Page 18
His eyes close again and his hand falls from mine. The invisible pressure around my mind snaps loose, and for one horrible moment no one moves.
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the wet drag of my own breath.
‘Well,’ Luca says softly, ‘that was specific.’
Malachi’s expression hardens, then he nods. ‘No one contacts O’Rourke.’
Aaron’s jaw flexes. ‘If the sire does not wake soon—’
‘He gave an order,’ Malachi growls, and this time the words cut cold enough to shut even Aaron’s mouth.
Gideon is already moving towards the chamber doors, broad shoulders blocking the flare of corridor light beyond them. ‘I’ll have the secure line prepared just in case he can’t use the mind-bond. I’ll keep it close until he authorises it.’
Iskander pushes away from the wall, all immense, silent violence. His pale hair is tied back from a face carved into hard northern angles, and the look he gives the unconscious vampire on the slab contains something too old to be called worry.
‘I’ll double the Vault guard,’ he says. His voice is low, roughened by an accent I can’t place. ‘No one enters without your command.’
‘Or hers,’ Aaron says.
Malachi’s gaze cuts to Aaron as if he’s suggested kneeling in a church and praying for sunlight.
Fuck.
Aaron doesn’t blink. ‘His command was to protect her. From everyone. Until he wakes and amends it, she’s part of the Moretti Order.’
I would enjoy Malachi’s expression more if Valentin weren’t lying on a slab with black veins crawling beneath his skin.
‘How touching,’ I say, because my mouth has apparently decided survival is overrated. ‘I’ve always wanted to be promoted from suspected catastrophe to inconvenient royal parcel.’
Luca’s gaze flicks to me, and despite everything, amusement sparks in it. ‘Parcel with knives.’
‘Several.’
‘Enough,’ Malachi snaps. He steps closer to the slab, his attention locked on Valentin’s motionless face, and for one fractured second the fury drains from him and leaves something rawer beneath it. Fear. Devotion. The terrible helplessness of a man built for violence confronted with an enemy he cannot tear apart with his hands.
When he looks back at me, that vulnerability is gone. ‘If he wakes wrong, you do exactly what he told you. You run.’
My fingers tighten around the sheet. ‘And if I don’t?’
His smile is a beautiful, joyless thing. ‘Then I drag you out myself and let you hate me for the rest of your short life.’
Short life.
The phrase crawls under my skin, cold and sharp, because every person in this room knows there may not be much life left for any of us if Valentin doesn’t wake soon.
I look down at him. Then at the vampires who would die with him.
Tezra’s murderer is already pulling us towards Ireland. Rafe’s missing sireds are tangled in the same direction. O’Rourke sits at the centre of too many converging threads, and apparently he has a witch close enough to be useful and dangerous enough to make every vampire in this room react like someone has dragged a blade along their spine.
A sane woman would take Valentin’s warning as permission, grab her weapons, find the nearest exit and disappear. Instead, I stand beside the slab with blood drying at my throat, Bride’s Mercy cold beneath my tongue, and Valentin’s broken command still echoing through my skull.
I exhale slowly. ‘Okay,’ I mutter. ‘So today’s gone downhill.’
Luca looks at me; then, wildly, he grins. ‘I really do like her.’
Aaron closes his eyes for half a second. ‘Gods help us.’
‘Wrong department,’ I reply. ‘At this point, I think we’re waiting on the vampire.’
