Page 71 of Hupotasso
Neither of us says much on the way home, both of us wrapped deep in our thoughts as we consider the implications of the note from the queen.
When we reach my castle we head our separate ways.
It’s dark, and although I’m exhausted I’m too angry to sleep. Even if I could, I’d likely wake up in the daytime tomorrow and be completely out of sync. I need to stay up and ride it out.
As I enter my library, I see Viper sitting at my desk. I haven’t invited him back, and he knows he’s not welcome. Something extraordinary must have forced his return.
My blood runs cold as he delivers the news.
It takes me a full minute to react as I collapse into a nearby chair and bury my head in my hands.
‘My wife has run away?’
“I’m so sorry, brother,” he walks to me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “I came home as fast as I could. Asumpta contacted me because she couldn’t reach you. I thought you already knew, or I never would have delivered the information as bluntly as I did.”
I don’t look up as the door bangs open.
“This is family business,” Viper mutters. “You’re not welcome.”
“Shut your mouth,” Jag snarls, striding to where I sit and collapsing into the chair opposite me.
“Falcon. I just heard.”
My phone rings.
I listen carefully to what I’m being told before hanging up and rising.
“Later, Jag. I need to see Mother.”
53
The GPS guides me to a large house in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, and I pull into the curved driveway outside the home.
Yin had told me not to get out of the car, and I’m going to follow her directions to the letter. I still can’t believe that I’m actually free. Free of Viper, free of the castle, free of all the monstrous things that come with living with vampires.
I close my eyes as I turn the engine off and sit surrounded by trees and grass and suburban calm. Somewhere in the background someone’s mowing their lawn. The ordinariness of the sound is soothing, but my knees are still trembling, as are my fingers, and my heart is still pounding. It hadn’t stopped from the moment I’d stepped out of that room dressed as a nurse. I feel like I’ve run a marathon.
Subconsciously, I place my hand over my stomach. I know stress isn’t good for babies. I have to try and calm down. Taking a deep breath I try and slow my racing mind and calculate how many weeks pregnant I might be. I can’t remember my last period, which is ridiculous, but I’ve been so stressed lately with Viper and Tatyana and everything that my cycle has been totally disrupted. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be pregnant because I hadn’t fallen in all the months I’d been sleeping with Falcon.
‘Oh God, could it be Jag’s?’
My heart accelerates to warp speed, but I slowly manage to calm myself again. I know enough about babies to know that I must be three months or more along to have felt the quickening. I’ve only been sleeping with Jag for a matter of weeks.
‘It’s Falcon’s.’
Having convinced myself that I am indeed carrying my husband’s long-awaited heir, my mind then goes off on a million tangents; everything from templates to the three years I’m supposed to breastfeed, to having to stay and produce a boy or being murdered as I give birth. All this while under the influence of Viper.
‘I have to kill Viper. There’s no other way around this. Kill him without getting captured and returned to the castle. Kill him while I’m still pregnant. How? And risk my baby?’
I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my fucking mind sitting in the car jumping at every little noise and thinking myself into a frenzy, but thankfully right about then another car pulls alongside, and the darkly tinted window rolls down to reveal Yin.
“Angie,” she shouts across to me, “get in.”
Without question I jump from my car to hers, and we pull away again.
“We’ll switch cars several more times,” she murmurs as she accelerates.
I nod. I have so much to tell her I don’t know where to begin, so I attempt to blurt everything all at once.
