Page 82 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
Ashen is silent for a long moment as we approach the car. He opens the passenger door for me and then slips in behind me to the middle seat. “Maybe not with more,” he says when Ediye is settled behind the wheel. “They were loyal to Ember as she tried to gain more power and influence in the Council. Perhaps with Ember gone, they will be dissuaded from trying again, but there is no guarantee. But you’re right,” he says as he reaches forward to touch my arm, as though I might not be real. “We should not linger there.”
We fall into heavy silence as Ediye starts to drive us into the night. We follow the winding mountain roads and every so often the fear climbs my spine that we’ll be pushed off the path once more. Every time we see another set of headlights I tense, but Ashen’s hand stays at my elbow in a reassuring grip. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Ediye, who catches my eye in the light from the dashboard and smiles. I smile back, a lightness twining with the loss and settling into my chest.
“Davina,” I say to Ediye as we pass into the first significant magical barrier I can feel. We must be getting closer to the stronghold now. “Is she okay? She and Cassian… they seemed to be growing closer.”
Ediye glances at me with a doubtful frown. “I don’t know. She made herself pretty scarce when we got there. She held herself together, but she’s definitely upset.”
I nod with a worried sigh. “We realized just before the crash that Davina knew Aglaope, and she had a vendetta against Bobby Sarno. He was the connection between them,” I say as I turn my gaze to the dark road ahead.
“That and a demigod,” Ashen adds, and I’m relieved he offers the information without putting me in the position of keeping that secret from my best friend. I look back at him and offer a faint and grateful smile, and he squeezes my arm in reply.
Ediye glances over with a furrowed brow. “A demigod? I thought that was just human mythology.”
“Apparently not,” I say. “Aglaope was up to something. And she’s in the Realm of Light now, waiting on resurrection of sorts.”
“What? How the fuck did her soul get there?”
I hook my thumb back toward Ashen as Ediye glances at me. “Aglaope wanted the demigod’s heart and bones harvested by a Scythe and offered to capture Sarno as payment if Davina harvested the body. It’s why Davina was reaped in the first place.”
“Who reaped her?”
It flashes at me like headlights between the trees. In an instant, I see it all. One blink to the next.
I smell the horses, the manure in the stalls and the scent of the hay. I hear the birds outside and I feel the warmth of the sun that filters through the open door and lights the dust motes like tiny stars.
I hear their argument as though I’m right there in the stables with them. The way Davina admitted what she’d done. How Ashen begged her to run but she refused.
“If you let me go, they will know that you were the one who told me. What I did was wrong, I know that,” I hear her say. I see the tears streaming down her face as though she’s standing right before me. “It has to be you.”
“You cannot ask this of me. You must run,” Ashen says. His voice is desperate and angry. His heart pounds at his bones with worry and rage. I can smell it in his scent. “Just go, Davina.”
And then a blinding hit of magic.
Ashen has no control over the blade in his hand. His arm moves under Davina’s control until it faces her heart.
“I wish it could be different,” she whispers. Fat tears roll down her skin as Ashen shakes his head. She plunges forward onto his blade before he can even say a word.
I feel it, the way he does, as though I’m right inside him. I feel what it’s like to reap a soul. How the energy washes through him. The presence of the spirit. Their fear and sorrow. And suddenly I understand.
I snap out of the vision, knowing every detail of what happened. And my heart shatters for this dark and quiet man who casts his gaze out the window, not wanting to meet my eyes.
As Davina’s spirit passed through his palm and into the Shadow Realm, it was cleaved away from another soul.
The one he didn’t know about, not until the moment it slipped through Ashen’s hand like water and dissolved into the world as though it was never more than a dream.
The one growing inside her. The child he almost had.
I hit the button for the seatbelt and climb into the back seat, right onto Ashen’s lap. I wrap my arms around his neck and I hold on tight. And after a moment, he lets go of his regret and guilt enough to feel the comfort of being held. He embraces me like a lifeboat in a storm. I run my fingers through his hair as I hold his head to my neck and I keep him there. I know there aren’t words that will take away the pain he still feels, but if his grief refuses to let go, so can I. So I hold on. I hold on until we make it there.
When we arrive close to Valentina’s sprawling stone estate, I can feel the magic pulsing around us. Ediye was right, there are layers of spells so thick that we’d never get close with a portal. The energy hums and builds as we get to a thick stone wall. The gate opens, the magic visible as it lifts from the roadway to let us pass.
We follow a cobblestone driveway that circles around the stone fountain of an angel, weathered by time and harsh seasons. The house isn’t so much a house as a small castle, with round towers flanking an arched oak door that opens as the vehicle stops.
A woman steps out of the house with a tight smile, her long black hair fluttering down to her waist in loose curls. She wears an ornate, embroidered jacket over black leather pants and ankle boots. Her delicate hand rests on the arm of a beautiful man with wavy blond hair and an equally pristine and dramatic maroon suit. They stay on the top step of the landing as we approach, their smiles growing a bit more welcoming, if not a little amused at my stupid dress.
“Greetings, friends. I am Valentina, and this is my mate, Florin,” she says, gesturing toward the human who bows his head. My eyebrows twitch in interest. I’ve not heard of a human staying a human once mated to a vampire. Usually they’re turned first, since they’re so much more fragile than we are. But who knows what kind of ‘toying with mated death’ kink they’re into. Or maybe Valentina’s just bored of immortality, who knows? It’s odd, but then with all her ultra-reclusive secrecy, so is she, even among our kind.
“Pleased to finally meet you,” I say, ascending the steps to shake her extended hand. “I’m Leucosia, and this is Ashen of House Urbigu.”
