She grins. “Yeah, and that promise you made to that dark lord to be his little sex toy for a year? What about that?”
My mouth drops open. “Who told you?”
Raven waves her magic wand and her fingertips sparkle with electricity. “You can’t keep secrets from me,” she says dramatically. “But seriously you are right about the books. You could work on them together with the others. And Lucianna is going to be thrilled that you’re coming back to Chicago. Did you tell her yet?”
I narrow my eyes at the nosy little buttinsky. “Mind your business witch. Now fly away on your broomstick so I can go find Corvinus. I need to tell him that we’re leaving for Chicago.”
Raven gives me a hug. “Things have a way of working out, Embry. I’ll see you soon,” she says before waving her magic wand.
The sound of the rocking chair causes me to jump. “Gramma! I swear, were you listening that entire time?”
She laughs softly. “Dear child. I’ve been with you every minute of your life.”
There’s a part of me that always knew that. “You’re always with me too. If not physically, in spirit. I feel you, Gramma.”
Gramma laughs gently. “As it should be. You have the gift of sight, Embry. You’ve always had it, you simply needed to believe in yourself and have a reason to harness it. Your lovefor the vampires, for your friends, it's what brought your power through.”
My throat tightens with emotion. “You saved Lucas and the vampires that night. I don’t know the whole story, but I do know that. Lucas said you gave your life for them all but made him promise to look out for me. That’s what you meant when you said he was meant to protect me and nothing more?”
“Yes, dear. Lucas was a good man in his day before the evil witches got to him and took his very soul away. Those witches will never stop until they destroy everything good in the world.”
My chest tightens as I listen to my grandmother’s words, half wondering if I’m in a dream. Surely, I’ll wake up and all I’ll hear is his evil laugh as he tries to run me through. Because no matter what she says, no matter the truth, I can’t simply forget what he’s done. I swallow through the emotion that forms in the back of my throat. “Why do you say that, Gramma?”
The rocking chair stops moving and it’s so quiet for a moment that I can hear the pitter patter of raindrops on the forest floor outside. “Did you think Lucas would go back on his promise to me, my love? The dear boy would have done anything for me, for you, and for the vampires.”
My chest heaves with the weight of what she’s saying, because nothing makes sense anymore. I was there, all the manipulation, all the betrayal, the difference in his feelings for me, the way he treated me and the way he tried to kill me when I tried to stop his evil plot. “He didn’t really love me.”
“He always loved you, just not the way lovers should love. I meant for him only to be your protector. You felt that, yet you forced what wasn’t meant to be. And he did that, fought hard to do that, even though he was being used as the witches’ pawn. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Tears fall from my face. Maybe I did force the feeling, maybe he was protecting me even when I thought he wasn’t. “He died though…”
Nothing but silence from Gramma, but the chair starts rocking again. “Your destiny awaits. Listen to your heart, my dear. It’s time for me to leave. Your real future is about to knock on the door.”
11
CORVINUS
Embry’s scent permeates the entire forest as I stalk through the undergrowth in my search to find her, my eyes scanning the night this way and that. A swooshing sound splinters the quiet of the air, and animals scurry from the brush and branches and head for the crowns of the trees as a big black bird barely misses my head before landing on a branch. Damnable bird. “Rupert, I can’t find the fucking witch’s door again, take me to it!”
The raven with spiky black hair turns his log beak straight up to the fucking sky. “You have no manners, asswipe; you’ll get nothing from me that way.”
My growl is ferocious, and I don’t care who hears it in the night. Embry could be in danger, and I have no time for this at all. “You have one minute to tell me what I want to know, or I will burn you and everything you hold dear to the fucking ground you dismal crow.”
His beady white eyes turn swiftly. “I’m a Raven!”
This bird tests my patience like no other. “Embry’s scent is everywhere. Where did she go? Tell me what I want to know, raven, or I’ll burn you alive!”
The bird flaps his wings a multitude of times and rolls his eyes. “Where do you think she went? She went back to the cavern. The same place that kept her gramma safe, and her gramma before that. You sure aren’t as smart as you look, vampire!”
If that fucking bird weren’t a friend of Embry’s and had not kept her safe when she first got here, I swear I would run his sassy mouth through with the end of my sword, put him on spit and give him to anyone who would eat his rotten little ass. “I know that!” I gesture around. “Where the hell is the door? I’m just going around in fucking circles.”
He takes off in the sky. My cape flies behind me as I soar through the forest, avoiding the large branches and scaring creatures from all over the land as I follow the crow. A tall tree with a long scar down the length of its trunk tells me soon I’ll see a winding river and follow its bend. If memory serves there will be a bend and then an overgrown patch of ivy growing up the side of a hill.
There I’ll find the witch coven, the one that protected Embry when she first got to the Mystic Forest, in the foothills of the Carpathians. When I reach that door hidden behind its wall of green this time, I’m not going to be begging for her to let me in. I’m going to demand it and bend that sassy little female over my knee.
His black shadow circles back and swoops from a high branch in the tree, settling on a branch nearby. I exhale a breath of frustration. “Do you not ever give anyone advance notice?”
Rupert just shrugs is big dumb wings. “It pays to be careful you know. You’re looking for Embry to protect her?”
