Mark of Betrayal (Dark Secrets #3)(115)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“What are you doing here?”

“Got a call—heard my brother was still alive.”

I pulled back from the hug and looked at the two boys. “Who told you?”

“Mike,” they both said, and laughed.

“When did you get here?”

He looked at his watch. “’Bout twenty minutes ago.”

“So…” I bit my lip, looking from one face to the other. “Are you guys okay? I mean, there weren’t any fists flying or—”

“No,” David said. “We’re all good.”

“Yeah, death has a funny way of putting things into perspective,” Jason added.

“So, are you back?” I hugged David’s arm, looking up at him. “I mean, now Jason’s here, won’t they try to say the prophecy child can be with him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because, despite him being of my blood—”

“An exact copy of your blood,” I challenged.

“It doesn’t matter, Ara. He is not the firstborn—nothing can change that.”

“I don’t think the people will care. I think you should just come home and we’ll face Drake together if he wants to come get us.”

David groaned and walked away.

“David, please. Come on. We’re strong now. He can come here, he can fight us—he won’t win.”

“And what makes you so sure, Ara?” David spun around from where he stood facing the window. “You don’t know what he’s capable of, and you don’t even know what you’re capable of. Mike fills me in, my love—he tells me everything to do with you, and I know you can’t use that static light as well as you’d like to think. We can’t put all our cards in that basket.”

“But we’re putting them in the prophecy child one? We’re putting them all there when you’re never even here to create a child, we put them there when we don’t even know if she can be conceived.”

David rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Ara, just stop it.”

“No! I won’t. I’m tired of this. I…I have all these questions, David, and I never ask. I never question what you do, because I trust you. But I don’t think I should anymore. Either you’re incredibly dumb or you’re incredibly naïve and you just believe everything Morg tells you or…” I paused. “Or you’re keeping things from me.”

“And what if I was, Ara?” He stepped up and grabbed my arm. “What if I am keeping things from you—would you leave it alone? Would you back down and let me do my thing?” he asked, his eyes shifting to each of mine.

“Yes.”

He dropped my arm with a sigh. “Look, I can’t do this anymore, either, Ara. I don’t want to be away from you. I don’t want to lie to you. But I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because you won’t like the truth.”

“What if I promise to at least go along with it—even if it’s bad?”

He shook his head then looked over at Jason. “There are things…”

I stood very still, like a doe that spotted a hunter, waiting for him to continue.

David sighed and sat on the bed, his head in his hands. “Things that we’ve discovered about certain people here, Ara. We may have more than one traitor in our midst, and we just don’t know who.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

He half looked up at me. “My being away is for reasons I cannot share, right now.”

“Because of the traitors?”

“Because they may hurt you to get information I have.”

“Well, won’t they do that anyway?”

“Not while they believe you to be this naïve, easily-led young girl. If I shared even half my knowledge with you, you wouldn’t be the same.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” he said, looking back down at the ground. “All I can tell you right now is that I went through Arthur’s room at Elysium. I found notes on the prophecy. Turns out he knew about it long before the vampire council came to find you. And it wasn’t common knowledge. I was ordered to kill a Lilithian upon my entrance to the council, and even I wasn’t told about this prophecy.”

“So, Arthur knew about this child—even before he knew a Lilithian had been found?”

“I suspect so. But his notes on the deciphering of the prophecy differed. And it makes sense—all of it. There is no evidence that this child will kill Drake, Ara. I don’t know where Morgaine got that information, but—”

“From Drake,” I said, and both the boys looked up. “She got it straight from him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Arthur told me Drake was the one who told Morgaine about the prophecy. That’s what made her go searching for parchments and scrolls.”

David stood up, his eyes narrowed. He walked slowly toward me but stopped and turned to look at Jason. “What do you know, brother? You know more than you’re letting on. What is it?”

Jason moistened his lips, looking from me to David.

“Drake told Morgaine what he wanted her to know,” I cut in. “To serve his own greater purpose. These scrolls you all get your information from could possibly have been forged by Drake to look like prophecy scrolls.”

“She’s right,” Jason said. “There was no signature on those scrolls. Every other prophecy held Vampirie’s seal. You know that.”

David nodded. “But I never questioned it.”

“Why?” I asked.

David’s lip turned sharply on the corner. “All this began because you were kidnapped by Drake. I trusted Morgaine—she was willing to help me rescue you. I’d have believed anything she said.”

“And now the dust has settled,” Jason said, “it seems as though there are a few things coming into sharper focus.”

David frowned then, and as the same idea he obviously had sunk in to my head, my mouth dropped. “Is she the traitor?”

His hand came slowly up to his mouth. “It’s possible.”

I took a few steps back and let out a long, quiet breath, almost seeing it come past my lips in the colour of disbelief.

“Look, we don’t know for sure,” David said. “I mean, what motive would she have for getting you on the throne, for saving you? All of it.”

“Because, like you said, maybe this was never about the child. Maybe all this—” I motioned around the room. “Is for some other reason.”