“What is, Belle?” he asked, not trying to hide the weariness in his voice.
“My love. My infatuation. My obsession.”
For all the things he had been expecting, it wasn’t that.
“You’ve been here merely a few weeks. Before that, we hadn’t seen each other in lifetimes.”
“Two hundred and seventy-five years, one month, and eighteen days,” Belle said. Then added, as he stared at her, “since you left me in Paris to take ship from Le Havre.”
“I didn’t keep count.”
“I did.”
“Touching, but I don’t believe you.” He couldn’t even remember what day it was he’d left. How could she?
“Your coldness wounds me, but I swear I tell the truth. Oh, yes, I have seen you since then. Most recently this visit, of course. But I have counted the days of your absence, and learned from my mistakes.”
“Oh? What mistakes?” The whole conversation was surreal. When would she get to the truth? These games were irritating.
“Loneliness. Growing old is a lonely business, even—especially—when one is immortal.” She tilted her head to one side. “You have some experience of what I speak, I think?”
He had no sympathy for her melodrama. “It’s the life you chose, Belle. And the life for which I never had a choice, thanks to you.”
“And still you are brusque. But maybe I deserve that.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “For the longest time, I wanted to follow you. But I was trapped in Paris, with responsibilities of my new territory. I had sought power, and the gaining of it came not with the freedom I had envisaged, but chains of a different kind. It was many, many years until I was powerful enough to act as I wished, to leave Paris without risk that my position would be undermined in my absence.” A nod toward him. “You know something of that too, I presume?”
He did. “Yes.”
“I knew also that you would never see my approach to you as sincere were I to present myself as your sire. It was a conundrum with no solution, until by chance, some thirty or so years ago, I happened to learn the true origins of the vampires, and their fascinating history with witches, lost in our records and nearly forgotten.”
Antoine felt the creep of dread run over his skin. “What has this to do with Cally?”
“Mais oui, but she was part of my plan, it is true.” Belle paused, playing to the drama of her grand reveal as if it were habit and she couldn’t help herself. “You see, I learned the hard way that no one could in truth love another if there was a power imbalance. It would always be the bond of master and slave, not of equals. And if a bond is to last, it has to be of equals, does it not?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it?”
“Would you accept me as more than your sire, knowing I could at any time, as I did so often before, put you beneath me?”
“Never.”
“Exactement.Yet now, your power begins to rival even that of Curia members. I watched with great delight as you fought offJorge, so much older than you. You should never have been able to meet his power, yet you almost did.”
“Because of Cally’s blood, not you. You did nothing to help.”
“Ah, but you see, I hadalreadydone everything I needed to help.” Belle smiled smugly. “How would you have found Cally, had I not thrown her in your path?”
Antoine scoffed. “You are delusional. You are claiming you were here, before the Curia meeting, thrusting a random girl my way, one you did not even know was a witch?” He shook his head. “What games are these, Belle?”
“I made no such claim.”
“Well, good.”
“It was, in fact, twenty-six years ago that I was here readying her for you.”
Antoine stared at her in bewilderment, if only because her tone held no humor or mischief. She believed what she said. “If I did not know our healing also protected our minds, I would upgrade ‘delusional’ to ‘insane.’”
“Yet, all I say is the truth, so I swear.”
Antoine slumped in his chair, watching her, incredulous. “You mean to sayyouwere the one who attacked Cally’s mother?” he said in disbelief. “To make her a witch, in the hope that I would find her and bond her?”
