“You mentioned that Morpheus was with you. Why were you bound by the candle and he wasn’t?”
Damien turns introspective. “It’s late, and this is a long story.”
“I’m not tired, and after the night I’ve had, I plan to open up a bottle of wine. Why don’t you come in?” He nods once, although I sense reluctance in the way his body tenses, and he stares over the steering wheel. “That wasn’t an order or anything. I wasn’t candling you,” I clarify. “I’d just really like to talk. Would you care to come in and have a glass of wine?”
I might be imagining it, but the muscles in his face and neck seem to ease. “Yes, I would.”
He parks in the garage, and I lead him into the parlor, where I leave him to check on Grams before retrieving the bottle of wine I took from the Mobil station from the kitchen. I unscrew the cap and pour us a couple of glasses. It isn’t bad for gas stationwine.
“I wonder what happened to Hank.” I’ve thought about Hank more than once since the incident. He did a bad thing stealing my money and attacking me, but the memory of his broken body on the pavement still haunts me.
Damien folds himself into the green velvet sofa beside me, making the heavy piece of furniture groan under his weight. “He’s still recovering in Richmond Memorial. He claims someone robbed him, but unfortunately, none of the security cameras were working, and no money was missing from the register, so the police are going on the assumption that he did, in fact, jump off the roof.”
I sip my wine. “I hope he doesn’t mention my Jeep or remember my license plate.”
“That would be difficult, considering I wiped his mind before I dropped him.” He flashes me a little fang.
My jaw drops. “Brilliant. How did you think of that in the moment?”
“I assumed you’d have to buy gas there again.” The corner of his mouth twitches.
“I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m relieved. Shouldn’t I feel more guilty for what happened to him?”
“Guilty for what? You didn’t do it.” His diamond eyes study me.
“I might as well have. You did it because of me.”
“And if I hadn’t, he’d have put you in a hospital bed, or a grave.” Damien believes that, just as he believes that Tony is a bad man, an evil man. Maybe he’s right.
“Maeve told me tonight not to trust you. That you murdered her ancestor.”
“The one who magically tore me and my two brethren from our world in an attempt to enslave us. Yes, I killed her and I do not regret it.” He says this through his teeth and Ican tell the memory is still fresh, even after hundreds of years.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I love Maeve and it’s hard for me to believe that her family would do such a thing, but I can see the pain in Damien’s eyes. “Maeve didn’t tell me the whole story.”
He softens at my show of empathy. “Maeve may not know exactly, being a relatively young descendant of the witches who cursed me. I, on the other hand, will always remember that time. Unlike her, I lived through it, and it changed my existence forever.”
“Will you tell me, the way you remember it?” I pull my legs underneath me, squeezing a pillow to my middle, and hold my breath. I want to know the truth about how Damien became the advocate, but I won’t force him.
He grows serious and stands to pace the small room, almost like he’s not sure where to start. “To understand how I ended up here, you first must understand where I come from. My home is on Tenebris, a watery planet much like Earth with one island continent of the same name. Maeve might think of it as a world of darkness, but for me it was a world of life. My kind, shades, we are like vampires in that sunlight weakens us. Unlike vampires, we can survive it, but it makes us vulnerable. We are immortal in the dark. If a sword pierces our flesh, we simply blend into the darkness and come back together somewhere else. But in sunlight, we are mortal. In sunlight, we can be captured. What you need to understand is that before I was abducted and brought here, I was heir to the southernmost kingdom of Tenebris, the Kingdom of Stygarde.”
“Wait, wait, wait. What?”
22
Flesh and Blood
DAMIEN
Eloise straightens. “Are you telling me you were, like, aprincein your world?”
I rarely speak of my past life as a royal of Stygarde. Those memories come weighted in considerable sadness, but she needs to understand. “It’s been a long time since anyone called me that, but yes. My parents ruled Stygarde, and I was the oldest of three siblings, although still too young to lead by my people’s standards. I’d barely completed training as a warrior when a neighboring kingdom attacked. The elf mages of Willowgulch have magic much like your witches. A long bloody war ensued that drained my kingdom. The elves learned to magically produce sunlight and used it to trap and kill our soldiers. We’d slayed a fair number of theirs as well. I couldn’t see an end to the violence.”
“What were you fighting over?”
My brow lifts at her question, surprised she wants details. “Land. Specifically, a forested area between our twokingdoms. A wild, neutral territory until a hunting party found a dragon’s egg and everything changed.”
“Like from an actual dragon? They exist there?”
