Page 43 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
Ashen takes a long moment to answer. His left hand slides over my arm, climbing toward my wrist until his fingers meet mine, lacing between them. He draws our joined hands up to point toward the valley. Hot air balloons rise from the fields. They float up toward the travertine pools, roaring gusts of burning gas to keep their colors in the sky. Ashen folds our joined hands beneath the surface of the water until I’m enveloped in his strength. “I guess it just wasn’t the right time,” he whispers, and seals his words with a kiss.
We stay in the warm water, watching the hot air balloons as the sun comes up. We talk about our long histories and all the places we’ve been, all the times we nearly met but didn’t, the lives we took or saved. After a while, the tourists start filtering through the nearby pools, though no one comes too close. It’s as though they sense the darkness in Ashen, some kind of aura he naturally exudes when he’s not trying to cover it. Unlike the immortals who know why they should be wary, the humans must keep away based on instinct. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. It’s as though they could be in a different realm, just illusions of the landscape. All Ashen’s focus is on me, on the things I say or the way I laugh or the expressions I make as he shares his secrets, his fingers drawing endless, shifting patterns across my skin as we talk.
So many times I’ve tried to imagine we weren’t meant to be enemies, even when we were. I wanted to forget we were a vampire and a demon, hunter and prey. I wished we were just a man and a woman, trying to come to terms with one another. Probably ourselves too. Now, suddenly, I realize how precious this moment is. Because I’m not trying. That’s all we are.
CHAPTER16
Sooner than I’d like, Ashen declares that it’s time to move on, and we leave the pools and walk down the trail to where the driver waits at the gates. This is when Ashen announces he’s taking me to ‘lunch’, which is at a small coven just beyond the village. When we arrive at the unassuming house, the witches greet us with predictable wariness toward the Reaper, but they’re welcoming enough, leading us to the dining room where a human man is bound to a chair. His mind is clearly addled by some spell, so I don’t need to try using my voice to subdue him. Honestly, after the failed attempt in Ravello, I’m still afraid to even try, so though this goes against my predatory nature to hunt and kill, I’m frankly relieved. The coven leader also assures me he’s a douchebag, as per strict criteria from the Reaper, who sits down at the table with a glass of wine and a newspaper as I sink my teeth into the human and bleed him dry.
We don’t linger with the coven, which Ashen and the witches seem mutually happy about. Our driver takes us back to the hotel where I’m deposited not at our room but in the spa. “Clothes will be on the bed, vampire. The driver will pick you up at four in front of the lobby,” Ashen says as he leaves me at the spa reception desk with a woman named Pinar, who will be mypersonal wellness director, apparently.
“But where are you—” I don’t have a chance to even finish my sentence before the glass door is sliding shut behind Ashen. He casts me a wicked smile over his shoulder and then disappears around the corner, taking any hint of his emotions with him, my mark eerily still after a fleeting wisp of his self-satisfied amusement. “What the hell…” I whisper.
“Something wrong?” Pinar asks in a warm Turkish accent as she hands me a fluffy white robe and slippers.
“Just…a strange date.”
“Have you been dating long?”
“Not really?.. It’s complicated. This is technically our first date.”
“Ahh. First dates are usually the strangest,” Pinar says, nodding her head as she slips an arm around my shoulders and guides me toward the spa rooms. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to do at the spa today? A massage, perhaps? Facial?”
“Wax,” I declare. “Definitely a wax. Full Brazilian. Please.”
Pinar lets out a gentle laugh. “So, not abadfirst date. Just a strange one.”
Pinar pushes me into a change room and the pampering begins. When every pube has been ripped out, every muscle tenderized, every pore slicked with luxurious lotions, I make my way back to the suite.
As promised, there are clothes on the bed next to my makeup bag and a sparkling clutch. No bra, just a lacy cream-colored thong. Sneaky Reaper. Not that I could wear a bra with the dress I raise from the bed, with its neckline that cuts to the navel and the even lower, plunging back. It’s blush white with a spattering of tiny gold crystals that cascade down the bust to disappear among the flowing layers of the floor-length skirt. There’s a pair of simple but elegant sandals to go with it, and a note in a careful script honed over centuries of time.Four o’clock, vampire. I’ll be waiting. ~A.
I press the note to the mark on my chest. It warms beneath my palm as I reach to this invisible thread that somehow connects us. I feel Ashen’s presence, the whisper of his emotions. Anticipation is there. Longing. But he manages to keep his feelings calm so that they’re nothing more than a gentle breeze between us. Or maybe the storm of my confusion and excitement and anxiety just drowns them out.
I sit at the vanity and pull my hair from my face to fall down my back in chocolate waves. I put on my makeup and then my dress and shoes, placing my lipstick and the key to the Shadow Realm corridors in my bag. When I stand in front of the gilt-edged mirror, I almost don’t recognize the woman looking back at me. The difference isn’t in the green hues of my hazel eyes. It’s not in my olive skin, or the angles of my cheekbones, or the set of my lips. It’s in my essence. My expression. The minute details that are hard to define. It’s a peace. A confidence. Like some element had been missing, mined from me with every year of loneliness that had passed. It was something I’d let go of in exchange for survival. And now, the more choices I claim as mine, the more I allow myself to have and to feel, the more it comes back to me. I’m finding my way back to the woman I once was. Maybe even better than before.
I give myself one final glance and leave the suite, heading straight out the lobby where the car is waiting. When I slip inside, the driver passes me a note with a map of the path I’m supposed to take once we arrive back at the Thermal Pools, the only destination an ‘A’ and nothing more. When we stop at the entrance to the park, I follow the instructions, passing the hot springs along a wooden bridge and then taking the winding limestone path that leads to the ancient city of Hierapolis.
Partway down the road, there’s a barrier with two guards, the wordsInsaat nedeniyle kapaliwritten across the scratched yellow plastic.Closed for construction.But as soon as the guards see me, they pull the barrier back and let me pass.
With every step I take along the road, my heart drums at my ribs. Excitement slithers around my bones. It’s been a damn long time since anyone’s gone to these lengths to make a mystery for me. Maybe ever. Somehow, Ashen just knows exactly what I like. It’s in every detail, whether it’s something tiny or a grand yet intimate choice. It’s in the color of a dress. It’s the way he understands the restorative power of water for a woman whose immortal life began in the sea. It’s how he knows that I can never forget a moment of my life, and now he’s helping me to make new memories in spaces that remind me of the ancient past.
I take a curve in the road and he’s there, standing on the path.
I stop and we look at one another for a long moment. Ashen seems perfectly at ease with his hands in the pockets of another beautiful black suit, the precise stitching tailored to his height and his broad shoulders and narrow waist. The wings of the tattooed bird on the side of his neck peek from his collar and I sense his pulse beneath them, just a touch faster than normal. His short dark hair falls over his brow, his eyes leaving mine to flow down to the scepter visible on my chest, then lower, all the way down to the hem that grazes the white limestone road, and back up again.
“All right, vampire?” he asks with a faint smile. The light in his eyes holds more gravity for me than the sun.
“Better now.” I didn’t expect to say that. Neither did Ashen, and he likes it, judging by the way his smile widens. I swallow, feeling a little thrown from myself. “You look cocky as sin,” I say, trying to slip my broken mask back on as he saunters over with just a little swagger in the sway of his steps.
“I might be a bit,” he replies as he stops in front of me and leans in to press a kiss to my cheek. His scent of mint and brandy and unlit cigars invades my senses. “I’ve managed to keep the Queen of the Shadow Realm both surprised and out of trouble for almost an entire day. That seems like an accomplishment worth being cocky about.”
I take Ashen’s offered arm and we start toward a fork in the road. “The day’s not over yet, Reaper.”
We walk in silence to a gap between two limestone barriers. The Roman amphitheater of Hierapolis stretches before us, rows of curving seats stepping down toward the stage, the rebuilt columns and statues of thescaenae fronsproviding a background to the band playing softly as they warm up their instruments. Tessa is there, adjusting a mic stand among glass orbs of different colors that throw flickering candlelight across the stone. The semi-circular orchestra section in front of the stage is bordered by lanterns. There’s a spot set up with blankets and colorful pillows in the middle of theima cavea, the lowest portion of the seating area.
Ashen moves forward to start leading us down the steps but I can’t move. The air isn’t flowing in or out of my lungs, even though my mouth is open. My free hand is pressed to my sternum to keep my thrumming heart from melting through my bones. Tears sting my eyes as Ashen takes a step back to my side.
“Come on, vampire,” he whispers as his arm slides across my back. “The show is ready to begin.”
