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I am about to snap at him when I realize,he’s right. Despite the warmth from the fire, I shiver. My legs give out, and I sink to my knees.
How could I have forgotten something so important?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CLARA
“You are a bastard,Cassius. You should have told her.”
“She will find out later, after she heals.”
The hazy snippet of a distant conversation replays again and again.
Cassius kneels before me and takes my face in his hands, forcing me to look him in the eye. “I assure you, it’s nothing like your connection with Alaric,” he says, misunderstanding my reaction. “We are not quite so tangled up… at least, that is what the witch claimed.”
“Your lives are now tied together. Magic demands a price, and that was the price offered to save your life.”
I remember asking him to explain, but each time he would deflect until the chaos of everything else took over my every thought.
“Tell me how,” I say, my voice little more than a rasp.
Sitting back on his heels, Cassius finally relents. “Did you think she would give you the opportunity to take my life without my consent?”
My stomach churns. I’m completely horrified.
“If you sacrificed me, I would have slipped quietly into the Otherworld. But then you decided to forfeit your own instead.” He shakes his head. “I was meant to be the sacrifice. Della and Lawrence were subdued to keep them from interfering.”
“How could you think I would do that to you?” Does he think I’m so selfish that I could kill him without a second thought? Tears slide down my cheeks.
“What good it would do to break the compulsion if you weren’t there to welcome him back?” Cassius smirks as if to make light of it all. “You left me with no other choice but to give you some of my years.”
I lurch forward and grab the collar of his shirt. “What does that mean?”
This is no simple explanation, needing a few simple words, and I am eager to know everything all at once.
“Did you forget? Vampires are immortal. What is fifty or sixty years in the span of eternity?” He pries my hands loose and clasps them in his. “It’s those years that connect you to Asmod in the same way I am.”
The fact that we are connected seems far less important now compared to what he offered to do.
“Why…?” I don’t finish the question because I already know the answer.
He loves me.
And though I do love him. He loves me in a way I can’t return—not in the same way. My heart belongs to Alaric. And I could no sooner change that than I could stop the sun from setting. Maybe, in another life, things would have been different. My chest squeezes painfully because there is no easy answer.
“There’s no need to cry, little bird,” Cassius says, pulling me into his side. “Perhaps you’ll understand if I explain.”
I doubt it.The expression I give him says as much.
“At first, I wanted to possess you, as one would a caged bird. I wanted to know what it felt like for someone look at me the way you look at him. In my attempts to capture you for myself, I became that bird, trapped in a cage, with the door open, but unable to fly away. However true my feelings are now, they grew from the seeds of selfish desire. I would not wish you to give your heart to someone like that.”
When I shift to pull away, his arms tighten to keep me there. “Cassius—”
“Of course,” he continues, not even attempting to disguise the devilish smile in his voice. “Should you find yourself no longer able to resist me despite everything, I would not object to being on the receiving end of your affections.”
***
Irritation simmers below the surface as I stare down the door to Cassius’s quarters. After finally explaining everything, he simply got up and mumbled something about needing to feed, then left me sitting on the parlor floor.
