Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(117)
Author: A.M. Hudson

He shrugged. “Why not? I could come with you, read her mind—”

“No.” I touched his arm. “I need to take care of this myself.”

“Okay.” He took a step back, offering the stairs. “I’ll see you at the meeting. Want me to fill everyone in?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I offered a smile and wandered away, practicing what I’d say to Morgaine in my head. It was time for a little clever leading.

***

“Morgaine?” I shoved her door open without knocking, startling her.

“My Queen?” She dumped her book on the bed and stood up. “What brings you here?”

“You’re off the council.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You are officially fired.”

“Why, Amara?”

I stepped closer, lowering my voice, though I wanted to shout and scream in her face; she wasn’t proven guilty yet, but my gut was very rarely wrong. “You and I both know why. You’re a liar and a traitor, and while I promised Drake not to expose you,” I lied, “that affords you no place in my good graces, nor among a group of people I trust implicitly. You’re the enemy, Morgaine, and I want you out of this manor.”

“Drake told you?”

“He told me many things. I know all about the dagger. I know all about the contract, and I know that this child I carry is. . .” I paused, hoping she’d fill in the rest. I needed to see just how much she really knew.

“Anandene,” she said to her feet.

“How long have you known? How long have you been aware that David and I would bear the Antichrist?”

“She won’t be the Antichrist, Amara.” She moved closer, dropping her reaching hand when she read the very clear signal I gave off not to touch me. “She’s a pure vessel. She’ll be—”

“She’ll be fine until her memories return, and then she’ll be an evil witch that’ll seek to marry her own uncle.”

“I know.” She tucked a strand of her cherry hair back, shaking her head. “I didn’t want this any more than you, but—”

“So you knew? You forced David and I together so we’d have this child—letting us believe she’d kill Drake—bring peace? Why?”

A frown crinkled her brow, narrowing her eyes as they moved onto my face. “If you don’t know the answer to that, then Drake didn’t tell you anything about who I am or what I’m doing here. Nice try, Amara.” She opened her door. “You can leave now.”

My hand shot out and slammed the door closed again, holding it in place. “I’m not going anywhere until I get the truth.”

“The truth?” She took a few steps back. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“That. Is where. You are wrong,” I said through my teeth. “You owe me for your safety. Your freedom. And you will either tell me the truth, or I will torture it out of you.”

“Fine.” She stormed off and sat down heavily on her bed. “But you won’t like it. And when you find out what it is, you can’t touch me. You can’t force me to leave, and you cannot tell a soul, because if you do, my uncle will see to it that the dagger is used for its true purpose.”

The floor fell out from under me. I stood frozen on the spot, clutching my tummy to stop the tightening. “Your uncle?”

She drew a breath and let it out, averting her eyes. “My name is not Morgaine, Amara. It’s—”

“Morgana.” I exhaled the word, standing there like a fool for a few seconds after as it all sunk in.

“I’m not helping Drake because I want him to have a happy ending, Amara,” she said, folding her legs up under her on the bed. “I just want my mother back—want the life back that he took from me.”

“Took from you?

“Yes. Took.”

“Okay, I’m gonna need you to elaborate, Morgaine.”

She kind of groaned, rolling her eyes as most people did when I didn’t ‘catch on’ to the full story immediately, despite not having any of the facts.

“From the moment he met Anandene,” she began, “all he cared about was being with her. He stopped caring about his little sister, and when he became my guardian, he didn’t even care that I was left without anyone to love me—a small child dumped in a cottage on the outskirts of town until I was twenty-five, with nothing but monthly visits from my uncle to tell me I’d see my mother again when she’d completed her task. I never even got to say goodbye to her.”

“I’m sorry, Morgana. That’s. . .” I walked over and sat down slowly beside her. “I can’t even imagine how awful that would’ve been.”

She offered a smile. “My grandmother lived there too. I guess I wasn’t really alone. And she taught me witchcraft and told me stories, but I never saw any other children, never saw the world. Never really knew my mother. Never even knew why she left me.”

“Drake didn’t tell you?”

“Not until I was old enough to leave the cottage on my own. By that point, he’d lost the child of my mother’s re-manifested soul, and all hope with it. He told me I’d never see her again but that he could feed me blood—make me immortal—if I promised to hide my true identity.”

“So you became Morgaine, a Created Lilithian.”

“Yes. And I built an army—destroyed the last page of the contract, and made it look like a prophecy so that, if Drake’s Warriors ever found another Lilithian, my army could “save” her and keep her safe, without Drake being implicated and the truth about Anandene coming out.”

“So, he knew you built the Core?”

She nodded. “It was his idea.”

I rubbed my brow. “Why did you need to hide the truth about Anandene so deeply?”

“Because many would seek to stop it happening—on the belief that bringing things back to life in that manner is the devil’s work, that it’s unnatural and will bring a curse.”

“Is there any truth in that?”

“None,” she said with a gentle laugh.

“But there are so many lies,” I said, looking off at nothing, amazed at the depth of it all and how the hell she kept up with it when even I couldn’t. “You’ve clearly had to rearrange the story every time we turned over a new leaf, right—reformat them to make them fit?”

She nodded.