Chapter Forty-nine

I stared up at him. This close, he and Radu could almost have been twins instead of brothers. The arched brows, the patrician nose—just a little too straight for aquiline—the high cheekbones and the sculpted lips were all the same.

But no one would ever have any trouble telling them apart.

Radu had a slightly more delicate cast to the features, which had earned him the sobriquet “the Handsome,” once upon a time. Mircea was plenty handsome himself, but it wasn’t the same type. There was a sweetness to Radu, a gentleness that had somehow survived everything that had happened to him. His thick lashes and bright eyes had always reminded me of a stag: beautiful, regal, occasionally silly, one of nature’s great works of art.

But lovely as it was, and as powerful as it could be at times, a stag was still prey.

And Mircea could never be that.

He was the wolf in the darkness, the eagle flying overhead, the predator you never saw coming. The eyes could melt with genuine feeling, or brighten with laughter, or charm or seduce or any of the other thousand tricks in his repertoire. But if you looked close enough, you could see them, even then: the watchful eyes of the predator, staring back at you.

I recognized them because I had them, too. I sometimes wondered if that’s why we clashed so often. We were too alike: too stubborn, too suspicious, too . . . something. We’d never had an easy relationship; I doubted we ever would. But I wanted that relationship, no matter how much I’d denied it—wanted it fiercely.

And so did Dorina.

She might resent him, even hate him, but she loved him, too. I remembered that pang of longing she’d felt in the hall, while he searched for her. Remembered and experienced it all over again, because it echoed the same emotion in me. She loved him, however much she didn’t want to; loved him despite knowing it wasn’t returned; loved him even after he locked her away.

And now he was planning to do it all over again?

How could he do that?

How could he even think that?

“Because I want you to live.” Hard hands gripped me. I struggled, but was too weak to break his hold, to do anything but stare up at him in disbelief and pain—hers, mine, ours, I wasn’t sure anymore.

How could he do this?

“Listen to me!”

“I’ve listened to you for five hundred years, and what has it got me?”

“Life!”

I laughed, and it was cruel. I heard it in my voice, but couldn’t stop it, didn’t care. “Yeah, and I’ve enjoyed it so.”

“More than you would have if I’d done nothing!”

I’d finally managed to pull away, and had started to walk off to clear my head, but at that I rounded on him. “How do you know that? How do you know anything? You don’t know much about me, and less about her! Maybe she could have compensated in time; maybe we’d have reached some kind of balance. Or maybe not. Maybe we’d have been torn apart like all those other dhampirs, and died screaming, but you don’t know. Because you had to interfere, to handle everything, just like you always do—how has that worked out, Mircea?”

“Better than the alternative!”

I spread my hands. “How? I’ve spent centuries scrabbling, half-mad, on the edges of a society that hates me, looking for a foothold I only found because of her. Meanwhile, she’s been caged like some kind of animal, only able to emerge when there’s something to kill, abandoned, alone—and now you’re planning to do it all over again!”

A hand like steel found my arm. “I am planning to save your life! Something you will not have if she banishes you. And you’ve thought about it—don’t deny it. That word came from your head, not mine. You’ve thought—”

“Maybe I have.” I struggled with his hold and went nowhere. “It doesn’t mean she’ll do it!”

“And it doesn’t mean she won’t. Vampires have a constant war between our two natures, pulled by the beast on one hand and our humanity on the other. Forced to reconcile the two because we don’t have a choice. You do. And now so does she—”

“I’m not listening to this.”

“Yes, you are. For once you are going to listen—”

“For once? For once?” I stared at him.

“You never listen—”

“You never talk!”

“Well, I’m talking now.” It was grim. “We vampires have no choice but to blend our two natures, to come to equilibrium or to go mad—and some do. Unable to reconcile the monstrous part of themselves that every human has, but that every human does not have to feed. We cannot hide from what we are; we have to prey on others to survive. But we cannot give in to it utterly, or we risk becoming the monsters we are so often thought to be. It is a constant balancing act and there are times—oh, yes, there are times—when we would love to banish one part or the other.

“What if we could?”

“You wouldn’t. Go back to being human?” I laughed, because that comment deserved it. “No vampire would do that.”

“You might be surprised. But that isn’t the offer on the table, is it? Not you becoming human but Dorina becoming vampire. Fully, completely, with no human side to hold her back, to rein her in. You’ve thought about it—don’t you think she has, too?”

“Damn it, Mircea! You can’t just—” I stopped the explosive comment I’d been about to make, tried to compose myself. Arguing with him made me see red faster than anything else on earth, and then nothing productive happened. “She could do it,” I admitted, after a moment. “I know she could.” I met his eyes. “But she hasn’t. And she’s had plenty of time.”

Mircea didn’t even blink. “She’s had a few weeks. To our kind, that is nothing. To her, it is nothing. Her viewpoint today—if she even knows it yet—may not be the same tomorrow. Or next week or next month or next year. The fact is, she can banish you at any time, force you out and take over, and you have no defense against it. Save one.”

“You mean by doing the same thing to her.”

“Not the same thing. She will still be alive.”

I looked at him, and wished I had his way with words. Wished I had a way to make him see. “That’s not living.”

It never had been.

But I didn’t have the words, and maybe there weren’t any, because Mircea was as stubborn as I was. He’d found a solution once, at great cost to himself, when everybody had told him there wasn’t one. It hadn’t been perfect, but from his perspective, it had kept both versions of his daughter alive.

Why change it now?

But for me . . . it wasn’t that easy. I hadn’t known what was happening before, hadn’t even known Dorina existed. Much less the price she’d paid for my continued survival. And now that I did, how could I send her back to that? What right did I have to send her anywhere?

“You have the right of any creature to survive.”

“Get out of my head!” I turned away, furious and frustrated, and afraid—more than I wanted to admit. And angry at myself for feeling that way.

Because she’d never given me cause, had she? Not once. And she’d helped me, all those times she’d fought for me. Maybe I hadn’t needed it, but maybe I had. Maybe there’d been things she’d picked up on that I hadn’t seen, dangers I hadn’t noticed.

Like tonight. I’d been sleeping, dead to the world. The faint static of that creature’s mind hadn’t even registered. I would have slept right through everything, and awakened to the death of a queen and a world in chaos.

But Dorina had heard.

And while I might have been the one to throw that knife, she’d gotten me there.

Or maybe she’d just done it out of self-preservation, since our losing the war would hurt her, too. Like maybe all those times she’d helped me in the past were because she thought me weak and incapable, and hadn’t been willing to risk it. I just didn’t know.

And neither did Mircea.

I turned back around. “I want to talk to her.”

“Dory!”

For a moment, Mircea looked like he was about to lose his cool. The eyes flashed amber bright; the nostrils flared; the hawklike aspect of his features became a little more pronounced. Because I have the same effect on him that he does on me.

But he reined it in.

“That would be unwise,” he told me tightly. “If she knows what we’re planning, she could, and likely would, evade it—”

“We aren’t planning anything—”

“But you should be! Now, while she’s asleep. When she wakes up, we won’t be able to talk. When she wakes up—”

I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. It was drowned out by a burst of noise, shockingly loud, only it wasn’t. Just the usual soft music, idle conversation, and click, clink of glasses, which I hadn’t realized had been blocked out until it suddenly broke over us again.

I stared around, like Mircea himself was doing. Something had cut through the sound barrier his masters had created, but I didn’t know what. And I couldn’t see what was happening in the room, because there were still two rows of vamps in the way.

Until, suddenly, there weren’t. They parted, straight down the middle, leaving a long, cleared path lined with vamps on either side. And at the end—

Was a woman.

No, make that a fey, beautiful and golden haired, her shining locks cascading to the floor and explaining the consul’s current hairstyle. But there was no Goth vibe here, no reds and golds and vague creepiness. There were only big blue eyes and a simple blue gown and a peach and pink complexion, like something out of a Victorian painting of the perfect woman. Or girl, because she looked about sixteen.

She wasn’t.

Efridis was almost as old as her brother Caedmon, and he was ancient by human standards. But looking at her, it was almost impossible to believe. The air of innocence was palpable.

Which was why it was so strange to feel the tide of rage suddenly pouring through me.

I had time to say, “Uh-oh,” not that I could hear it over the roaring in my ears. I had time to look at Mircea, who was staring back with alarm on his face. I had time to feel the strangest sensation, like I was about to vomit up the world.

And then Dorina tore out of me, as I’d seen her do in Mircea’s presence once, barely a ripple on the air, almost invisible unless you knew what to look for. But I did. And even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered.

I’d have caught on when Efridis started screaming.

Everything after that happened really fast. I saw something emerge from the fey queen, another ripple in space. But not one rising calmly or charging out determinedly, but ripped out of her by Dorina, right before they went writhing into the air, and what felt like a couple extra atmospheres descended on the room. Mirrors shattered; vases toppled; fey and vampire alike hit the floor. Except for Mircea, who grabbed me right before something smashed into us like a freight train.

It sent me flying back against the wall for the second time that night, something I wasn’t sure my body could take. But Mircea had gotten behind me and absorbed the blow. And then held me as I screamed and fought, feeling like my insides were being ripped out, because Dorina was back—and she’d brought company.

Whatever she’d planned, it had gone horribly wrong, because the creature was far more powerful than her, than both of us. I felt Mircea invade my mind, trying to help, but it easily flung him out as well. But it obviously didn’t know my father, because the next moment he was back, and he’d brought company, too.

A lot of it.

I didn’t know all of Mircea’s masters, but suddenly I could see them, and not just the ones gathered around us. A brunet sat on a sofa a few floors down, a book falling from his suddenly motionless fingers; half a dozen beat-up guards, drinking around a table in Washington State, looked up all at once, as much in sync as if they’d been practicing for weeks; a few dozen more dropped what they were doing in Las Vegas, heads turning unerringly toward New York—

But it wasn’t enough.

This thing, this fey queen’s power, was like nothing I’d ever encountered. Shocking, cutting, cruel. And pervasive.

It felt like every cell was being attacked at once. I tasted blood in my mouth, saw it spurt from my lips. Felt my heartbeat start to slow—

And then my field of vision abruptly widened—or “pulled back” might be more accurate. Because, suddenly, I could see beyond the confines of the country, Earth like a blue ball spread out beneath me. One with golden sparks lighting up everywhere.

Mircea’s family, spread around the globe, a lightning storm of power all coming online at once at their master’s call.

And while the thing inside Efridis was strong, so were we. Everywhere she looked now were faces, staring at her. Every move she made was countered, not by the power of one or two, but by dozens, hundreds, thousands. I’d had no idea Mircea’s family was so large, no idea at all—

And then the globe caught fire, as a few million more sparks flared in the darkness.

“The Senate,” someone said, but I didn’t know who. I was watching a globe full of light come screaming at us. A ball of fire roaring with the combined fury of all the Senate’s masters and their families, all at once.

I didn’t feel it when the blow landed, because it didn’t land on me. But I felt the creature get torn out of me, felt it go flying back to its home, saw the fey queen get lifted off her feet by the force of it and slammed back against the wall, hard enough to go crashing through it.

And then they were gone, all those minds, all that power, leaving me panting in Mircea’s arms as Caedmon dove for his sister, as the consul stepped daintily forward, as Louis-Cesare ran for me. And as Marlowe’s voice boomed out from somewhere across the room.

“I believe we have our second senatorial witness, majesty!”

“You know, I do believe you’re right,” the consul said, peering through the hole in the wall at her currently unconscious guest. She looked at her guards, streaming at her from all over the room, and bared some fang. “Take her.”