And he didn’t want to.
“You’re right,” he rasped. As he spoke, his voice grew louder. “We have stood by and witnessed what he has done to mortals over and over. I don’t mean the ones that he murders in a night or a week. We know about those, too. But we have watched him tear beauty from one after another of his ‘pets.’ They aren’t cared for, Candide. They aren’t submissives with a quirky name. Not his. His arevictims.”
“We have had to safeguard our own survival,” Candide countered.
“We have,” Roger said. “But when is his villainy too much to bear? When is our survival nothing but a coward’s excuse to do nothing and pretend we don’t mind what’s happening?”
“Look at what has happened to you! Your name in ruin, your position revoked, your lovers kidnapped, and your pets murdered or nearly so!”
“And I will pull him into the ashes with me,” Roger growled. “I willburySeamus if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Bloody tears welled in Candide’s eyes, but she spun away from him before a single one could fall. She held her arms tight, a hand going to her face, and smothered her tears.
“I can’t continue like it was,” Roger said as he approached her. Gently, he put his hands on her shoulders. “Something has to change. You agreed with that.”
“It was easier to pretend without you here. You have always made me wonder what joy might feel like.” Candide tilted her head back. “I wish you hadn’t woken.”
Roger froze colder than blood in an arctic wind. In the months since he’d woken from his enchanted coma, he had told very few about what had truly happened to him. Anton had known on his own, but he had made it clear that he hadn’t told anyone either.
Candide was not someone that Roger had told. “You know about the curse?”
“I do.”
The shock clouded the rage. Numb, he spun her to face him. “Was it you?”
“That put you to sleep? No.” Candide slipped out of his grasp and walked over to the table with its chairs down. She put her hands on the back of one as if to steady herself. For once, all her masks dropped away. The innermost version of Candide was a tough core made from a long-conditioned endurance, but he spotted a weariness in her expression. “But I did ensure that Seamus could not find you.”
“What?” Roger demanded.
“Do you remember what June 1989 was like? Truly? Or do you remember it the way you like to remember everything else? With a million filters and only the pleasant bits of reality?”
“Candide, I am struggling to control my temper. Don’t test me.”
Candide narrowed her eyes at him. “Heaven forbid I call you out on your own bullshit. Up until recently, you might have believed you were only playing the part of a vapid playboy, but we both know that con came from a place of truth. Youwantedthat ignorant life to numb your own pain. I always enabled it because your attitude allowed me to ignore my own agony.”
Roger stalked over to the other chair and put his hands on the back of it to mirror hers. “That version of me is dead.”
“That remains to be seen,” Candide replied.
She didn’t have confidence that he would stick to his guns this time. He wasn’t sure he could blame her. From her perspective, he had been this way and that, thrown about like a kite without a string.
He needed to remain grounded. To gather information instead of dismissing it.
“What did you do?” Roger said.
“I was expecting you the night of June nineteenth, do you remember that? You had asked me to put you in contact with someone who sold enchanted weapons. It didn’t take a clever person to put together that you, Ezra, and Dmitri had had enough. After Anton’s little farce of killing Ezra’s love onstage—I know that he and Seamus had killed the poor boy long before their public display—the whole coven was on edge. Ezra was furious, and Dmitri was grumbling about how our kind are the worst devils. And you were changing, mon cher. You were different. You were secretive, and then you asked for weapons.
“Then you were simply gone. I feared that Anton had finally devoured your soul. Don’t give me that look. I have known since before I was made. I thought the vampires they ate were the ones that disappointed them, so I made it my mission to remain eternally useful. And I have, but we both know that they eat who they want. I was terrified you had been one.
“I looked everywhere for you. I finally heard rumor of you leaving a blood club with a beautiful fey boy. I tracked the boy down, who was no mere boy but a fuckinglord. I couldn’t convince him to tell me more than that you were safe in slumber.” Candide pulled the chair farther out and then plopped into it. She buried her face in her hands. After a long moment, she composed herself. “He was willing to tell me what the‘scheme’ was if I could strike the right deal, which made him a threat. Anton and Seamus would have never bargained for you to disappear like that, but they were already tearing the world apart looking for you. I saw opportunities opening for me, and you were safer than any of us. If they were distracted, I could cement my own power out of sight of their inspection.”
“Is that why you were eager to help me? Place me on the throne, and you would rule from behind the seat?” Roger said.
“As much as Seamus acts like he is the sole authority of the coven, operations on this scale require more than one leader,” Candide said firmly.
She wasn’t wrong, but Roger hadn’t seen that her support had been self-motivated. He should have noticed it. Should have known that nothing she ever did came without its price.
Everyone plays me. Uses me. Wants something from me.The anger was rising too quickly. It was bringing a storm with it. He would be caught in a thunderous downpour with a cyclone on the waves if he could not manage his emotions.
