Page 118 of Chain Me
A woman lay slumped in the pit of the coffin, visible even from where I was standing. Tangled blond hair shielded her face, but her softly rising chest and the pink hue of her skin revealed that she was alive.
“Georgie?” I cried out, rushing to her. Cold, hard stone scraped my knees as I crouched and plunged my arm into the cavernous space in search of her hand. “Georgie?”
Her eyes were closed, her body unmoving. But her clothing… I swallowed hard, racked by confusion. The faint illumination in the chamber was just enough for me to make out her pink shirt and jeans. It was the same outfit she’d worn the day I screamed at her to leave.
“She is alive,” Mero explained. “Despite her slumber, she’ll suffer no lasting damage.”
“Her letter,” I croaked, stroking the hair from her face. I didn’t even care that I was speaking to a creature even Dublin seemed to fear. Facing him, I demanded, “She tried to contact me. How?”
He smiled. Unlike with Raphael, emotion shaped his handsome features, giving them life. Definition. And in a way, the subtle nuances in his expression only served to enhance his imposing nature. “I woke her when it suited my needs,” he said softly. “But you can rest assured that little she did was under her own will.”
Including the bounty on my head? I tried to ask, but Dublin’s voice sliced over mine, harsh and biting.
“And now what?” he demanded. “You want me to kill her? Slice her throat in front of her sister to prove once and for all what a damned, selfish creature I am? I know how your mind works.”
“Isthatwhy you have waited this long to face me?” Mero laughed as he turned to him. “I won’t harm the girl. She knows nothing to be a danger to you, regardless.Norwill I harm your Eleanor. Why would I?” He raised a hand and slowly curled the fingers into a fist as if trapping my soul within them. “Killing her now would be a mercy to you.”
“Don’t touch her.” Dublin lurched onto the tips of his toes, his teeth bared as Mero shifted his attention to me. But he didn’t come closer, not even as the other vampire’s hand settled over my scalp in dangerous reassurance.
“No. You would rage and attack me of course—but in the end, you would thank me. I would save you from it, this pain…” He stroked me once and withdrew his hand, placing the outstretched fingers over his heart. “This knowledge that there could have been so much more. No, Cael. I am afraid that what you truly fear will come to pass. I suspect you’ve already inferred as much.”
He inclined his head, but Dublin said nothing.
Silence filled the chamber, unbearable in its all-encompassing weight.
“Shewilldie,” Mero finally declared. “As will your mortal child. But they will live before that day will come. Live and wither before your eyes to the point that even your blood will cease to have an effect. You can never turn them. Never chase them beyond the void.” His voice softened, a lethal hiss as his gaze returned to his old friend’s. “You will know what true love, and joy, and peace are, and then you will watch it slip away through your fingers, swallowed by time. And like me, you will not have the mercy or option of death. You know that now, don’t you?”
Slowly, he advanced on Dublin’s position, but his posture wasn’t triumphant or mocking. Everything from the set of his shoulders to the tilt of his jaw conveyed only one emotion above all others.
Pity.
“In the end, you will come to know what true despair is, Cael,” he murmured. “True madness. She will never be more beautiful to you than her next breath. You will grow to love her more by the second until you swear your soul can no longer contain it. And you will grow to hate her.” He extended his fingers toward me in a fatherly gesture. “For her innocence. Her freedom. Her fragility. I pity you, my friend. Adara’s magic turned out to be far crueler than I could have ever imagined.”
He drifted toward the doorway and then looked back at me from the threshold, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. “She wasn’t supposed to love you in return. That I did not foresee. And now that you have sold yourself to Raphael for more time than she could ever outlive, you will truly suffer.”
He slipped from the room, but Dublin didn’t follow.
And as if carried on an unseen wind, Mero’s voice drifted back to us regardless.
“Know that I will be watching, old friend. Waiting. I will even leave the other Gray girl, for now… But I will return, merely to witness the moment you truly understand. There is no end to this life awaiting us. No end to the pain.” A heavy sigh trailed the words as his voice softened, barely a whisper. “This beautiful, innocent creature you cherish will one day be an agonizing memory. And then we shall see in just how many ways I can extend your suffering…”
As if a spell had been broken, Dublin finally lurched into action. He raced through the doorway, a blur of motion. “Stay here,” he hissed back to me.
I couldn’t move even if I had the strength to.
My hand remained entwined with Georgie’s, gripping her fingers though hers remained limp in response.
Despair, that bitter poison, lurked on the edges of my psyche, desperate to invade the second I allowed it to.
But I couldn’t. Because if I surrendered to it now, even for a second, I would never rise from its depths again.
Eventually, footsteps approached, clattering over the stone.
“All is well, I hope?” a man called out. His voice sounded distorted, as if he spoke from outside of the structure, though I recognized his dry tone regardless. Dmitri. “If it really is how you say for the other one… My, my, he must have used quite the powerful drug on her delicate soul. Curing it could take some time—”
“It’s all right, Eleanor,” Dublin warned.
I hadn’t even realized I was on my feet, hissing through my teeth as he approached the coffin.
