“Why not? Are you ashamed?”
“You ask an awful lot of questions,” he mutters as he studies me.
I shrug in response.
“No, I’m not ashamed,” he says with a sigh. “But that doesn’t mean my father isn’t.”
I exhale a breath as I slump into my chair. That much I understand. “I know the pressures of family expectations better than most.”
Lief nods in commiseration before he sighs. He turns back to the book. “Well, I had better get on with this…”
“Lief?” I say as he picks up a pen. He looks up at me and I give him another smile, this one feels more genuine. “I think it’s nice that you’re a writer. It’s a noble trade. It must be a peaceful life.”
Lief gives me a look like,should we interrupt them? But I can’t get over what that woman Talyria said.
She is over a thousand years old? She claims that she was a vampire? How could she have lost the night kiss? I hadn’t realized that such a thing was possible. I thought that a vampiric state was inalterable.
And to claim to be the Thief Queen?
My father has been obsessed with stories of the Thief Queen, even coming to fear in recent years that she may have somehow come back. Even though the Thief Queen’s reign was over a thousand years ago, such a thingwasa possibility. After all, the famed original uniter of the thief and assassin guildswasa vampire, and therefore, immortal.
Elwis modeled his own rise to power after the stories of this Talyria Undying.
He even found me while trying to locate the Thief Queen’s burial place.
Is it possible?
But how can it be….
This woman clearly believes what she is saying. So, either she is raving mad or she’s telling the truth.
Could she have been also telling the truth about being my sister from a different life? Is she the key to my long-lost past?
As I ponder it, I realize I’m not actually very surprised. Of course, I would be in a criminal family in both my past and my present. A life of stealing and killing seems to be something that I can never escape. I was born for it, whether I want it or not.
Lief places his hand on my shoulder, getting my attention back to him and our current predicament. We are hiding underneath the bed, we both ducked under it when we heard the commotion in the hallway only for it to turn out to be Talyria and Victor.
We came here for that spellbook, it’s essential to me being able to earn favor for Lief. Who Talyria is and how she relates to me is of secondary importance. Even if my soul longs to know more about my past, my mind knows that no matter what it was and who I was, it cannot be changed.
My future though? It is very much on the line, and my actions now will determine what future I get. Will it be a future with Lief?
Or a future where I am the daughter who failed my father?
But maybe who I was can answer the question of who I want to be. Because I’ve lived my whole life up to the point unsure of what I’ve been doing and what I even wanted from my life. I don’t think I want to kill or steal my whole life, always striving to be more powerful and three steps ahead of everyone else. That may be fine for my father, for my whole family really, but I’ve never been satisfied with this life.
And maybe the only way to learn what sort of life I’d be interested in is to figure out who I was before Elwis the Eel found me.
I roll toward Lief until my chest is pressed against his shoulder. “Trust me,” I whisper to him, a soft phrase that I’m not even sure if he heard.
Until he nods and says, “Always.”
I find myself smiling as my hand moves through the shadows under the bed until I find his hand. I give it a quick squeeze andthen I roll out from under the bed. I leap to my feet, the agility of practiced years guiding me more than any conscience thought. Lief lumbers slowly to his feet on the other side of the bed, his knee making a popping sound as he stands.
Both Victor and Talyria whirl at that.
“How long have you been there?” Talyria asks, her eyes widening.
“What exactly were youdoingdown there?” Victor demands, his eyes narrowing.
