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But he wouldn’t bring those memories to this table.
This table belonged to now and not to the past. This table was about creating a new set of memories.
He glanced at his father, who smiled. Of course.
Join me, Adrien. Daniel’s voice pierced his mind. And all this will end. I will even spare the human’s life and her son’s. Just say you will serve me and I will end this suffering.
For a split second he considered agreeing to it, if for no other reason than to spare Lily and Josh, but reason returned.
He also knew that Daniel wouldn’t keep his word. He’d never let Lily and Josh go.
Adrien responded with a single word: Never.
How unfortunate, but have it as you will.
* * *
Lily stood beside the granite slab, a guard on each side of her, as she waited to be chained to her place of execution. She didn’t look at Josh again. How could she without falling into another round of screaming anguish.
Quill’s voice, loud and strong, sounded through the arena as he stated again the reason for the execution, the illegal hunt for the extinction weapon.
The crowd responded with shouts and condemnation.
Her eyes began to burn. Once more she looked up at the gleaming black dome of the ceiling. She had heard that in a spiritual sense obsidian meant “truth.”
What was the truth of this situation? Why was she here? What had gotten her here? Why was she trapped in a way that prevented her from helping either her son or the man she loved?
From the time of her husband’s and daughter’s deaths, grief had dominated her life, a pain so deep that for a long time, until she’d been contacted with news that Josh was alive, she’d felt nothing but a numbing pain without end. She had lived that pain and it had ridden her hard, for months turned to years.
Meeting Adrien had been like setting a lit match to a gasoline-soaked bonfire of sexual and emotional need. Her relationship with him had simply exploded until now that bonfire burned in her heart.
She loved him, a new love born out of this impossible situation.
Grief was still with her and she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would grieve for those she’d lost until she drew her last breath.
But the chains had birthed something new in her. She’d come alive in the course of the past few nights, alive in ways never before imagined, bursting with strength and passion, and the awareness that she was bound to a vampire in a way that gave her unexpected powers and the ability to live in a secret vampire world.
In a sudden revelation, she understood the lesson of the chains, of her bondage to Adrien, of what they’d become over the past three nights: Their real power came from working together, back and forth, functioning as a team.
But in what way could she work with him now?
She glanced down at the double-chain wrapped around her wrist and began to loosen and unfurl it until it hung in a long loop from her hand. Time seemed to slow. The double-chain, once she put it on, would mean a final commitment to Adrien, to being with him forever, inseparable. There would be no way to remove this chain, to leave Adrien behind, and she’d never be able to return to the human world in any normal sense.
Yet as she stared at the chain and heard the crowd as through a fog calling for her death, she knew this was where she wanted to be, with Adrien, nothing held back. From her right, she saw a manacle lifted in her direction as the guard prepared to bind her and secure her to the granite table.
In a swift move she flipped the double-chain over her head and felt it fall around her neck, as the guard seized her wrist and secured her with the heavy wrought iron.
Immediately the chain began to vibrate. Power swirled around her.
“Lily, what have you done?”
She met Adrien’s gaze and smiled. What I should have done the moment Gabriel gave me the chain.
But you’ll be bound to me permanently.
She smiled. I don’t want to be anywhere else.
In that moment she opened her heart to Adrien as she never had before. She let all her grief go as she focused her thoughts on him, letting her love flow in his direction, letting him know that she loved him more than life itself.
All this she sent through the chains that bound them.
* * *
Adrien shifted as best he could so that he could see Lily, to watch her as the double-chain came to life between them, a sealing of their fates together, now and forever.
But mostly he felt her love, her eyes glowing with emotion, with all that she felt for him. It meant more to him than words could ever express that she would have donned a chain that bound her to him. Even if this was to be the last moment of his life, and hers, that she had done this thing filled his heart with joy.
“I love you,” she called to him. “And I always will.”
“I love you, too.”
“Silence,” Daniel shouted.
Adrien felt the weight of the chains on his body, chains he had known ever since he could remember, maybe even since birth. Yes, he’d been born in chains and lived chained up, whether mentally or more recently chained in a cavern and tortured with whips and clubs.
Now he felt the chains again, so heavy that they pressed into his soul and mired him in the moment, sank him deep. He couldn’t believe he was here again, knowing not only that he would die soon, but that the woman he had come to love over the past several days would also die—along with the boy she’d given birth to ten years ago, her beloved son, the remnant of her family.
Adrien turned to look at his sire, at the man who had spawned him, who had given him life, standing in his arrogance beside the boy.
Daniel looked back, his eyes glittering, his desire to inflict pain rising once more.
Adrien knew that look well.
Pain always followed.
He closed his eyes, unwilling to let Daniel feed off his suffering and pain. Instead, he focused on Lily and her love, and on the chains vibrating powerfully at his neck. He opened himself to experiencing what she felt right now. What came to him was her love, that she found him worthy and noble, that in this moment nothing else mattered. He felt her strength as well, that despite the horror of the Pit she could reach out to him, willing him to know that she loved him, though she would soon die.
That love, which she gave so easily, which was just who she was, began to move through his soul like a healing river.
For the first time in his life, he let his rage go, all that horrible anger that had lived in him like a festering wound.
He allowed other feelings in, the better ones, the ones he’d learned from those vampires who lived in close-knit communities, like Alfonse and Giselle, and more recently from Lily, about love, about forgiveness, about opening his heart to another person and trusting that good things would follow.
