It wasn’t the sort of thing one brought up in casual conversation. But it still stung to look into the depths of her blue eyes and find not so much as a spark of recognition.
“We’re in good hands,” I assured her now.
With fresh tears glittering in her eyes, Gray slid her hand across the bar and took my hand, her touch tentative but warm. Genuine. “Thank you, Darius. This weekend has been… insane, to say the least.”
Words failed me.
Not one hour ago, I’d forced Gray to accompany me into Black Ruby when she’d clearly wanted to leave. I’d left her alone in a bar full of vampires, where she’d been assaulted and nearly kidnapped by two of the worst of our kind.
She should despise me.
Yet here she was, offering me genuine gratitude.
I was finally beginning to understand why Ronan had always believed she was so special. That the day would come when she’d need—and deserve—our loyalty and protection.
He’d never told us what, if anything, he’d known about her origins, or how she’d come into our lives on that storm-tossed night, or why he’d been so certain she’d ultimately need us in her corner.
Only that hewascertain. The young witch had a purpose, he’d insisted. A destiny larger and more important than any of us.
Like the others, I’d given him my allegiance simply because he’d asked, though his ominous words had felt too much like prophecy for my liking—notoriously unreliable things, in my experience, and prone to gross errors in translation.
But last night, just outside Black Ruby, our mysterious little witch had called upon her dormant magic and resurrected a dead child.
And though a single-minded vampire like Hollis may not have sensed it, that same magic had surged again tonight, just before they’d taken her. It’s what had called me out of my meeting, alerting me that something wasverywrong.
Perhaps I needed to rethink my stance on prophecies.
Covering her hand with mine, I looked into Gray’s eyes and frowned, wishing I trulycouldprotect her, that I could promise her that the fights she’d endured this weekend were the very last of her troubles.
Unfortunately, something told me that the darkness for Gray—for all of us—was only beginning.
Eight
Gray
“We need to talk about last night, Gray.”
The vampire fixed his honey-eyed gaze on me, and the mood between us shifted.
After everything that’d happened, I’d almost forgotten the real reason I was here tonight. Why he’d all but dragged me inside Black Ruby.
“It doesn’t matter.” I pulled away from his touch and repositioned my ice pack. “It’s in the past.”
“Gray, I—”
“Could I get some water?”
That muscle in Darius’s jaw ticked, but he filled a glass for me and set it on the bar, watching me with a calm detachment that told me he was in no hurry.
Immortal beings rarely ever were.
“You claim it was your first time, yes?” he asked.
“First time?”
“Bringing someone back from the—”
“Don’t say the D-word.”
