Crown of Blood Page 5

  “I’m sure I can’t be the only one not drinking in this city,” I say, crossing my legs and lifting my chin slightly.

  He doubtfully cocks his head just a little to the right. “It’s one of the few reasons people flock from all over the world to this city. They can lower their inhibitions and not be judged.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, swirling my drink. “I feel a little judged right now.”

  He laughs and takes a step in my direction, his drink still in hand. His other slips into the pocket of his slacks. “It wasn’t my intent. Merely an observation.”

  He’s average height, in good physical shape. His hair is a dirty blonde, maybe needing a cut. Green eyes and a chin that I’m guessing was shaved this morning, from the barely-there hint of five o’clock shadow.

  He’s overall attractive, in a simple way.

  “Are you here by yourself?” I ask, looking around the room. But there are hundreds of people here, he could be attached to any of them.

  He stops beside my table and turns, scanning the crowd. He points to a group of four guys, all dancing and generally looking like fools. “It’s my buddy’s bachelor party. He’s getting married in four days.”

  “That’s exciting,” I say, feigning interest.

  “Not really,” he says, taking a sip of his drink. “She’s kind of a nasty person. We’re all pretty sure she’s marrying him for his money.”

  I chuckle, shaking my head. “Why aren’t you out there looking like an idiot with them?”

  He shrugs. “I spent too many years looking like an idiot. Been there, done with that.”

  He offers a small smile, and something about how normal it is tugs at me.

  “Would you like to sit?” I offer. Only because he’s being friendly, but not overly flirtatious in a way that makes me instantly recoil.

  He smiles again and sinks into the chair beside me.

  “I’m Trevor,” he says, extending a hand. I shake it.

  “Logan,” I offer.

  “You asked me, so don’t think I’m just creeping on you when I ask,” he says with a hesitant little chuckle. “But are you here by yourself?”

  My eyes go to the crowd. I think about it. About the most familiar people around me in this town, even this state. Who? Edmond? Who I met when he recognized my mother’s face and ratted me out to Cyrus? Or Rath—who pretended to be someone he wasn’t for my whole life?

  “Yes,” I answer. Because it’s true. And I try to pretend the answer doesn’t make my chest hurt.

  “I only say this because I’m a junior defense attorney,” he says. “And I’ve seen a lot of bad, bad things. The Strip really isn’t a very good place to go by yourself.”

  I smile into my glass as I take a sip. “I’m tougher than I look.”

  He laughs and shakes his head as he takes another drink, finishing it off. He’s about to say something when I cut him off.

  “Do you want to dance?”

  He looks over at me, and I can see it; he’s surprised.

  I am, too.

  He smiles again, stands, and holds a hand out for mine. I take it, and follow him out to the floor.

  The music is so loud that it’s more noise than actual music. But it pulses, wild and electric. Trevor sets his drink on a table and turns me to face him.

  He holds my gaze as he puts one hand on my hip and moves to the music. He’s hesitant, going off of my cues. But right now I’m just lonely and so detached from anything real.

  I place my hand over his, drawing myself closer.

  There’s something hypnotic about the environment. The heat in the air. The fact that there’s very little room to move around. Our bodies have no choice but to press close together.

  He’s not your husband, I think to myself.

  I turn, my back to his front, letting my eyes slide closed as Trevor’s hands once more cling to my hips, pulling them toward his own. I reach up, looping a hand behind his neck.

  Louder and louder the music pounds.

  It reaches down through my blood. It pours into my heart. It saturates through my pores.

  Less and less space exists between our two bodies. I try to eliminate it, one beat at a time, so I don’t feel so alone. So I don’t feel so lost.

  The feel of his lips soft on my shoulder makes my eyes slide closed. Makes my lips part just slightly.

  His fingers tighten on my hips and I pray he never lets go.

  One hundred bodies moved in perfect synchronization. A stomp. A slide forward. A twirl. A dramatic drop.

  My hair brushed the sparkling stone floor, and slowly, he raised me up. My eyes met his as I stood upright. They hide behind his glittering gold mask, but I knew those eyes. Had stared into them for decades and centuries.

  He twirled me under his arm once more as the other couples slowly worked to form a circle around us.

  But I didn’t see them.

  I saw the heat in those dark green eyes. And for a moment, I was grateful. That despite our separation, over and over, I had worn four other faces, but his was always the same.

  Always my Cyrus.

  With my back to his chest, our hands raised together. They crossed in front of my chest, and he pulled me in close.

  Gently, his lips touched my shoulder. Slowly slid toward my neck. They rose up, until they were just under my ear.

  “I have loved you for centuries, Sevan,” Cyrus whispered. “And I swear I will love you for millennia more.”

  Another pair of lips plays gently just under my ear, and I startle back to the present with a stiff jerk.

  I straighten, taking three steps away from Trevor, into the crowd.

  I turn, and see the confused, disoriented expression on his face.

  “Thank you for the dance, Trevor,” I say, grateful that my voice is working better than I expected. “I hope you have some fun with your friends.”

  He doesn’t say anything as I walk away. Just stares after me, his mouth slightly open.

  When I break outside of the hotel onto the quieting sidewalk, the breath rips from my chest with a gasp.

  I lean against a stone wall down the walk, my hands clutching my chest.

  Alone.

  Aching.

  Both of us.

  Both of you are hurting, Logan argues with Sevan. Damn it. You don’t have to do this. We don’t have to be alone.

  And my mind wanders back, to just one week ago. When I found Cyrus standing at his bedroom window. Empty. Broken. Alone. I begged him then to tell me what would make him happy. He asked me to stay, and I slept in his arms that night.

  For just a few moments, when I woke up the next morning, I was happy.

  Staring into his face. I knew what he was capable of. How dangerous he could be. But I also knew how he would do anything to protect me. Staring into his face, I knew I loved that man.

  I love Cyrus.

  You don’t have to hurt this way, Logan whispers to Sevan. You’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting him.

  Oh, but you don’t remember everything yet, Sevan quietly answers. We’ve been through this before. This pain. This recovery. This blending. Over and over. And it’s his fault.

  I rub a hand up my arm as my face crumples with emotion. Tears well in my eyes as I stand straight again. My chest is tight and it’s hard, so hard to breathe.

  Logan’s human legs would have shaken on the walk back to the House of Valdez. But Sevan has done this before. Over and over. And she walks back with her chin held high.

  Chapter 6

  The very, very first hints of light dance on the horizon just as I slip once more through the doors of The MetroCosmo. I recognize a member of the House of Valdez, who stands at the door. The minute I walk past him, he speaks into a device on his wrist, letting someone—everyone—know I have returned to the building.

  I head straight to the elevator, place my palm on the glass, and step inside the moment it opens. I rise through the building, and I’m not one bit surprised when the doors
open, to see Hector Valdez standing in the main area.

  “If you’re here to reprimand me for sneaking out, you can save your breath,” I say as I step out and walk right past him. “I’m a grown ass woman, I can do what I please.”

  “Please, my Queen,” he says, scrambling to follow me. “It’s just that if anything were to happen to you, you know what the King would do to us.”

  I instantly turn. Grabbing Hector’s tie, I spin, backing him against the wall. His head cracks against it, splintering the mirror.

  “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I say, keeping my voice calm and even. “And if you dare breathe a word about any of my comings and goings to Cyrus, you will have more than just him to worry about.”

  His eyes slip down, to where I hold a broken piece of mirror at the base of his ribcage.

  The terror in his eyes is obvious, and I both relish in it and hate it.

  I drop the shard and step away, releasing him.

  “You won’t be bothered by me much longer,” I say as I continue walking down the hall to my suite. “I only came here to retrieve Rath. I will be leaving tonight.”

  I place my hand on the mirror, and the doors slide open. I step inside.

  Rath steps out of the bedroom Cyrus once occupied, and I note that he does, indeed, look better rested.

  “You have everyone here at the House of Valdez in quite the state of distress,” he says.

  I note: there’s something different about him now, now that I’m Resurrected.

  He’s so calm and composed. His speech is more formal. There’s a deeper darkness in his eyes. Everything about him seems…older.

  “They don’t need to worry about me,” I say as I cross the space. I head to a desk pushed up against one wall and open a drawer to find a piece of paper. “Though I suppose I can sympathize with the pressure they feel from Cyrus.”

  I find a pen and head to a chair, sinking into the comfortable black leather.

  “I am surprised,” Rath says, observing me as I begin writing things down. “This…you…everything that has transpired since you Resurrected has not been what I expected.”

  “How is that?” I ask without looking up.

  “The legend of Cyrus’ love for Sevan is unprecedented in all of history,” he says calmly. “So, the fact that you came here, that Cyrus has returned to Roter Himmel without you, is nothing short of baffling.”

  “History only tells Cyrus’ side of our story.” I have to concentrate on not squeezing the pen so hard that it splinters and explodes. “Cyrus does not tell the version where I have to cope with what he did, over and over. It does not tell the story of our fights over right and wrong. He has omitted me begging him to end this, our curse, over and over, through several lifetimes.”

  I’ve stopped writing and my eyes stare at nothing, a blank space of floor.

  “The story passed down through our descendants captures the beautiful parts of Cyrus and myself. But it is missing all of the darkness.”

  My chest feels that darkness.

  There’s a deep, pitch-black cavern inside of me, filled with secrets and lies and tear-filled words.

  “I understand,” Rath says. “Logan.”

  I look up at him then, at that name.

  For a few moments there, I lost her. She slipped into the shadows of all the others I have been. For just a moment, I was a simple person who just lived one life.

  But they all come crashing back now.

  I look back down at the notebook in my lap.

  “Jafari,” I say. My voice is quiet. It holds just a little bit of a tremble. “Helda. Shaku. Antoinette. Edith. Itsuko. La’ei.” I close my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. “And Logan. I have been every one of these women. Lived an entire life as them before death. They’re all there, but they feel…just out of reach. Out of focus.”

  Rath slowly crosses the room. He looks over my shoulder at the page.

  “Tell me something about Antoinette,” he says as he takes a step away and sinks into the chair adjacent to mine.

  I look at him, studying his face. The black, curly facial hair that has grown long on his face over the last month. His hair is long, too, far longer than I’ve ever seen it.

  But those are the same familiar lips, set in a serious line. Those same eyes that have seen far more than I ever realized.

  “Antoinette was born at Court,” I say, and instantly I can see it. The beautiful landscape of Roter Himmel. The hustle of bodies, Royal and human, living side by side. The gowns and the food. The midnight parades through the streets. “Our father, Lord Gadox had only one wife. They’d been lucky, they were able to conceive three children, three years in a row.”

  I smile as I recall their faces. “I had one older sister and one younger. And we were a happy family. My parents loved one another. They loved us children. They took us on weekly boat rides on Spiegel Lake. Trips into the mountains. My mother baked the most wonderful bread every morning.”

  My brows furrow and fall to the page, focusing on the name I bore for nineteen years.

  “A Royal with three Royal daughters drew a lot of attention in Roter Himmel,” I remember. “During that time, there was only one other female Royal born. You know how close Cyrus has kept an eye on the female descendants.” My eyes lose their focus, recalling the moments of tension leading up to the knock on the door that came once every six months. “Cyrus came to see us very often. Twice a year, from the time we were born, he would visit our home. He was always so happy. His eyes held so much excitement.”

  My skin crawls, remembering what that meant to me when I was old enough to understand why he came to see me and my sisters.

  “Cyrus favored my older sister,” I continue. “Aimée. He never said it, but I could see it in his eyes, he thought she would be the one when we Resurrected. He paid her the most attention. And I was grateful for it. If she was the Queen, I didn’t need to worry about it. I could simply plan my life, decide what my fate would be once I was immortal.”

  Emotion bites at the back of my eyes and I shake my head. It comes back, clearer and faster, the more I talk about it. “We were sisters, had been so close our entire lives. We were close in age, so Cyrus allowed us to wait to Resurrect all at the same time.”

  Goose bumps rise on my skin as I remember walking to the castle with my family. It was a great procession. Everyone in the entire town came to watch the Gadox sisters go to end their lives as human and wait to see if they were the one, Cyrus’ long lost wife, who had been dead for seventy-six years.

  “We did it in one of the grand ballrooms at the castle,” I resume the story of Antoinette. “We stood in a row, Cyrus seated on his throne before us, Sevan’s empty one beside him. Three guards stood behind us, and drove a dagger through our hearts.”

  A gasp slips over my lips now, and my hand rises to my chest, remembering those two seconds of agonizing, blinding pain. The feel of warmth slipping down my chest.

  And then the dark.

  “I woke four days later, at the exact same moment as my sisters,” I say. “For two weeks, we were pampered guests at the castle, spending nearly every moment with Cyrus. Cyrus watched Aimée so closely. Spent so much time flattering her and making her laugh.

  “But then as I walked passed a door, I had a…vision,” I say. “A memory. I knew there was a passageway to the treasury behind that door. I spent the rest of that day wandering the castle, and one by one, I knew where every single door led. Slowly, I could recall cleaning the debris from the castle. I remembered Cyrus spending hours fixing it. And I remembered the way our son’s infant cries reverberated throughout the entire castle the first night we slept in it.”

  My throat closes up and I can’t speak as I recall an angelic face.

  But like a door being slammed closed, my memory goes dark, blocking it out.

  “It took me another month to forgive Cyrus for the attention he gave my sister,” I say. “It was petty, and I knew he was only relyin
g on hope and instinct. But it was still difficult, thinking he didn’t recognize me, even though I’d been there in front of him for so long.”

  “It’s understandable,” Rath says, and I actually flinch. I had forgotten he was here. “Sevan, I cannot even imagine how difficult this must be for you.”

  I look up at his face, and I’m filled with wonder.

  Rath is very good at reading people. He’s good at reading the multiple people inside of me.

  He knows when to address Logan, and he knows when to address Sevan.

  I nod, settling back further into my chair, suddenly feeling exhausted. I’m trying to pull all these lives together, back to the surface, and consolidate them into one.

  I look back down at the paper. “I don’t remember everything. And I’m not a very patient person. I might as well use the resources at hand, right?”

  I stand and with my paper and pen, I head toward the door. But I stop just in front of it. I look back at Rath.

  “You’re free to go wherever you like,” I say. Stupid Rath. He’s just one more man that makes my heart feel all tangled into complicated knots that can never be untied. “I’ll make sure no one from Court or the House of Valdez bothers you. You can return to Alivia if you like, or go wherever.”

  He stands, staring at me, history and knowledge in his eyes. “I’ve served in some capacity or another my entire life. Right now, I see a woman who needs someone on her side, no matter who she is. I told you that I’m here for you.”

  Rath may not be Eli, like I’d always thought. But he’s still here, supporting and protecting me.

  I smile.

  “Come on, then,” I say as I nod toward the door.

  Together, we walk down the hall, to the elevator. We rise up a floor, and the doors open.

  “Please find Hector, Edmond, and Rafael and tell them that I need to speak with them. Now,” I say to a House member who looks at me with questioning eyes as I head straight into the ballroom. But he scrambles and heads off to search.

  I’m feeling bold. And even though Logan thinks this is weird and crazy, I head straight for Cyrus’ throne, which still sits at the head of the room.