This would be the last time he’d touch her.
Sebastian looked at her lips, at the curve of her jaw, remembering how strong it could be—how defiant when she lifted it and pretended she didn’t want him as much as he wanted her. Now he would have no one to taunt in a carriage, no one to tease and tug and coax into his arms.
His wound from her stake still ached, oozing blood, and he remembered again why she was lying there, and how she had found Beauregard’s lair. Who had led her there, and why. How Beauregard had manipulated them both.
He’d sat there—it had been hours—since he and Pesaro had been allowed to enter after whatever Hannever and Ylito had done with Zavier’s blood. Somehow they’d fed it into Victoria using some sort of tube, but it hadn’t seemed to do any good. The back of his neck still prickled and chilled, and she still lay there, cold and pale.
She moaned again, and Sebastian looked up. He met Pesaro’s eyes from across Victoria’s body. There was no hope there, nothing but grim determination. A stake sat on the table near Pesaro; Sebastian had no doubt he’d not hesitate to use it.
A cold one, he was.
Wayren and Ylito had found a small corner of the room where they both sat reading or studying some old text. The sight of them brought to Sebastian’s mind the fact that the page he’d stolen from the Consilium was still in Beauregard’s lair.
He would have to go back and find it once…once this was over.
At that moment Victoria’s eyes fluttered, and the sensation in the room shifted. It became closer and smothering, and no one seemed to breathe.
Wayren was suddenly standing at the foot of the small bed. Ylito took his place near the head, and before Sebastian knew what was happening he heard a soft whisk, and then a faint clink. Pesaro was doing something at his side of the bed, and Wayren and Ilias near the foot.
Restraints.
God, restraints.
How demeaning for her.
He felt and found the soft leather cuffs, the metal fastenings on the side, and let them drop. He wouldn’t do it.
Victoria was breathing more stridently now, and her eyes were fluttering. One of her legs moved; her lips parted; she rolled her head. She tried to raise an arm, but it was held in place by…not a cuff, but Pesaro. His hand on her arm, around her wrist. Clamping it onto the edge of the bed.
All of a sudden her eyes fluttered open. Wide. They opened wide, and she looked around. They weren’t red; they were the same brown-green they’d always been.
The room seemed to hold its collective breath, waiting. Ylito shifted near the head of the bed, and Sebastian saw him reach for something on the table.
No. Not the stake. Not yet.
But when he glanced over, he saw that it was still on the table, held in place by Pesaro’s hand.
“What…” Victoria said, looking around, her eyes moving slowly from face to face. “Beauregard!” She tried to move, and a confused look passed over her.
Ylito moved, and something splashed through the air, sprinkled down on her face before Sebastian could stop him. Not her face!
But instead of screaming and tearing at the spray of holy water, Victoria twisted around, merely turning her face to get away from it as if it were nothing more than a summer rain shower.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice stronger now.
Something in the room changed. It was as if a sudden light had come on. They all looked at one another, afraid to hope….
“Is it possible?” Ylito asked, looking at Wayren.
“I don’t know how it can be,” she replied. She’d moved next to Sebastian, and he felt her palpable…was it relief? Could it be? She reached down, smoothing her hands over Victoria’s face, over her shoulders, her eyes closed, a low hum coming from the back of her throat.
“The two vis bullae.”
They all looked at Pesaro, who’d removed his hand from the stake. Whose face actually bore an expression now. “She wears two of them, does she not?”
Sebastian stared at him. How the bloody hell could Pesaro know that…when he himself didn’t?
Wayren straightened, her hands continuing to move in soft, rhythmic gestures over Victoria’s body as if to soothe it…or to somehow measure it. “It must be. There can be no other explanation. The strength of the two overpowered Beauregard’s blood, and she was not turned.”
“And so that is why she needed blood,” added Ylito. “When the tainted vampire blood did not take hold, it had to be replaced with mortal blood.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Victoria. “Why am I here?”
Sebastian looked down at her, a sudden jubilance rushing over him. For the first time in a long while he felt something other than doom and guilt. Thank God.
But then, as he took her cool fingers into his hand, he realized something horrible.
His neck was still cold.
Epilogue
Wherein We Are Reminded That Hell Hath No Fury
Sarafina Regalado walked boldly into the chamber where Lilith the Dark awaited.
Her journey from Roma to these mountains in the depths of Romania had been long, and she was exhausted. But she refused to be cowed by the powerful undead who stood before her. What was the worst that could happen?
The queen of the vampires could bite her.
And Sara would rather enjoy that.
“Do I know you?” Lilith asked after a moment. “Why have you braved my guards to speak to me?”
“My father was Conte Regalado, but he is dead. The woman Venator killed him.”
The blue-red eyes narrowed. “Ah, so you are the one. What do you want?”
“I bring you news,” Sara told her, looking around at the sumptuous furnishings, and examining the vampire’s gown. Out of style, wrong fabric…but somehow it suited her. “Akvan is destroyed. The Door of Alchemy has been opened.”
“That is no news to me.” The queen was watching her hungrily. “Beauregard is dead, too, at last. Although his armband is missing again.”
From under her cloak Sara pulled a sheet of paper, brittle with age and from the thin wax that covered it. “Perhaps you would find this interesting. I obtained it from one of Beauregard’s minions—the one who brought me to you.”
Lilith took it lazily, but Sara saw the way her gaze sharpened when she looked at the drawing of the plant and the instructions, written in a language that Sara didn’t understand. But she didn’t need to. She’d brought it to someone who would know how to read it.
“And what do you wish from me?”
“How did Max kill Akvan?” asked Sara. “He should not have been able to.”
The queen looked at her, and before Sara’s eyes she became even paler than before, nearly translucent, so that more ribbons of blue veins showed through her white skin. “Maximilian. No.”
She rounded on Sara, who was suddenly taken aback by the fury in the vampire’s eyes. They burned in her skull, burned as they looked at her, burned as though they touched her skin. “Did he slay Akvan with his own hand? With his own hand? Tell me!”
Sara nodded. “He did.”
“No. I cannot—No.” Her mouth compressed; her hair swirled about her in a cloud of copper. “No! He has betrayed me!”
“And you are not the only one,” Sara told her. “Although,” she added hastily as the vampire spun back to her, fangs bared as though to tear into her, “his betrayal of you—whatever it was—must be much more important than what he did to me.”
“Max. How dare he!” Lilith was shrieking now, her chest heaving with anger and malevolence. “After all of the graces I’ve bestowed on him, all of the freedoms! And he betrays me.” Her voice had dropped now, steadied. “I shall have my vengeance.”
She looked at Sara. Lilith’s eyes glowed, but no longer burned. All but one of the veins under her skin had faded. Her lips curved invitingly. “Both of us shall. Now come closer, my dear, and give me your pretty little neck.”