Mark of Betrayal (9 page)

“
No. I don't know. Maybe—if I have to.”

He pressed his lips into a thin smile and looked to one side. “I’ve never known a girl who holds such strong values to be so easily led.”

My mouth dropped. “What do you mean by that?”

“
I mean…” He sighed heavily. “You disapprove of killing and violence, yet, if I were to forcefully disagree, convince you it was necessary, you would acquiesce—despite what you felt was the right course of action.”

I looked down at my hands. “I'm just trying to get this right.”

“
Then follow your heart, Amara. Do not allow yourself to be controlled by others’ opinions. I can see you clearly have a great amount of respect for me, and while this is not only sweet but very flattering, it’s also dangerous. Your council has warned you that I may be a traitor, yet you take my word as vow.”

“
I can't help it, Arthur. I just don't think you're the bad guy.”

He smiled warmly. “Well, that leads me back to the point I was trying to make in the beginning; not that you must either kill or not kill, but to be sure it is what
you
believe to be right.”

“
And what if I'm wrong?”

“
Then you make a mistake—and you learn from it.”

“
Hang on, if I'm queen, aren't I supposed to behead my advisor when things go wrong?” I smirked at him.

“
Well,” Arthur said in a light, laughing tone, “if that’s the way Her Majesty demonstrates strength and governance, then I say, behead me.”

I laughed. “Aside from the fact that it’s impossible to behead a vampire, you know I wouldn’t really do that, right?”

Arthur nodded. “That, my dear, is what worries me.”

Chapter Three

I quickly learned that Lilithians and vampires shared one common ground; they liked their traditions and formalities. Everyone at the dining table had remained upstanding until I was seated. I felt ridiculous dressing formally for dinner as it was, but having someone push my chair in, bow at me and then motion everyone else to sit, made me just want to hide my face in my hand and laugh at them all.

The seat mirroring mine was the only empty one at the table; a place the king would sit when he returned, or, according to my people, when I took a new husband. The knowledge that my David should be sitting there, fourteen seats down from me, so far away but closer than he was now, made that chair seem like a vortex, ready to suck my composure up with one breath. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples.

“
What’s up, baby?” Mike whispered, leaning closer.

“
I’m okay. Just a bit of a headache.”

“
Don’t worry,” Morgaine said from the seat on my left. “Dinner will end soon enough, then we’ll all leave you alone for the next twelve hours. Sound good?”

I smiled at her and leaned back in my chair. Down the other end of the table, too far away to yell hello to, Eric sent me a warm smile. Arthur looked up at him, following the direction of his eyes, then leaned in and whispered something that made Eric look away.

“
Morg?”

“
Yeah?”

“
You’ve got better hearing than I do. What did Arthur just say to Eric?”

She looked over at Arthur, who smiled across at us, obviously having heard what I just said.

“
He just told him to remember that, in official gatherings, you are a queen, not his friend.”

“
Don’t listen to him, Eric,” I said quietly, knowing he’d hear me over the noisy dinner chatter; he smirked into his plate. I shot Arthur a narrowed glare to which he returned a warm smile.

“
We may be worrying for no reason.” My ears tuned in to the portly woman who speaks her mind when no one asks. “Drake may already be dead.”

“
But what if it were a ploy—a theatrical diversion?” said Moustache Man. “He may be very much alive and waiting for us to drop our guard.”

It seemed Arthur and I weren’t the only ones with these theories.

“
Yes, from what I hear, Lilithian venom is not enough to kill him. He has black magic spells that keep him safe.”

“
Hm, an immunity spell?” I grinned, looking at Mike, who kicked my foot under the table.

“
Yes. If only we could get hold of that spell,” Morgaine said. “We Lilithians could feed off vampires without risk of hurting them from our bite.”

“
Yes. Perhaps we should put a team together to start working on that,” I added, offering Mike a wry smile; he was not impressed.

“
I agree,” Morgaine added, stirring the pot of Mike’s irritation. “We should start work on it right away.”

“
It’s a waste of resources,” Mike said, glaring at her. “Maybe after we catch Drake.”

“
Why do we need to catch him?” asked a face I hadn’t seen before. “Why not just go in there now and kill him?”

“
Because we don’t know where he is,” someone else said.

“
And we
can’t
kill him, right?” I said, looking at Mike. “Isn’t it only this prophecy child that can?”

“
That’s not true,” Eric said. “The prophecy says your child will be the one to do it, not that you or any other vampire can’t.”

“
This may be correct,” said a man beside Eric. “But we must not mess with the will of Fate.”

“
Here, here.” Another man nodded. “Bad things happen when you meddle in things that already have an order.”

“
Bad things happen when old vampires get superstitious, like a human, and start using those superstitions to make political decisions,” a Lilithian said.

A couple of arguments broke out across the table; I looked at Arthur, who seemed to be staying out of this one. And I realised then that the table had been divided; to my left side were all the vampires and to my right were Lilithians. I wondered why they were seated that way—if it was deliberate. The only exception to that seating arrangement was Morgaine’s. It seemed kind of fitting that she was seated on the vampires’ side, given that she’d bedded with Drake. I gagged on my rice for a second, feeling the pinch of vomit rising up my oesophagus.

“
Look,” Mike said loudly, raising both hands to end the arguments. “The fact is, we need to catch Drake, and it needs to be soon.”

“
No,” I said. “We actually just need to gain control over all the Sets. All we’re trying to achieve is the enforcement of the new rules so we can have peace between Lilithians and vampires.”

“
Peace? We should be imprisoning the vampires—killing them all,” one woman said.

“
I concur,” a man on the Lilithian side added. “Rid the world of their kind.”

“
And what would we eat, then?” I asked.

“
Keep some. Farm them. Store them.”

The vampires rose up in arms, voices reaching across the table, barely holding back violence.

“
There are to be no more prisoners,” I said loudly; everyone stopped—to my amazement. This queen thing was suddenly growing on me. “I will enforce equal rights for both vampires and Lilithians alike.”

“
While Drake is still breathing, that will never come to par.” With that statement, the two species broke into heated conversations again—their food untouched.

“
If Drake wants to live in united peace, he can remain on the throne,” I said in a calm, quiet voice, refusing to enter this shouting contest. “Maybe we can rule together.”

Conversations around the room ceased abruptly with a unified gasp.

The portly woman snorted. “You can’t negotiate with him.”

“
I disagree.”

“
Of course you do,” a Lilithian added harshly. “You can’t possibly presume to know what is wise—you’re just a baby.”

“
Here. Here,” an old man said, tapping his finger on the table. “You were not even born when Drake stormed this manor and killed our queen. You did not hear of the horror, or the deaths of so many Lilithians that day. You cannot make a ruling about this, Princess, because you know nothing of our past.”

“
The past is inconsequential. I’m thinking about the future.”

“
Future? Future!” One man, so enraged, leaped from his seat, slamming his hands on either side of his plate. “If you want any kind of future, you will send your knights forth at once to seek out and kill Drake.”

“
I concur,” a man said.

“
As do I.”

Several men from each side wrapped their knuckles on the tabletop, nodding, their mutters of agreement uniting them for the first time tonight.

“
Yes, this is the wisest course of action. We should act immediately.” Moustache man, who I was starting to think might be a position of authority among the House, had the final word, all going silent after.

“
The thing is,” I addressed the entire table, “I am your leader, and
I
have to decide which is the right course of action. I’m sorry, but it won’t necessarily always be the wise one.”

“
Then you will lead us all to ruin,” the portly woman scolded.

“
That’s enough!” Arthur glared at her. “Show some respect.”

“
It’s all right, Arthur.” I held my hand up, then smiled at the woman, who bowed her head apologetically. “Look. I know you’re all afraid because I’m young. But I was born for this role, and I have a wise council to advise me. I won’t see the Lilithians fall back into Drake’s hands.” I touched my chest. “I honestly would die before I let that happen. But, I will lead us to the freedom we
all
desire, and I’ll take whichever path is likely to cause the least damage.”

“
Least
damage? What kind of a leader would be willing to sacrifice even one life for her naïve, altruistic outcome?”

“
A good one,” I said. “Look, I am in a position of power. And in that—” I smiled at Arthur, “—it’s sometimes impossible to circumvent the unpleasant. But it is, however, my job to determine the
lesser
evil. I’m not a miracle worker or a god, I cannot do the impossible.”

“
But, Your Majesty, Drake will not quit. He will not stop until you and every other of our kind is dead.”

“
Yes, he must die,” Portly Woman said.

“
It is not for you to decide whether Drake should live or die,” I said.

“
Then who does?”

“
No one. God, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that opposing that which is considered bad by most does not make you good—only misinformed.”

“
Considered
bad? Drake
is
bad!”

I sipped my drink and took a breath, feeling more confident seeing Arthur’s reassuring smile. “When Drake took back the throne,” I started, “he made the decision that our kind was dispensable. How did that feel?
Are
we dispensable?” I looked directly into each eye. “There is good in everyone, and I believe we
can
negotiate with Drake. Enough blood has been shed. We must
offer
peace in order to restore it.”

Mike dropped his fork onto his plate and all heads turned as the clatter startled the stunned silence in the room. His mouth closed, the ball in his throat shifting.

“
Well then—” Arthur stood and raised his glass. “A toast—to the princess and her insightful approach.”

“
To the princess,” the table hummed.

With daylight gone, night darkened the stained-glass dome over my bed; what was blue or white glass in the sun became transparent, showing the stars beyond, hiding away up there in a world too high for me to ever reach. Those glistening entities made Lilith, her story, her life, seem like more of a mystery to me, but one that I, somehow, felt more connected to.

I’d been told of her beginning; how she was conceived of Vampirie and a human girl, and how she was loved by all who knew her. But even though I knew this, when I first laid eyes on the dome above my bed—depicting her beginning—I was surprised not to see a shapely woman reaching across a clouded sky to an infant. Cliché, I know, but that’s what I expected. Instead, my eyes feasted in the story-book scene of a little girl sitting in a garden full of roses, sharing tea with a man and two expressionless dolls. I wondered who this dark stranger was; his black hair and cloak seemed so out of place beside this girl in floral print, with a yellow ribbon in her hair. Perhaps he was Vampirie, or maybe even Lilith’s grandfather. I couldn’t see the image enough to make any real conclusions. My room was dark, lit only by the flickering glow of a gas lamp by my door, but even in such dim light, the man’s electric blue eyes shone out like beacons, radiating with love for this little girl. It made me think of my own daughter—the child of the prophecy—made me think about tea parties we might have in the garden and the dolls we would play with together. And when I brushed a strand of hair from my face, feeling the youth of my barely twenty-year-old skin, I cringed. Once upon a time, I had everything planned; I’d go to college, get married once I found a job as a teacher, then, when I was about twenty-eight, I’d have started planning a family. A little boy first, then maybe a girl.

I dropped my hand onto my belly and felt the smooth skin under my pyjama top. For all I knew, after what David and I did on the piano this morning, there could be life forming inside me right now. It felt, at the same time as magic, also really scary. I wanted to make it stop, to make it all go away. But also wanted to feel it inside me—feel the life growing, moving, becoming a possibility.