Aria

“I love this place,” Aria whispered as she settled on the bench before the fountain. The couple within the center of the fountain, forever gazed yearningly at each other, but they would never be able to touch. Braith had once told her that in the beginning of their relationship, he’d thought of the couple in the fountain as them and had understood the torment on the faces of the couple as he’d been afraid to get too close to her.

She’d later learned Atticus had built the fountain because of Genny.

How fitting now.

“I know you do.”

She tilted her head back as Braith settled onto the bench beside her. This close, she could clearly see the beautiful blue of the band encircling his iris. Black stubble lined his square jaw as his eyes held hers. The heat of his body warmed hers, the love in his gaze making her sigh as she leaned against him.

“I love you,” she whispered.

His fingers slid over her hair, lifting it up and letting it fall back down. “And I you, more than you could ever know.”

“Oh, I know.”

Releasing her hair, his fingers stroked over her cheek, turning her head toward him. Behind his back, hundreds of red roses climbed the trellises and spilled over the walkways of the garden. She didn’t recall there being so many roses before, but now they were everywhere she looked. Their heady fragrance tickled her nostrils, but his scent enveloped her when he leaned down to kiss her. Her hands encircled his forearms as something tugged at the back of her mind.

She couldn’t let him go. She could never let him go. If she did…

What? What would happen? She should know the answer to that, but she didn’t, and right now she didn’t care. Not when his tongue was moving over her lips in that demanding way. She opened her mouth to his heady invasion, her toes curling and a moan escaping her when she felt his fangs against her lips.

Need the connection.

Her fangs lengthened, and she bit down on his lip, but no blood filled her mouth. Pulling away, she gazed up at him as he cradled her cheeks within his hands. “Why can’t I taste you?” she asked.

Sadness filled his eyes as he bent to rest his forehead against hers. For a minute, she simply savored their closeness before his hands lessened their grip on her face. “You know why,” he whispered.

Over his shoulder, the roses drooped. The edges of their petals wrinkled as the vibrant red color darkened in hue. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as the once vibrant red roses became the color of midnight. Blood pooled in their centers before sliding down to drip off of their black petals. The pristine, white rocks of the garden pathway turned crimson with the blood spilling over them.

“Don’t make me leave here,” she pleaded.

“You can’t stay here, Aria. You have to go back.”

Her hands flew up to cover his on her face. She tried to press them closer again, but they were fading away as his appearance wavered before her. “Braith,” she choked out.

“I’m always with you,” he said, and she felt the feathery caress of his ghost lips against her forehead. “Always a piece of you, and I will come back for you, not even death will keep us apart.”

Tears dripped off her chin as he shimmered before her and vanished.

***

Aria

Stars twinkled against the midnight backdrop of the sky as Aria lay on her back, staring up at them. She propped her hands behind her head while she tried not to recall the dream that had woken her over an hour ago. She cursed herself again for falling asleep, but exhaustion had drawn her under.

Not even death will keep us apart.

How desperately she wished those words were true, but the emptiness inside her made believing in anything nearly impossible right now. She watched as the stars changed position in the sky and tried not to think of the many times she and Braith had lain out beneath the stars together. It was impossible not to recall those nights, his kisses, the scrape of his fangs against her skin, his body moving over hers…

Aria rolled over and shoved herself into a seated position. She shook her head to clear it of the memories. Recalling happier times did not make things better; they made it far worse. Lifting her head, her gaze fell on the trees. From within their dark depths, Braith stood staring at her, watching her in that fascinated way he had so often since she’d met him.

For a second, she swore her deadened heart gave a lumbering beat once more. She rose to her knees and almost leapt to her feet to run to him. Then the image faded away, as it had in her dream. She was left with nothing but the shadows of the trees and her encroaching insanity.

Her fingers dug into the earth, tearing away pine needles and leaves as dirt embedded beneath her fingernails and the world became filled with a reddish haze. Her fangs lengthened when bloodlust surged to life within her.

He could still be coming back for me.

Don’t think it. Don’t get your hopes up. You won’t survive the loss of those hopes.

That little inner voice was right and she immediately shut down any belief of Braith’s return.

Xavier lifted his head from where he sat against the trunk of an oak when she took a ragged breath, then another. She hadn’t required air in some time, yet she kept trying to draw it into her lungs now as her gaze remained riveted on where she thought she’d seen Braith standing.

Xavier rose and walked over to kneel beside her; he rested his hand on her back. She wanted to shy away from his touch, but she found herself unable to move enough to do so.

“Easy,” he soothed.

She took another rattling breath before closing her eyes and carefully reining in all of her unstable emotions. Lifting her glasses, she rubbed at her swollen and gritty eyes.

“I’m okay,” she whispered when she had herself back under control.

“If you’re not, that’s okay too,” he said.

She lifted her head to look at him. They’d come from two completely different worlds, yet he was her friend and protector. “No,” she said. “It’s not, and we both know it. Queens are not allowed to fall apart.”

He rested his cheek against her hair and rubbed her back. “That is not always true.”

“It is now.”

He kept his hand on her back as she rose to her feet and carefully made her way toward where Max was keeping watch over the house. He turned toward her when she knelt at his side. “Anything new?” she whispered.

“I haven’t seen her and none of the guards have changed,” he replied.

Aria settled in beside him. “If you want to sleep, I’ll watch.”

“I’m fine,” he replied as Xavier sat on his other side.

Aria peered through the thick underbrush before her. Thirty feet of bushes, vines, and trees separated them and the vampires who were most likely guarding the evil woman inside. If the vampires did smell them, there was little difference between their scent and the other vampires of their town. They were too far away for Max’s heartbeat to be detected.

Her gaze drifted around the woods behind them. She cautiously scented the air as she searched for any hint of a shift in their environment, but she detected nothing. Turning her attention back to the house, she carefully watched everything as the moon crept higher into the sky. She lifted her glasses to rub at her eyes again when a curtain above pulled back to reveal the white-haired vampire often at Sabine’s side.

“Goran,” she murmured as she recalled what William had said his name was.

Xavier and Max followed her gaze to the window. The man stared out it for a minute more before settling the curtain back into place. Aria restrained herself from jumping up and running to the building next door to climb to the roof.

If Goran was in there, then that bitch was too.

***

Aria

The next day, Aria stood sixty feet back in the woods, staring through the trees and brush to the house next to the one Sabine was in. They’d spent all last night and most of today trying to learn as much as they could of the vampires who had invaded the town. There were thousands of vampires, far more than they’d seen in the woods before. It was one more bit of information to file away, one more piece of the puzzle they hadn’t had before.

To get inside the house with Sabine and Goran could be the best way to get more information, but how was she going to land safely on the roof and then climb up it? The roof was nearly a ninety-degree pitch in some places. Even if she could find tacks or nails or something to stick through the soles of her boots, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be spotted or wouldn’t plummet onto the vampires standing guard below.

Death was not an option for her, not right now, and neither was being caught. They had to get closer, but how? By going inside?

Even she had to admit it was one of the crazier ideas she’d ever had, but Sabine had yet to leave the residence and Tempest and William had said she’d rarely been seen outside while in Badwin.

“Crap,” she hissed between her teeth.

“I second that,” Max said.

“The reasons to go inside are sound.”

“Many things are sound and still stupid,” Max replied, and she had to agree with him. “What are you going to do once you’re in there? What if she smells you? You’re going down a chimney so you’re going to have soot all over you. You’ll never be able to leave the chimney with soot all over you, because you’ll leave a trail bigger than the one they left that led us here. Staying inside the chimney isn’t an option either as you won’t be able to hear anything inside the stone walls.”

“What do we do then?” she asked. “We risked our lives to come here. We need more information than they have bigger numbers than we first thought. Not exactly morale boosting.”

Max lifted his hand to rub at his temples. The sleeve of his too big shirt fell down to reveal the bites and burn scars marring his wrists. He’d obtained those scars during his days as a blood slave. It had been well over a year since Aria had seen his scars. He usually kept them covered up, but wearing borrowed clothes instead of having his own, had made that impossible for him.

She was glad she wore the glasses. If he’d seen the direction of her eyes, he would have covered the scars back up and shut himself off from her. Max had come a long way since he’d been freed from his captivity as a blood slave, but any reminder of it still caused him to withdraw.

“I have an idea,” Xavier said from behind her, and she turned to look at him as he unfolded himself from the tree he’d been leaning against and walked toward them. His eyes focused on Aria when he stopped beside her. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t like many things, but I’m willing to do anything to stop her,” she replied.

“Those soldiers, not all of them are overly loyal to her. I’d bet at least half of them, if not more, are following her out of fear and because of the vast amount of power she has.”

“True,” Max said.

Xavier’s gaze went past them to the vampires gathered around the building and patrolling the streets. “We capture one of them and make them tell us what they know about her.”

The blood drained from Aria’s face. She knew Xavier; if he got a hold of one of Sabine’s followers, he would do anything necessary to make them talk. Yes, she’d just told them she would do anything to stop Sabine, but could she condone this action? Could she help carry it out?

Max clasped her arms, drawing her attention to him. Her skin bristled against being touched, but for some reason she could withstand it better today than she could yesterday. Every day brought something new now; it wouldn’t surprise her if being touched tomorrow brought pain again.

“Doing this is far better than risking you,” he said. “We have a better idea of how many followers she has now. We know she has continued her campaign of punishing vampires who go against her, and you saw what she did with those humans in the woods. One of her followers is a small sacrifice to make in the grand scheme of things.”

“Wouldn’t we be sacrificing a piece of ourselves too by doing this?” she inquired.

A muscle in his jaw twitched, his gaze went beyond her to the town. “It’s a piece of myself I’m willing to lose if it helps us stop her.”

“Max…”

His eyes were like chips of blue ice when they came back to hers. She swallowed heavily as she was once again confronted with the man who had been set free from the palace, angry and capable of doing anything to make the vampires pay for what had been done to him.

“I learned long ago we all must do things we don’t want to do in order to survive,” he said.

She knew those words were only a hint of what he’d been through, of what it had taken for him to live through his time in captivity. Resting her palm against his cheek, she sought to give him some comfort. It would be easier for all of them if she closed herself off to those she loved before she died, but she couldn’t. Beneath his words, she sensed the wealth of suffering in Max’s heart. Their experiences as blood slaves had been completely different from each other. Braith had treated her kindly. Katrina, the vampire who had bought Max, had not been so kind.

He placed his hand over the top of hers and gave it a squeeze.

“Yes, we must,” she agreed. She was willing to sacrifice anything to ensure her loved ones, and those who followed her, had some peace in their lives again. She looked to Xavier. “How do we lure one of them away?”

Xavier turned to look at the vampires guarding the house again. “It won’t be one of them. They’ve been trained to protect her, and they won’t leave there one at a time. We have to lure one away from somewhere else.”

“Let’s go then,” Aria said. She slid her hand away from Max’s cheek. He kept hold of it for a minute more before releasing her to follow them through the woods.

***

Aria

They settled in to watch the stables at the edge of town as a handful of vampires exited and entered. It only took an hour to determine that the small, redheaded vampire who remained standing in the doorway of the stables was the one in charge. The only time he left the doorway was when someone brought in a horse.

“What if he doesn’t know anything?” Aria asked as she studied the stocky man with a bulbous nose and eyes that looked about to pop out of his head.

“If he provides care to the horses, then he probably knows more than most in this town,” Xavier said. “There tends to be talk in a stable.”

She’d spent a fair amount of time in the stables in the palace to know that was true. “What if he’s new to her group?”

“He’s not new. So far, he’s known every vampire who has walked into the stable. He’s been with this group for a while.”

Aria’s eyes narrowed on the ugly vampire. What had he seen and done during his time with these vampires? She recalled the parade of humans being dragged around with them and the way that vamp had broken the poor woman’s neck.

Keep remembering that later when you have him, she told herself. She hated them all and wanted them all dead, but there was a big difference between murdering someone and torturing them.

“We’ll need somewhere discreet,” Xavier said.

“There are caves about five miles from here we can take him to,” Max replied.

“That will work.”

They waited until the vampire was alone, standing in the doorway and chewing on a piece of straw before Max took a knife and drew the blade across his palm. Aria noticed Xavier staring at the scars once again visible on Max’s wrist before he turned away. A muscle twitched in the corner of his eye. Xavier could be ruthless and cruel when necessary, but he would never allow another to be hurt for pleasure as Max had been.

The stable vampire’s head turned, and his nostrils flared as he scented Max’s blood on the air. Max walked into the woods with Aria and Xavier flanking him about thirty feet out on each side while Max lured the vampire deeper and deeper into the forest.

When the vamp went to leap on Max, Xavier pounced and brought him down beneath his weight. He shoved a piece of cloth into the vampire’s mouth and jerked his arms behind his back with one hand to pin his wrists there. He balled his other hand and drove his fist into the vampire’s temple. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he went limp.

Xavier lifted him and tossed him over his shoulder. “Lead the way.”

Aria broke into a brisk jog through the woods with Max by her side. She kept alert for any hint of danger within the forest as they ran over the rough terrain. After three miles, they had to stop so Xavier could knock the man out again and Max could take a break to drink some water, but they made it to the cave in less than an hour.

The vamp was starting to regain consciousness again when they entered into the cool rock walls of the cave system. Max lifted a stick from the ground and ripped off a piece of the vampire’s shirt. He wrapped the cloth around the stick before following them into the caves. The vamp kicked his feet in the air as his hands beat against Xavier’s hold, but Xavier didn’t ease his grip on him.

They were almost to the center of the cave when she heard the strike of a match and light burst forth as Max set the piece of vampire’s shirt on fire. Aria stopped at the entrance to a small cavern. These were not caves that they had once resided in. There were no booby traps and no gates, but she’d hidden here before and knew they were well out of sight and no one would hear them down here.

They may not be as protected here as they were in some of the other caves, but it was sheltered. Searching the rocks above them, she saw no bats that would be scared by their presence and possibly alert others to their location if they decided to take flight. Xavier walked over to a large rock in the middle of the cavern and dumped the vampire unceremoniously on the ground.

Stepping away from the vamp, Xavier grabbed the ends of his shirt and pulled it over his head. He tossed it to Max. “For the torch,” he said. “And for other things,” he added ominously and Aria shuddered.

Max caught hold of the shirt and tucked it into his waistband for later use. The vamp’s brown eyes nervously took them all in before settling on Aria. His mouth parted as his eyebrows shot into his hairline.

“I think he recognizes you,” Max said.

“Can’t say the same,” she murmured.

His already buggy eyes bugged out more when Xavier took the torch from Max and walked over to stand before the vamp.

“Aria, go back into the cave and wait for us there,” Xavier said.

“No.”

Xavier’s face was merciless when he turned to face her. “There is no reason for you to see this.”

“I suggested going after her. I agreed to this. I am condoning it. I will not walk away and let you bear this on your own. Whatever happens here is mine to bear also, and I will stay here until it’s over.” She turned to Max and rested her hand briefly against his arm. “I understand if you don’t wish to see this.”

“I’m not leaving,” he replied.

“Max—”

“I intend to help with this. I’m not leaving.”

“There are some things that can never be unseen,” Xavier said to her.

“I would hate myself more if I walked away to leave you both to this. I’m not going anywhere.”

Xavier turned away from her. The firelight danced over his brown skin and the tattoos covering his chest and back. It was the first time Aria had seen all of the markings etched onto his chiseled muscles. The smaller vamp at his feet made a strangled sound and tried to squirm away, but Xavier rested his foot against the man’s shoulder and pinned him in place.

“I’m going to pull out that gag and you’re going to answer my questions,” Xavier said to him. “Otherwise, I’m going to make your insides your outsides.”

Sing like a canary, Aria silently pleaded as Xavier pulled the gag from the man’s mouth.