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“I’ve met dhampirs,” he told me harshly. “And spoken to others who met more, as I searched for a way to save her. They go mad, I was told. Their human and vampire natures rip themselves apart, I was told.
“I was never told about you.”
I stared at him, uncomprehending. It did not last long. I had asked for the truth, and I was getting it, but every word felt like a heart blow.
“I do not know what you are, but you are not dhampir. Dory is, and she has and will suffer for it, all her life. But you—I fought you. I was an adult and a vampire, already rising in power, yet I barely overcame you. You almost killed me, as well as her. You invaded my mind, as easily as you do that of all your puppets. You used advanced mental combat techniques against me, and you supposedly just a child. A child!”
He laughed, and slumped back into his seat.
“No child of mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dorina, Faerie
“Fuck,” Ray whispered, because I supposed he had seen.
I didn’t say anything. The golden glow that the wine had given me was gone, and instead I felt something like I had that night: cold, frozen, disbelieving. Had I been in my body during that conversation, I might have fainted. As it was, I had just sat there, dizzy and blank, while Horatiu berated his old charge.
“As he damned well should have!” I looked up to see Ray incandescent. “What the hell?”
“Mircea saw—sees—me as a threat,” I said. “A demon or worse—”
“Why?”
I waved a helpless hand. “Dory was growing, as all children do, but that tortured me. It is why dhampirs go mad. Vampires are supposed to be immutable, always the same. But she was human and ever changing, ripping my mind apart whenever a growth spurt hit.”
“Damn.”
“I lashed out in pain, in terror, not understanding what was happening. I wanted to be in charge, in order to stop the changes, to end the suffering. But had I succeeded, I would have killed us both, as children cannot simply stop growing—”
“You were a child, too! You didn’t understand!”
“And neither did Mircea. He only understood that I was threatening his daughter, and that I must be contained.”
“You were his daughter,” Ray repeated stubbornly.
“No.”
I left Horatiu, still arguing. I couldn’t listen anymore. I fled down the hallway to Dory’s rooms, stunned, confused, and heartbroken.
And then I stopped and stared about, wondering why I’d come. I looked with blank eyes at the prettily appointed rooms, blue and white and soft gold. Serene, like a Venetian morning.
Like her, when I was gone.
She was asleep, her long, dark hair spreading over a pillow and dropping off the side of the bed. It flowed below her waist whenever she stood, a smooth, silky fall that her maid would insist on doing up in one of the intricate styles that Venetian ladies loved and Dory hated whenever we had company. There were still a few small braids in place, weaving through the unbound mass, ones she’d been too impatient to undo before bed.
I sat on the edge of the coverlet, my spirit form not even denting the fabric, but boiling up blackly around the posts. It looked like smoke. It looked like the demon spirit Mircea thought me to be. I sat there for a moment, staring at it, finding it hard to think.
Was he right? Was there something . . . wrong . . . with me? I did not know. Unlike him, I had never met another dhampir. Except for Dory . . .
I had always assumed that her abilities were limited because of her human nature. That she carried more of our mother’s blood and me more of our father’s. But Mircea was right about one thing: even he could not do some of the things that I could.
What was I?
I didn’t know, and there was no one to ask. No one who knew anything about dhampirs, or . . . whatever I was. I wanted to do something, but . . . there was nothing to be done. Nothing at all.
My eyes finally focused elsewhere, on the dress Dory had worn tonight. A paler blue than Mircea’s brocade, it fell over a nearby chair like water. The dinner party that had necessitated the postponement of my plans had required formal dress, although it was only a small gathering of friends—humans, of course.
