He didn’t smile back.He didn’t so much as blink.‘I suppose you want me to say you’re free to go.’
‘No,’ I said, not meeting his eye.‘Our deal was for me to lift the curse.This is the beginning, but we know what we need to do now.I’ll stay with you and find a way to kill her, and then—’
‘Enough!’
It was the first time Raleigh had ever raised his voice to me.Even on the night I tried to kill him, I hadn’t seen him like this.He quickly realised his mistake and stepped away from me, but I had already been jolted into silence, feeling like I was once again no more than a villager, and that Raleigh was again the prince on the hill.
‘I appreciate your effort,’ he said, more quietly now, ‘but this was never an option.Every vampire knows this cure.Moira knows it.Hell, I think the priests in Triz know it.It’s not an option.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was in the very first book I told you to read.’Raleigh stormed over to the stack of starter books I’d still never touched, snatched the first book from the pile and let it fall open on a dog-eared page.I felt the blood drain from my face as he dropped the book in front of me.There, in plain German, was the cure I’d spent three months searching for.
Three monthsI’d wasted.I was nearly halfway through our bargain andthishad been lying there the entire time?‘You should have told me.’I was too angry to raise my voice.All my energy was being poured into not tearing up the book.
‘You told me you read it,’ Raleigh said.
‘Because I thought you were wasting my time.’
‘That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you!’Raleigh cried.‘You don’t listen to me, and the fact that you didn’t read the book only proved that.If I’d told you outright that there was a cure we knew of, you would have spent the last three months pursuing it, and I can’t let you do that.’
‘You were testing me?’I asked.I didn’t know if I was more angry at the manipulation or the fact that no matter which way I tried to reason with it, I knew that I’d failed.
‘Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have tried to kill the Queen if you knew.’
‘Of course I would have.’I was outraged he would suggest otherwise.‘This is how we cure you.Do you think I want to be stuck here for eternity?’
I wanted Raleigh to yell back, but to my horror his lips curled into a smile.Not the cruel, sharp smile he would have given me months ago; there was no joy in his eyes, malicious or otherwise.He looked defeated.‘I should be the one asking you that.’
My heart thrummed painfully.Eternity to me was a threat, one I had no real way of comprehending.Raleigh had already experienced it; he had walked in darkness for three hundred years.He had no right to condemn me to the same fate.But if I was him, wouldn’t I want someone else at my side?How could I really fault him for wanting a companion to make that darkness the slightest bit lighter?
‘I want you to cure me, Clara,’ Raleigh said.‘This isn’t an empty task I’ve set you on, but this isn’t the solution you’re looking for.It’s impossible.’
‘But you know who your sire is,’ I countered.‘She’s invited you back to court.All you need to do is accept the invitation.She’d never see it coming.’
‘Do you think no one has ever tried?’Raleigh’s voice was painfully soft.‘Every hunter in Europe tried to go after her, and still she holds court as she always has.’
‘You mean vampire hunters?They exist?’
‘Barely.’He fell into the seat beside me, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes.‘If she even learns we’ve had this conversation she will hunt down everyone you’ve ever cared about and treat them as livestock.’
Was there anyone left for her to hunt?I wasn’t sure.I doubted she could feed from Raleigh, but the thought of Father and Yann cold and bloodless wasn’t one I wanted to linger on.
‘Is she so bad?’There was once a time I thought Raleigh to be as cruel and ruthless as the image he painted of his queen.And yet here he was, visibly fearful, speaking of her as we had always spoken about our prince.
He glanced at me then, a fragmented smile splintering across his lips.‘Why do you think I want to be cured?’
Something inside me split in two.‘Raleigh …’ His towering frame seemed so small in that moment, as though the Queen’s grip on him was crushing him.I wanted to ask what she had done, but a deep crack had already split through Raleigh’s facade.If I pressed any harder he would shatter.‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered.
I knew nothing of Raleigh’s world, not the origins, not anything more than what humans had penned in books.It had taken me three months to find for myself the one cure he thought to be common.How could I hope to find, and execute, another in the five I had remaining, when neither he nor Moira had even so much as a lead?
Did another cure exist?Raleigh seemed to believe in one, but I was less convinced.Vampirism was no common cold; there were no honey remedies or peppermint brews to stave off the symptoms.This was a curse.I knew little of curses, but I did know they couldn’t be so easily lifted that we had the luxury of ignoring one certainty.
He was asking the impossible of me, all to spare his queen.
My heart twisted.In the end, I would join him in the darkness.There would be no cure for me.Only Raleigh’s blood on my hands, and his was blood I no longer had any desire to spill.The end of the year was truly our deadline.In all the time I’d spent as Raleigh’s prisoner, I had never felt so trapped.
‘Promise me you’ll never try to kill her,’ he urged.
