“Who are you?” I demanded. “Is that you,Nemea? Did you fake your death?”
Even as I said it, it sounded crazy to my own ears. Still, I couldn’t deny that something about her remindedme too much of the late queen. I’d constructed a theory and built a house of paranoia with it, threading my insecurities and fears between the bricks. Every room within was haunted by the specter of agony brought on by Sidney’s grandmother and her glee at shutting me away from any hint of light.
What if the old queen hadn’t died at all? She was bored and bat shit crazy, a caustic combination. Maybe she wanted to prove herself a second time and eliminate several upstarts in the process. If she was pretending to be someone else…she’d cut her old mates loose somehow and appeared as a rogue vampiress.
The idea sounded impossible, yet the more I turned it over, the less it felt like madness and the more it felt like memory. Magic had a sensation you never forget if it scarred you deeply enough.
Here was Ilyana Krudelbach, young, Devotion-less. And somehow able to wield power thatfeltlike the old queen’s magic. Maybe I was the only one who’d figured out her game early.
If it was truly Nemea here with me, I’d end her now. It was the least she deserved for what she’d done to me. To Sidney. Tousand the future she’d ripped away at a callous whim.
“Show your true face!” Unchecked shadows swirled at the corners of the room, emerging from the rough-cut pits in the stone to dance to the tune of my fury.
I loosened my grip just enough for her to catch a breath. She stood on the tips of her toes, her ragged gasps turning into the cadence of shaky laughs. Tears finally leaked out of the corners of her eyes, tracing wetness around my thumb and forefinger.
“You always loved…your conspiracies,” she rasped.
I scowled at her, ready toclose my fist again. “What?”
“We first met under a bridge. It was pouring rain,” she continued. Her throat bobbed against my palm as her gaze darted over my face. “I had nothing, just the clothes on my back. You took me to Aetherius’s temple.”
Confusion twisted my lips. I’d done that for a few kids, but never a Born vampiress. We all were supposed to be in the carefree bloom of our youth, but for one reason or another, each of my friends had found themselves on the streets alone. We’d gathered at the temple for the hope offered by Lord Aetherius.
I’d never heard my god’s name from another vampire before. Perhaps that was why I let her finish what she had to say.
“We trained together. They said only vampire slayers deserve to bathe in Lord Aetherius’s light.” Ilyana sniffed, but she was already regaining her composure. She spoke quickly, the words nearly falling over each other. “It wasn’t necessarily what we wanted, but we needed a place to grow up. You kept asking to train under Carlyle to do outreach for the poor.”
I froze as my thoughts struggled to catch up with who this was, stating facts about my own life.
“And Dr. Hillman took me under her wing. You used to call me?—”
“The smartest girl I’ve ever met,” I interrupted. My heart thudded so hard in my chest it was a wonder I didn’t vibrate with the force.It couldn’t be her.
She tried to form her usual wry smile, but it looked wrong on a face that didn’t belong to my betrothed. “I made a curative to prevent vampirism…but it failed you and…”
My world tilted on its axis. “Sidney,” I breathed.
“Zane.” She coated my name with months of longing.
I dropped my hand, and we collided in a desperatetangle, our mouths fusing together. One of her hands fisted in my hair, and she clutched me to her.
Her lips felt…strange. The pressure of fully formed vampire fangs against my own was new and less welcome. I wondered whether she was thinking the same. Her body was different, slimmer in my hold. Whatever she’d done to impersonate Ilyana had physically changed her head to toe. I couldn’t shake the impression that I was passionately kissing a stranger.
“How?” I pulled away and squeezed her waist. She flinched with a hiss of pain. “Fuck, sorry. You’re injured.”
Just as I’d witnessed through the scrying plate. Mathias watched the parts of the labyrinth she was in a little more than he did the other candidates, and the council went along with it. I’d seen her fights. It was a miracle she was still breathing. I needed to thank that red-haired vampire for summoning the tytoursus that’d ended the lives of several of her competitors.
She’d kissed him and put her arms around him in a hug that lasted way too long. Sidney wasn’t the hugging type. And hadn’t she tried to argue that he was her devotee?
Maybe I need to be interrogatinghiminstead.
Her injuries took priority, though, and I bottled the jealousy up before it could eat me alive. I sucked in a deep breath and kept silent. After all, I had never sought her out, wanting her to think I was dead.
Clearing my throat, I looked her over, spotting injuries peeking from damage to her leather armor. There was no hint of the Sidney I knew in the woman in front of me.
“How?” I repeated, dumbfounded.
She swiped at her cheeks, smearing labyrinth dirt. Her lips twisted in chagrin. “It’s a long story.”
