Shadow's Claim

Chapter 29

“Gentleman caller?” Raum shouted to Morgana as soon as the three of them had landed in his receiving room. Historically, Bettina had visited this place only to discuss the most serious of matters.

—Bettina, your father . . . he’s fallen on the battlefield.

—This is your summoning medallion, Tina. We only need a bit of your blood.

—You must be wed, m’girl. Without a protector, you risk another attack. What if something happens to me this Accession? Who will protect you?

“Curse you, Raum!” Morgana yanked her arm away. “Never trace me again, or your horns will decorate the grille of my new mortal car!” She flounced over to one of the rustic divans, draping herself over it with a great flourish.

Bettina perched on the divan opposite Morgana, gazing around warily. Raum’s spire was like an extension of him—a mix of violence and unexpected thoughtfulness.

Crossed battle-axes hung above a rough-hewn hearth. Centuries’ worth of armor lined the walls. Above them were the mounted heads of monsters he’d hunted: vicious Gotohs, ghouls, and Wendigos.

But he also possessed a collection of rare scales from myriad basilisk nests. Demons held those dragons sacred. In the room’s firelight, the scales gave off a mesmerizing shimmer, waves of iridescent pearl, jade, and crimson.

Caspion traced into the room, heading straight to the sideboard.

“I don’t like this,” Raum snapped. “Don’t like the way that vampire looks at Bettina, as if he’s wedded and bedded her already. As if he knows her.”

Bettina peered at her bitten nails, watching them begin to grow back.

“And as glad as I am about the Vrekeners, I demand to know how he found them!” Raum’s eyes widened, and he pointed a claw at Morgana. “You must have helped the leech! Predicted where Skye Hall would be!” Raum joined Cas at the sideboard. “When you wouldn’t assist us?” He sloshed demon brew from a pitcher into a mug, then thought better of it and palmed the pitcher in his big hand.

“How? I’m no soothsayer, as evidenced by my sanity.” Morgana spread her arms over the back of the divan with an insouciant grace. “And you know I tried to read Bettina’s mind to give you a description of the four. But she couldn’t even bring herself to picture them.”

Daciano had probably been able to see deeper into her subconscious than Bettina herself could.

“Your hand is in this, sorceress!” Raum insisted, adjourning with the pitcher to his oversize desk.

“One more time, Raum—the Hall is impervious to Sorceri. We can’t find it, reach it, attack it—”

“And I’m to take your word on that?” Raum all but yelled, “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you!”

Morgana snapped, “The feeling is mutual, I assure you!”

Cas slid Bettina a glance that said: “This is so messed up.” She flashed one back: “I know, right!”

She felt as if they were two siblings watching their dam and sire fight.

Wait. Siblings? Were her feelings turning . . . sisterly toward him?

Morgana said, “Ah, Raum, you’re just angry that the vampire did something supposedly impossible! When you couldn’t.” With a pointed look at Caspion, Morgana added, “When even the vaunted ‘tracker’ couldn’t track them.”

Cas glowered. “Because Raum ordered me off their trail! Eventually I would have found them somehow!” To Raum, he said, “I always did before. Yet you commanded me to stop searching. You as good as handed this revenge to the vampire!”

Raum slammed his fist against the desktop, rattling writing utensils and skull paperweights. “I gave that order because you were exhausted. You’d barely finished transitioning to immortal, hadn’t even harvested a death yet! And I didn’t want you to repeat what Mathar did!”

Everyone fell silent. “What? What did my father do?” Bettina finally asked.

Raum scowled, knowing he’d said too much.

“Raum?”

At length, he muttered, “He hunted your mother’s killers until it nearly drove him mad. He monitored Skye Hall’s movements for years, trying to come up with a pattern, to predict where it would appear next. No use.” Raum scrubbed his hand over his craggy face. “Mathar existed, like a ghost, as long as he could, holding out for you. Then he sought the front line of the bloodiest battle he could find, knowing it would end him.”

He’d wanted to die? In a soft voice, Bettina said, “He couldn’t live without her?”

Raum shook his head sadly. “Had no interest in that prospect.”

Mathar’s love for Eleara astounded Bettina. His love for me. He’d existed—in misery—for me.

No wonder he’d seemed distant. He’d been tormented. “So devoted,” she murmured to herself.

Morgana sniffed. “Eleara was just as much so. Though I could never see it.”

Bettina’s gaze landed on Cas. Would she ever know such devotion from a male? And return it just as fiercely?

With the vampire. The thought arose without warning, startling her because it felt like . . . truth.

Cas met her eyes then, but again he didn’t seem to see her. What if I’ve been horribly wrong about us?

“There’s no finding the air territories,” Raum continued. “I didn’t want to doom Caspion to failure. I still don’t know how the vampire located them.”

Cas frowned at Bettina. “Did you tell the vampire about the Vrekeners?”

“No!”

“Outside of this room, no one knew about those four. So there’s no way, unless . . .” Cas trailed off.

All eyes fell on her neck.

Raum sputtered. “You didn’t . . . y-you wouldn’t!”

Morgana grinned. “Did you gift the vampire with your blood?”

Bettina blurted the words: “It was an accident! He never bit me. We—we kissed and his fangs went sharp.”

Cas, Morgana, and Raum groaned in disbelief.

“Oh, for gold’s sake, you’re really that naïve, freakling? First R.H.P.S., and now this. Clearly, I’m derelict in my duties.”

“This is why I still have her medallion!” Raum pointed out in a vindicated tone. “She’s too naïve.”

Cas said, “Vampires like him don’t have ‘accidents.’ ”

“He tried to warn me!”

“But you were beyond caring?” Morgana said. “It’s called seduction. And what it shows us is that your prince is a very cunning player indeed.” Her blond brows drew together. “Strange, though—an immortal male will usually become an unthinking, primal brute when fighting for his female.”

Daciano a brute? Bettina couldn’t see it. “Morgana, it was only the tiniest drop.”

“Then maybe he harvested only your most recent memories.” Her godmother examined the end of a braid, the Sorceri equivalent of navel gazing. “Haven’t I changed in front of you within the last few months?” With a shrug, she said, “If he sees that memory, I’ll expect a call from him directly.”

Raum’s eyes went wide. “Then he knows our kingdom’s defenses.”

Cas’s disappointed look sliced through her. “The secrets I’ve trusted you with, Tina.”

“And now Morgana’s arranged for them to be together for this—this tour?” Raum blustered. “What if the vampire bites Bettina? You know that could prove ruinous to her.”

Daciano’s kisses and caresses had proved so—Bettina could think of little else—so why had no one told her to be wary of those? Then she frowned. “Why is a bite ruinous?”

“Because they’re excruciating,” Raum said. “Right, Morgana?”

Excrutiating?

In a grudging tone, the sorceress said, “Bite play can go badly. If the vampire’s exceedingly thirsty or inexperienced. And the prince did look peckish. Hmm, what say you, Caspion?”

Had Cas’s cheeks flushed? “It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt.” He sounded almost as if he were speaking from firsthand knowledge. Hadn’t he described a bite as altering? Had some Dacian female taken his blood?

Did it . . . hurt?

Daciano was inexperienced, had never bitten another. Would he tear her skin?

Raum traced before her. “Promise me you’ll keep your blood from him.”

She craned her head up. “I promise! Believe me.” Bettina had suffered enough excruciating pain to last an eternal lifetime.

To Morgana, he said, “You intend to send her off without a chaperone, to spend the night with a ‘very cunning player’ who’s practiced in seduction?”

“You did not just say the word chaperone to me.”

“I won’t have it, sorceress. We will come to blows!”

“Oh, let’s!” Morgana leapt to her feet, her eyes beginning to spark in warning, like a viper’s rattle.

“Damn you, what if the vampire sullies her?”

That was the absolute wrong thing to say to the sorceress. Morgana looked as furious as Bettina had ever seen her, braids flying. “What if she sullies him? Why is it always the female who gets sullied? Archaic demon! You think like the primordial!”

Raum yelled the vilest of Demonish curses, basically telling Morgana to suck on his horns until they were raw. Bettina gasped. In turn, Morgana blew him a kiss, essentially telling him she’d poison him at the earliest opportunity.

“You Sorceri harlot!”

“You demonic fossil!”

Cas joined in, and the three started up once more.

Bettina stood unsteadily, putting her hands over her ears. Did none of them understand how close she was to losing it? Inside, she was at once blistered and numb, torn between alternating urges.

Cry.

Scream.

The latter won out. “Shut up, all of you!”

They were shocked into silence. She’d never raised her voice to any of them.

Turning to Raum, Bettina said, “If Mathar couldn’t find the Vrekeners and you knew a tracker like Cas never would, then you never truly expected to uphold your end of our bargain!”

Pulling at the collar of his breastplate, Raum said, “I had inside information from a very reliable source.”

Morgana sneered, “How. Convenient.”

“And what about you?” Bettina turned on her godmother. “Vow to the Lore that you have my power! Now, Morgana.”

“Freakling, I dispatch the orders.” Rattle rattle RATTLE. “I do not receive them.”

Bettina sank down on the divan once more. “So you don’t. Both of you tricked me.”

“I, too, have inside information,” Morgana said so smoothly.

“Bullshite, harlot!”

I’ll never get my power back. But she would still be queen in two nights.

Seeing Raum and Morgana and even Cas like this made her realize she had depended on them far too much. They were fallible, just as she was.

Even without her power, Bettina had better start thinking like a queen. Before they could start up again, she said, “What will happen now? Will the Vrekeners retaliate?”

“We’ll be lucky if they don’t descend upon us for this,” Raum said. “I’d ordered my demons to do this quietly. If they were ever to reach Skye Hall, they were supposed to make the four disappear—not spill Vrekener heads in front of all and sundry of the Lore!”

“The vampire acted alone,” Morgana pointed out, sitting once more. “No one can prove otherwise.”

“Let them descend upon us!” Cas snapped. “Then maybe I’ll get the chance to actually bloody my sword with one of their ilk. We’re Deathly Ones, and we’ve been too long without war. We are fierce, and we can trace. They should fear us.”

Raum gazed away. “They’re like locusts, Caspion, a plague from the heavens. If word of this gets back to them . . . It was badly done, is all I’m saying.”

“It was perfectly done,” Morgana said. “How better to signal to the Vrekeners that we know how to reach their lair? They are not invulnerable. Perhaps now they’ll think twice about ravaging an Abaddonae royal! Or hunting my subjects like dogs!” Inhaling through her nose, she said, “This conversation is finished, Raum. Your ‘girl’ is about to be queen. There will be no chaperone. Nothing more need be said. Now, go get ready, freakling.”

Raum turned to Bettina, his expression weightier than she’d ever seen it. “Understand me, Tina, the blood contract of the tournament will compel me to give you and your medallion to the winner. If the vampire seduces you, Goürlav will kill you—and there won’t be anything I can do to stop him.”

“So certain I won’t win the tournament, Raum?” Cas shook his head in disgust. “You each know where I stand with all this. I leave now.”

“Cas, wait!” Bettina caught him before he traced. “Walk me back to my spire?”

Morgana called from the divan, “Have fun tonight, freakling. Try not to sully the vampire too hard.”

Once Bettina and Cas were alone, he said, “I still can’t believe Daciano found them! I spent sixty godsdamned nights combing plane after plane.”

She frowned at his surly tone. And you’re so young. Just like me. Seeing Cas like this made her abundantly aware of her own young age.

Maybe she had confused having someone in her heart with giving her heart to another. “Aren’t you happy that they’re dead? That I won’t have to fear at least those four?”

Caspion held up his hand to stop her. “Just don’t.”

When they neared her door, she said, “Please don’t be angry with me.”

He stopped, turning to her with a frown. “Did Daciano get your blood that first night? Or were you with him again? When you knew it wasn’t me?”

She whispered, “I was with him again.”

“I promised to be faithful!” He cast her a wild-eyed look. “But you didn’t return that promise, did you? Do you know how difficult it is for a male demon to go without sex? Have you never wondered why there are eleven restaurants in Rune and twenty-three brothels?”

“I’m sorry! I never intended to do anything with him. I got caught up, and the next thing I knew, we were kissing.”

“Just like Morgana said, it’s called seduction. I’m well versed in it.” His fists clenched, his forearms bulging. “Did he come to your rooms again?”

“I-I went to his tent.”

“Why in the hell would you do that?”

“Cas, please . . .”

He laid his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me!” His horns had straightened ominously.

She’d never seen him so angry. She grasped for a lie, but she’d always wanted to be truthful with him. “The vampire told me . . . he would spare you in the melee.”

“So that’s why he aided me? My gods, Bettina, he forced you to do things by threatening my life? You whored yourself for my safety?”

“No! Yes? When you say it like that, it sounds so much worse than it was.”

Cas wasn’t listening. “He’s earned a slow death.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the vampire’s tent, his grip on her tightening. “I’ll make it last—for days.”

Would he go attack Daciano this second? Neither could kill the other outside the ring.

“Cas, it wasn’t quite that way.”

He turned back. “Then what way was it?”

She remembered Daciano’s damp skin in the firelight, the sultry warmth of that tent. His eyes like onyx. She took a breath and admitted, “I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do at the time.”

Cas released her at once, backing up with his hands in front of him. “Do you want him now? Is that it? I can’t stop this tournament, Bettina. I can’t come back from this.”

“I-I don’t know. I’m just so confused by everything—”

“Look at you!” Cas exclaimed. “You crave that vampire even now!”

“I do not!” Do I? Now that her entire existence had been upended yet again, she couldn’t stop replaying how it had felt to be enveloped in the vampire’s mist. Tethered to him.

Connected.

After she’d lost her power, that feeling of emptiness had tolled inside her. But the connection she’d shared with Daciano had made that ache ebb, even if just a little.

As if her growing bond with him didn’t leave any room for emptiness.

“Then, by all means, have fun on your tour.” Cas pointed his finger at her face. “If the vampire beds you tonight, you better pray I can defeat Goürlav.”

“Please don’t be mad at me!” She reached out to touch his shoulder, but he recoiled, tracing away.

She stared after him for long moments. They’d never fought before, had always gotten along with such ease. Yet just now he’d looked as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her.

Turning toward her rooms, she passed the guards posted at her door, ducking her head so they couldn’t see her watering eyes.

Their mewling, halfling soon-to-be queen. Who had no idea what she was doing.

Don’t cry, don’t cry. . . .

As soon as the door closed behind her, she removed her mask and swiped her forearm over her face. How could she not cry?

She’d fought with all her loved ones, and the guilt was heavy. They were all that she had in the world. Unless she counted the vampire. You are mine . . . we are fated.

On top of tonight’s developments, she was still trapped in this process—helpless to do anything but watch as Daciano and Cas likely went to their deaths.

Tears don’t help anything. What to do? Go outside and take in the night. But her feet wouldn’t quite shuffle her outside.

Alone on the balcony, up so high—in the dark? With an “imperfect” barrier spell?

Did it even matter that those Vrekeners were dead? Would more come? She suspected she’d always be crippled by fear. She couldn’t just turn it off. . . .

What to do? Work! Yes, she’d lose herself in creation.

She hurried into her workroom, inhaling deeply as she entered. The familiar scents helped to center her. When all the world seemed to be dismantling around her, creation was her one constant.

In the next half hour, she could finish fabricating the piece for Patroness. All she had left to do was attach the two moving parts of the weapon—the all-important spring mechanism and the blade. Then etching, then completion. So close.

And once she’d finished with work? How to handle this eve with Daciano?

As she gathered the needed tools, she imagined what she’d say to him. First she’d rail at him for taking her blood.

Before, she hadn’t known for certain whether he’d harvested her memories. Now she did. She was sick of everyone walking all over her.

After she railed, she would demand answers! Did you take my memories on purpose? Why gift me with those heads in such a manner?

Are you . . . are you afraid of dying tomorrow?

Salem shimmered into the room. “What’s wrong wiv you, chit? You look like you’re about to cry. And in your workroom, no less? This is the seat of nirvana for you.”

“Why are you even asking? I know you heard my conversation with Cas.”

“That’s fair.”

“I broke my promise to him. He’s denying his instinct, making sacrifices to be with me. But I betrayed him.”

“He wants credit for not diddlin’ a whore?” Salem occupied her earring. “Bully for him that he hasn’t been dippin’ his wick in all the hookers in Rune—for a few chuffin’ days out of his immortal life. Really? He wants a biscuit for keepin’ it in his pants? Try not havin’ sex for eighteen years!”

Salem’s Cockney accent was so thick tonight; at any second, she expected him to say, “P-please, sir, I want some more.”

She shook her head. “You won’t turn this around, sylph. I am at fault.”

He slithered around her neck to her other earring. “Does Cas compliment you? Does he hold your hand? Does he ask about your interests? Have you two had a chin-wag about what your future’ll be like?”

When she opened her mouth to answer yes, Salem added: “In detail?”

She closed her mouth.

“After each bout, he hams it up for his adoring tarts and longs for his randy ways. He’s not tryin’ to fall for you.”

Bettina glared. “Cas never wanted any of this to begin with! He never wanted me. I dragged him into this.”

“And so far, you’ve saved his life! Though I do think Goürlav’ll wipe the floor wiv ’im.”

She flinched as if struck. But her voice was toneless when she pointed out: “Goürlav will only face Cas if he wins. You assume Daciano will lose?”

Silence. She knew she was getting a duh look. “And that’s a shame,” Salem said, “because the vampire’s in it to win it wiv you.”

“In it to win it?”

“Besides giving up his home, he’s interested in your interests, and he’s willing to compromise. I saw him chokin’ down wine for you. He thinks you’re the mutt’s nuts. You could’ve done worse.”

“I’ve only known him for so little time. I can’t just turn off my feelings for Cas like a spigot. And if I went from utter love of Cas to utter love of Daciano, what does that say about me? At best, that I’m fickle. At worst, that I’m as young and stupid as everyone seems to believe.”

“No one expects you to turn off your feelings—they’ll always be there—just start seeing ’em for what they really are.”

Had she begun to? Whenever she imagined marriage, she’d begun to think only of . . . Daciano. Whenever she thought of Cas, she kept replaying all the milestones of their friendship.

“The demon’s your best mate, as in friend. Some other female out there is his other kind of mate. She ain’t you.”

Bettina was starting to believe this. If she and Cas had been fated, then why was there so much strain between them—especially when they tried to act like a couple?

Oh, what did it matter how she felt? So long as Goürlav still lived, Bettina’s two choices of men were about to become . . . none.

She snatched up her soldering torch and adjusted the flame. Work! The fire blazed in front of her watering eyes.

“You know those raves you used to attend?” Salem said in a cautious tone. “You look like you’re havin’ a bad trip. Just slow your roll, chit.”

“I’m fine.” Flame to metal. Spring mechanism. Seamless adhesion.

“Look behind you, Princess! The dummies are dancing.”

She heard them moving, but didn’t glance up.

“Oi! Those soddin’ dummies are boffin’.”

She set the flame aside, slammed her palm against her workbench. “Please, Salem!”

The dummies stilled as if affronted. “Fine, then. Should I go spy?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Go.”

“Maybe some of me sources’ll give up details about Goürlav—now that their delegates are dead and all.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said absently, lifting the torch once more. Soon she was lost in the process, working in a frenzy.

“I’m going, Princess.”

Still here? She blew on the last heated section of metal, examining the assembled piece. Pride welled in her chest as she doused her torch. It was just like Daciano’s sketch.

Yet when Salem finally left, a presence remained.