Liliana either didn’t notice or misinterpreted our shock. “Dr. Mitu has yet toconclusivelyfind a link for him like yours. Regardless, I can say in all confidence that you are Vlad’s scion.”
“Lucky me,” I whispered. “Lucky, lucky, lucky...”
I didn’t finish. I just turned around and headed for the door, strode down the hallway, away from the office.Steel spine, chin up. Steel spine, chin up... I repeated it endlessly, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t calm down. I just walked and walked, aimless and confused, until I heard Huck’s boots slapping against the floor as he jogged to catch up.
“How do we get out of here?” I said, spinning in a circle. “I can’t remember how we came in.... I need air.”
Huck grabbed my arm and hurried me across the hall to a set of glass doors. Cold air rushed over my face as we stepped onto a narrow balcony that overlooked an empty collegiate courtyard. A cracked porcelain bowl filled with cigarette butts sat near my feet.
“Breathe,” he said, one hand flattened on my back. “Slowly. Exhale, inhale... There you go. You’re all right now.”
I grasped the railing and breathed in brisk air until the shock passed. “I’m okay,” I said when I came back to my senses, and then, trying to minimize my embarrassment, “We keep ending up on balconies, don’t we? Good thing you’re wearing more than a towel this time.”
He made a surprised noise in the back of this throat and glanced at me from the sides of his eyes, both sheepish and amused. “Well, you know what they say. Clothes make the man.”
I wanted to laugh, but the cold air caused my eyes to water. “Oh, Huck,” I murmured.
“What in the devil is happening?” he said, leaning on the railing with me.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” I whispered, knuckling away tears before they could fall.
“Is this what Lovena meant by the ‘hands of fate’? Because they can go to hell right now.”
When a student walked through the hall behind us, Huck mumbled something about ears listening and pulled the balcony door shut. “Okay, let’s think about this. Let’s say all this is true about your bloodline. It would explain why this dragon order has been hounding us. Maybe they don’t want the journal. Maybe they wantyou.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Rothwild is obsessed with Vlad. Your father said as much in the journal. And this woman just implied that the professor was doing work for Rothwild. Is it a stretch to think they may have told Rothwild about your connection to Vlad? Maybe that’s why Rothwild hired Fox in the first place. To get to you. To play some kind of cat-and-mouse game.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Are you sure? Think about it, banshee. Fox says in the journal that he was constantly frustrated because every lead he chased had already been investigated by Rothwild.”
I heard what he was saying, but I couldn’t make all the puzzle pieces slot together. Rothwild wanted Vlad Dracula’s ring, and I was positive there were three bands—that much I knew. And when Rothwild hired Father this summer, I was back home in New York, so he didn’t hire him to get to me. I think he truly wanted Father to track down the ring components. Father took the job, failed to find the other two bands this summer, quit the job, and then a few months later found a new lead in Turkey and renewed his search. There was no way Rothwild could know I’d be along for this trip.
I wasn’t even convinced Rothwild knew there were three bands. For all we knew, he was still under the impression that there was one real ring.
And yet he’d hired Dr. Mitu to research his ancestry?
This was maddening.
“Do you think Father knows about this genealogy research? The page in the journal that was torn out... Do you think he came by here after all, or telephoned Dr. Mitu? Did Father know and not tell me? He kept everything else from me—I didn’t even know he was in Romania this summer until he dropped me off in Istanbul. That’s when he told me he was hunting Vlad’s ring, Huck. When he had one foot out the door of my hotel room and was ready to go to Tokat.”
“That was wrong,” Huck said. “That was very wrong.”
“And if he knew this... this bombshell about my heritage and kept it from me?” I shook my head violently as anger heated my chest. “It’s not even his to keep. It’smybloodline, not his.Myconnection to my mother, not his!”
“Whoa,” Huck said, hands on my shoulders, turning me to face him. “You don’t know that Fox knew about this. I can’t believe he’d hide that from you—”
“Oh, I can,” I murmured. “He doesn’t respect me. He doesn’t care. He would definitely hide a piece of vital information from me and then toss me to the lions—or, in this case, the dragons. We’re surrounded by murder and mad occultists, Huck. Father has kept this from me and put us in danger, all in the same stroke.”
“If,?” Huck insisted, forcing my gaze to connect with his. “Ifhe even knew about your mother’s bloodline, maybe in his own bumbling way he thought he was protecting you from all this chaos—I know! It’s still not right. It’s more than not right; it’s downright foolish. He’s a great man, banshee, but he’s also a stubborn, shortsighted, occasionally stupid man.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I mumbled.
“He doesn’t think. He’s not a planner. He just flies by the seat of his pants and hopes he lands on his feet. Usually he does, and that’s the maddening part of it. But I can’t for one second believe that he would do something on purpose to endanger you. And I don’t believe you think that either.”
“Believe what you want,” I said, and then winced. “Damn it all! My eye hurts like something is splitting the socket from the inside out.”
