Page 33

Lucian

Present

For several minutes, I sat in stunned silence. Kerainne was right. The knowledge that she’d kept this secret did hurt me. But she was wrong about this making me want nothing to do with her. Instead, I was mostly angry with myself.

My hand shook as I grabbed the wine bottle and poured myself a third glass.

Kerainne’s lips twisted in a bitter smile that didn’t match the pain in her eyes. Revisiting that memory must have been agonizing. “And here’s where you tell me to get out and tell me you never want to see me again.”

“Wrong,” I bit out.

Her head cocked to the side and more of her brittle facade crumbled. “Then will you go back to Luminista?”

“Wrong again.” I took a deep drink of wine. “I remembered how furious I was when you’d disappeared for over two years. And when you told me you’d been taking care of your sister, I accused you of lying.”

She refilled her wineglass. “I sort of was.”

“No, you were only omitting pertinent facts.” I couldn’t help a teasing smile even as my heart was contorting in shock and agony at the bombshell she’d dropped.

“Tiana’s existence explains a lot about where you were.

” I wondered why I didn’t guess at that timeline when Nikkita confessed to birthing Delgarias’s child.

I felt so stupid for not figuring it out sooner.

“But why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known, they’d have never tried to betroth your sister to me. ”

“With how vehemently our mother disapproved of Nik and Del’s union, I didn’t dare.” Her expression screamed that she hadn’t trusted me not to tell anyone in Luminista about Nik’s pregnancy.

That also hurt, I admitted to myself. “And Delgarias’s quest for immortality led to him becoming the first vampire. Did you also keep that a secret from me?”

Kerainne shook her head. “I didn’t know about that part.

Nik waited for the hundred years he said he’d be gone for, then waited another fifty.

She ended up going to Shellandria to see if his people knew what happened to him.

They’d found out and told her. She came home long enough to pack her things and made me swear a blood vow that I’d keep Tiana’s existence secret and to never tell Delgarias about his baby or Nik’s location.

All she said was that Del had sold his soul and she had to hide from him. ”

“I remember that.” I also remembered her crying in my arms because of an argument with her sister that she refused to share any details about.

At the time, I’d been hurt at her once more not trusting me with her secrets.

“Word got out soon that Delgarias was exiled from Shellandria, but they never revealed the reason. I wonder why.”

“I don’t know. After the first time he came to Medicia looking for Nik, I didn’t see him again until after Mephistopheles’s attack.

Between those times, he only sent letters.

I eventually figured it out on my own.” Kerainne’s angry pout was adorable.

“I still need to have a word with him over his deception. He’s practically family. He could have trusted me.”

“I’m sure he felt the same about you when he was searching for Nik,” I reminded her. The wine was a good idea. It gave me courage to speak my heart. “And you could have trusted me with knowing about the miscarriage. Is that why you never came to me again when you had a Yearning?”

I didn’t want to admit that I’d been so clueless that I hadn’t known the first time we’d lain together was because of a Yearning.

Kerainne nodded, her pout had wilted into a frown of abject sorrow.

“I worried that if I conceived again, I’d lose the seedling again.

I never wanted to experience that hurt again.

And when you talked to me about having a child, I was just so scared…

Wait, is that why you kept putting off the wedding? ”

“You put off the wedding first.” I argued more harshly than intended. “That hurt my feelings, so I put it off next.”

“And round and round we went.” Kerainne sighed and stood. “You see, this is why we’ll never work.”

“It almost did work. We’d set a date and were a mere day from our wedding before Mephistopheles destroyed everything.

” My heart twinged as she flinched at his name.

Quickly, I pressed on to my point. “And it can still work if you stop running away from me and trust me enough to talk to me. Just because I’m not as smart as you and the high sorcerers you keep company with doesn’t mean I can’t be good for you. ”

“It’s not just me you have to be good for,” she said in a defeated tone that wrenched my heart. “I gave you a chance to be good for both of us and you know what you did.”

“I know I made a huge mistake, but—”

“No. I can’t go through this anymore. Especially not now. We’re in a war and we need to focus on that, not the hot mess that was our relationship.”

“It wasn’t that messy,” I argued desperately. “We just messed up a few times.”

Her tired sigh seemed to fill the room. “We’ve had over two-thousand years to get it right. What the fuck do you think has magically changed so we can get it right?”

“A lot of things, actually.” I had a list that would probably make a grand speech, but too late I realized I was too drunk to vocalize all of them. Instead, my stupid mouth blurted, “But I think there are still things that you don’t want to tell me, so maybe we can start there.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do this. Stay away from me, Lucian.”

With that, she vanished.

My fists clenched at my sides. Part of me wanted to follow her to the tower and try to have it out with her, but the sliver of sobriety in me kept me where I was. I reheated the tea I’d made and drank that to sober up a little.

The truth was, I needed some space and time to process the heartbreaking story Kerainne told me.

The old me would have indeed fled back to Luminista and taken a few years to mull it over.

But that was one of the things that had “magically changed,” as Kerainne had phrased so sarcastically.

Aside from making assumptions that turned into misunderstandings, I realized that Kerainne was like the lioness of her family name.

No lioness would accept a mate who abandoned her when things grew difficult.

And though she’d abandoned me more than once, it had always been for the sake of people who needed her help, or to protect her own boundaries.

In contrast, the times I left her were either to nurse my wounded pride, or try to force her into accepting that my way of life was better than hers.

I still believed that Luminista was better. There was no war, no hunger, no unnatural death, endless peace, prosperity, and time to relax, play, and create.

But now I knew that if I wanted Kerainne, I would have to be where she wanted to be…or, in the case of the Prophecy, needed to be.

In fact, the Prophecy itself was the source of nearly all of what magically changed to make a future between us possible. But I didn’t know how to go about telling her that in way that would make her listen.

The first cup of tea sobered me enough that I was beginning to feel a bit of the hangover that would have me in a stranglehold tomorrow.

I summoned a pitcher of water to stave off the worst of it.

After guzzling as much as I could without getting ill, I returned all the dishes to the kitchen and went to bed, praying for a dreamless sleep to ease my scrambled mind.

But the fates weren’t that kind.

Instead, I was bombarded with visions of Kerainne’s joyous face as she held her belly.

Then, a golden-haired child with her eyes and my smile…

her nose and my eyebrows, her adventurousness and my focus…

And then the child faded away, replaced with Kerainne’s face contorted in pain, blood pooling between her legs.

Hitching sobs woke me up, and I realized they were coming from me.

I curled up in a ball and cried. I cried for the loss of the child that never was, for Kerainne’s suffering at having the hope of that child torn away from her so cruelly, for her feeling like she had to keep that pain to herself all these centuries, and for myself for my own longstanding wish to create a child with her.

To find out it had almost happened, and that tragedy having prevented us from being able to even try, fates it hurt.

Eventually, I fell into oblivion, but it gave me no solace.

I awoke to a knock at the door. My heart leaped with hope that it was Kerainne even as I quickly dressed and worked a spell to freshen my breath while frantically finger-combing my tangled hair.

Unfortunately, instead of Kerainne, or even one of my friends, I found Delgarias standing on my porch.

“Revered One?” My voice came out more of a croak than intended.

Del raised a brow. “An old friend shouldn’t feel the need to address me so formally.”

It was my turn to arch my eyebrow right back at him.

“ Are we still friends? The last time I saw you before this Autumn was after Medicia was destroyed, and just like with Kerainne, you didn’t tell me Mephistopheles had turned you into the first vampire, in fact, you lied to me and told me you hadn’t seen Kerainne when she just told me last night that you did. And then—”

“And then you became betrothed to my Bride,” he finished for me. “May I come in so we can hash all that out and then I can talk to you about something of more significant urgency?”

It was only then that I realized that it was freezing cold outside and the frigid air was blowing on my bare toes. Not only that, but it was already after sunset, otherwise Delgarias wouldn’t even be here.

“Of course. Would you like some tea?” I paused after shutting the door behind him. “Are you able to drink tea?”

“I can, and would appreciate a cup. The rest of my kind can only have a few sips of a beverage.”