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“It’s the truth. Five centuries of life, of fighting and conniving and scheming and clawing and this? This is how it ends?”
Nothing.
And it utterly enraged me. Like all those years, loving him and hating him and being drawn to him but being afraid to get too close, because it always, always ended the same way. With him leaving. Either physically walking away, or withdrawing behind an icy facade until I did.
And now he was doing it again.
Now he was doing it permanently.
But the bastard wasn’t getting away with it this time.
I already had him in my arms, and now I shook him. A great clot of blood, his own by the color, fell from his lips, staining my already gory shirt. Like I gave a damn.
“Is this how it ends, Mircea? Is it?”
Nothing.
I threw him down on the sofa, straddled him, slapped him, hard. “Is it?”
“Security,” I heard Marlowe mutter, behind me.
Fuck him.
“I’ll kill the first one who touches me,” I snarled.
And then I slapped Mircea again.
“Five centuries, five fucking centuries, only to die a puling coward while this thing gets away. What about revenge? What about pride? Don’t you care?”
Nothing.
“So many years, and for nothing,” I told him scornfully. “If you were going to die like this, going to just give the fuck up, you should have done it then. You should have died with her.”
Radu was looking at me, horrified. And then he seemed to remember what he was doing, and stuck the bloody arm to Mircea’s lips again. Not that it mattered.
“She waited,” I said, staring down at him, the blood pounding in my ears. “You didn’t come. She bled out, on one of your own brother’s stakes, worse than a damned crucifixion, only it was your name on her lips as she prayed. And as she died, still calling for you. Sobbing, begging…but you weren’t there. You were never there!”
I shook him again, he and Radu together, because as terrified as he was looking, Radu didn’t move. “She needed you; you didn’t come. Now I need you. Are you going to abandon me, too? Are you going to leave me, too?”
Nothing, except the tick of the clock and my harsh breathing.
Nothing.
Until…a movement. Tiny, tiny. Just a tick in his throat.
Or possibly…a swallow.
“Mircea…Mircea, please,” I whispered, as the light in the room, brilliant only seconds ago, dimmed, narrowed to just his face.
Please.
And then nothing.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I tried to push him out, but the Scream had taken all my strength, not that I’d had much to begin with. And he was strong. So strong, this strange creature of light.
“Why are you doing this?” The voice was warm, deep, gentle. Inexorable. “You are hurt and exhausted. And at the moment, weaker than the things you stalk. This is not about the Senate…is it?”
