Wraithsong (26 page)

Anthony’s lips slope downward. “Do you think
she’ll stop at your gift? Do you really think she’ll give you your
mom back?”

“
I—”

His eyes suddenly ignite
with anger. “Here’s what she’ll do, Sonia. She’ll kill you,
and
me,
and
the other Lightálfars
and Huldras, and then she’ll continue her devious appropriations
until there’s nothing left to take,” he says bitterly.

Something tells me he’s right. I can’t trust
Maureen to do what she says based on my own values or morals, for
Maureen has a completely different set of values she lives by. “I
just thought that she thinks the way I do, and that she would honor
her word, like I would.”

Anthony’s lips narrow and his expression
relaxes a little. Placing his hand on my chin, he caresses my lips
with his thumb. “That’s why you’re so wonderful. You would do the
right thing.”

I kiss his thumb, but he quickly drops his
hand. I look at the gold ring on his finger and again notice that
the crest looks like a lion holding a Dane ax with goat horns, and
around the beast, some type of vine or serpent design. “I meant to
ask you before. Where did you get your ring? You always wear
it.”

“
My father gave it to me
before he left.” He twirls it around his ring finger and blinks at
a faster rate.

“
It’s beautiful,” I
say.

“
I wish…my father…” Just
then, there’s a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” Anthony says. He
gets up, peeks through the security hole in the door and opens it
to allow the Lightálfars to enter.

“
The doorman said we’d find
you guys here,” Skuld says. She’s just as alert as before. I,
however, feel like I need to get some rest before I lose my ability
to think clearly.

“
Any more sign of the
Darkálfar?” When Skuld shakes her head, Anthony says, “I’ll get the
key to your room and you can get settled in. I think we’ll call it
a night because of what happened.”

“
I agree,” Skuld
says.

“
Can you come over at seven
o’clock tomorrow morning for breakfast? We can strategize then,”
Anthony says. Skuld nods and Anthony fetches the keycard from his
wallet and hands it to her.

“
Any more adventures since
we separated?” Ross asks.

“
No—you?” Anthony
says.

“
Nah, we just went shopping
for some candy,” Ross says.

Anthony explains to me that by candy, Ross
means ammunition and weapons.

“
I don’t think what we
brought with us from Arizona is hefty enough, if you know what I
mean,” Ross leers.

I laugh nervously, though no one else does.
It’s well past midnight, and my body has started shutting down.
“Good night,” I say. “And thank you for helping.”

“
This war has been going on
forever. We want for nothing more than the death of Maureen, the
Darkálfars and the rest of her wretched gang,” Ross
says.

Skuld clears her throat. “Just one more
thing before we leave.”

All eyes focus on her.

“
We connected with the
other nine Huldras. All of them, except for one, will be here
tomorrow.”

There are nine others like me? I can’t wait
to meet them.

“
Great,” Anthony says. “It
could mean the difference between our defeat and our
victory.”

“
Well, sleep peacefully, we
have a lot to do tomorrow,” Mani says, his eyes lingering on me for
a moment.

“
Good night to you, too,”
Anthony says, nearly pushing him out the door.

After they leave, I brush my teeth and hop
into bed.

Anthony meanders in to my room, leaning his
shoulder against the doorframe. He’s holding a huge book and I’m
certain that it’s the same one I saw him holding back at his house
in Sarasota. “What do you think you’re doing, Madam?” He’s
serious.

“
Going to bed,” I say
plainly, feeling agitated because I think that my sleep time might
be under attack. “I’m exhausted, scared and not in a good mood.
This week, I’ve had my mom kidnapped, learned that I know nothing
about who I really am, and have seen my friend killed and brought
back to life again. I’m tired and I’m going to sleep.”

“
No, you’re not. We have
lots of work to do and I need to catch you up on everything you’ve
missed at the Academy—tonight. You get three hours of sleep, that’s
it; the other hours we’ll be studying.” He plops the huge black
leather-bound book onto my bed.

“
But I’m so tired,” I
whine. I don’t think I’ll be able to handle another ounce of
anything tonight. “We can get up early tomorrow and then I’ll be in
a better mood, I promise.”

Anthony creeps across the bed, his eyes
intently connecting with mine and I wonder what he’s doing. He
plunges forward and presses his lips to mine before pushing me down
to the mattress, lying on top of me. When he kisses me
passionately, my pulse suddenly quickens and I forget in an instant
that I’m sleepy. I thought I’d be able to resist him now that I
appropriated some self-restraint from Karl, but no, not at all. My
body responds immediately to his; the excited feeling awakens my
senses and my mind. Anthony pulls my shirt up so my abdomen is
exposed. He caresses my skin, and I moan and shiver, but not from
being cold. My hands slide beneath his shirt and his skin is so
smooth and warm against my fingertips. Gasping, I feel heat
building in the deepest part of my core and I’m confused because he
said he wouldn’t be kissing me anymore. Flipping him over onto his
back, sitting on top of him, I say, “I thought you said last time
was the final time?”

“
Yes, but I can’t have you
falling asleep on me when you have so much to learn, now, can I?”
Anthony says with a sly smile.

“
Wait…what? You did this so
I would wake up?”

“
Absolutely,” he says,
grabbing my hips.

“
You’re so…I can’t
believe…” I snatch a white down pillow and hit him with all my
might.

He flips me over onto my back, his hands
around my wrists, pinning me to the mattress. Then he kisses me
ever so gently. I love how his lips move across mine, gliding and
tickling like a feather, and oh, so tantalizing. He can’t be doing
this just because he wants to wake me up, for his kiss is too
sincere and too full of desire for that. He continues to kiss me,
more passionately now, his tongue exploring my mouth, and I feel my
heart rate doubling in an instant.

“
Awake yet?” he says,
retracting his lips away from mine.

I look at him as seductively as I can. “Are
you going to finish the job you started?” My heart leaps in my
chest at how daring I’ve become, but I think he wants me too. For a
moment I know we have the same thought. We’re here alone, both
wanting each other, both highly awakened to each other.

He grunts and his expression grows troubled.
“I can’t, Sonia, no matter how much I want to I—”

“
I meant studying,” I say
as innocently as I can, knowing full well that I’m playing him.
“What did you think I meant?”

“
Sure, that’s what you
meant,” he says sarcastically.

“
It was—was there something
else you had in mind?” I say, biting my lower lip.

He laughs, but quickly turns serious. “No
really, I can’t. We can’t.”

“
What do you mean?” I ask,
now curious about what he means.

He sits up. “I don’t want to talk about it.
Let’s study.”

“
Really, you’re going to
pull the I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it line on me again?” I’m more
than upset.

He shakes his head. “I’m not going to go
down that path tonight, Sonia. Many other things are at stake.”

I try to understand, but his refusal to talk
about it hurts.

“
Okay, so here’s the Book
of Huldras.” He reads the gold-embossed title from the front
cover.

Pushing my desires away, I let the subject
go, knowing I can’t win this battle. The book is about six inches
thick and the size of Anthony’s laptop. It looks new and the cover
is black leather and the interior pages, a rich cream color. “We’re
supposed to read through this whole thing?”

“
Yes,” he says.

“
Tonight?” I hear my
whiney, annoying voice, but I can’t help it from coming out that
way.

“
I’ll condense some of it
for you, but the more we get through tonight, the better,” Anthony
says.

“
I’m not a speed reader. As
a matter of fact, I’m the opposite.” I feel completely overwhelmed.
The kind of overwhelmed that makes me freeze up so I can’t think or
reason or move.

“
I’ll help you,” he says.
“Listen, it’s not as bad as you think. We’ll just take one page at
a time.”

“
Okay, but this book must
be like four thousand pages long!” I say, exaggerating.

“
Actually, it’s
six-thousand-two-hundred-forty-four-and-a-half.” Anthony sounds
chipper.

“
Oh, my bad,” I say and let
myself fall into the mountains of white down pillows. The word that
comes to mind? Impossible.

Chapter 28

I don’t stop him, except for a few questions
here and there, until two-and-a-half hours later, when we come to a
passage about inter-marriage between Huldras and Darkálfars. I’m
sitting on top of the bed with a pillow wrapped in my arms.

“
Huldras or Huldus and
Darkálfars are explicitly forbidden to marry one another. Huldras
or Huldus may only marry each other, or humans, or Lightálfars
because of the following reasons listed below. There are no
exceptions to this rule,” Anthony reads.

“
That makes sense,” I
say.

“
How so?”

“
If I married a Darkálfar
and we had a child, the child would become evil, wouldn’t it?” I
say.

“
That’s the common belief
among the governesses.”

I get the sense that he doesn’t agree with
the law. “Do you have reason to doubt it?”

He doesn’t answer right away, appearing to
struggle with whether or not to share something. “No,” he finally
says.

“
Well, I wouldn’t want to
marry a Darkálfar anyway,” I say, lightheartedly.

He gets a pained look on his face and then
his cheeks redden. “It’s one of the strictest laws of the
Huldras.”

He’s acting like he’s hiding something from
me. “Is there something you’d like to share?”

“
No.”

I remember Anthony telling me that he
wouldn’t kiss me again and I wonder if that has anything to do with
this information. “Just know that you can tell me anything.”

He nods.

“
What would happen if
someone broke the law?” I ask out of curiosity.

“
They would be banned from
the Dynasty and would never be allowed to return or associate with
Huldras or Huldus ever again. They become outcasts.”

“
That’s rather harsh, isn’t
it?” I ask. “What if the Darkálfar was good?”

“
There has never been a
good Darkálfars. The governesses see it as a betrayal of our own
kind and it’s looked upon as seriously as the killing of another
Huldra or Huldu.”

“
Then it’s a good thing we
don’t have to worry about that.”

Anthony closes the book and then hops off
the bed. “Let’s call it a night and I’ll quiz you in the
morning.”

I follow him. “Can I ask you something—about
us?” I don’t want our time together to end though my body is
yelling at me to go to sleep.

He faces me again. “I’m not sure that we
should talk anymore tonight since it’s so late, and you need the
rest.”

“
Screw the ‘should!’ We’ve
been through nightmare after nightmare this week and I don’t care
about any
shoulds
anymore.”

He laughs a little. “All right.” He comes
back to the bed and sits on top of the mattress.

“
I need to know something.”
I face him and inch closer, my knees propped up against the
mattress between his knees. He wraps his arms around my waist and I
play with his hair.

“
All right,” Anthony says,
his beautiful blue eyes looking up at me.

I take a deep breath. “When I saw you…die
back there at the restaurant, something occurred to me.”

“
Yes?”

“
I know I’ve only known you
for a few short weeks, but—” I huff; this is very difficult.
Putting my feelings into words? Impossible. My breathing shallows.
“Geez, this is so hard,” I whisper. “Why did you…choose to help me
over your mom?”

Anthony pulls me in close, his cheek leaning
against my chest. “Because I know Maureen is in the wrong, and I
really like you—a lot.”

Just like that, he’s said it, revealing that
he feels the connection between us, too. I smile and relax my body
against his.

“
I’ve never been attracted
to any girl other than you, and I’ve never had such a hard time
trying
not
to
think about someone, because I know I shouldn’t.” He pauses. “Does
hearing me say that frighten you, Sonia?”

“
Yes—no. I’m only afraid
that we can’t…”

“
Be together?” He looks up
into my eyes.

I nod slowly, and he rises to his feet,
kissing me tenderly once.