Rapture's Edge (23 page)

“Kings are known to be heavy-handed,” she said stiffly. “The burden of rule rests on their shoulders. They can’t afford to be…soft.”

“There is heavy-handed, Eliana, and then there is bloodthirsty. Tyrannical. Ruthless.” His voice dropped. “Mad.”

She barked a disbelieving laugh. “Mad? My father, mad? You yourself said he was brilliant—”

“Genius and madness often go hand in hand—”

“What proof do you have?” She was livid now, breathing hard, eyes flashing cold fire. She stepped even closer, and he took in a deep, intoxicating breath of her scent, not perfume but something richer, darker, decadent. “What evidence can you produce? My father worked his entire life to find the solution to the problem of our infertility and the curse of the Transition that’s plagued us since the beginning of time. And he found it! He actually did it! What kind of brutal madman would want us to survive, to join Bloodlines with humans and live in peace—”

“Your brother shares a portion of your father’s particular brand of madness,” Silas interrupted, very quietly. She blanched, her lips flattened in disgust. “But none of his genius and none of his foresight. Caesar is warped in ways
your father wasn’t, but, my dear, your father was warped in ways only the devil himself could conjure. Ask, if you don’t believe me.” He gestured toward the abbey. “Ask your friend Mel. Ask any of the rest of them. Your father had a side so dark it puts the blackest pits of hell to shame.”

She flinched. All the color had drained from her face.

“I’m sorry. Truly I am. I only say this to you now to help you understand why the
Bellatorum
conspired to kill your father and take the kingdom for themselves. They found out about the serum somehow—I assume it was from reading your father’s journal, or from Demetrius’s Gift of Foresight—and they knew it would put their own status in jeopardy if all the half-Blood caste of
Legiones
could survive the Transition. They’d no longer be one-of-a-kind warriors—they’d be one of hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds. How special would they be then? They used you as a pawn in their game of domination, and I believe, I have always believed, that their ultimate goal is nothing less than domination of the world itself. They’ll move first on the other colonies, kill the Alphas and their families, just like in Rome, and then they’ll turn their sights on the world at large. These are killers, Eliana. Killers who are tired of answering to
anyone
. Killers who will not hesitate to take what they want, by any means possible.”

He stepped closer, his voice beseeching, his brows drawn together. “This is why it’s so important the serum doesn’t fall into their hands. Why it’s so important we continue to fortify ourselves with weapons and keep hidden for now, until we have the stronghold built and we can invite the members of the other colonies who are tired of their own tyrants to join us. Then we can take revenge for what the
Bellatorum
took
from us.” He lifted his hand, brushing his knuckles across her heated cheek. “What they took from
you
.”

She swallowed hard. Her lashes lowered, and a slight breeze blew a stray tendril of hair across her cheek. Was it his imagination, or had she leaned into his hand? A surge of heat pulsed through his veins, victorious. Then her lashes lifted and she pinned him in her gaze, clear and cold as a dragon’s.

“I definitely plan on taking revenge, Silas. On all my enemies, whoever they might be.”

His hand on her face stilled, and he gazed back at her in arrested silence. Was she agreeing with him? Or was that a threat? She confused him even more with what she said next.

“Thank you for what you did with Caesar this morning. He might have killed me. It kills me to admit it, but…you were right about him.”

Now she sounded truly grateful, indebted even. “Eliana,” he murmured.

“And you’re also right about children being blind. But I’m not a child anymore. Whatever the truth is, I’ll find it. Because real power doesn’t come from hatred. It comes from truth.”

Silas almost laughed out loud at that. He had to bite his tongue to silence it.

Power didn’t come from truth. Power came from the ability to manipulate outcomes to one’s own favor. Just as he had now done.

She’d find out the truth about her father, and though she wouldn’t like it, he’d gain even more of her trust. Yes, killers did enjoy creating diversions. They did indeed.

Poor, sweet Eliana. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

He nodded solemnly, allowing his hand to fall from her face. Without another word she turned and walked slowly away, winding through the graves, dry leaves crunching like broken bones beneath her feet.

It was something Mel said earlier that day that had done it. A simple story, awful but undoubtedly true, had made a tiny grain of doubt take root and push up an evil leaf.

They were in the room where she slept—she didn’t refer to it as her bedroom, though there was a cot; it was more like a hotel room in purgatory, anonymous and cold—and Mel had been helping her into a new set of clothes after her bath. She’d napped for a while, but she was still exhausted, and her body was sore all over. Her ribs, they’d determined, weren’t broken from Caesar’s kicks, merely bruised. The bullet wounds on her hip and leg had already begun to heal.

Eliana had recounted in unwavering detail all that had happened from the moment she was shot in the museum, and Mel had listened, unusually silent. When she’d finished with her story and sat staring at the old stone wall across from the cot on which they sat side by side, the last thing she’d said had been, “I keep coming back to something Gregor said, before we had to escape from his building.”

“Which is?”

“Assassins generally don’t have to perform surgery in order to get their marks to divulge information.” Eliana glanced at Mel. “Why would Demetrius take the time to do that? And why, when the rest of the
Bellatorum
showed up, did he let me go?”

It was a long, long time before Mel answered. In the dim blue shadows of the room—there was no electricity in the
building—her elfin face was very serious, almost austere. Finally she let out a small sigh, as if she’d come to some bleak, unwanted conclusion.

“Do you remember the day we met?”

This startled Eliana, it was so out of left field. She tried to think back, but couldn’t precisely recall. “Um…”

“It was two days after the Christmas
Purgare
,” Mel continued, gazing around the room. “My twenty-first birthday.”

“Birthday? I…I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

She shrugged. “Why would you? You were the king’s daughter. I was a servant. A lowly handmaiden. It wasn’t important.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both feeling the resounding truth of that simple statement.
It wasn’t important
. How things had changed.

“I was terrified.” Mel laughed softly. “You were like this alien creature, so perfect and pampered”—she shot Ana an apologetic look—“and unlike anyone I knew. Six years apart in age, and worlds apart in every other way.”

“You were very skinny,” Eliana gently teased, poking a finger into the firm, well-developed muscles of Mel’s thigh. “All knees and elbows.”

“We were both skinny,” she agreed, nodding. “Skinny and innocent. Little skinny ducklings with our heads shoved so far up our asses we thought our shit was the stars.”

Eliana laughed, a sound that seemed jarring in the cold, dusty room. “You really have a way with words, Mel.”

She smiled. “It’s a gift.” She glanced sideways at Eliana, and her face grew serious again. “But I remember that day more for something else.”

“What?”

Mel looked at Eliana for a long, searching moment and then turned away, swallowing. She took a breath and in a low voice said, “It was the day my husband died.”

Eliana started, shocked. “
Husband?
What—Mel, I never knew you were married! Why didn’t you ever tell me—”

“No one knew. He was a half-Blood. Handsome as hell, with a great laugh and dimples you could get lost in. We weren’t supposed to be together, of course. I was a servant, and he was one of the best of the
Legiones
, being personally groomed by your father to enter the
Bellatorum
if he survived…” She trailed off into silence.

“Oh no,” said Eliana quietly. “Oh, Mel. I’m so sorry.”

“We had the same birthday. We never talked about it, the fact that I was full-Blooded and didn’t have to worry about the Transition, and he had a gnat’s chance in hell of making it through. We went ahead and got secretly married, both of us knowing we didn’t have long.” Melliane looked down at her lap. “I prayed so hard my Fever would come so I might get pregnant. So I’d have something to remember him by…” She swallowed and bit her lower lip. “But it never happened. At least we were together at the end, though. He said he wanted me to be holding his hand when…when…”

She suddenly covered her face with both hands, and Eliana wrapped her arms around her shoulders. They sat like that for a moment, silent, still.

“I never knew,” whispered Eliana. “You were so…composed when we met. You didn’t even cry. I never guessed you were going through that.” After a moment, Mel sat straighter and swiped at her eyes while Eliana crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Her face, always so lovely, hardened. She looked away. “Because your father ordered me not to.”

Eliana gaped at her, astonished, but Mel just went on in this dead tone, avoiding her eyes. “He found out we’d gotten married. Of course he would, wouldn’t he? Never missed a thing, your father.” An edge of bitterness snuck into her voice, which Eliana didn’t miss. “He found me with Emil—that was his name, Emiliano—and made us swear to never tell a soul. He said we could stay together until…until the day came when Fate would decide if we should stay together or not. Afterward, only one thing kept me from killing myself.”

Eliana’s voice trembled. “What?”

Mel turned and regarded Eliana with haunted eyes. “Demetrius.”

The blood drained from her face. She stood abruptly from the bed.

“Not like that,” said Mel, guessing what her shocked expression meant; D was known to be a womanizer of the first order. Back in their old colony, he’d chewed through women like a termite chews through wood: relentlessly. “We were only ever friends. I know Emil never told anyone we’d gotten married because he knew the trouble it would cause, but somehow Demetrius got wind of it, or figured it out…I really don’t know. But after Emil died, he came to me every single day and held me while I cried. Just…held me. He never said a word the entire time, but knowing someone else knew how I’d felt about Emil helped in a way I can’t explain. He’d come to my chamber, and I’d cry on his shoulder, and when I calmed down a little, he’d leave. After weeks and weeks of that, I began to feel like I owed it to him to keep on living, like he’d invested so much time and effort
in me it would be the lowest kind of selfishness if I repaid his kindness by slitting my wrists.

“So I lived. And once he saw I was past the worst of it, Demetrius stopped his visits and never said a word about any of it, just nodded as he passed me in the corridors, like nothing had ever happened. But every year on the anniversary of Emil’s death I’d find a single white rose on my pillow, and I knew it was from him.”

Eliana shook her head slowly back and forth. There seemed to be a weight on her chest, crushing her lungs, stealing her breath.

“What I’m trying to tell you, Ana, is that man who handled me with such care, that man I barely knew who sat with me so patiently, that man who gave me so much comfort at the worst hour of my life is not the kind of man who would plot to kill the father of the woman he loved.”

“He didn’t love me,” said Eliana instantly. “He
used
me. And you weren’t there. I saw him with the gun in his hand, Mel. I
saw
him.”

“You saw him shoot your father?” Mel said quietly, looking up at her.

Eliana’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t have to see that.” Color came flooding back to stain her cheeks. “I’m perfectly capable of putting two and two together when I see a…a body on the floor and someone holding a smoking gun. And don’t forget, Silas discovered his plot to take over my father’s reign—”

“Yes,” said Mel bitingly. “Silas. That paragon of virtue.”

“I know you’ve never liked him, but he’s been nothing but helpful, supportive. Even if he is a little”—she paused, remembering his calculated marriage proposal, the way he’d argued for her hand, all logic and no love—“astringent.”

Mel shrugged, but her face was hard as granite. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I do know how he helps your brother with his little…
problems
, though. And I do know how he looks at you, E.”

Eliana stared at her.

“Like you’re dinner,” she said darkly. “A roasted pig, all trussed up and ready to eat.”

Eliana’s skin crawled. Something about that sounded just right. She walked slowly back to the bed, sat down beside Mel once more, and leaned into her shoulder. Looking at the worn stone floor, the bare, shadowed walls, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? Why tell me now?”

Mel’s sigh was heavy. “Because you’d never have believed me, and I didn’t want it to come between us. What difference would it have made, anyway? Dredging up the past when nothing could change it? You and I have always been so good at leaving the past behind. But,” her voice faltered, and she glanced at Eliana, “now the past is catching up with us, and I think you should consider, really
consider
, the possibility that nothing is what it seems. And make your choices going forward accordingly.”

Mel had left her after that, sitting alone in the middle of the empty room with memory and confusion a pair of snarling dark monsters inside her skull, one thing repeating itself over and over, relentlessly.

Nothing is what it seems
.

To Eliana, that was the most frightening possibility of them all.