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Lila
AS I SAT IN SEBASTIAN’S office, all I could seem to think about was the fact that this was the same chair I’d sat in when the prince had decided to make me his slave. So much had changed since then.
I was no longer the same girl I had been when I’d first set foot in this office. I had changed. Everything about me had changed. And as much as that scared me, it also made my heart pump faster.
I finally felt alive, for the first time in my life.
“So, tell me something, Lila,” Celia said, speaking for the first time since she had learned that Alessandra and Sebastian were engaged. “Why does Sebastian care so much about your well-being? Don’t get me wrong. You seem like a nice enough girl. It’s just unlike my cousin to want to protect humans.”
He cares about me because he’s in love with me, I thought to myself. But I couldn’t tell her that, not without spilling my guts out to her about everything.
So, instead, I gave her the first answer I could come up with. “I think I’m his favorite slave.”
“Hmm.” She studied my face for a moment, almost as though she were trying to decide if she believed me or not. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but the office door flung open before she had a chance to.
An unhappy-looking Sebastian entered the room. “Celia, would you please go to the dining hall? Henry is waiting for you there. I want you to explain everything that’s going on to him. I need to speak to Lila in private and then I will join you.”
“Okay.” She rose to her feet.
“Oh, and Celia?” Sebastian said. “Please don’t mention Lila to anyone. If anyone should ask, you never saw her. You don’t even know she exists.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” She glanced over at me suspiciously. “It was nice to meet you,” she said before heading out of the room.
Once she’d closed the door behind her, Sebastian locked it and then turned back to me. Without making eye contact, he strode across the room and stood next to his desk, his back turned to me.
“I need to figure out what I want to do with you,” he murmured.
I stared at his back, confused. We had just shared the most breathtaking kiss of my life and he’d professed his love for me and now he needed to figure out what to do with me?
“What do you mean? Are you rethinking your decision to... keep me? Are you planning to kill me instead?” I was almost afraid to hear his answer.
He glanced over his shoulder, looking at me for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Kill you?” He chuckled. “No, Lila. Quite the contrary. I’m trying to figure out how to keep you alive.”
“Well, that should be easy enough. I won’t go into the woods by myself again,” I assured him. “I promise. I’m not sure what I was thinking.”
“It’s not you that I’m worried about.” Turning away from me, he glanced out the window. “I just told Princess Alessandra that you were dead.”
“Why?” What would make him tell the princess—and not just any princess, but the princess who happened to be his fiancée—that I was dead? I spoke the first thought that came to my mind. “Are you trying to keep us a secret?”
“Yes, but not for the reasons you’re probably thinking. This is my best shot at keeping you safe.” He crossed the room and came to sit in an armchair across from me. “She wants you dead, Lila. If she thinks you’re already dead, then she has no reason to try to kill you.”
“I don’t even understand.” I shook my head. “Why would she want me dead? What did I ever do to make her want to kill me?”
“That’s just Alessandra,” he explained. “She views you as a threat that needs to be eliminated.” His eyes met mine evenly. There was a look of sincerity behind his gaze. “I promise you that I won’t let her kill you, Lila. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
I frowned. “And how are you planning to do that?”
“Well, Alessandra can’t be the only one to believe you’re dead,” Sebastian replied. “I need everyone to believe it. Celia is the only one who can know you’re alive and even she can’t know that you’re Lila DeHaven. We’ll have to provide her with a false surname.”
“How are you planning to make everyone think I’m dead? Do you even know how ridiculous this plan sounds? The palace is big, but it isn’t that big. Alessandra and I will end up crossing paths at some point.”
“Not if I can help it. You can’t return to the Slave Chambers,” Sebastian informed me.
“I can’t?” I swallowed hard, not sure how to feel about the idea. Even though I didn’t really consider myself close to the prince’s other slaves, they kept me company. Life at the palace would have been even more boring than it had already been if I had to be by myself.
“No.” He shook his head. “They need to believe you’re dead, too. I need to keep you somewhere secluded—somewhere the other girls won’t see you and where Alessandra won’t think to look for you.”
“And where would that be?” I questioned.
His blue eyes slid over to meet mine. “The Chambers.”
“You’re going to send me back to the Chambers?” I whispered, trying to fight back the tears that were rising to the surface. I couldn’t cry in front of him. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. But the thought of going back to the Chambers made me want to.
He shot an apologetic glance in my direction. “I’m sorry. I hate the idea just as much as you do.”
“I highly doubt that, Sebastian,” I snapped. He could say whatever he wanted, but the reality was that he had never been locked away in the dungeon like I had been. I hadn’t been there for very long, but I’d hated every second of it.
It was the closest thing to torture that I’d endured since I’d ended up here.
The Chambers were the one place in the whole castle where I’d actually felt like the prisoner I had become—the prisoner he had made me.
“I’m sorry. It’s just the only place I can think of right now. I promise it will only be a temporary situation, just until I can figure out a more permanent arrangement for you.”
“You make me sound like I’m a piece of furniture that needs arranging,” I commented bitterly.
“You’re anything but, Lila. I don’t think you realize just how important you are to me.” He rose from his seat and came closer to me. To my surprise, he knelt down on the floor in front of where I was sitting and took my hand in his.
“I never imagined myself saying this, but... you’re the love of my life, Lila. You’re the love of my three-hundred-year life.”
I allowed his words to sink in. This vampire who had been around for 300 years was in love with me.
As he leaned in to kiss me, I spotted it: a smear of red, just below his bottom lip. At first I wondered if it was blood, but the color was a shade too vibrant to be blood.
It was red lipstick.
“You kissed her,” I whispered, blinking back the tears that sprang to my eyes.
“She kissed me,” he insisted, his blue eyes locked on mine. “I couldn’t just not kiss her back. She would have been suspicious. I need her to believe you’re dead.”
I tried to swallow the lump that was lodged in the back of my throat, but it remained there, preventing me from being able to speak.
Releasing my hand, Sebastian brushed my cheek with his fingertips. “Don’t be angry with me, Lila. I can’t handle the idea of you being angry with me.”
Like I could handle the idea of him kissing someone else? He had some nerve.
“Tell me something. Are you still planning to marry her?” I asked, barely able to form the words.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He shook his head, avoiding my gaze.
I let out a little laugh. “How can you claim that I’m the love of your life and then be unsure if you’re still going to marry her? You told me earlier that you didn’t even love her. Did you lie to me or have your feelings already changed?”
Sebastian’s eyes locked on mine again. “Me marrying Alessandra has nothing to do with love, Lila. It’s much more complicated than you can understand.”
“Then make me understand,” I insisted. “Make me understand how you can love me and actually consider spending the rest of your life with her.”
“You were there to witness my conversation with Celia,” he reminded me. “It looks like we will have forty-eight hours to either evacuate the island or we will have no choice but to go to war with my aunt.”
“I know I overheard all of that, but what does it have to do with you marrying Princess Alessandra?” I questioned.
“As much as I wish I could tell you otherwise, the truth is that I need her right now.” Sebastian’s blue eyes remained on mine as he continued. “Emilio Craven, one of the princes of another vampire coven—not to mention one of the most powerful vampires in the world—wants to take over all of the other covens. It looks like a war is brewing, whether it’s with the Craven coven or Aunt Caroline and my cousin Daniel.” He sighed.
“What does Alessandra have to do with any of this?” I asked.
“Our coven alone isn’t strong enough to go to war with anyone right now. If our coven joins forces with Alessandra’s coven, we might stand a fighting chance.” He paused for a moment and then sighed. “And if we do choose to evacuate to avoid going to war with Aunt Caroline, we’ll need somewhere to go. I haven’t discussed it with Alessandra yet, but I’m sure that she would be willing to allow us to move into the Allegro palace if it should come to that.”
I stared at him evenly. “If you move into the Allegro palace, what will happen to me?”
“You’ll come with me, of course,” he said matter-of-factly.
“But if Alessandra wants me dead, she won’t allow me in her kingdom.”
“I’ll find a way.”
I paused for a few long moments. “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The war. It’s because of me... because of the prophecy. My blood has the power to spark the first world war,” I recited the prophecy. I shifted my eyes over to his. “If I had never come here, none of this would be happening.”
“I wish I could tell you that it wasn’t, but truthfully? I don’t know,” Sebastian admitted with a sigh.
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have come here. If I never came here, you wouldn’t be forced into marrying Alessandra.”
“Please don’t say that, Lila. If you had never come here, I never would have had the honor of meeting you. I wouldn’t feel the way I do for you right now.”
“Maybe that would have been a good thing,” I muttered, darting my eyes away from him.
He shook his head. “Before you came here—before I met you—I thought my heart had turned black. It had been such a long time since I’d felt anything for anyone. But now? Now I know that my heart was simply frozen, that all it needed was for you to come along and melt the ice.” He reached over and touched my hand gently. “Alessandra means nothing to me, Lila. You’re the one I love.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe everything he was saying, but there was a part of me that knew better. It was the part of me that was unable to ignore the fact that Alessandra was a princess—royalty, just like him—and I was nothing more than his slave. How could he love me? I couldn’t even begin to compare to everything she had to offer him.
“Lila, please say something,” Sebastian whispered after I had gone completely silent for a few long moments.
I met his gaze evenly. “I guess you should probably take me to the Chambers now.”
He looked saddened, but he nodded. “There’s a secret shortcut through my office. We’d better take that route so that we don’t bump into anyone in the hallway,” he explained as he rose to his feet and opened the door to what I thought had been a closet.
As we stepped into the darkness, I swallowed hard.
I was about to be made a prisoner yet again. Actually, who was I kidding?
As long as I was stuck in this world, I would always be Sebastian’s prisoner. And the worst part of it all was that I wouldn’t have had it any other way.