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“He will be fine,” Myrinn said softly as though her words were only meant for me.
Arlo looked up at me with those mesmerising eyes, one as blue as the skies, the other richer than the earth itself. His lips trembled as they tugged upward at the corners. He winced but still forced the grin nonetheless;it never met his eyes.
“Deal with this,” Arlo commanded me. “Find answers. Then come to me.”
I swallowed hard, unable to refuse him. If Arlo had told me to kill every person within Evelina in his honour, I would have done it here and now.
No one uttered a word to me as I watched Myrinn escort Arlo from the room. They were not alone as the silver-garbed guards of the Queen’s assembly gathered around them in a cloak of metal and steel.
Only when they had left did I turn back on my family.
“When I find out who is behind these attacks, I will take pleasure in causing you terrible pain. Do not think I will let you die quickly. You will suffer just as you have made me suffer.”
I looked to Haldor who tugged his human from the floor. She was waking now, moaning as though waking from a night of heavy drinking. Gildir stood guard, unease of the events keeping his usual, misplaced humour silent. Frila was encased in her human’s arms as he wasted his breath trying to console her.
“Hold your threats,” Queen Claria said coldly, looking at me with an expression she had not granted me before. “It is unbecoming of a prince.”
“Do not mistake me, Claria,” I replied, hissing through my teeth to stop myself from screaming. “My words are bond. It is a promise, not a threat. Remember that.”
22
Iheld out the broken shards of blood-coated glass, not the shards that littered my jacket, but the smatterings of it that filled the pocket at my chest. There was no need to care about nicking my fingers on glass as I had fished them out of the pocket to show her. Pain was not a luxury I held.
Myrinn had to steady my hand by holding my wrist. It shook so violently that I could have dropped the pieces and let them scatter across the floor. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had.
Nothing mattered anymore.
“Help me understand,” she pleaded, eyes wide, as though blinking would cause her to miss what I had to say.
It had taken great persuading for me to convince Myrinn to dismiss the healers. She refused at first. Of course she had, as she regarded the blood covering my chest. The pleading in my eyes convinced her to do as I wished.
It was not my blood that coated me. If the healers removed my clothes, they would have found my skin bruised, but not marked. It would have created more questions than answers.
I could have laughed at what happened. Although I had known that the vial of vampire blood shattered upon impact with Samantha’s stabbing attack, it still did not feel real. A dream, a bad one, but surely this was not my reality.
Even as I had whispered into Myrinn’s ear, pleading that she kept Faenir away, I still did not fully grasp that I was finally being forced to tell my truth. To face it head on.
When Queen Claria requested that Myrinn be the one to take me to the healers, I almost believed she could read my mind. For a moment, I liked her, because she kept Faenir from coming here and finding out my deadly secret.
I was not prepared for him to find out. Not this way, at least.
“The blood is not mine.” My voice was firm. Tears dribbled down my cheeks.
Myrinn tried to reach for my jacket as though to prove me wrong herself by revealing a wound beneath it. She would have found nothing. “You are in shock, Arlo,” Myrinn fussed, trying to push me back upon the bed. “It was silly for me to send the healers away… Faenir would kill me if he knew.”
“He can’t find out,” I said, fisting the glass in my hands; every fragment bit into my palm, but I did not care.
Myrinn gasped in response.
“Listen to me,” I cried. “Please.”
“Okay,” Myrinn said, holding her hands up in surrender. “I am listening.”
It took me a moment to catch my breath.
“The blood belongs to a vampire. I kept it in a glass vial for the single need to drink it when the time was required. That caused this. It… broke.”
The world spun for a moment, as though someone had yanked it harshly out from beneath me.
