The same way I’d become one of them.
I expected Raphael to argue, but when he turned back, he was looking at Thea, not me.
It stung before I could stop it.
It’s a good thing. The less attention he paid to me, the better.
“And you saw none of this.” He spoke it like a statement.
“My visions aren’t always clear.”
That wasn’t an answer. The narrowing of Raphael’s white brows said as much, but he didn’t press. Since I was keeping my own secrets—a dangerous pile of them—I had little standing to pursue that line of questioning.
Raphael’s attention returned to me. “Again, you should have told me. I could have fixed this mess.”
“If you hadn’t tried to turn me, then you never would have had the poison.” The cruel irony is Raphael had nearly died when Ihadn’tbeen trying to kill him. Things needed to change, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to kill him, even though doing so would’ve brought the kingdom to its knees.
“And then you’d be dead,” Raphael repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time. He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Maybe Demos is right. Maybe Iama fool.”
I stared at him for a long time.
There was so much in that silence. Anger, regret. Hurt. I felt it deep in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was even my own, but it ached as badly as anything ever had. I’d ripped open a chasm between us and Raphael had done the rest. The line he’d crossed… there was no way back. No way I could undo my betrayal any more than he could undo his.
It was Thea who once more broke the tension: “Well, I’m glad we’ve gotten this cleared up. Sam, why don’t you join me for some tea and biscuits?”
Even though I couldn’t eat or drink?
Yet I gladly accepted the exit. I needed space from the vampire king I’d tried to kill.
The king of a nation I still needed to bring to heel.
Chapter Six
Raphael
Raphael watched his fledglingwalk out the door.
The last time he’d done that, she’d gotten stabbed and brushed against the true death. It was only the streak of panic he’d felt through their mental link, a flash that had barely slipped through Samara’s meticulous shields, that had let him race there in time to save her.
So it took an inordinate amount of restraint to not follow at her heels, to not linger in her shadow, watching for any sign of danger. Danger whose throat he could rip out.
As his fledgling, Samara’s bond to him would be heightened. The desire to safeguard her hadn’t truly changed, given he had already been protective to the extreme. He’d be attuned to her survival needs, and for the first few days, perhaps weeks, she’d need to stay within the castle. The transformation would demand she stay at least that near.
If only she’d stay close because she wanted to stay close tohim, the way he ached even now to be in her presence.
He lingered at the door, waiting for some sign she might return, that she might want to be back in his presence. But ofcourse she was with Amalthea. The oracle was greedy for her friend’s company. She’d been incensed it took Raphael so long to recover from the poison and get her. He’d scarcely opened his eyes, waking from the coma to find the barest embers of the fledgling bond stirring, when she’d thrown open the doors and asked why he was lazing around.
As if he would ever have left Samara to suffer in that state if he’d had a choice. The half state was meant to be endured for hours, a day or two at most.
Not nearly a month.
It was a wonder she wasn’t entirely mad. To have saved her only to have lost her… he would never have forgiven himself.
Poisoned blood or not. The fact that it was the closest Raphael had come to the true death since the first necromancer he’d dispatched didn’t bear notice. She was his undoing; he had accepted that.
The conniving spymaster had somehow escaped his notice for months. Worse, the spy no doubt had help, even if not among Raphael’s own guard, then perhaps lower in the castle. When he hadn’t been guarding his unconscious body, Demos had investigated, but his general’s reports had turned up nothing. Titus had been careful. Samara’s story filled in some gaps, but the fact the witch had been able to move so easily among his staff, had been able to approach his Chosen, meant danger still lurked in his kingdom.
Raphael’s fangs ached with the urge to tear open the weasel’s slimy throat all over again. The witch had died too quickly.
