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I cut him a look as he fell into step. “You will?”
“I’m a growing boy, aye?” He gave me a smile that cheered me despite myself. “And besides, you seem like you could u
se the company. ”
Now I cut him a longer look. This was suspicious behavior.
“Fine,” he confessed. “I’ve spoken with Kenzie. ”
I braced myself. “You did?”
“You should trust her,” he said mysteriously.
“What did she say?”
“She told me about Yasuo’s attack. I don’t like the danger you keep finding yourself in. ”
“You don’t?” Now this really was weird, especially seeing as I’ve been facing danger since the first moment he’d brought me here. I stopped short when I realized he was making one of his ominous thoughtful-Ronan faces. “And?” I asked warily.
“She is disturbed that you might not be able to…”
“To fight back?” I shrugged, suddenly very depressed. “What’s your point?”
And where was Carden? He always came when I talked to Ronan—especially when I felt any sort of strong emotions. Sort of like right now, Carden. I concentrated very hard. Earth to Carden, come in.
Had I done something to upset my vampire? He’d tucked me in so sweetly the last time I’d seen him. But he had said the word good-bye. What did it mean? Had it been good-bye good-bye? I tried to recall his exact words in my head, but I’d been so out of it when he left, practically drunk from the excessive feeding.
“You need to be ready to act against Trainee Yasuo with appropriate force,” Ronan said, and the preposterous notion drew me back into the conversation.
I huffed a cynical little laugh. “Appropriate force. Of course I don’t want to use appropriate force against Yasuo. Wasn’t fighting Emma enough? Just how many friends do I have to kill in this place?”
“Don’t be angry,” he said, his tone unexpectedly gentle.
“It’s not that I’m angry. ” Between Carden’s unexplained absence, Alcántara’s unwanted interest, and Yasuo’s fury, anger wasn’t exactly what I felt. “I’m sad. Lonely, maybe. Confused and scared, definitely, for sure. But it’s not quite anger. I don’t know…I’m worried about Yas. I mean, above and beyond the whole trying-to-kill-me thing. His eyes were all wonky, and he didn’t seem like himself…like, at all. ”
Ronan’s expression shuttered, but he gave a slight nod that told me he knew a little something about loneliness and uncertainty. “It’s only out of concern that I…that Kenzie and I,” he quickly amended, “bring this up. ”
I thanked him, but my throat grew tight. Kenzie and I. Did Ronan ever take any responsibility for his own actions or feelings?
“You must be prepared,” he warned. “Yasuo won’t be satisfied until he feels he’s exacted revenge. ”
My mood spun on a dime. “Alcántara is the one who killed Emma, not me. Yasuo should get revenge on him. How is it I’m the only one who seems to want to know what happened to her? Because if she wasn’t dead when she was taken from the ring…” Emotion stabbed me like a stiletto in the chest, and I sucked in a breath, needing to gather the guts to finish the thought. “If she wasn’t dead,” I continued slowly, “he should want to know what happened to her. Hell, as a vampire Trainee, he’s the one with the ticket inside the bowels of that castle. He’s the one who can find out. ”
“Maybe he knows already,” Ronan said evenly.
“Then maybe he should tell me. ”
“Maybe you should forget this foolish idea,” he snapped.
“Foolish idea?”
“That there’s something in the castle for you to discover. There are all kinds of nightmares in that keep. And no,” he said, seeing my look, “I don’t know what they are. Certainly, you could break in and satisfy your curiosity, but you’d bring the knowledge to your grave because we’d never see you again. ” Something flickered across his face, something tight, like pain.
Ronan cared, and at the moment, it just made me sad. I sighed. “Look, I’ve been getting stronger. But Carden—Master McCloud, I mean—he says that the difference between strength and power is—”
“Don’t,” Ronan interrupted. “Annelise, you will please refrain from quoting vampire politics to me. ”
“It’s not politics,” I said, but my protest was weak. His jaw had tensed at the mention of Carden. For whatever reason, I was walking a fine line here. “It’s survival. ”
