Bloodchild (22 page)

But if he was telling the truth,
that meant that someone else, someone powerful had plotted to take her right to
the throne from her. And that person was responsible for what had happened to
Brad.

She had to know. There was no
point in winning the duels and the throne if it was to lose everything again
because she had been so focused on Rhuinn that she hadn’t noticed the rise of
another threat.

In the blink of an eye, she made
her decision. She knew the risk, but it was worth it. She allowed the black
hole to dissipate, and Rhuinn reappeared at the other end of the box, his arms
crossed, his posture nonchalant as though they were having a polite chat. He
wasn’t even channeling anymore, and the colors swirling around him had
disappeared, leaving the world in shades of gray. If his lips were curled in an
amused smirk, she didn’t let herself see it and remained focused on the ball of
light hovering above him.

“Say it again,” she demanded in a
harsh voice she barely recognized as her own. “Tell me to my face that you
didn’t order that girl to steal this—” She touched the insignia pined to her
breast with two fingers. “—and kill whoever stood in her way.”

“I did not employ anyone to try
and steal a bauble that means little to anyone other than you,” he said,
sneering. “Nor am I responsible in any way for your pet getting killed. If you
cannot protect your own people in the heart of your domain, you have no one to
blame but yourself.”

Above him, the ball of light
glowed brightly, its green color never flickering and casting a sickly tinge to
Rhuinn’s features.

“You killed Anabel!” she shouted,
closing her fist as though it might help her hang on to the Quickening as her
control started to slip. “Deny that!”

When he shrugged, it was all she
could do not to lash out at him, hurt him the same way he’d hurt Ana, but even
if she’d tried, she might not have managed to, not when the ball of light was
drawing all the Quickening she could channel.

“I questioned her,” he said
coolly. “I’m not denying that. Had she told me what I wanted to know, she might
still be alive. But she thought keeping quiet would protect you. She thought
you were worth her life.”

His grin grew sharper as he turned
to look out ostensibly toward Brad. Vivien’s breathing accelerated, beads of
sweat rolling down her back.

“I wonder if he still thinks you
were worth dying for,” he added. “After all, if you can’t keep your own people
safe, how can you protect Foh’Ran?”

Green. The light was still green.
Every word that had passed his lips had been true.

Gasping for breath, Vivien
redirected her channeling. The light above Rhuinn vanished, and darkness
started to form around him again, more slowly than before as Vivien’s strength
was diminished. He didn’t appear to notice; he was still looking out toward
Brad.

“It must have been lovely for you
to get him back,” he said as though musing aloud. “If only for a time. He’s
found someone else to follow now. Someone else to bed.”

Of their own accord, Vivien’s eyes
snapped to the glass wall and, beyond it, Brad. The wall seemed clearer all of
a sudden, letting Brad’s image in flawlessly. He was watching her, like
everyone else, but she couldn’t read anything on his features. What she could
see, all too well, was how close to him Ciara was standing, her body pressed
against his side, her mouth an inch from his ear when she leaned in to murmur
something to him. He looked at her, taking his eyes off Vivien.

And everything went black.

“Nice trick,” Rhuinn said, a laugh
lurking in his voice. “Too bad you didn’t push your advantage when you could.”

Vivien blinked repeatedly, turning
her head this way and that, but she knew already what Rhuinn had done: he’d
turned the black hole on her, taking advantage of her distraction. She tried to
channel light, a flame, anything so she’d be able to see, but her own
expectations of how the black hole functioned worked against her, and every
light she summoned was consumed by the darkness.

She couldn’t silence a shriek when
something touched her arm. She wasn’t quite sure what it was until she felt
hard metal close on her wrist. She tried to tug herself free, but Rhuinn was
behind her, yanking at the chain attached to the cuff and forcing her arm to
curl painfully at her back.

“Be careful with vampires,” he
murmured right against her earlobe. “All of your mother’s troubles started when
she married one.”

Vivien struggled against him, but
she couldn’t stop him from binding her second wrist and pulling it behind her
as well. He let the darkness dissipate at the same time as he forced her to her
knees on the hard stone floor. She couldn’t see him or the chains as he
remained behind her, but she tugged at her restraints, trying to free herself…
and realizing too late that all she was doing was reinforcing the strength of
Rhuinn’s channeling.

Her head was pounding with a
headache from channeling the lie-detector trick, and as she tried desperately
to find a way out of this, she could feel the Quickening slipping out of her
grasp. All at once, colors returned to the world.

She had lost.

“Do you concede?” Rhuinn asked
coldly above her.

Her gaze flitted over the glass
wall again, back to Brad, but she couldn’t bear to look at him, not when
Ciara’s hand was clenched over his shoulder. She looked down the line of faces,
all of them so tense as they observed what they had to know was a lost cause,
until she found Aedan. He gave her the tiniest of nods, and it was almost like
having permission to fail.

She nodded, lowering her head.

“Say it,” Rhuinn demanded, tugging
at the chains.

His voice sounded different, and
Vivien didn’t need to look up to know the glass cage around them was gone.

She closed her eyes and took a
deep breath, calming herself. At this point, it was all about appearances. She
had lost this time, denying it was futile, but if she could make it seem as
though this was the outcome she had wanted…

After all, Rhuinn himself had
thrown away his first duel in the past to have the chance to kill his opponent.

Drawing a smile to her lips cost
her, but she managed it. She raised her head and turned it back to look at
Rhuinn and let him see her smile.

“I concede,” she said loudly so
all would hear, making the words as close to a drawl as she could manage.

She’d lost, yes. She’d lost this
duel, she’d lost her focus, she’d lost the Quickening, she might even have lost
Brad—
no, don’t think about that, not now
—but watching a frown of
uncertainty flicker over Rhuinn’s features still felt like a tiny victory.

EPILOGUE

Soon

If Aedan was honest with himself,
he had thought about what might happen should Dame Vivien lose the first duel.
He had believed in her chances and in her desire to win, and he had hoped with
every fiber of his being that she would defeat Rhuinn, but a small part of him
had been unable to ignore the question ‘what if?’ and he had tried to imagine
how Rhuinn, the High Families, even the other guards might react if she lost.

What he’d never considered — what,
maybe, he hadn’t wanted to consider — was how it would affect Dame Vivien
herself. She put on a wonderful mask even as she conceded, and kept it on as
they left and Passed Through back to the castle. But as the door closed on
Olric, leaving the two of them alone in the library, it seemed as though the
mask crumbled.

She wavered on her feet, unsteady
in the way he’d expected her to be when she’d taken her leave from the court.
Aedan rushed forward to help, but she raised a hand to stop him and took the
few steps to her chair on her own. There, she all but collapsed, hiding her
face in her hands. A light tremor shook her shoulders, and the faint smell of
salt drifted toward Aedan. He swallowed hard. How many times would he have to
witness her tears when he had long ago promised himself to do everything in his
power to stop them before they even rolled down her cheeks?

Worse—he was, in part, responsible
for this. He had brought her back to Foh’Ran, with Bradan’s help. He was one of
the reasons why she had decided to remain and reclaim the throne. He had agreed
that challenging Rhuinn to a duel would be a good idea. He hadn’t fought harder
for Bradan to come back, and his absence had ruined her focus.

He wished he could have comforted
her, with words or actions, but words escaped him at that moment, and what
could he possibly do? At a loss, he came closer. At the sound of his steps, she
turned her face away from him, wiping at her cheeks and taking big gulps of
air. Aedan considered asking her if she wanted some privacy, but before he
could summon the words, she looked back at him.

“What now?” she whispered.
Exhaustion and defeat rang in her words as clearly as they shone in her eyes.
“What if I lose the next duel, too? What if I win and have to kill him in the
third duel in order to win?” She shook her head, and her voice fell quieter
still, so quiet that Aedan might not have heard her without the acuity of his
vampire senses. “I don’t know if I can kill anyone, even him.”

Aedan would have given anything to
be allowed to reach for her, offer a light touch of comfort, or even hold her
against him the way he’d seen Bradan do with such ease, the way he’d done
himself once, when they’d both been so upset. He closed his hands into tight
fists to push back the impulse.

“I still believe in you,” he said,
putting every last bit of his faith in her into his voice.

She let out a quiet, humorless
laugh.

“You’re the only one. Maybe you
should have left me on Earth. Or maybe I should go back now before things get
even worse.”

Although Aedan did not reply and
tried to school his features, something must have shown of his distress because
Dame Vivien gave him a pained smile.

“I’m not going to,” she said
softly. “I know what it’d mean for you if I ran back to Earth, and I wouldn’t
do that. But I can’t help wishing I could.”

Aedan inclined his head, showing
he understood. He couldn’t begrudge her wishes that couldn’t come true, not
when he had some of his own, too.

“It’s no use thinking about what
you might have to do come the third duel,” he said, knowing the words were less
than adequate, yet unable to offer anything better. “First, you’ll need to rest
and prepare for the second duel. You had little time to get ready for the first
one, and I know Bradan’s absence affected you. For the second duel, you are the
one who will decide on a date, and you can give yourself time to prepare and
collect yourself. You can take up to forty days if that is what you wish. It
might be good to delay that long.”

He forced himself to stop talking.
She knew all this, she’d read everything about duels she could find in this
very library, and she didn’t need him to repeat it to her.

For long seconds, she remained
silent, watching her hands and turning the ring on her thumb. He wondered what
she was thinking about, but would never have dared ask. She gave him an answer
soon enough anyway.

“Did you…” Her voice was shaking.
She took a deep breath and started over, never looking up at him. “Did you talk
to him while I was fighting?”

Aedan didn’t need to ask whom she
meant by ‘him.’

“I didn’t get a chance,” he said.
“I’d have attracted too much attention by going to him.”

And besides, at the time it hadn’t
occurred to him. He’d been too caught up in watching her battle Rhuinn, the
cage that held them both hiding nothing of their duel. The entire time,
however, the bond had pulsed with Bradan’s feelings, with his worry for Dame
Vivien and his love for her, and they had echoed against Aedan’s own,
reinforcing them until Aedan would have been hard pressed to tell whose
feelings they were—not that it mattered.

So little time had passed since
her return to Foh’Ran, barely more than a blink when compared to Aedan’s entire
existence, but already he had given up denying his own feelings to himself. He
would never act on them the way Bradan had, wouldn’t even confess to his dame,
but trying to pretend he felt only a guard’s respect for her was useless.

“Aedan? I need to ask you a
question.”

She’d looked up while he was lost
in his thoughts and now met his gaze. While her tears had faded, her eyes still
gleamed. They seemed to pierce Aedan, and he started, suddenly worried about
how much he’d shown of his thoughts on his face.

“And it’s a personal question,”
she continued, “an intrusive question, I know that, but I need you to answer
and tell me the truth.”

He had shown too much; he was sure
of it. She knew. Bradan had more than hinted at it before leaving, but she
hadn’t mentioned it. But now she was asking, and that wasn’t good. That wasn’t
good at all.

“I don’t think I should answer,”
he said, his voice tight with nervousness. “A bodyguard has no right to show
feelings for his charge.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“God, are you back to that? I
thought you’d accepted that he loves me and I love him and your disapproval
doesn’t factor in it.”

Relief swept through Aedan. Of
course she was talking about Bradan. Of course she wouldn’t ask about Aedan
himself. How silly of him to think she’d somehow seen more on his face than he
meant to show.

“My apologies,” he offered,
automatically leaning forward in a small bow. “Please do ask your question,
Dame Vivien. I will do my best to answer it.”

As long as she didn’t ask about
his feelings, he’d answer anything.

* * * *

Vivien’s annoyance disappeared as
quickly as it had flared up when she saw relief slacken Aedan’s expression.
Relief? Why was he relieved? Was she misinterpreting what she saw?

She observed him more closely,
forgetting to ask her question as she wondered what he’d thought she’d ask.

‘A bodyguard’, he’d said. Not
Brad, not Bradan, but ‘a bodyguard.’ He wasn’t talking about his brother.

That was why he didn’t show it,
wasn’t it? He’d just told her bodyguards shouldn’t show their feelings. He
hadn’t been talking about Brad at all. He’d been saying that he, unlike Brad,
wouldn’t tell her if he felt anything for her. He might suspect she knew, but
he wouldn’t admit to it. Maybe it was better that way.

Shaking her head, she cleared her
mind and asked the question that had been troubling her for too long already.

“What I meant to ask,” she
started, “is this. Brad said you could tell when he and I… when we were close.
Intimate.”

When he gave a small nod, she opened
her mouth to continue but realized how awful this had to be for him. He loved
her, and he believed he wasn’t allowed to have feelings for her. But from the
first day, he’d watched her and Bradan flirt and fall in love and eventually
get in bed together. The entire time, he’d felt what Brad felt—what he himself,
per his own rules, wouldn’t be allowed to feel even if Vivien loved him rather
than his brother.

No wonder he’d always been so
disapproving of them together. How much had it hurt to have their love shoved
into his mind through that strange bond?

Vivien closed her eyes briefly and
pushed those questions away. She couldn’t think about that now. There was
nothing she could do about Aedan’s feelings—for that matter, there was nothing
he would do about them, not that she wanted him to. Brad. Her question was
about Brad.

As much as she tried to focus,
however, her question came out as a broken string of false starts and
hesitations.

“Did you feel… Was Brad… While we
were dueling, Rhuinn said Brad and Ciara…”

Humiliation and embarrassment
warred through her, sharpening when she chanced a glance at Aedan. His pained
expression revealed he understood what she wasn’t quite managing to ask… unless
it was an answer in itself?

“Dame Vivien,” he started, but was
interrupted by the familiar sound of chimes announcing someone was asking to
Pass Through.

Vivien jumped to her feet without
thinking.

“Savel will let us know who it
is,” Aedan said, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from going toward the door.
He followed without another protest.

She knew she was silly for even
daring to hope, but she couldn’t help it. It might be him. It might be Brad. He
might be coming back to her after realizing how much she needed him at her
side, his support, his confidence, his love. She didn’t care that she was less
than dignified, rushing down the steps with Aedan right behind her urging her
to please be careful. She just wanted to know—

Savel appeared in the corridor,
coming toward her. He paused when he saw her, and she stilled.

“Dame Vivien,” he said, inclining
his head. “In the Passing Room. It’s Bradan, my lady. He’s asking to Pass
Through to talk to you.”

She felt lightheaded, and she was
grateful when Aedan’s hand curled around her arm, holding her steady. Her
gratefulness increased when Aedan said, “Thank you, Savel. Our dame will speak
to Bradan on her own.”

She usually hated when he tried to
dictate her actions or spoke in her stead, but right now he seemed to know what
she wanted, what she would have said if her throat hadn’t been so tight with
anticipation, fear, and hope.

His hand remained on her arm all
the way to the Passing Room, a whisper of a touch, not gripping but close
enough to help her, should she miss a step in her haste to get to Brad.

The corridor that led to the
Passing Room had never felt so long. Vivien was all but running when she
reached the end of it. She heard Aedan close the door behind her, but it felt
very distant, barely reaching her conscious mind, just like the colors swirling
around the room meant very little to her. The one thing that mattered was
Brad’s image, right in the center of the room. Her breath caught in her throat.
Before she knew what she was doing, she was focusing her will and taking hold
of the Quickening, channeling to open a passage and allow Brad to Pass Through.

He stepped through the opening as
he might have stepped through a door, followed by Ciara. Vivien saw the woman,
she saw Aedan stepping forward to put his body between her and Ciara—or was it
between her and Brad?—but she didn’t care. She only had eyes for Brad.

Stifling a sob, she pushed past
Aedan and approached Brad. She found herself hesitating in front of his serious
expression, but right then he opened his arms to her, and she crossed those
final couple of feet, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face
against his shoulder. She noticed the marks on his neck, but she refused to let
herself wonder what they meant. He remained still for a handful of seconds
before he closed his arms around her. She tightened her own, shutting her eyes
to stifle the rising tears.

“Are you coming back?” she asked,
the words muffled against his shoulder.

When he didn’t immediately answer,
she knew the answer was no, knew he wouldn’t stay long. And the longer she
remained in his arms now, the harder it would be to let go in a moment.

Pulling away might have been one
of the hardest things she had done of late, maybe even harder than facing
Rhuinn in a duel. She had lost when she faced Rhuinn. This time, though, she
had an ally. She took a step back, and her shoulder bumped against Aedan’s arm.
She expected him to recoil at the contact, but he stayed where he was. Maybe he
understood she needed support right now. Or maybe he did, too.

* * * *

Bradan had known the question
would be voiced, but he’d hoped he would get a few more moments of closeness
with Vivien before he had to hurt her again. Watching her move away from him
and seek his brother instead broke his heart, and he had trouble finding his
words to answer her.

“Are you staying?” Aedan repeated
her question, and Bradan heard the same hope in his voice that he had in hers.

“I can’t,” he murmured.

He glanced back toward Ciara. She
had followed him when he Passed Through, and she stood behind him, her arms
crossed, her expression impassive.

“I can’t stay,” he said again.
“Not yet. I wish I could. Vivien, I swear, I’d like nothing more than to be
here with you. It’s tearing me apart inside to have to leave you. But it’d kill
me if I hurt you again—”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she interrupted,
her eyes pleading.