Darkness Embraced (7 page)

“I’m not in your head, Renata. I’m in your heart. There’s a big difference.”

She closed her eyes and I wondered if she were counting to ten.

“You were never this frustrating to deal with.”

“Everything changed when you cast me out.”

“You act as if I completely deserted you, Epiphany.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Vasco,” she said, “tell her.”

He put his fist over his heart and bowed. “You made me swear an oath never to tell her.”

She waved it away. “You are free of your oath. Now tell her.”

“Tell me what?” I stepped forward, resting my weight on the pad of my foot.

“Epiphany,” Vasco said, “she did not desert you.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Did you not think to question your friendship?” Renata asked.

“No. Why would I? Vasco has shown me kindness. I do not question that.”

“He showed you kindness because I appointed him as your protector,” she said. “I did not throw you to the wolves as you are so quick to accuse me of.”

I wasn’t sure I believed it. Vasco stood and didn’t bother to say anything in his defense. “It’s true, isn’t it?” I asked in a voice that was almost a whisper.

“Colombina.” He spread his arms out. “It is true.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I don’t believe you. You’re both lying. I don’t know why, but you’re lying.”

He moved forward as if to touch me. I whirled away from him before he even got close.

His eyes widened. “Colombina…”

I put my hands over my face. “No. How can it be true?” I glared at him. “You are telling me that this friendship…all of these years have been a lie? You’ve only pretended at someone else’s command? At her command?”

“We are friends.” His voice was soft as he reached out toward me again.

“Stop trying to touch me!”

He spread his hands again, but this time he was trying to make a point of harmlessness. “Look inside of me.”

I stubbornly shook my head. “No.”

He was quick, so very quick. His hands dug into my upper arms as he shook me. “Look!”

His power hit me and there was nothing subtle about it. Vasco didn’t pour his emotions down my throat. He simply opened himself up and my power sucked it in like some great black hole.

Candles sent a dance of light and shadows across the room. I was kneeling on the familiar stone floor of Renata’s bedroom. She regarded me from where she sat in the corner of her room, displeasure rendering her beauty even colder.

She said my name, only it wasn’t my name.

It was Vasco’s.

“My Queen.” I bowed my head.

She bid me to stand and I rose, waiting.

“I have a task of great importance for you, Vasco. A task I am unwilling to place in the hands of any other but you.”

“What is your will, my lady?” The words flowed smoothly, in spite of the niggling sense of unease I felt. I was afraid of what she would ask, but I was her creature. Whatever she asked, I would do.

“Epiphany,” she murmured, features taking on a thoughtful expression as she traced the carved wooden arm of the chair. “Watch her. Protect her. See to it she does not fall prey to the Elders.”

The unease left in a whoosh of air. “It will be done.”

The vision changed, and I was suddenly in the banquet hall, leaning against the far wall. I saw myself, and knew for certain these were Vasco’s memories I was viewing, not mine.

It is a strange thing, seeing yourself from the perspective of another. Vasco’s thoughts clouded mine, making it hard to differentiate between the two. I knew this; he had known I had been Renata’s pet. He had known I had been cast out, though he too did not understand why. He saw my vulnerability and felt, not pity, but compassion.

I watched and remembered, though I did not want to.

I moved as inconspicuously as I could through the tables, careful to keep my distance from the others. The dress I wore in his memories was modest, solid black, but the black brought out the paleness of my skin and the pale gray of my eyes. I have always been small, but the way I held myself made me appear even smaller, as if I was trying very hard not to be noticed.

I had been.

I felt Vasco raise his glass to his lips, watching and wondering.

The vision changed. My boots were silent against the stone floor. I walked down one of the lesser hallways that led to the library. It was odd seeing the Sotto from Vasco’s height. There was a startled gasp and I turned on my heel, heading quickly in the direction of the sound. Someone groaned and I started running. I hit the bend at the end of the hallway.

“What’s it like no longer being the Queen’s favorite little bitch?” Lucrezia’s voice sent a shiver of disgust through me.

“Lucrezia!” I said harshly. She turned, long auburn hair framing a round face with wide pale green eyes that were not quite sane. I agreed with Vasco’s thoughts. I didn’t think she was quite sane either.

“Vasco!” she said, surprised. “How nice of you to join us…”

Epiphany, my body in the vision, made another small noise of discomfort. I felt Vasco’s emotions in that moment. He wanted to protect me, not because he was ordered to, but because what Lucrezia was doing was wrong.

Lucrezia kept my body pinned against the wall.

Her wrist twisted and there was another disturbing sound. I didn’t want to think of the woman pinned to the wall as myself. It was both a blessing and a curse that I was reviewing the memory from Vasco’s perspective. A blessing because I didn’t want to remember that bitch touching me. It was a curse because I saw that when Renata cast me out, I had lost the will to live, to survive. It was there in my flickering eyelids, in the set of my mouth, the slack submission of body. It was a pitiful sight, and Vasco wanted to save me from it.

Lucrezia’s cheek rubbed cat-like against the back of my mahogany hair as she cooed at Vasco, “Want to play?”

“Let her go.”

“No, thank you.” She smiled so sweetly and traced the lobe of my ear with her tongue. “Are you sure you don’t want to play, Vasco? She’s up for grabs now.” She made a pleased noise low in her throat. “And so very tasty.”

I grabbed the hilt at the back of my neck. My sword sang free of its sheath. “I will not ask you again, Lucrezia.”

“Oh.” She widened her eyes in a pretentious fashion that was undeniably Lucrezia. “Looks like our friend has brought a toy.”

She moved and that was all it took to set Vasco over the edge. I knew from my own memories and personal experience that there were cuts high up between my shoulder blades, cuts Lucrezia dealt me.

From Vasco’s memory, it was not so obvious.

The tip of my sword dug into the delicate skin beneath her jaw and I used it to push her back, following as she kept back stepping. “I’m stronger than you, Lucrezia. You don’t want to play this game or any game with me.”

She hissed at me around the blade digging into her chin. “You should have told me you’d claimed the woman as your bitch, Vasco! I didn’t think she was quite your type.”

I gave the sword a little push and a drop of crimson blood slithered down the steel. “Touch her again and I’ll cut your heart out and feed it to you.”

I withdrew my sword, wiping the blood on my tunic, and turned toward the girl…

I was suddenly on the floor staring up at Renata’s ceiling.

“Epiphany.” It was Vasco’s voice. He touched my cheek lightly. “Epiphany?”

“I’m not quite sure, yet,” I managed to say.

He helped me sit up, propping my back against his torso. “You wouldn’t let me guide your vision,” he said, as if he were in my thoughts and felt my confusion. “If you had let me guide it and didn’t try to take control, you wouldn’t feel like this.”

How did I feel? I felt unreal and confused. I blinked. “Vasco…”

“Sì?”

“Don’t you ever do that to me again. For future reference, I’d rather stay in my own body.”

His lips spread into a grin. “So I noticed.”

I heard movement and turned to look at Renata. She knelt beside me, touching my forehead with nimble fingers. “I did not know you could project memories, Vasco.”

“I cannot, my lady.”

She gave him a questioning look. “Her?”

He nodded. “It seems Epiphany’s powers of empathy only want to absorb. Her power doesn’t care whether it is thoughts, emotions, or memories that it is absorbing.”

Renata made a little, “Hmm,” sound as her fingers tickled lightly down my neck.

“He didn’t protect me just for you,” I whispered, watching her.

“So I noticed.”

Had she seen the memory?

Her hands found my shoulders and she started pulling me away from Vasco. His grip tightened around me for a second, I think, afraid of what she would do. I didn’t have the energy or the will to fight either one of them. Renata gave him a look of warning and he let me go.

Her hands moved at my back.

“Turn around,” she whispered the words against my hair and I shuddered.

I moved to my knees and turned. Renata opened the back of the dress and pushed it down off my shoulders. She exposed my back, touching the scar there. The knife Lucrezia had used had been silver, and though my body had healed, it had left two light pink scars like an angry X between my shoulder blades. One thing Vasco hadn’t witnessed was that before he’d arrived, Lucrezia had told me she was going to carve the target on my back. She’d stayed true to her word.

The rage was a bitter and hateful thing in my mouth as Renata’s fingers traced my scarred flesh. It wasn’t my rage. It was hers. The muscles in my back twitched and jumped, as if my skin remembered the blow.

“Renata,” I whispered.

It was like something hot sliding down my spine. I said her name again, through clenched teeth.

I turned and caught her wrists in my hands.

Vasco hissed and I knew it wasn’t at Renata. He’d never seen the scar. I let go of her wrists.

“I thought,” he said, swallowed, and tried again, “I didn’t know she’d maimed you.”

“I know,” I said. “You were too late. You saved me, Vasco, but you were too late. The knife was silver.”

Renata looked at him in one of those very slow movements. Her anger brought forth the blue topaz color in her eyes. “You never reported to me that she had been abused.”

I wasn’t looking at him as he repeated himself, “I did not know Lucrezia had maimed her.”

“I am not maimed,” I said, “only scarred.”

Renata touched my cheek and I flinched.

I will kill her.

I gazed up at her and said, “I won’t stop you.”

I thought I saw a small flicker of surprise flit across her features.

“It seems you are right, Vasco. Epiphany’s power seeks and it finds.”

“Sì,” he said.

“It’s never been like this,” I said.

“I know. I believe that Renata not only tasted your power, but has, ah, given it a boost of sorts.”

“With practice would I be able to read a person’s thoughts whenever I wanted to?” I asked.

“I am not sure, colombina. Our powers are polar opposites. Where yours absorbs, I project.”

I nodded; it was something I already knew.

“Some.” Renata brought my attention back to her.

There was something in her demeanor that made me ask, “How do you know?”

She smiled ruefully. “It seems you have gained a power more similar to my own.”

Renata explained while deftly tying the lace at the back of my gown. “Telepathy was one of the first powers I gained,” she said. “I had no idea your empathy would be so similar.”

“You can read minds?”

“Better than you can,” she said, but there wasn’t any arrogance in her tone. “I have had years of practice to read the thoughts of others and to project onto them what I wish them to feel.”

I peered at her over my shoulder. I licked lips that were dry. “Have you read mine?”

“What do you think?”

That was unnerving.

I pushed the hair out of my face. “What will the challenges be like?”

“Difficult,” she said. “I cannot make it any other way.”

“What are they?”

“You will see.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

She touched my brow. “It would be unfair and it would displease the Elders.”

“You are their Queen.”

“Even a queen has rules to abide by.” Her fingers traced the line of my jaw. She stood in a fluid motion, her velvet skirts like dark water. My eyes followed the line of her body, the paleness of her shoulders beyond the sheer sleeves.

“There is a way to avoid all of this,” she murmured thoughtfully.

“How?”

“Come back to me.”

Her words pierced me.

The proposition was sweet, so sweet, and bitter. Why did a part of me enjoy that bitterness?