David didn’t return to school—to his human life. What was the point, I suppose? He was only ever here to be with me, and I’d made it pretty clear last night that I wasn’t interested that way. But I had a lot of questions for him—like how old he was in human years and what he did for a living when he wasn’t pretending to be a teenager—but they all had to wait until the end of a long and painful day of school. I finished my work quickly, as if by rushing it I could make the bell toll sooner, but it didn’t, and I ended up sitting and staring blankly at the wall, wishing I could see Harry and look at him as my son for the first time. I tried to remember his face, but it had been so long since I saw him now that I kept mixing it up with a kid on a TV show that I watched.
At lunch, I sat outside the conversations with my friends, a part of me feeling suddenly like a forty-year-old woman sitting in a group of teens. None of their trivial problems mattered to me anymore, and the final straw came when Cal walked past and said hello to everyone but me. Not only was I literally too old for this juvenile bullshit, I now felt too old for it.
I stood up, grabbed my bag, and headed for the office to call home sick. I needed to talk to David and see my son, and anything that got in the way of that just seemed like a complete waste of my life.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Ara?” Brett asked, pulling up in David’s driveway.
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you seem fine, but I’m worried, kitten.”
“Why?”
“You don’t really know these people—”
“I’m not here to see them. I’m here for my son.”
“Still. I just feel like I should stay—”
“I need to do this alone.”
“But why? Do I suffocate you? Hover?”
“No—”
“Then let me stay.”
“Why? What are you so worried about?”
“So many things I can’t even begin to say.”
“Like?”
“You’re not ready for this,” he said. “It’s too soon. I’m worried about how you’ll cope—”
“Look.” I turned in my seat. “Last night was a shock, but I had time to process while I was tossing and turning in my bed”—we both laughed—“and yeah, I’m scared. I have no idea what a mom is or does, but I’m… I don’t know if it makes sense because I barely know Harry, but I just feel like he’s…”
“Yours?” he suggested.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Now that I know, I can’t turn my back on that—”
“But it’s not Harry I’m worried about.”
“What then?”
He stared forward, his jaw fixing in place.
I followed his gaze to the top of the porch steps as Mike and his chubby blonde wife gathered there, waiting for their uninvited, unannounced guest to get out of the car. Brett stuck his hand out the window then and waved, and I quickly folded the visor down to tidy myself up.
“You look beautiful, Ara,” he said, “they’ll love you.”
“I don’t care what they think,” I said. “It’s my son I want to impress!”
Brett laughed, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “Take care, okay?”
“I will.”
“And if you need me… if…”
“Stop worrying.” I touched his wrist, sliding my hand down to give his a quick squeeze. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded, placing both hands back on the steering wheel. I ignored the fact that his knuckles went white as I clambered out and shut the door, and then as I waved goodbye, I realized with a sudden smack of dread that Harry would still be at school—like I should be.
“Hey,” David said casually, coming down the sloped path with a huge smile and a bounce in his step.
“Hi. I uh…” I showed my teeth in a sheepish grin. “I came to see Harry but—”
“He’s at school,” he said.
“I just realized that.” I watched Brett disappear down the street.
“You don’t have to go, though,” he insisted. “You can stay.”
I looked up at Mike and his portly little wife. “Am I welcome if I’m not here to see Harry?”
David laughed, as did Mike. “Of course you are, sweetheart.”
A part of me didn’t feel welcome, though, and the fact that Mike and that woman stood there blocking the door, like sentries to my former life, just made my feet drag as David led me up to the house. When we reached the top of the steps, my eyes did a sweep across the woman. She had shiny blonde hair and was about as short as me, so the extra weight she was carrying made her look even shorter and kind of like an Oompa Loompa. She was human, which surprised me, and as I got within the radius of her aura, I realized she wasn’t fat; she was very obviously carrying a child. I could feel the life radiating off her in subtle little pulses and smooth, rolling waves. She didn’t smell all that different, not to my untrained nose, but there was definitely something there—something like what I’d felt when I found that broken egg, except this was much more powerful and had a very human feel to it.
“Hi,” I said to her.
“Hi.” She smiled as if she wasn’t sure at first that she should. “I’m Emily.”
“Ara,” I offered. “Nice to meet you.”
And then she cried. Her face just cracked, and she covered her mouth, turning in to Mike’s shoulder to sob.
I looked at David. “Was it something I said?”
“She’s a crier,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m sorry.” Emily waved her hands in front of her eyes to dry them, then quickly reached out and hugged me tightly. “We knew each other before,” she explained. “We were best friends in high school.”
“Really?” I actually hugged her back. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. Again.”
She laughed, drawing away, her face filling with color.
“And congratulations, by the way.” I playfully backhanded Mike, the sport, the conqueror.
“On what?” he said.
I nodded to Emily’s belly. “The baby.”
His face dropped and a pair of wide eyes landed on Emily.
She rolled her head down to look at her stomach, slowly meeting my eyes again. “What?” she said.
“Yeah, what?” Mike turned his whole body to face her.
“Five… months?” I said, wincing apologetically. They obviously didn’t know.
“That can’t be right. I’m still getting my period.” She looked at him then at me. “Are you sure?”
“I…” I looked to David for guidance, and when he smiled and nodded to say it was okay, I shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I thought you knew.” It’s completely obvious. How could they not?
The very sudden and loud burst of excitement that blast out of them both startled me. I jumped back as she flew into his arms and he picked her up, spinning around on the spot like some cheesy romance film couple. I couldn’t believe people really did stuff like that.
“I’m not fat, Mike!” Emily announced, as though this was ultimately great news.
David and I exchanged grins and he leaned in to say, “You used to do that to people all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You could see life before it became obvious to those carrying it.”
“But vampires and Lilithians can hear heartbeats—even fetuses. How come no one picked it up?”
He took me by the elbow and guided me in past the crying, kissing couple. “It’s easy to miss when it’s someone you’re close to, and Mike and Em haven’t slept in the same room for months.”
“Why?” I asked, glancing back at them as David closed the door.
“They’ve been at odds since I took off on my yacht.”
“Why?”
He looked guilty. “Emily didn’t agree with a few things Mike did, or said. I don’t know.”
“Did or said?” I scrunched my nose up. “What did he say to you?”
“Not to me.” He touched my arm, leading me away from the front door. “It doesn’t matter. Looks like this news will bring them back together again.”
I glanced back at the door. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them whispering and kissing and apologizing. “How long have they been trying for a baby?”
“Twenty years on and off—give or take.”
My eyes went wide.
“Yeah.” He grinned. “So I guess that comes as pretty good news.”
“I’ll say.”
He started walking down the short corridor. “And I just decided it’s time for me to move out.”
I laughed. “Probably a good idea.”
“What is?” He stopped and spun around with a frown on his face.
“Moving out.”
“What about it?”
“You just said it was time for you to move out.”
His eyes widened and his mouth turned up into a surprised smile. “You heard that?”
“Did you not mean for me to hear it?”
David just laughed, shaking his head. “It just never occurred to me that you could.”
“Hear you?”
“Hear my…” He tapped his head and then stopped, looking at me with more consideration. “Never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“If you don’t already know, it’s probably best if I leave it that way.”
“Don’t already know what?”
“Forget it. Come on.”
I followed him to the lounge room, feeling an odd sense of being home as the warm daylight wrapped around me, making everything look bright and white. Except David. That tan I noticed last night looked even darker against his cream shirt today, giving me a new appreciation for his appearance. Being that he was technically a lot older than any of the other guys I hung out with, it stood to reason that he dressed like a forty-year-old man. A sexy forty-year-old man. He wore his sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, the buttons undone, with a lighter grey shirt underneath. His longer hair had been sun-bleached in places, and he still hadn’t shaved off the scruff on his face, so he just looked so… sexy.
He stood by the speaker and plugged in his phone, and while he wasn’t looking, I took a moment to just look at him; my ‘husband’, my friend. He was gorgeous. I had to give Ara a pat on the back for this one. That hot shirt combo with his light denim jeans and caramel boots suited him a hell of a lot more than his schoolboy look. He was less rock-and-roll and more man. My body didn’t quite know what to do with itself. I even had to admit that if he’d looked like this when we first met, things would have been very different. Now, he was all mine if I wanted him, but I just didn’t. Not after how deeply he broke my heart when he left. And took my son.
My eyes moved across to the mantle above the fireplace then, swishing around the room so quickly that I almost missed it, but when I saw my face—my past face—looking out at me from a photo-frame, I suddenly understood why David had rushed up so quickly to hide it that night I was here.
“Oh my God!” I said, moving over to pick it up. “Is this Harry?”
He looked fondly over my shoulder at the image of me holding a toddler in my lap, smiling. “Yeah. He was eighteen months old.”
“Wow.” I ran my fingers over it, connecting to this son I never knew I had. I didn’t feel sad that I couldn’t remember any of this, but instead just felt kind of glad to know about him now. Enough time had been wasted, but I knew in my heart that, as a mother before, I wouldn’t have wasted a second of it. I couldn’t remember loving him, but I knew that I had. And I knew that he did at least remember that love, which was all we needed really.
“What are you thinking?” David asked, studying my face.
“I have no past to go on,” I said, and he pouted. “But I really don’t want to mess up the future because of that.”
“What are you saying?”
“Will Harry forgive me—for what I said?”
“He already has.” He smiled.
“What if I mess up again—do something wrong?” I put the picture back. “I don’t know how to be a mother and—”
“Don’t sweat it, pretty girl,” he said, taking me by the hand and leading me to the twin sofa. “Harry has a lot more forgiveness in his heart for you, no matter what. And I’ll be here beside you the whole way, okay? I’ll tell you if you do something wrong.”
“Will you hate me for it?” My throat went tight, seeing his face again—the way he looked at me that night we fought.
His eyes softened and he bowed his head, keeping hold of my fingertips. “I can’t hate you, Ara. No matter what. I can be angry with you, not like you very much sometimes, but I will always love you.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
“And I mean that as a friend.” He smiled warmly. “We don’t need to rush anything. You don’t need to promise me your love, but my heart is always open to you if you ever change your mind, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered, nodding.
He brushed my hair back off my shoulder, running his hand down the side of my face after. “Love like ours doesn’t easily go away.”
“But you loved her,” I said. “I’m not her.”
“You are,” he insisted. “If you can stand to be her for Harry’s sake, then why not for me?”
He had a point. I didn’t like it. I stood up and moved away from him, taking a stroll about the room, touching things and looking at pictures before finally feeling calm enough to look at him again, but when I did, I found a broken man leaning over with his head in his hands.
“David?” I said softly.
“I can’t promise not to try.” His deep voice was very quiet and very fragile. “I will always try to win you over.”
“Then maybe you need to stop trying to win your wife back, and work on getting to know me.”
As his eyes met mine, I could tell I hit a chord—got through to him on some deeper level.
He stood up, walking toward me. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“But?”
“No buts.” He held both hands up in surrender. “Okay, maybe there is a but.”
I laughed. “Which is?”
“But it will be hard for me to remember that, so can we…” He stopped in front of me and went to take my hand but obviously thought better of it. “Can I have some extra lives?”
“Extra lives?”
“Yeah, like in a video game. I need some pre-approved forgiveness from you, because I will forget sometimes that you’re… that you don’t want to be her—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be her, David. It’s that I’m not her.”
“Right.” He nodded, but only to brush me off. “So just forgive me, okay? When I forget that we’re not together.”
It made me furious that he refused to acknowledge that I was my own person—not his Ara—but for the sake of Harry, I didn’t want to fight with him all the time, so I nodded. “You can have three extra lives a day, how’s that sound?”
“Perfect.” He laughed once, a short breathy laugh where his teeth showed. I couldn’t remember this man from my past, but I knew instantly that that was my favorite smile both in this life and the one before.
I looked away from him then and let my eyes explore the little courtyard outside the glass doors. This family sat out there often. The conversational circle of chairs and the spade on the terracotta tiles, with freshly-dirty gloves beside it, was evidence of that. I wanted to sit out there in the warm golden sun then, but I wanted to sit out there without all my problems.
“Can I ask you something?” David said, cocking his head and flashing a cheeky grin when I looked back at him.
“Shoot.”
“The closet?”
My cheeks got so hot I could almost see the red glow reflect in his eyes. David laughed, and I kind of wanted to kiss the cute dimple in his cheek.
“Did you feel bad about that after?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“You never mentioned it again—”
“You never mentioned it,” I said, leaning in to my disbelief. “You avoided making eye contact. You sat four seats away from me at the movies the next night! I thought you regretted it.”
“No way, Ara. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.”
“Really?” I leaned back, folding my arms, trying not to show that it mattered to me.
“Haven’t you?” he asked delicately.
My arms loosened a little. I didn’t want to admit it, but I nodded anyway.
“So…” He braved a step closer and hesitantly put his hand on my waist. “Can we do it again some time, maybe a friends-with-benefits kind of thing?”
“And what if you start wanting more from me?”
“You can punch me in the face and not speak to me for four months,” he said, and I laughed. “But we were married once, and I miss yo—I miss her in that way. And after we did that… now I miss you in that way,” he said sweetly, wrapping his voice around me and luring me in. “I think I could cope better with us only being friends if we occasionally got to be close like that.”
My breath hitched in my throat, stuck down by nerves and this growing desire. I wanted him like a friend, and I wanted him like a lover, but I wasn’t ready for sex yet. Wasn’t ready for him to be my first. I’d done some research lately, and I knew that your first would always hold a special place in your heart. He would already, because of the closet and because he was once my husband, but this was my new life, and I wasn’t planning to keep him as a part of it for eternity. Not even as a “special memory”.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.
David let go of my waist and stepped back, nodding.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.”
“But I am, because I do care about you… I just… I don’t want to lose my virginity to you.”
“You’re still a virgin?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I thought… Cal…”
“David, when you left, I was miserable. I blew Cal off the next day—”
“Blew him off?” He paled. “As in…”
“I told him I’d never be with him.”
“Really?” He looked way too relieved about that.
“Yeah,” I said softly, nodding. “I’m not ready to love anyone, okay? It’s not just you.”
“You can make it feel that way sometimes.”
Although I was the one standing here looking at him, taking him in, it felt more like I was seeing him through the eyes of his wife. I felt sorry for him. And I agreed with him. “It isn’t intentional. You’re just more sensitive to it because you love me.”
“She’s here! She knows who she is?” someone gasped from somewhere in the house. My immortal ears only picked it up because I thought for a moment that I recognized the voice—an older woman—but I couldn’t place it.
“Who is that?” I tuned my ear to it.
“Who is who?” David checked around him, as though there was an invisible person in here, his gaze shooting to the glass doors as it burst open and hit the wall, making the pictures there shake. A thin Lilithian woman who was made up to look fifty or so stood there staring at me, her straight blonde hair falling plainly around narrow shoulders, a pair of wrinkled eyes pooling with tears above a hard-set mouth. This woman had been through a lot, but despite her pleated-front pants and cardigan giving her a meek appearance, I could tell she was the sort of woman that could kick ass when the need arose.
“Ara,” David stepped forward. “This is Vicki.”
“Your mother?” I studied his face, trying to catch even a glimpse of resemblance.
He shook his head and waved the woman over to us. “She’s actually yours.”
“Huh? But mine died when I was younger.”
“Not mother by blood,” Vicki said, her lips arching down and quivering, “but mother all the same.”
“How come I haven’t met you until now?”
“I couldn’t bear to see you until you knew who you were. I…” She choked up for a moment, taking a jagged breath to speak again. “Can I hug you, please?”
“Um…” I lifted one shoulder, not sure what to say, and the woman took that as a yes, rushing in to wrap me up in the kind of way I’d always imagined a mother would embrace her child. Vicki smelled a bit like mothballs and old books, which reminded me of the night David and I went into that closet, and as much as I wanted to hold on—draw on this experience for the moment when I’d see Harry again—I felt funny hugging her while thinking about him.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, finally pulling away.
“I’m not really back,” I corrected her. “I know who I was, but who I am is entirely different to your Ara and—”
“I know.” She nodded softly, the natural lines in her face showing her age. “But you are a part of her, no matter the differences now.”
For her sake, for the sadness and visible loss in this woman’s eyes, I almost wished I was her Ara. David’s too. But I still just felt no connection to her. Didn’t even feel like a ‘part’ of her, yet for some reason, it felt wrong to say that to this woman.
“Why…?” I held my breath, unsure if this would offend her.
“Why what, dear?” she prompted.
“Why did Brett care for me if I have a family?” He’d never mentioned a mother, and the only father I had was too busy running the Drakarian monarchy to care for me. But what had Vicki been doing all this time?
David placed his hand on the small of my back—an offer of comfort clearly, but I shrugged him off.
“Ara,” he started.
“David, let me explain it,” Vicki cut in. “We weren’t sure you would ever regenerate,” she said to me. “It wasn’t guaranteed, and when you did finally arise, I was living here—away from that world. They couldn’t transport you here to be cared for and I couldn’t return there.”
“Why?” I asked.
“My son…” She did this odd kind of hiccupping sob thing and covered her mouth. “He died only days after you.”
I didn’t realize how tense and closed-off I was until the pity made my arms and shoulders sink. “I’m sorry.”
“I was barely half a person myself after his death,” she explained, “so I knew I couldn’t be there to help you become a whole one again. I—”
“You don’t need to explain,” I said, reaching out to touch her arm. “I understand.”
Something in her eyes told me she knew I would. She smiled then and held my hand, running her eyes past every inch of my face. I wanted to ask how her son died, but it was clearly a painful story, so I filed that curiosity away with a hundred others in the ‘later’ corner of my brain, although it was getting a bit full in there.
When Mike and Emily came back in, we all talked for a while, standing in the same spots, until Vicki mentioned photo albums. It occurred to me that it was the perfect way to better understand my children’s past before actually meeting them.
“Can I see them?” I asked. “The albums?”
“Of course. Right over there.” Vicki directed my gaze to a bookshelf in the back corner of the room—stacked high with books of all shapes and sizes.
Mike and Emily left us to it, and David followed, saying something about coffee, while I sat myself down on the ground and scrolled along the spines, skipping past “Ara and David’s Wedding” and taking out “Elora Aged 1-3” instead.
Fine blonde baby hair and emerald eyes looked back up at me from the first page. She was a supernaturally beautiful baby, and I could see the power of Vampire and Lilithian blood running just under the surface of her radiant skin.
When I flipped over the page, I met with a very cheeky grin under a slathering of chocolate cake-mix, two tiny teeth showing white under all the brown. “Aw, she was so cute.”
“She was always very spirited,” Vicki said from beside me.
It felt odd seeing my face in pictures that I didn’t remember posing for. In some I was helping the baby in my lap unwrap presents or take steps, and as I looked closer at one, I noticed a black line under my wedding band—like a tattoo. But shining out above all the little things I noticed, I could see one thing for certain. “We look happy,” I noted, brushing my fingertips over a picture of Elora by the fire on Christmas. Beside that, a little girl in a pretty gold party dress sat in her father’s lap by the same piano in this room, her tiny hands set to the keys underneath his, both of them wearing the exact same smile. David just looked so attentive and so loving, and I realized I’d never really seen that side of him—the father. It did slightly alter my heart toward him. Just a little.
“Is he a good dad?” I asked Vicki.
“Yes,” she said in a deeper, whispery voice. “But he’s changed since he became human.”
“In what way?”
“He was always very loving and kind to the kids, but there’s something more…” Her eyes drifted away as she thought about that.
“Human about it now?” I offered.
Vicki nodded.
I shut the book then and picked out the album labelled “Harry—Age 1-5”. The same cheeky grin that belonged to his big sister filled out the pages of this book. It seemed that was the only smile he ever wore, and I got the sense that he was a bit of a troublemaker, in a cute way.
“He used to crawl to the top of the chest in about five seconds and then he’d just wait for someone to walk in and spot him,” Vicki said, pointing to a picture of Harry on a chest of drawers in nothing but a diaper. “We’d usually scream in shock when we’d find him, and he’d just cackle and squeal. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”
I laughed, looking to the picture beside that. “He’s always had that spark, hasn’t he?”
“He gets that from you,” Vicki said, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“No.” I shook my head, looking at a picture of David with Harry in his lap. “He gets it from his father.”
I didn’t notice David come in until he sat down beside me, placing a coffee cup on the floor by my knee and one beside Vicki’s hand. I picked it up and absently took a sip as I turned the page, but I had to stop and look at David before I saw even one picture there. “Did you make this?”
“The coffee?” he said, grinning into his own cup.
“This is amazing.” I took another sip. It was just the right balance between hot and perfect, with the creamiest blend of rich coffee, milk and light sugar. I’d never tasted anything like it.
Then, as I took in his grin, I got the sense that I had—before—and with that, I got the sense that he knew exactly how much I’d like it.
I looked down at the book and lost myself in Harry’s baby face for a while, not uttering a word more about how great the coffee was. I’d have to be careful not to fall in love with David’s tricks. If I did fall for him, I wanted it to be real—not a manipulation of all the things he knew I liked before.
“This picture here.” Vicki pointed to Harry laughing, the faces all around him completely stunned as the wax melted on the candles of his fourth birthday cake. “This is the exact moment everyone in that room learned Harry could read minds.”
“Read minds?” My head whipped up and I looked at David.
He nodded, tucking his knees up and resting his arms over them. “He gets it from us.”
“Us? As in you and me?”
He nodded. “When I was a vampire, I could read minds. And you eventually learned how too.”
My head was in a spin. That was what he meant earlier when he was surprised that I’d ‘heard’ him. It was a thought he had—about moving out. He didn’t say that out loud at all.
“You knew Harry could read minds before this,” Vicki noted. “But you kept it quiet.”
“Why?”
“Because it can be dangerous for people to know these things, especially with a little boy that can’t defend himself yet.”
“Why would he need to defend himself?”
“Harry has a rare skill,” David said. “There may be people out there that wish to manipulate it and use it for their own purpose. It would only take a second where we weren’t watching, and Harry could be gone—”
“All because he can read minds?”
“You don’t know what an asset it is in this world,” David said, which felt strange. I thought for so long that he had never been a part of the immortal world, so to have him suddenly in it—knowing more than me—was off-putting. And also cool. I guess I felt less alone now.
“And my brother, Jason”—he shuffled closer and aimed a finger at the face of himself standing beside a younger version of himself—“he can give you back some of your memories, if you want them—”
“How?”
“It’s one of his talents—if he’s taken memories from you in the past, which in your case, he has.”
“Why would he take my memories?”
“He…” He cleared his throat. “Okay, take was a poor choice of words. More like looked into them. And by doing that, they’re stored in his memory.”
“Oh okay.” I nodded.
“There aren’t many,” he added, “but it might be enough to give you a glimpse of your old life.”
I looked down at the picture again. He and his brother were an exact likeness—a decade or so aside—and as I looked at Jason’s smile, I felt a very strong but distant connection to it. “Is he a painter?”
“Who?” Vicki said.
“Yes,” David said, keeping his eyes on me, an expectant smile warming his face.
“Do you remember him?” Vicki asked, hopeful.
“No.” I flipped over a page. “But… I think I remember something about paintings. And a Jason.”
“But Falcon said you would never get your memories back—that’s what they all said,” Vicki declared.
“We still don’t know much about it, Vicki,” David said in that cool, milky voice. “Jason got his memories back, remember?”
“But he wasn’t burnt to ash! He was only—” She stopped short on my sudden gasp.
I slammed the book shut. “I was burned?”
David went pale, turning his whole body away before placing his hands down and pushing up to stand.
“David?” Vicki called.
He ignored her and slowly walked from the room, stiff and rigid, like he’d just been kicked in the butt.
I looked at Vicki. “Why did he walk away?”
“He’s never spoken of…” Her shoulders rounded. “He can’t face it—what happened to you.”
“Why? What did happen?”
“Do you want to know this?” she asked, like I was a child.
“I think I need to.” I watched after David, wishing he’d come back.
“Your sister killed you—”
“I know that bit. Because she needed my soul, right?”
“Right. But I’m guessing David didn’t tell you that she hated you at the time—or that she hated David more.”
“He left that bit out.”
“No one knows exactly what happened. All we know is that you were both tortured before she injected David with Lilithian venom and only let you save him if you promised to give up your soul.”
I touched a thumb to my fang, picturing it all. My venom could be lethal to a vampire with no immunity, but… “If we were married, he’d have been immune, right?”
“He was,” she said. “But after a period of torture and blood-loss, that immunity died, as he would have without a pulse of your life-giving light.”
The same light I used to save that snake. The same light Queen Lilith also possessed, which could make a vampire human after an injection of venom. “So I made him human?”
“Yes.”
Then he lied when we spoke last night. Or rather, he let me believe I turned him human under different circumstances. “So it was my life for his?”
“Yes.”
My hands fell heavily into my lap. “I must have really loved him.”
“You did,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “And he hasn’t forgiven himself—can’t come to terms with the fact that he didn’t save you.”
“Save me?”
“She burned you alive after she extracted your soul.”
The horror ate me up for a second, but the curiosity forced me to just move on. “But, if I had no soul, wouldn’t I be dead?”
“It takes a while. A person can live for up to twenty-four hours without a soul.”
“Oh.”
“And David had to watch. He was conscious as you burned alive. Morgana—your sister—made sure of that.”
“Poor David.”
Vicki nodded. “He won’t talk about what Morgana did to you down in those tombs, but his brother, Jason—”
“Wait!” I put two and two together: his brother; mind reading; the phone calls. “Jason. He’s the king!”
“Yes.” She smiled.
“It…” It all made sense. Jason was family. That’s why he cared so much if I recovered. “Brett said Jason and I were close once.”
“You were.” She nodded. “And that’s why he stole a glance into David’s head shortly after you died—to see what happened to you.”
“So what happened?” I laid the photo album aside and shuffled forward like an excited kid on a story mat.
“We don’t know. He said he’d never speak of it.”
That made my skin ache in certain places and I didn’t know why. I swallowed hard as if a knot of tension had made my throat thick, but there was nothing there. I wanted to say that it was all okay now, because I was alive and David was alive. But I wasn’t alive. I mean, she wasn’t. Ara wasn’t. She did die that day, but I at least understood now why it was so important for David to get her back: he needed to tell her; he needed to make her understand, just like I needed to make him understand after our fight, that he was sorry. That he would give anything to take it back. He just needed it to all be okay again. And I couldn’t give him Ara. I couldn’t give him my love. But I could give him peace.
I stood up, reluctantly leaving my coffee behind.
“Where are you going?” Vicki asked softly.
“I need to speak to him—tell him it’s okay now.”