Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (46 page)

"Not just 'okay,'" Dorin promised. "Appropriate. Perfect."

He left me alone then, and I gently laid the dress on the bed. I wore her necklace, I was about to slip into her gown, and I stood in her home. But could I live up to the legacy of Mihaela Dragomir? Was I a real princess, as I hoped, or just a ghost—a pale, insubstantial shadow of her—like the old man in the restaurant had believed?

Doubts won't help now, Jess. Lucius believed you were just like her, in every way. . .
.

Locating the bathroom, I stripped off the jeans and shirt Id worn on the plane and took a long, hot shower. Toweling off, I carefully removed the dress from the hanger, undid a row of seed-pearl buttons that ran down the back, and stepped into the gown, drawing it up around my body like an embrace from the past. A leftover hug from my mother.

It fit perfectly. As if it had been designed for me.

I gazed into a gilt mirror that stood in the corner of the room, watching my reflection by the light of a full, clear moon that shone like a quavery searchlight through a long bank of warped, leaded windows.

Is this how Mihaela had regarded herself? By the light of this moon? In this same mirror?

The collar of the dress was high, rising almost to brush my jaw, but the neckline plunged deep, showcasing the bloodstone at my throat. The gown curved over my breasts, then fell as sharply and abruptly as a waterfall cascading over a Carpathian cliff, ending in a sweep of silken train that swished like a whisper when I walked. Like the whispers that no doubt followed any woman who dared to wear this spellbinding dress.

This was a gown that made a statement about the woman who wore it. It told everyone who saw her, "I am powerful, and beautiful, and just
try
to look away from me. I
will
be noticed."

I had no silver coronet, so I gathered my curls loosely behind my neck and allowed them to tumble freely down my back, glossy black hair upon glossy red fabric, staking my own more youthful, but still dramatic, claim to the gown.

The young woman I saw reflected in the mirror, her dark eyes glittering in the moonlight, really did look like a princess.

Strong. Determined. Unafraid.

There was a knock on the door, and Dorin called in to me, "Your guests have arrived. Are you ready?"

"Come in," I urged him.

Dorin poked his head in the room, and his merry, crinkled eyes snapped wide open. For a long moment, he simply stared at me, finally saying, "Yes. You are ready, indeed." Then he stepped aside, allowing me to walk through the door before him. I noted that he bowed to me, just slightly, as I passed.

Chapter
62

THEY WERE WAITING for me at the foot of the curved staircase, every face turned in my direction as I descended, and I watched as their looks changed from skepticism and concern to appreciation and wonder—and hope. And the fact that they were beginning to believe in me gave me confidence, even as it terrified me, too.

Who am I to be anyone's savior? Anyone's princess?

You are your mother's daughter. . . beautiful, powerful, regal. . .
Dorin's reassurances and Lucius's ode echoed again in my mind, giving me courage.

One by one, my vampire relations approached to meet me as I paused at the foot of the staircase. Dorin introduced them, and as each of my Dragomir kin—cousins close and distant— came near to bow or curtsy, I saw echoes of myself in the curve of a nose, the arch of an eyebrow, the slant of a cheekbone. They were attired in good clothes, but I noted that the dresses were a bit outdated, the suits sometimes ill-fitting.
What has become of
 
us since my parents' destruction?

"Come," said Dorin when we had all been introduced. "Let us dine."

I led a small procession into a long and lofty dining room, chilly in spite of a fire that blazed in a cavernous fireplace, and, at Dorin's indication, claimed my seat at the head of a table glittering with silver and candlelight. We Dragomirs were in difficult financial straits, but all the stops seemed to have been pulled out for my return.

"Sit, sit," Dorin said quietly, pulling out my chair. "I am afraid I must serve . . . We are short on servants right now, and it is difficult to draw anyone from the village, anyhow, given the current state of things. No one wants to be working late at the Dragomir estate ..."

"It's fine," I reassured him, taking my seat.

Toasts were raised to me, in Romanian, and Dorin translated for me.
To my health . . . to my return . . . to the pact. . . to peace.

A murmur went around the table as the last toast was concluded, and Dorin bent to speak to me. "They wish to hear from you. They are too eager to eat. You must tell them your plans."

For the first time since I'd donned the red silk dress and begun to settle into my new royal role, I felt a flash of genuine panic.
I didn't prepare a speech. I should have prepared a speech. What can I tell them? God, what do I even plan to do?
"I can't do it," I whispered to Dorin, leaning close to him. "I don't know what to say."

"You must, Antanasia," Dorin begged me. "They will expect it. They will lose confidence if you do not."

Confidence. I cannot afford to lose their confidence.
And so I rose, facing my family, and began, "It is my honor to be among you tonight, back in our ancestral home . . ."
What can I say?
"It has been too long."

Dorin translated for those who didn't speak English, glancing at me now and then with more than a little dismay in his eyes. He knew I was struggling, and looking at my relatives ringed around the table, I saw uncertainty creeping back into their minds, too. I was losing their trust as quickly as I'd gained it.

"I intend to ensure that the pact is honored," I added. "As your princess, I promise I will not let you down."

"Tell me,
Jessica''
someone began. A deep voice.

Oh, thank goodness. . . a question.

"Yes?" I searched the faces, trying to find the speaker in the dim, candlelit room.

"How
do
you
intend to keep the bargain? Stop the war? Because I understand the Vladescus have no interest in the pact anymore."

The voice came from behind me. The familiar voice.

I spun around, knocking over my chair, to see Lucius Vladescu standing in the doorway, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest, a bitter smile on his face.

"Lucius." My heart stopped in my chest, and all the blood drained from my face. It was
Lucius.
Alive. Standing not twenty feet from me. How many times had I dreamed of seeing him again? Dreamed of touching him? How many times had those dreams nearly devastated me with their futility? But now, he was so close. . . .

His smile faded, as if he couldn't maintain his coolly ironic demeanor at the sight of me, and I heard him murmur, just faintly, "Antanasia . . ." In that one word, I perceived longing, relief, tenderness, eagerness. The same emotions I was experiencing. He hesitated, uncertain, one hand extended as though he might approach me.

"Lucius," I repeated, blinking at him, as the reality of his existence slowly sank in. "It's really you."

When I said that, Lucius's hand dropped to his side, and he regained his ironic smile. "Indeed, there is only one," he joked bitterly, all traces of tenderness fading. "And the world is better for it."

I began to run for him, then, nearly tripping over the train of my gown, wanted to hurl myself at him, tackle him, and kiss him again and again for the joy of seeing him. And then scream at him for lying to me and abandoning me. But then I saw his face up close, and I stopped short, in midstride.

"Lucius?"

It seemed as though he'd aged years in the few months we'd been apart. All vestiges of the American teenager were gone—and not just because he'd resumed wearing his tailored pants, his velvet jacket. His black hair was longer, drawn into a careless ponytail. His mouth was set more firmly. His shoulders had broadened. Stubble shadowed his usually clean-shaven jaw. And his eyes were blacker than ever, almost as if they had no soul behind them, animating them.

Behind me, the Dragomirs seemed frozen in place, to find their enemy in their midst.

"Security's a tad lax," Lucius noted. He pushed off from the door frame and strode past me into the room, not meeting my eyes, assessing the obviously timeworn furnishings with the same disdain he'd exhibited months ago in our farmhouse kitchen. Only this time, he seemed not just arrogant, in the innocent way of someone who's known nothing but privilege, but deliberately dismissive. "I was going to sign up for the tour," he added. "But I couldn't wait until ten a.m. to see you, Jessica."

I stared at him with a mixture of dismay and fury. He knew that using my American name was an insult in this place. And he was being so cold. "Don't speak to me like that," I told him. "It's cruel, and I know you are not cruel."

He still refused to meet my eyes, deliberately averting his gaze. "Am I not?"

"No." I moved toward him, refusing to let him control every moment of our meeting. This wasn't a high school dance, where he could assume the lead. He was in my family's home. Shaken as I was to see him so unexpectedly, to find him so altered, I would not be cowed, like my relatives behind me, quaking in their chairs. "You are not cruel, Lucius."

We were standing close to each other now, near enough that I could smell that aromatic, exotic cologne he'd gotten away from wearing sometime during his transformation into an American student. Lucius the warrior prince was back, in every aspect. Or so he wanted me to believe.

"Why did you come here?" Lucius asked me, softly so that my relatives would not hear. He still didn't meet my gaze. "You must leave, Jessica."

"No. No, Lucius, I won't."

He turned to me then, and there was a flash of misery—of humanity—in his eyes, but it was momentary, and he stepped around me, putting physical and emotional distance between us again. I could tell that he was struggling to keep his emotions in check. To keep me at arm's length. At least, I hoped he was struggling. The coldness, the distance: They seemed so real.

"You were watching my house," he noted, circling the table like a hawk looking for the rabbit that didn't have the good sense to stay still. As he passed behind each of my vampire relatives, they cowered visibly. I wished, desperately, that they'd stop doing that.

"How did you know?"

"It's wise, on the eve of a conflict, to stay alert," Lucius advised, voice growing even flintier as he talked of war, slipping into his role as a general. Slipping away from me. "Of course I have guards on the perimeter of my property. Your family pesters me endlessly, whining about the unfulfilled pact, claiming that I never wanted to share power . . . And the more they say that, the more I realize, Why share what I can take by force? I am not averse to a little spilled blood, if it achieves my ends."

"Lucius, you don't mean that."

"Yes, I do," Lucius said, placing his hands on the back of Dorin's chair. My uncle locked up with a full-body spasm. I knew he was terrified that Lucius would destroy him, right then and there, for bringing me to Romania. "Have you ever known me to jest about power, Dorin?"