Bound by Flames

“No, he’s not,” Maximus replied in a low voice. “He’s really gone.”

“Impossible,” was Vlad’s flat reply.

Maximus sighed. “Szilagyi didn’t trust me enough to tell me about Mircea until he thought I’d raped Leila. Then he took me here and I met him. The things Mircea can do . . . That’s why Szilagyi wasn’t afraid to come after you. He just waited until the boy had grown powerful enough because he needed Mircea’s abilities to build his army. Otherwise, your allies and even some of your enemies would have been too afraid of you to side with Szilagyi.”

Vlad’s bark of laughter startled me. It was hard, ugly, and foreboding, all at the same time.

“If that’s true, then what you’re telling me is that I’ve finally killed my worst enemy, but the threat against me is still very much alive.”

“Yes,” Maximus said steadily.

The two men stared at each other, and a new kind of tension filled the air. Maximus had saved my life, kept me from being raped, enabled me to escape, gave Vlad the location to Szilagyi’s lair . . . and yet everyone in the vampire world thought he’d betrayed Vlad in the worst way possible. Even if he wanted to, could Vlad let Maximus go without it looking like an act of extreme weakness? With the precarious position we were still in, would Vlad risk that, knowing that his enemies would use it as a rallying cry against him?

“Vlad,” Maximus began.

“Don’t.” The single word was edged. “I can never forget what I saw on that video. Despite Leila’s assurances, every time I look at you, I will see a replay of you raping my wife.”

Maximus bowed his head in resignation, and Vlad’s hands slowly began to fill with flames.

“Don’t,” I said with a gasp. “Vlad, you can’t!”

He ignored that and grabbed Maximus. Not by the shoulders, as he had with Szilagyi, but by the head. As soon as he touched Maximus, the flames extinguished, and he brought their faces close together.

“Aside from Mencheres, you are the truest friend I have ever had.” Vlad’s voice was so thick from emotion, it was almost choked. “And yet I meant what I said. A good man could forget, but I can’t, and so I cannot reward your loyalty with what I promised. You have no place in my line, Maximus, and you never will.”

A harsh sigh escaped Maximus and my heart broke as his shoulders began to shake with suppressed sobs.

“I didn’t do this for a place back in your line.” Each word was a rasp. “I did it for you.”

Vlad kissed him, once on each cheek. Maximus bent his head until their foreheads touched.

“You are my friend forever, voivode meu,” Maximus murmured.

“Princes don’t have friends, they have subjects,” Vlad said in an equally low voice. “You are no longer my subject, but even though I will not see you again, you will forever be my friend.”

He kissed Maximus one more time on the forehead, and then released him. “Go,” he said, the word as ragged as the regret strafing my feelings.

Maximus bowed, turned . . . and paused. “I can’t. The floor’s molten rock and you caved in the only way out.”

The barest smile twitched Vlad’s lips. “Rather ruins the moment, doesn’t it?”

Maximus’s mouth curled faintly as well. “Good thing neither of us is sentimental.”

As I watched them, I felt a flicker of hope that was uniquely mine. Vlad thought he could never get over the illusion that had so devastated him; it had pushed his powers to a new level. Yet I believed that, with time, he could look at Maximus and see the true friend he loved, not the painful images of deception. After all, Vlad’s powers weren’t the only thing that had grown under our horrible circumstances recently. So had his capacity for love and perhaps most surprisingly, for mercy.

“Leila, were you the only one who followed me down here?” Vlad asked, bringing me back to our present issues. “Or did Petre and Samir ignore my commands to stay at the bridge, too?”

“I don’t know,” I started to say, but Maximus turned and, sidestepping some slowly spreading puddles of steaming rock, went to the cameras lining the walls.

“Petre’s still at the bridge,” he said after a moment. “Samir isn’t. I don’t see him on the other cameras in the tunnels, but over half of them aren’t working anymore.”

“Find him,” Vlad said to me.

I was confused for a moment until the obvious dawned. “How did you know that Samir grabbed me when I told him I was going after you?” I asked as I ran my right hand over my upper arm.

Vlad grunted. “If he didn’t, then he didn’t try hard enough to stop you.”

Samir’s essence imprint flared beneath my fingers. Good thing he’d been sufficiently mad at me when I wrenched away from him. I followed the link and saw him in the antechamber, trying to remove the rocks blocking the tunnel, piece of stone by piece of stone.

“He’s in the antechamber with the honeycomb cells,” I said.

Vlad glanced upward. At first, I thought he was thinking, but then I felt that painful, crushing sensation as his power began to swell and contract in ever-increasing rotations.

It took far longer than it had for him to melt the stone walls, but I was still awestruck when he flew me through the hole he’d created all the way back up to the surface. Maximus flew himself out, and then the three of us went around to the original hole that Vlad had blasted into the tunnels to get Samir. That was easy since the way to the antechamber hadn’t caved in. Just the way leading deeper into the dungeons had, and Samir—loyal friend that he was—hadn’t been willing to leave until he knew that Vlad and I were safe.