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At that moment there was a knocking at the door and Ari’s voice called my name.
Saint opened the door at once and Ari came in. He looked at me and nodded.
“Well,” he said, “We’ve come up with a plan.”
90
Kaitlyn
“So…we’re going to sneak away, back to Nocturne Academy in the middle of the night and not come back for a couple of years until the rumors have died down?” I looked at Ari skeptically. “That’s the whole plan?”
Saint had gone back to his own room and Ari and I were alone in mine, sitting on the bed while he explained what we were going to do.
It wasn’t much of a plan, in my opinion. I still preferred the idea of telling everyone the truth right away—tonight—before they could start spreading the crazy lies the Blind Crone had said. But Ari’s parents were in agreement—they couldn’t challenge the wisdom of the local Oracle, even if she was now deceased.
“This is ridiculous!” I exclaimed, getting off the bed and starting to pace as Ari watched me in surprise. He was probably expecting the old Kaitlyn—the quiet, timid girl who was too afraid to stand up for herself. But the deeper into this crisis we got, the more I felt myself changing—becoming more than that—more than I used to be in the past.
“This whole place is ruled by superstition,” I told Ari as he watched me pace. “Everything and everyone that looks a little bit different is just ‘bad luck’ or ‘under a curse’ or some nonsense like that. Look at Saint and what happened to him,” I continued and saw the look of surprise in Ari’s face.
“He told you his past?” he asked, his eyebrows rising high. “But he never speaks of that to anyone.”
“Well, he spoke of it to me,” I said firmly. “And what he needs isn’t magic—it’s medicine and therapy. And your little sister, Jalli—why can’t she come back to the human world with us and have an operation to cure her club foot?”
Ari sighed unhappily.
“Dios, Kaitlyn, I’ve told you—my Sire won’t allow it. The older Drakes don’t trust anything from the human world.”
“But they came from the human world—at least half of them did,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but that was centuries ago,” Ari told me. “If the records in our oldest archives are correct, the first brave farmer who came through the rift in Spain did so sometime back during Medieval Times.”
“And that’s the mentality your people still have,” I told him. “You’re talking about witchcraft and bad luck and magic and you’ve completely ignored any kind of science.”
“But witchcraft is real,” he reminded me. “And magic truly works. It’s not just superstition, like most humans believe.”
All right—he had a point, I had to admit. But still…
“Just because magic works doesn’t mean it’s the only way to solve any given problem,” I argued. “Why can’t we find a way for magic and science to coexist?”
“That, my L’lorna, is the question the various groups of Others have been asking themselves for as long as they have been interacting with the human world.” Ari sighed and shook his head. “Come—can we please not fight right now? Aren’t you thirsty?” He bared his throat for me, pulling down the collar of the rich satin robe he was wearing to expose the pulsing blue vein at the side of his neck. “Don’t you need to drink?” he asked.
His low, seductive tone and the sight of that vein pulsing under his smooth, caramel-colored skin made my fangs feel itchy and my throat feel dry. But I was in no mood to be manipulated or appeased right then.
I felt like what we were doing—running away in the middle of the night and letting Ari’s people continue to believe the blatant lies about me—was wrong. And while I couldn’t stop him or his parents from doing it, I could at least be what my mom would have called “a conscientious objector.”
“No, thank you,” I said, looking pointedly away from him and trying to think about anything but my dry-as-a-desert-throat. “I’m not thirsty right now.”
Ari seemed to understand that I was mad at him—mad at all of them—because he didn’t push me. Instead, he rose from the bed and came to me. He put out a hand as though he wanted to touch my shoulder…and then drew back as though he wasn’t sure how I would react.
“Kaitlyn,” he murmured, “L’lorna…please don’t be angry. My parents and I are only acting for your safety.”
“More likely they’re just looking for a way to get rid of me,” I snapped at him. “A way to get rid of the ugly, scarred girl who doesn’t belong—who will never belong—here.”
“Be fair,” Ari said in a low voice. “Has anyone spoken of your scars in a disparaging way—well, other than Sasha Sanchez but she is nothing but a vrota—from the moment you came here to my land?”
