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Darnell considered carefully, but his mind was locked up too tightly to leak anything. I suppressed my grumbling, wishing I could just beat it out of them both.
Honestly, this whole thing would have been simpler if we could just unleash our true vampire strength and magic on each other. We’d have a new Queen in a matter of hours, instead of this stupid charade of Trials where our power was kept hobbled for entertainment.
After a long enough pause that I’d assumed he wasn’t going to say anything, Darnell answered me. “Finding a live gobbelin would mean either Merden placed them here - further implicating her in their rise - or that they can breach whatever mist or mage magic is keeping us inside. Also a disturbing possibility.” He watched me right back, obviously looking for my reaction, too.
I shrugged. “I don’t like either of those options,” I said honestly, without giving him anything useful.
“I wonder if anyone else has died yet?” Jillian mused, a little grin on her face as she stared up at the new stars blinking awake in the sky.
I willed myself not to react at all, intent on not giving away anything Kas had told me about Blaise and her unprecedented trip into the mist.
Had Nineve also been brought back from the dead, just like the humans liked to believe about all vampires? The idea that the mist could - andhad- released vampires from its grip was too raw for me to hold for long.
If there was even a chance that Nicolas could be retrieved...
“What is it?” Darnell asked me, his gaze shrewd.
“Just thinking about how pointless all this death is. All of this for one woman’s greed,” I said, trying to cover my sad hope with anger.
Darnell cocked his head at me, and I wasn’t sure he believed me. “Greed is just a stronger word for desire, though, isn’t it? Who’s to say one individual’s desire is worth less than another’s? You’re willing to kill for the throne. All of us are.”
I blinked at him. Was he serious, or just playing devil’s advocate? “I’m willing to killwillingparticipants. None of you were forced to be here. Whereas Merden’s killed thousands of innocents. And herdesireis worth less because it overrides everyone else’s free will.”
“Boring,” Jillian called, yawning. “You need to lighten up, princess, and have some fucking fun for once.” She stretched and rolled into a ball, closing her eyes as she rested her head on a pile of moss she’d gathered.
“She’s an idiot,” Darnell whispered, and I raised an eyebrow.
I didn’t feel like agreeing with anything he said. My instincts were pinging like crazy that this guy had secrets that I wouldn’t like.
“Sleep if you want. I don’t mind staying up, in case there really are gobbelins or whatever out here,” I suggested.
We hadn’t been observing night watches because plants didn’t attack, but I hadn’t slept more than a handful of hours since the Trial began. It wasn’t the plants I was worried about.
Besides, with any luck, one of my teammates would have some leaky dreams I could skim from their minds, now that I had the black ice lotus as an amplifier.
But as the night grew nearly silent without the snuffling of small nocturnal animals, I felt my mind wandering to a different desire.
Calling gently for Nicolas, I willed the mist to join me and give me his shape.
Bonne nuit, mon amour...
The old-fashioned greeting thrilled me as Nicolas stepped around a corner, looking even more like the handsome young vampire scholar I remembered.
His form was even less transparent, and his eyes looked real behind his glasses, not like hollow pits. Even his hair had a soft sheen of chocolate brown in the moonlight, rather than the matte grays and black the mist usually dressed him in. He was like an old photograph slowly coming to life.
Are you gaining strength? I asked, trying not to sound desperate.
He nodded, but his face was sad.I know what you want to ask, ma belle, but I cannot cross that barrier like your friend. The mist has lost magic, too, just like the vampire realm.
I sat up straighter, reading between the lines. Did that mean...So, it was possible once?
Nicolas tilted his head back to stare at the stars and the triple moons, which were halfway shaded already.I see whispers of what once was. I hear... des images... of how powerful vampires once were. Les immortelles.
He was mixing his French again, confusing words, and I worried it meant his strength was waning, no matter what he looked like. And if he reverted back to only speaking in poems, I didn’t know what I’d do.
Every time he came to me through the mist, my hope grew stronger that one day, he could just stay. And with it, my fear that his time was limited to the Trials also grew.
What do you miss?I asked to distract myself, hoping his own memories were more powerful than the mysteries of what our people used to be, before Merden. Before the Path between Haret and Earth crumbled, shutting in the darkness to grow like the roots of an insidious hothouse flower.
