Awakening
When the sound first came from the bedroom, Vivien’s head snapped up and bumped the wall behind her. She didn’t even notice. She’d been sitting on the stone floor for so long that her whole body felt as deadened and numb as her heart and mind did.
A little earlier—or had it been hours already?—Doril had come up to ask if Vivien was ready for her dinner. Vivien had only been able to look at her blankly. Food felt unappealing in the extreme, as did doing anything except waiting for Brad. She should have been hungry; she hadn’t had anything since coffee at breakfast, and it seemed like weeks had passed since then. It had been a long, painful day.
The cook left, then returned with a tray of hot tea, toasted bread, and roseberry jam. At her gentle but unyielding urging, Vivien bit into a piece of toast, but the berries had lost their sweetness and all she tasted was grief.
Roseberry on bread had been one of the very first things Brad had given her to eat when she’d returned to Foh’Ran, telling her that, as a child, she’d loved the berries. As for the tea, it didn’t even begin to warm her. She forced herself to drink it all to satisfy Doril, but if anything, the herbal taste deepened her pain. Anabel, her late elderly aunt, had been a tea drinker, and the grief Vivien felt from her passing was still a fresh wound, easily reopened.
The day had left Vivien wrung out, emotionally as well as physically. Her twentieth birthday would be one she remembered, but not for good reasons. She’d seen little of the celebrations Rhuinn, Foh’Ran’s ruler, had organized for her; she’d been too busy accusing him of murder and challenging him to a duel to care much about what was going on around them.
It wasn’t their confrontation that had left her so numb, however, nor the extent to which she had used the Quickening, the strange, magic-like force she was still learning to wield.
Brad, the man she loved, had died today. Vivien felt like a part of her had died with him. Her chambermaid had drawn a knife on him while Vivien stood in the next room, unaware. When the traitor had run, Brad had urged Vivien to go after her and retrieve the heirloom she had stolen, hiding from Vivien how hurt he was.
Every time she closed her eyes, she could see him the way she’d found him when returning from her chase: lying on the floor of her chambers, blood pooling beneath him, his brother Aedan kneeling at his side. Dead.
However, if the muted voices rising from the bedroom door were any indication, he’d awakened again—awakened as a vampire. She still didn’t know much about vampires or what it meant to become one, but Brad would still be there, and that was all that mattered.
Her heartbeat accelerated as she pushed herself up to her feet, teetering when her leaden legs threatened to buckle under her. She held herself upright with a hand against the wall behind her. Her eyes remained trained on the door, waiting for it to open.
Aedan, Brad’s twin brother, had asked her not to come into the room, but to wait for them to come out to her when Brad was ready. If Aedan had had his way, Vivien wouldn’t even have been allowed to wait in the hallway.
How could she have gone to her room and rested like he had requested right after telling her Brad would awaken at nightfall? In her mind, every time she thought of Brad, all she could see was his pale face, his closed eyes, his lips flecked with blood.
She needed to see that he was all right. She needed to feel his arms around her, to hear his voice say her name. She needed to chase away the pain that had ripped her heart apart the moment she first saw his inert body. Maybe, then, the guilt that choked her would abate at least a little.
She still couldn’t make out what the voices inside were saying, but the mere knowledge that one of them was Brad’s warmed her better than the tea had. Waiting the last few moments might have been the hardest thing she’d done all day.
At last, the door opened. For a second or two, Vivien wasn’t sure which of the twins was looking at her with such a grave expression. Until now, Aedan’s metallic eyes had given him away, but would it still be true now that Brad was a vampire too?
“Dame Vivien,” he said, and those two words were enough for her to know it was Aedan.
She didn’t wait for him to add anything and stepped forward instead.
“How is he?” she asked, her heart in her throat. She tried to look around Aedan but couldn’t catch sight of Brad. “Can I see him?”
Aedan raised a hand toward her, palm out, a request to slow down. His sleeve was rolled up, she noticed, and two small wounds, round and bright red, closed but fresh, marked his wrist. They looked like a set of bite marks, a set of fangs.
“Please be patient. He’s still awakening, and he needs to feed. It would be better if you waited until morning—”
She shook her head. “No way. I want—I need to talk to him now. I need to know he’s okay. Please.”
She and Aedan had clashed about many things in the past couple of weeks since she had met him, and she could tell already that this would be one more point of disagreement. Why would he want to keep Brad from her, though? Even if he disapproved of their relationship, he had to understand how she felt.
He held her gaze for a few seconds before turning back to look inside the bedroom. When he looked at her again, his expression had tensed even further, if that was possible.
“All right,” he said very quietly. “Just… be careful, Dame Vivien. Please.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but she didn’t have time to give it much thought. He stepped out of the way to stand at her side, and at last she could see Brad. He came out of the bedroom, the faintest of smiles on his lips. Vivien’s eyes prickled, and she smiled back at him.
When he stopped, she crossed the last, intolerable few inches and threw her arms around his neck. She could have wept when his arms closed around her, pulling her tight against him. Next to them, Aedan made a sound, almost like a hiss, but she couldn’t have cared less what he or anyone else thought. She’d been so sure she’d lost Brad… To have him back was heaven.
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, burying her face against Brad’s neck. “I should have stayed with you, helped you. I shouldn’t have run after her and left you alone.”
Brad pressed a kiss to her temple. His lips felt cool.
“Don’t be sorry,” he murmured. “I asked you to go, didn’t I? You had to get the insignia back.”
He turned rigid against her and pulled back ever so gently until their gazes met. She felt a pang when she noticed that his eyes had turned the same metallic silver as Aedan’s. She already missed their noon-sky blue.
“You did get the QuickSilver insignia back, right?” he asked, his voice lower. “Without it—”
She raised a trembling hand to his face and pressed two fingers to his lips.
“I did. Everything’s fine; don’t worry about that.”
She had reclaimed the insignia from the would-be thief who had mortally wounded Brad, but everything was far from ‘fine.’ He didn’t need to hear about her trip to Rhuinn’s palace now, however. He’d know soon enough which path she’d chosen. For now, all that mattered was him.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Are you in pain?”
She glanced down to his abdomen, where he’d been hurt. He must have changed clothes because there was no trace of blood on his shirt that she could see, nor was it ripped.
“I’m fine,” he murmured, pressing the words against her fingers like kisses. When she dropped her hand, he leaned closer again, his arms tightening around her waist. “Just hungry.”
Vivien licked her lips as his mouth approached hers, her eyes already fluttering half-closed. Before they could kiss, however, Aedan cleared his throat and said a single word.
“Bradan.”
Brad jerked back, his arms falling away from Vivien, his face turning to Aedan.
“We should go find you something to eat if you’re hungry,” Aedan continued, his voice quiet but suffering no rebuttal.
Inclining his head, Brad pulled completely out of Vivien’s embrace. She tried to cling to him, to no avail.
“Wait, not so fast! He just woke up. Give us a moment.”
Aedan’s eyes remained on Brad as he answered her.
“I did, Dame Vivien. He really needs to feed. And maybe you ought to rest. There’s a lot we’ll need to talk about in the morning. A lot of decisions for you to make, too.”
She knew that only too well, but she’d mourned Brad today, before Aedan had told her what he’d done. Then she’d waited for him to return to her, a tiny part of her still incredulous about the whole vampire thing. Now Brad was back in front of her, and Aedan was already trying to take him away.
Brad must have guessed she was about to argue further, because he brushed his fingers to her arm with the briefest of touches and brought her eyes back to him.
“Vivien,” he murmured, and he infused her name with the same love as always. “We’ll have time. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
A tiny, childlike voice inside Vivien wanted to protest that yes, he was going somewhere, wasn’t that what Aedan meant by going to find something to eat? Anywhere out of her sight was already too far. She could hardly begrudge him his food when he was hungry, however—even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what kind of food it would be.
“Of course,” she murmured, struggling to offer him a smile when what she wanted was to wrap him in her arms again and never let go. “I’ll… see you in the morning, then?”
Returning her smile, he nodded once before heading down the hallway. Aedan started to follow him, but he hesitated and looked back at Vivien.
“I have to go with him,” he said, sounding troubled.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“But we shouldn’t leave you alone.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“And who do you expect will attack me while you’re gone? Doril or Elver?”
Doril, the cook, and Elver, the groundskeeper, were the only two other people in the castle, and both were elderly. She doubted either of them had a violent bone in their body. Besides, now that she thought of it, Vivien realized she didn’t know whether age had anything to do with channeling the Quickening. She’d have to ask Brad. He’d taught her a lot already, but she still had many things to learn—including being more wary of people she’d just met.
She hadn’t suspected her chambermaid until she’d drawn a knife on Brad. Loree had seemed like such a sweet girl. And she was so young, too. How could she have killed someone like this, without a sliver of hesitation? The mere thought of it reawakened Vivien’s anger—and at the same time, chilled her to the bone.
“Dame Vivien,” Aedan started, but she thought she knew what he would say.
“I’ll lock myself in my room,” she cut in. “And if someone calls in the Passing Room, I won’t let them through. Satisfied?”
With the shields set over the castle and its grounds, the Passing Room was the only way for strangers to come in, and only with permission.
Aedan inclined his head, and she thought she even heard him whisper a word of thanks before he hurried after Brad, who was waiting for him at the end of the hallway. Vivien watched them go, her smile all but forgotten as her heart tightened painfully.
Brad was back, he looked fine, he’d held her as closely as ever and looked at her with the same love that always made her want to kiss him.
So why did she still feel like she had lost him?