Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(95)
Author: A.M. Hudson

I smiled. “Yeah, I did. I just . . . see, when David and first I met, I came to realise one day, well, to believe, that I couldn’t live without him. Then he told me he had to leave and I could never see him again.”

“Because he was a vampire and didn’t want you to hate him?”

“Yeah.” I stepped back so a maid could carry a box out the door. “I was so crushed. As you can imagine.”

Mike nodded.

“Then, he told me I could be with him forever, but I had to be a killer, you know, leave all my family and friends behind. Which, you know how I felt about that, right?”

Mike scoffed, turning away to fold another box as I spoke.

“But, after I nearly died—you know, with the whole masquerade thing, I decided I wanted to go with him—be a vampire.”

“But you didn’t have the gene.” He nodded to himself.

“Yeah. So, he left me for my own good. And it hurt.” My voice broke. “And then he came back, but even then we still weren’t free to love each other because, at any minute, the Set could’ve come for him and taken him away. We’d had nothing but stress and worry, and it wasn’t until he came back from ‘the dead’ and lived here at the manor that we ever had a chance to just be together, as every couple should.” I smiled, thinking about the better times. “Things changed for me, Mike. There were some humps in the road as we figured out how to love each other, but we did figure it out. And I was happy. I didn’t, for the first time since I met him, want anyone else in the world.”

“But this realisation happened after you’d already slept with Jason?”

I nodded.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter what you feel for him now, baby, does it?” he said absently, sealing another box with clear tape. “You destroyed that door when you slept with Jason. He won’t ever take you back.”

“I do know that. But, it. . .”

“Hurts to admit?”

I nodded. “Do you hate me?”

He breathed out, looking down at both of his big hands, then back up with a sympathetic half-smile. “What happened on the lighthouse, Ara?”

“I—” I stared out the window, reliving a flashback, blinking against the light when my mind returned to this day.

“Did you fall?” he asked accusingly. “Or did you. . .”

“I jumped.”

He nodded, wetting his lips. “Why?”

“Because I was mad at myself. I . . . I didn’t think I deserved to live after what I’d done. And I didn’t like the truth I realised when I was with Jase.”

“What truth?”

“That I was in love with him.”

He nodded again. “So you tried to kill yourself to escape it all? To just, what—”

“Mike, please.” I took an absent step back from him, just needing some air. “Everyone hates me now, okay. Everyone is mad enough as it is. Please don’t be one of them.”

“What do you expect me to say?” He walked calmly over to stand in front of me. “I love ya, baby, but you messed up something cruel, and then you went and tried to take the coward’s way out.”

I blinked rapidly, sending the tears back where they belonged, trying so hard to breathe in a gentle rhythm, but the pain of regret made my chest cave. I folded over, holding my breath.

“Look, don’t get me wrong, Ar.” He placed one hand to my back and the other around my arm, and gently made me stand straight again. “I feel for you. I do. And I hate to see you like this, but—”

“I did this to myself. I know.”

He patted my shoulder. “This too shall pass.”

I nodded up at him, forcing an odd kind of smile.

The corner of his lip pressed into his cheek and he patted my shoulder again, leaving me to find my own way out.

***

“He can’t move out,” Blade said, and I stopped walking, pinning my back to the wall in the shadows of the rounded stairwell. “We have to keep up appearances or the Upper House will start asking questions.”

“Maybe they should,” Morgaine said. “Maybe the people should know what their queen did.”

“Are you insane?” Mike jumped in. “They’ll butcher her, Morg. You know what the punishment for infidelity is.”

“Yes, but—”

“I don’t,” Emily said. “Mike, what is it—what will they do to her?”

“She could be whipped, at the very least,” Falcon informed.

“But the old favourite for Ancient Lilithian times, still in practice today,” Quaid said, “is La Brûlure de la Chasteté.”

“What’s that mean?” Em said.

“The Burn of Chastity. It’s where the victim—”

“Accused,” Morg corrected spitefully.

“The accused,” Falcon said, pausing after. I heard him swallow hard, even from all the way back here. He cleared his throat and started again. “The accused is held down on a bed, with her legs strapped into stirrups.”

“Yeah, then they heat this small iron club,” Blade said, his jagged tone suggesting hand demonstrations to go with the explanation. “And they insert it into the vagina to melt it shut.”

“The accused would often die of infection,” Falcon added.

Emily gasped. “David wouldn’t let them. There’s no way he’d—”

“He wouldn’t have a choice,” Quaid said. “Even the king and queen are bound by certain rules. If the House find out, Em, they decide her fate, not David.”

“But, surely he has some say?”

“Some, yes,” Falcon said. “But the fact remains. This needs to be swept under the rug like every other act of infidelity in the political history of mankind. There can be no leaked secrets or exposés.” He paused for a moment. “We’re not talking about a media frenzy, here. We’re talking about brutal mutilation.”

“She’d heal in six weeks,” Morgaine said.

“Morg?” Mike cut in. “Whose side are you on?”

“To be honest, I’m neutral. She did wrong, Mike. Maybe, just maybe, this time the punishment fits the crime.”

I heard a chair scrape out. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna—”

“Sit down,” Falcon said in a slightly louder voice. “Both of you. This is counterproductive.”