“The man from my dreams… I think I know who he is, too.” I walk across the chapel, my footsteps echoing. I come to a stop before the altar and the statue of the crown-wearing man holding the book. “King Solos.”
“What?”
“They met during a festival…he read her future… Ruvan, I think Loretta was King Solos’s lover.”
“King Solos took no lovers and fathered no children.” Ruvan crosses to me with a shake of his head. “It’s what led to such upheaval following his death. There wasn’t any clear, irrefutable line of succession—cousins, nieces, and nephews all fought for the throne.”
“No,” I say firmly. “He had a lover, Loretta. I saw them together. She was working closely with him—helping him.” Everything is slowly falling into place. “The workshop in the old castle was hers, not Solos’s. Solos didn’t enslave the first humans, he was workingwiththem.”
Ruvan rests his hands lightly on my shoulders, cupping them. Looking me square in the eyes, he says, “What you are suggesting goes against the entire history of the vampir.”
“History can be wrong,” I say firmly. “Haven’t we both learned that by now?”
“But this is…this is King Solos.” Ruvan looks up to the statue of the man and his book. “Jontun’s writings were explicit.”
“Don’t you want Jontun to be wrong?” I ask.
“But why would he lie?” Ruvan’s eyes are glazed over and distant.
“Maybe because the vampir weren’t ready to accept that help came from people they had seen as having ‘lesser’ magic.” I remember how Ruvan described the early humans. “Or, maybe to protect them?” I shake my head. “I don’t know. But I believe history has been changed, intentionally or not. Maybe we don’t know the full story—therealstory. Everything we know of Solos was through Jontun. We don’t have the whole picture of the man, and never in his words.” I place my hands on his hips and draw him close. The contact pulls him from his haze. “I know how hard it is to have your world shaken. But the only way we’re going to figure this out is if we open ourselves to looking at everything around us not as we want it to be, or think, or have been told, but as it is.”
Ruvan’s arms tighten around me. Last night, we embraced as lovers. But I think this might be the first time we’re embracing purely as friends. There’s no boiling tension. No insatiable need. That’s all beenfinallysatiated. And what’s left is support.
“All right.” He finally pulls away, looking determined. “So, King Solos had a lover and her name was Loretta. And if the Raven Man is seeking vengeance for her then—”
“Perhaps he was another would-be suitor?”
“A human who fell in love with a vampir,” Ruvan says softly, almost sadly. “And a king’s mistress at that. He was jilted and used. Perhaps he even tried to become a vampir to be worthy of her.”Worthy. The word sticks with me and I try to ignore it.
“She wasn’t a vampir,” I insist. I know what I saw in my dream. Loretta didn’t have the golden eyes of a vampir. I hope Ruvan is ready to finally accept that truth. “Ruvan, if the workshop was hers—a workshop with a door that could only be opened by a human, with records indicating a human was working with Solos—then Loretta was a human.”
“Why would a human be working with the king of the vampir?” He’s still stuck in his disbelief. I know, viscerally, how hard what he’s enduring is, but that doesn’t make me want to shout at him any less.
“Maybe she saw an opportunity to help her people, too. One we don’t know about or has been lost to time. Or…maybe she loved him.” Her eyes, his, the way they looked at each other in my dream. How I wish I could just show Ruvan what I saw. “Perhaps she was Solos’s bloodsworn.”
“Vampir have never bloodsworn themselves to humans.”
“But you—”
“I was the first.” He releases me, pacing the hall.
“Youthinkyou were. But you don’tknow.” I reiterate, “If I’ve learned anything these past weeks, it’s been that we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. If the general vampir population in Solos’s time saw the humans as little more than livestock to be used for blood, what would they do if they discovered their king was not only working with a human but bloodsworn to one?”
“They’d never accept it,” he whispers.
“Exactly! Jontun must’ve omitted Loretta from his records to protect both his king and her.” I take a step forward. He’s on the cusp of admitting it. I can feel it. But then Ruvan shakes his head slowly and a cold sweat covers my body at his expression. Dread has come to keep us company.
“King Solos could’ve hadanywoman he desired from the elite of Tempost. There’s no possible way he would select a human.”
I still. “What do you mean by that?”
Ruvan brings his eyes to me; they’re conflicted. The muscles in his neck tense as he swallows hard. He doesn’t answer.
“What do you mean when you say there’s ‘no possible way King Solos would select a human?’”
“Even if Jontun’s writings weren’t the whole picture, there’s truth in them. There must be… Everything we’ve ever known… King Solos would’ve never chosen a human.” Ruvan is interested in looking anywhere else but me.
“Because a human isn’tgood enough?”
