Page 22 of Filthy Rich Vampires: For Eternity

“Just promise me we won’t send our kids off to assassin boarding school.”

“Done.” He sighed and pressed his forehead to mine. “We should probably get out there before she throws another tantrum.”

I thought of her blood-soaked clothing and shivered. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

When we entered the sitting room adjoining the bed chamber, Sabine was pacing. She paused when she saw us.

Her hands twisted together. No trace of blood remained on them. Her face and skin had been washed. Now only her dress held proof of the violence she’d inflicted earlier.

Dominic sat in an armchair, nursing a glass of wine. The fire in the hearth had been stoked into a full blaze. The logs cracked and sparked, but otherwise, the room was utterly silent as if waiting for her to speak.

“You have to understand why I did what I did,” she started, then hesitated.

It wasn’t like her to be speechless. Or to offer an explanation for her actions. Not when she was accustomed to commanding any room—and everyone in it. But she was afraid now, and that terrified me.

“We’re listening,” Julian said coolly. He stood behind me, his dark presence filling the room like an avenging angel.

I leaned into him, doing my best to remain silent. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to speak. My feelings toward Sabine had always fallen into the mixed category. Tonight, I felt more conflicted than ever. If she knew more about this situation, why had she waited so long to say anything?

She faced me. “When I met you, I knew what you were.”

I kept my face blank, but it took effort. The whole time we’d been searching for answers, she had known. She had hinted at it, but somehow it still stung.

“And you didn’t tell us?” Julian’s words were pained, and I felt the disappointment that stabbed him.

“I couldn’t tell you.” She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “It was complicated.”

“But you did try to break us up,” he said. His hands closed around my upper arms as if he needed to anchor himself to me.

“I had to be certain...about your relationship.”

“You could have asked,” he seethed, “or listened, for that matter.”

“I watched,” she cut in, “and I tested. I won’t apologize for it.”

“If this is going to be you justifying your—”

“Will you just listen?” she interrupted him. “I don’t know where to begin.”

She was completely out of sorts. I looked at Dominic, who was studying his wine a little too intensely. Maybe he’d known, too. Her eyes tracked mine and landed on her silent husband.

“Yes, he knew,” she said. “He chose to stay out of it. He has never followed the old books.”

“Old books?” I repeated.

“Even before the curse, seers wrote about it, and they wrote about the great awakening. I spent the first half of my life trying to prevent the curse from happening. But I never found the threat, and then it was too late. Since then, I’ve been focused on the time when magic would awaken and who would break the curse.”

Her words hollowed out my gut, and I found that now I couldn’t speak.

“What does any of this have to do with us?” Julian demanded.

“Do you think it was a coincidence I sent you to work for the Queens?” she asked. “That I sent you here, and now you are mated to one of them?”

What the hell? Was she really going to play it like she’d been on our side the whole time? She had thrown me to the wolves more than once. She’d even wanted to duel to the death. This was the same female who had allowed her daughter to be tethered to an absolute psychopath.

I know that look. Thea. Don’t, he warned me.

Don’t what? I shifted in his embrace a little.

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