Yew Queen Trilogy, стр. 23
My stomach turning with the need to know Hekla would be okay, I watched her leave the castle. Baccio lowered the portcullis with a snap of vine magic, and then she was gone.
Safe.
Well, safe until these guys figured out how to get her back again. Hell, they could possibly lure the entire town up here for all I knew. Lucus had to know that was a possibility, right? Why wasn’t he mentioning it?
One thing at a time.
“Now, you must fulfill your end of the bargain,” Lucus said.
“Yes. The blood. The magestone. Got it.”
The flap of enormous wings echoed across the courtyard, and Kaippa landed between us, hands outstretched and nostrils flaring. “Ooh, did I miss something big while I was napping?”
Sunlight danced over Kaippa’s snowy skin, and I wondered bitterly why some legends didn’t prove true when others did. I would have loved to watch the vampire burn to death on this pretty autumn day.
“Leave us, Kaippa.” Lucus strode toward a hallway I hadn’t yet explored, and I reluctantly followed.
The corridor engulfed us in flickering light and the scent of old stone as we left the others in the courtyard and headed toward the casting chamber.
“I don’t think that I will, fae lord.” Kaippa said the phrase with as much venom as I had earlier. “I want to see what the magestone says about your fated mate.”
I stopped in my tracks. “What did you just say?”
Kaippa laughed until he had to bend double and support himself on his knees. Lucus extended a hand, and a vine slithered out of the walls to wind around Kaippa, but the vamp just kept on laughing.
“Don’t you know, Coren?” Kaippa snorted. “Didn’t you feel the bond when it showed up? That wild pounding in your heart when he speaks? I don’t know what you were up to out there with his brothers, but something called up your fated bond.”
Wild pounding. The thundering sound to Lucus’s voice. The feelings I’d had for him in the memory and then again when he’d fought Aurelio’s lure to keep me alive, to keep me for himself. The room tilted, and I nearly went over, Lucus catching my elbow.
“Shut your mouth, vampire,” Lucus hissed.
The vines around Kaippa tightened, and the vampire sucked a breath, the red fading from his lips.
“Coren,” Kaippa sputtered, that stupid grin on his jerk face, “you are stuck with our grouchy Lucus now. You two are officially bonded. You are fated mates.”
A thousand ways to deny a truth raced through my head.
Shouting. Raging. Shoving. Kicking. Punching. Steely silence.
But my heart knew the truth. When the bond had started in the memory, I’d had the strangest feeling, the most unique sensation. Euphoria. Insistent focus. Longing outside simple lust. It had been terrible and wonderful, and ever since, it had been near to impossible to turn away from him when Lucus spoke.
But how? How could a human be meant for a fae? Or was I even human?
A shiver rolled through me. The magestone would tell the truth about me. But supernatural or not, I couldn’t deny what I was feeling.
I was fated to love a monster.
Chapter 16
Lucus left Kaippa restrained in vines as we continued down the dark corridor toward the casting chamber. The firelight from the wall sconces flickered like they trembled at what I had discovered, that this immortal being was meant for me. Crazy. Stupid. All kinds of nope. How in the world was I supposed to run a bakery in historic Franklin with an aura-sucking horned guy at my side? What, was he going to run the cash register? An insane laugh crept out of me, and I pressed my hand to my mouth.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lucus kept his gaze forward, his eyebrows bunched and his hands curled into fists at his sides.
It was pretty freaking obvious what he thought about our bond. “No, thanks. Not yet.”
But I couldn’t stand this tension. Sometimes when it was really quiet, my ears rang. This silence had that sort of noise to it, practically piercing my eardrums with unspoken hostility and denials from both of us. A change of subject was in order.
“May I make a request?” Lucus’s jaw muscles tensed.
“You can try.”
“Do not offer yourself to Aurelio again. I don’t think he can handle your powerful energy in a rush. He is too weak.”
“Fine. But why is he weaker than you and Baccio?”
“He always has been. Since birth. He nearly died as an infant. Between our appearances on the ley line, we sleep inside the trees of the courtyard to reserve our energy. Baccio and I have survived fairly well in that way, but Aurelio doesn’t have our strength.”
They slept in the trees? How did that work? I imagined I’d have to see that to get it. Another question pinched at me, and this was as good a time as any to—once again—move the conversation away from what had just happened and all the baggage that came with it.
“Why have you never killed Kaippa?” It seemed perfectly possible that he could have and would have wanted to. “Has he never tried to attack you in your sleep?”
“The curse prevents it. The Mage Duke—”
“Does that asshole have a name? I hate to give him such a fabulous title when he doesn’t deserve the respect.”
Lucus paused and stared. When he finally started walking again, his gaze was distant. “His name was Ludovico Sforza.”
“Like the Sforzas? From The Borgias?”
“I assume you are asking if he was a contemporary of the Borgias? He was indeed.”
“Didn’t he hire Leonardo da Vinci to do some stuff?”
“He did.”
The shocks just kept on coming. “So…you, like, saw Leonardo da Vinci?” I was no history buff, but dude. This was insane, and it was wonderfully distracting.
“Once. His aura was a deep gray-blue. Like the ocean at night. Fascinating color.”
I shook my head. Unbelievable.
The corridor led into a domed, circular room with six slitted openings around the top of the walls. Light streamed