Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(32)
Author: A.M. Hudson

I let that sink in for a second.

“I’m sorry, Ara,” David said softly. “We can’t free the Immortal Damned.”

“I—” I cupped my hand over his as it landed on my shoulder. “I’m okay, David. Jase already told me that might be the case.”

David glared at Jason. “You knew this as well?”

Jason nodded. “Arthur told me what happened that day.”

“What day?” I studied both boys, completely confused.

David stepped back, closing his eyes. “We never intended to make up that part of the prophecy, Ara. Morgaine told our people of a coming queen—one who would bear a child that could kill Drake. But, when you were rescued from Elysium, we. . .”

“They all thought you just wanted to die,” Jason finished for him, looking back at me.

“We didn’t realise it was merely because you believed I was dead. And in a moment of desperation, Morgaine told you that lie—told you there was a way to save the Damned.” David hung his head in shame. “And neither herself, nor I, have had the courage to correct it since that day.”

“David?” I whispered his name, my heart breaking a little, not for the truth, though, but for the fact that he not only went to so much trouble to lie to me, but keep it up too. I felt stupid and used.

“I’m sorry, Ara.”

“This. . .” I said through my teeth. “This is why you wouldn’t approve Jason’s lab?”

“Yes.” He eyed Jason suspiciously. “And now I’m left wondering why my brother, who also clearly knew more than he let on, was sanctioning for a lab to research ways to do something he knows can’t be done.”

“It wasn’t just for the immortality cure, David. You know that,” Jase said sharply. “I clearly outlined my concerns for her safety and the—”

“Mike has it under control,” David yelled.

“Has what under control?” I stepped between the two of them.

David composed himself. “Your blue light.”

I looked down at my hands.

“That is not control,” Jason said, presenting me. “I’ve warned you, David. He could be hurting her by pushing her. And she’s tired of being in pain, brother—”

“She is my problem, Jason. Not yours. You—”

“It’s not just her pain, though. I told you. I showed you all the facts, David. I strongly believe that, beneath all these lies, we may have actually found a way to restore mortal life.”

David let a breath out through his nose like an angry bull. “Brother, there is no—”

“So what does the contract mean?” I cut in before they started bickering again. “What does it actually agree on?”

David’s shoulders rolled back to their correct position. “Like you said, Ara. It was a simple promise Drake made to Lilith to give something back in exchange for a child.”

“Not just a child,” Jason said, his throat tight, his teeth closed.

“No,” David added, his fists falling loose. “Her child, one not yet born, but sworn to be conceived under certain conditions.”

“Certain conditions?” I frowned.

“Tell her, or I will.” Jason stared David down—both of them meeting eye to eye, like a man staring into a mirror. “Fine,” he added, peeling his eyes away from his brother. “Ara, your blood is cursed.”

“Cursed?” I repeated, feeling like I had the repeat-every-last-line-these-guys-say disease.

“Yes,” Jason said. “To bear only females until the debt is repaid—a debt Lilith bequeathed your bloodline—passed down from mother to daughter over the centuries, until falling, finally, on you.”

“Which further cements our conclusions that your mom Eleanor wasn’t your biological mother, Ara,” David added. “Since she gave birth to a boy.”

“Okay, so my dad isn’t my dad. My mom wasn’t my mom. And I can only have girls until I’ve given Drake my firstborn.”

David shook his head. “No. Until your firstborn is conceived with a nobleman’s son.”

“A nobleman?” I grimaced. “What, like a—”

“Knight.” Jase winked at me.

“As in. . .” I pictured a man riding a horse in a metal suit with a jousting stick. “Like a. . .”

“Men were not knighted only for their ability to wield a sword, Ara,” David said. “They were knighted for the nobility they either had in their blood or in their hearts.”

“So, I have to a baby with someone who’s noble.”

“Not just any noble,” Jason said, casting his gaze slowly across the dusty room to his brother. “One specific noble.”

“Who?”

David sniffed once, standing taller. “Me.”

I went to speak, tell him I already knew that, but Jase cut in. “You weren’t meant to exist, Ara,” he said. “Lilith was supposed to be the one who bore a child with David.”

“Whoa.” I suddenly needed to sit down, but stayed standing, unable to move. Lilith . . . and David? No way. No freakin’ way. “Then . . . I wasn’t foretold or promised? You were, David.”

“More like designed,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Drake needed blood of the purest forms to create this child. Now, we don’t know why that was a requirement,” David reported, as if he were a lawyer in a court, presenting facts to a jury. “But he cast a spell on my father’s bloodline many centuries ago—one that would see only sons born to the blood of Knight until, at last, the cleansing was complete and two sons would be born to one mother.”

“One with the purest of heart,” Jason said and looked at David. “And the other. . .”

“Centuries of all the bad in one little boy.”

Those words swallowed my thoughts for a minute, reminding me of what David’s own father believed about Jason. “Jason’s the impure one?”

“So it would seem.” Jason looked at his feet.

“And you’re—” I walked over and touched his shoulder, ignoring David’s quick intake of breath. “You’re learning this for the first time?”

“I was always told as such. I just never knew it would turn out to be true.”

“How did your father know?” I looked at David.

“We’re not sure. But he misinterpreted the meaning, taking it to mean Jason would be evil.”