“You told them to lie to me,” you said. There was no jury for my crimes, only your steady, uncompromising accusations, all of them true.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“How dare you?” you snarled.
One time, while I was trapped in my own personal hell of a Shade Vale, a pack of reanimated corpses got inspired by a new way to kill me. Instead of the usual stabbing or a bludgeon to the head, they tied me up and stoned me to death. Not to diminish that experience, but this felt similar. Though your energy didn’t leave physical marks, it reminded me of the sensation of being stoned. And I certainly deserved it.
You stood and I mirrored your movement.
“Don’t follow me,” you warned. “And don’t come home tonight, or I swear to God, Henri, I will tear you apart.”
You glared at Lucian. “If I never see you again, I want you to remember this moment when you were too gutless to tell me the truth, so I had to seduce it out of you. How easily you fell under my thrall. Like a child.”
I searched your face for any signs of amity, but you were too disgusted to even look at me. You stormed out of the restaurant and crossed the street to where the car was parked. It occurred to me then that I’d never actually seen you operate a motor vehicle. By the time I’d gathered up the courage to go after you, you’d already hit a curb in your haste to get away. Your taillights were quickly receding into the black night—our escape plan.
Beside me, Lucian exhaled.
“Gods almighty,” he said with a stunned smile. “Mother’s right. Heisone of us.”
21
VINCENT
You lied to me. For eighteen years.
This betrayal was too big—it waseverything. It had shaped our relationship in countless ways. It was the reason for your sudden, inexplicable dark moods. Why you avoided certain subjects and dodged other questions entirely. You’d hidden this from me, for so long—my own identity. You might have never told me at all, just continued this charade and left me turning circles in my own confusion.
If I let you get away with it now, you might try to deceive me again later. I could handle you seducing me, even mistreating me, but I wouldnottolerate you lying to me. How many more secrets were you keeping? I could no longer trust you to be honest with me, so who could I turn to now?
Mater.
She wasn’t innocent by any means, but she’d been telling me all along, in her own way, by encouraging me to ask questions and giving me glimpses of a fuller picture. On top of your betrayal, I felt like an idiot for not putting it together sooner.
I got back to our hotel room and consumed blood until my stomach was bloated and my mind was addled by my drunken binge. In the dream realm, I conjured Mater’s lands and called for her by name, but my summons went unanswered. Finally, I sat down in the middle of my gazebo and focused all of my energy on invoking her. It had never taken so long before or demanded so much of my concentration, but at last, she answered.
She looked sick, despite her attempts to shield her condition. She was thin—unnaturally so—and lying stiffly on top of my furs as though the slightest shift might cause her immense pain. Even her snakes looked pale and lethargic.
“Mater, what’s going on?”
“I’m ill,” she said. Her brevity was unusual. Mater was never short on words.
“Is he starving you again?” Azrael was a cruel master and an even more despicable warden.
“Has Lucian found you yet?” she asked instead, tilting her head just enough to gaze up at me.
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Thanks to our matron.” If she’d been well, she would have touched her lips to the gold amulet that encircled her throat, a relief of Medusa and our family’s crest, but she was too weak to manage even that.
“He didn’t tell me about this,” I said, worried for her.
“He will.”
I waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, I took one of her limp hands in mine and stroked the fine bones of her fingers. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“I don’t have the energy,mi amore. Why have you summoned me, after such a long absence?”
It’d been a couple of weeks since our last dream share. Lately, fantasies of the two of us had taken up most of my subconscious thought, and those weren’t dreams I wanted to share with Mater.
