Page 103 of Chain Me
“No.” He grabbed my chin when I tried to turn away, forcing me to face him.
“I don’t know where she is now exactly, but the day I met her, she didn’t infuriate me,” Dublin went on callously. When I tried to wrench my head away, his grip tightened, holding me captive, forcing me to see. That alarming shift in his gaze—I sensed hewantedme to see it. “She doesn’t make me question things I have never questioned. She didn’t make me sell my soul to Raphael after one ridiculous dance. She didn’t arouse me to the point of madness. So if Dmitri meant ‘doom’ as in ‘liable to drive me insane,’ then you, Eleanor Gray, fitthatbill perfectly.”
Furious, he swiped at a bead of moisture rolling down my chin, crushing it.
“Come. Raphael doesn’t keep his dwelling as well ventilated as I do mine.” He tugged on my wrist, yanking me to my feet. “The air in this damn place is making you delirious.”
I had no choice but to stagger behind him in a daze, my head spinning as deliriously as he’d claimed. As we entered the hall, he didn’t shield me with his body this time. Side by side, we wandered the empty, breathtaking corridors until he shoved me through a doorway and I had to shield my eyes with my hand, blinded.
When my vision gradually cleared, I was convinced we’d entered another realm. One of luxurious sunlight painting a landscape of emerald green, surrounded by stone walls and positivelybrimmingwith roses. At least thousands, bloomed from vines and shrubs, spanning every shape and color imaginable. The moment I inhaled, I realized it was open to the air. Beautiful, crisp, fresh air. Up above, a blue sky melded with the scenic landscape, and I nearly forgot all of Dmitri’s grim tale.
“Is this your apology?” I blurted as Dublin pushed past me.
“Whatever on Earth for?” He shot me a weird look even as he snatched a fresh rose from a nearby bush and held it out for my inspection. “It’s merely somewhere we can talk in private.” He glanced warily at the structure we exited from—a wall of gray stone. A castle?
“Talk about what?” I asked, struggling to stay focused.
“So, perhaps Dmitri wasn’t entirely lying.” He stared dead ahead, and I could only guess at how hard it had been for him to admit even that. “There’s more to the Grayne’s history than I told you. Superstitious drivel, but if you want to hear it…”
“Tell me.” I crossed my arms, approached a worn stone bench and sat, still marveling at the wild space. It reminded me of some fairytale castle’s crumbling courtyard, abandoned by a monarch who no longer craved the sun. I cradled a nearby bloom between my fingertips, surprised by the petal’s softness. As Dublin neared, I whispered, “Tell me about Mero.”
After the snippets painted by Dmitri and Raphael, I needed to hear the rest from him.
He came to my side, threading his fingers through my hair while snatching my rose away. “His name was Abrahaim.” In a hollow contrast, his voice echoed cold and detached while his fingers casually parted my curls, easing a rose behind my ear. “Descended from Spanish Moors, he worked as a hired missionary in the heart of Andalusia, Spain. The stories he used to tell…” Something pained flitted across his expression too quickly to name. “He used to boast of sneaking into the Alhambra palace, stealing trinkets from the royal apartments. Of charming his quarry with myths of the crusades. A master thief. I met him as nothing more than a wandering vagrant.”
He turned on his heel and approached a shrub containing a soft, pink variety of blossoms. He fingered one, manipulating the delicate petals with ruthless intent.
“By then, I had escaped Ireland, stealing away on an English ship. To skirt the British occupation.” He shrugged as though referring to a minor inconvenience—not a defining event in a country’s history. “I had no plan. No goals. I merely deigned to explore wherever work or curiosity took me. It just so happened that, in Spain, I decided to try my hand as a hired mercenary working for a merchant who traded along the coast. There, he caught wind of a series of vessels returning from some new, mythical land. The Americas.
“Rumors ran rampant of the riches the vessel might contain, ripe for the taking. At his behest, I snuck onto a ship—one whose name you won’t find in the history books, mind you—in search of unspeakable treasure.” He looked away, gazing into the past. “And I was nearly gutted by Abrahaim, who worked for a rival merchant. After some rather heated back and forth, we decided we were too evenly matched to kill each other within a reasonable amount of time. So we would split the treasure between us, our masters none the wiser.” His faint smile fell flat. “Instead, we found a creature far beyond our understanding.”
“Raphael,” I supplied as he went silent.
He returned, pressing a new conquest against my palm—another rose. “Yes, Raphael,” he admitted. “Starved after months at sea, he attacked us both. To this day, I still don’t know his true origins. The man is, shall we say, obsessive regarding his past. Even the dates in the history books have been tweaked by him. I suspect your sister must have come close to the truth, for him to grow irritated enough to notice her.”
He sighed. “But in those early days, believe it or not, he was but a scared young man tormented by a curse he didn’t understand. One he’d inadvertently passed on to Abrahaim and me. But aswerealized the new limits of our power, his curse became our gift. Ourrevelation.Anything we wanted or desired was ours with nothing more than a flash of fangs. I struggled at first, if you can believe that.”
He laughed, fingering his cross. Slow, his steps carried him away from me again, to yet another rose bush. “The constraints of my religion weighed heavily on me. I was a damned, hell-bound creature. But in a way, I grew to accept that doom. I embodied it. Raphael and Abrahaim may have enjoyed their newfound control, but I relished in it. And under my command, we consolidated it, conquering cities from the shadows, building influence through contracts as we discovered creatures more varied than even the creators of the Bible imagined.”
Awe painted his tone as he snapped the stem of another rose—a beautiful, creamy white.
“A triumvirate of allies, we were unmatched. If only you knew. Your little history books. Your legends and myths. If only you knew how much of it was a lie.” He laughed bitterly, twisting his blossom between his fingers. “But then…the years marched on, unending, taking their toll on each of us in different ways. Raphael grew more reclusive, content to control his reality through proxies on puppet strings. Abrahaim on the other hand, became pensive, racked with more guilt with every additional life ruined. And I…”
He turned to me, but I doubted he even saw me. His eyes were wide, consumed by the past.
“I grew numb. Detached. It was as though I could only ever feel anything through violence. Through sowing fear. Crushing souls.” He formed a fist, crushing the rose into nothing. “Destroying lives. The more they bled, and agonized and screamed, the more intoxicating the power became. There is something terrible and addicting in sowing chaos… But every drug presents the danger of a relapse. When its high breaks and you fall from the glorious height. Increasingly I felt it, thatguilt.A woman desired money to save her ailing father. In return, I consigned her to years of servitude, whoring herself, no different than hundreds before her. But in those days, I’d see her pain and, for a second, I’d feel it.Guilt.”
He gritted his teeth against it, and I knew deep down that if he could have purged that emotion from his soul entirely, he would have.
“It became too frequent, too much. In yet another instance, I desired the soul of a succubus, and in the process, her daughter was harmed.”
Saskia, I realized.
“As if conjured by heaven’s mercy, Abrahaim was there to convince me that there was another way. We could control our impulses, he claimed. Leave that life behind. He made it sound beautiful. I will give him that.” His mouth contorted into a painful imitation of a smile. “We took new names to reflect our rebirth—mine a reminder of where my was soul bound, while his was a simple phrase, chanted during the crusades his ancestors fought within.Memento Mori.Remember death. From it, he took the name Mero. Then he told me of a witch he knew, powerful enough to create a totem to keep him grounded. Help him remember the humanity we both had so eagerly shed.”
“Your necklace,” I whispered, eyeing the silver totem hanging from his throat. The one I found in the crypt took on a darker meaning. Not a backup of Dublin’s, but something far more meaningful…
“Yes.” He bowed his head, stroking his fingers along his cross. “Mero had one as well.”
