Page 5 of The Vampire King's Victory

“If you’re Kaly then we don’t have much to say!” Julian barked back, anger filling him. “You’ve taken Caemorn’s soul and--”

“No,” Christian’s hand on his forearm squeezed tighter, stopping him from speaking.

His best friend was rigid and staring at Caemorn with all his might as if he could seethroughthe Immortal. And maybe he could. Julian could almost feel the Eyros power working within him.

“I don’t understand,” Christian muttered and shook his head.

“What?” Julian did not bother to cast his voice down low. Caemorn would have been able to hear them anyways.

“He doesn’t understand how I can be the same and still be Kaly,” Caemorn answered helpfully.

Julian’s head snapped towards him. “So you’ve just been pretending all this time?”

But that didn’t ring true to him. Even the most consummate actor could not have pulled what Caemorn had off. Daemon would haveknown.

“He wasn’t pretending. He wasn’t lying. He… he didn’t know,” Christian murmured and shook his head.

Caemorn nodded. “You understand, Christian! Ah, such a good student already. Now please come down before the wall brings you down.”

“Just because you didn’t know who you were before, you do now. I think we should stay up here,” Julian called down.

Caemorn laughed. Not evilly. Not sinisterly. But fondly. And maybe a little sadly. “Seeing you two now--as youwere--before everything… it’s poignant and harder than I thought.”

“How is that exactly?” Julian asked, just to keep the conversation going.

His eyes flickered all over the space. He cocked his head slightly. He drew in deep breaths, flaring his nostrils. He looked, listened and tried tosmelleven the way out of here.

But my parents! I can’t leave them!

But he wouldn’t put Christian in danger either. He had already caused his best friend to lose his First Life, he wouldn’t let Christian lose his Second. He would get Christian through this and then face Kaly himself.

“The gate’s not here yet,” Caemorn said.

That had Julian snapping towards him again. “What do you mean?”

Caemorn spread his arms. “A gate out of here hasn’t been created yet. But it will be. In time. Come, we really must--ah, you’re going to be knocked down.”

And sure enough, there was a low rumble that Julian felt in the soles of his feet that ran up his calves as the rumbling grewlouder and louder. There was acrackand the stone snapped apart beneath their feet.

“Shit! Jump!” Julian cried.

He and Christian had no choice but to leap off of the cliff and onto the ground below. Caemorn gestured for them to come to him, to the stone structure, as his silver eyes were fixed behind them.

“Come on! It’s all coming down! You’ll be crushed!” Caemorn cried.

Julian heard thecrack,crack,CRACKas the entire cliff-face split into boulder-like pieces and fell apart. All of those boulders started to roll down towards them. He and Christian exchanged one look and then they dashed past Caemorn into the structure. Caemorn followed after and swung two heavy doors shut.

“Help me!” Caemorn demanded as he braced himself against the doors.

Christian and Julian jumped over to him and braced as well. There werebooms!The doors shuddered. Dust sifted down from up above as the whole structure.

“Is this place going to collapse on us?” Julian asked Caemorn.

“According to the two of you, no,” Caemorn answered even as he flinched when there was a terrible groaning noise all around them.

“According tous?” Christian asked. His hair was full of rock dust and it dusted his face like makeup so that he appeared pale.

“Yes, you were the ones to tell me how this went,” Caemorn answered.

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