei.

  Edith.

  Antoinette.

  Shaku.

  There rests the body of Helda.

  Jafari.

  And finally, there in the center, straight across from where I stand, where Cyrus kneels before, are the bones of Sevan.

  Tears slip from my eyes as I stare at them.

  What is this curse? What is this magic that rips me from body to body, with all my memories, from face to face? What kind of evil saw this as fair?

  I feel my mind wanting to fracture as I stand here, seeing all of these skeletons. I remember every detail of living in every one of those bodies. I remember racing across the sand, I remember swimming in the ocean in the moonlight. I remember meals eaten and long journeys taken.