Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (47 page)

My uncle said nothing.

Lucius leaned close, speaking right into Dorin's ear. "I shall deal with you later for defying me and bringing her here."

"Step away from him," I ordered. "You're here to see me. Don't torment my family in our own home."

Lucius surveyed the room again. "When all this is mine, I shall have to make some serious changes. Giving tours. It shames all of vampiredom!"

I stared at him, refusing to become visibly upset or tearful, even, over just how callous he was acting. The Lucius before me was even icier and more inaccessible than he'd been after Vasile had ordered him beaten so severely.
Lucius. . . where is
my
Lucius?

"I want you to leave now, Lucius," I told him, deliberately calm. "I won't talk with you when you're like this."

He arched his eyebrows. "Is this not the reunion you hoped for, Jessica? Is this not what you came thousands of miles for? Are you disappointed to find your family weak—and your former betrothed more despicable than ever?"

"You can't make me hate you," I said. "No matter how hard you try. I know what you're doing. I know you're trying to drive me away from you. You think you're beyond redemption because you destroyed Vasile. You're convinced that you're just like him—or worse because you betrayed your family. But you're not like Vasile." I dared to stroke his arm. "I know you."

Lucius pulled away. "Do not touch me like that, Antanasia!"

"Why not?" I asked, dropping my voice so my family would not hear. "Because you're afraid that you'll lose control, like you did in my bedroom back home?"

"No," he countered. "Because I fear that I shall lose control as I did with my uncle."

"Lucius, you had to do that."

When I said that, his eyes shifted, and he glanced at my relatives, still sitting in unsettled silence, staring at our exchange. "Come with me." He clasped my elbow in his firm hand and led me across the room, out of earshot of my family. "We speak of private things in front of others. It is not right."

We stopped in front of the fireplace, and the firelight cast soft, flickering shadows across Lucius's face, making him look younger again. I nearly reached out to touch his cheek. But his eyes were still too distant. Too black. "I shall tell you this, and then you shall pack your bags and go home, Jessica."

“I m not going—“

"You think you know me," he spoke over my objection, still clutching my arm, fingers digging in. "For some reason, although I clearly abandoned you, although I obviously wanted you to think that I was gone ... in spite of this, you cling to some desperate hope that there is a future for us. It is time I disavow you of that, once and for all, because we are no longer in civilized Pennsylvania, attending high school, playing at war on a basketball court. This
is
a war, Jessica."

"It doesn't have to be, Lucius. I know you love me."

"The Vladescus never acted in good faith, Jessica," Lucius continued, his mouth a grim line. "We had a plan. For you."

"A . . . plan?"

"Yes. I was to win you over, marry you—innocent as you were, an American teenager ignorant of vampire culture—and bring you back to Romania. The pact fulfilled, we would have waited a reasonable time, until none could accuse the Vladescus of violating our part of the obligation—"

"And then?"
I already know.

Lucius stared deep into my eyes. "And then we would have discreetly dispatched you. In secret. Acting as though we mourned your loss, but quietly pleased to have the last, inconvenient Dragomir princess out of the way."

"No, Lucius." I shook my head, horrified. I wouldn't believe it. "You wouldn't have done that."

"Oh, Antanasia. You are still so absurdly innocent. Do you think the Vladescus ever intended to share their sovereignty with an enemy?"

No. Of course they hadn't.
"How . . . how was it supposed to happen?"

"I was not privy to those details," Lucius said. "But perhaps by my hand ... I would have had so many opportunities, alone with you in our castle."

No, Lucius, not you.

He gazed into the fire. "It was so perfect for us, that you had been raised in America. In their attempt to keep you safe, the Dragomirs actually doomed you. A true vampire princess would have understood the risks of marrying me. She could have protected herself, remained always alert. But you, you would have come with me willingly, never even suspecting . . ."

I took a ragged breath, forcing myself not to cry out, cognizant of my family not far away. They were watching. I had to maintain my composure, although betrayal ripped through me. "You knew all this when you came to my parents' home? When you
lived
with us? When you
kissed me?"

Lucius, too, was aware of our audience. The misery that had seeped into his eyes was not reflected in his regal posture. "Oh, Antanasia . . . when did I know? From the beginning? Only toward the end? I am not sure. Perhaps I was innocent myself at first. Or perhaps I just deceived myself, not wanting to see the truth. But there came a time, yes, before I kissed you, when I knew that I was complicit."

I choked back a sob, swallowing it down hard, keeping my shoulders straight. "I don't believe you."

"Does it not make sense, Antanasia?" He glanced to my family. "Look at them. The Dragomirs are diminished. Vasile could have duped them easily and controlled them without the loss of a single Vladescu. Without a war. The only blood shed would have been yours. You were to be sacrificed in the interest of Vasile's little coup."

"That was Vasile's idea," I pointed out, desperate not to believe Lucius capable of destroying
me. He cared for me. I felt it in his kiss, seen it in his eyes. But he's dangerous, Jessica. He doesn't want to be a Vladescu, but perhaps he always will be.
"This was
Vasile's plan,"
I repeated. "Not yours."

"And when I saw the whole scheme in its entirety, I was thrilled by its simple brilliance. Does that sicken you, Jessica? Because it should."

"You wouldn't have destroyed me, Lucius," I insisted. "You love me. I know you do."

Lucius shook his head. "Only enough to tell you that I would have destroyed you. That is as much as I can give. Now go home, Jessica. Go home and despise me. I had hoped to leave you with a happier memory of me. But you have come here, and now I cannot even do that."

"I won't leave, Lucius. If only for my family. The Dragomirs need me."

"No, Antanasia. You give them nothing but false hope. Look at you." His gaze traveled up and down the length of my body, and again his eyes came to life, this time with deep admiration. Admiration I'd seen there before. "You are beautiful. Amazing.
Inspiring.
They will fight harder, to think that they do so for their returned princess. To think, foolishly, that you have been wronged by the failure of the pact—when in fact I saved your life by breaking the pact. They will go on believing that they have been cheated out of peace and shared power, and they will rally to fight for you. But in the end, the Vlades-cus will prevail. Do not prolong their agony or increase their losses."

"They are already angry," I pointed out. "I can't change that. They want a war, too, unless the pact is fulfilled."

"If you tell them to yield to me, they will," Lucius pointed out. "You are their leader. Tell them to submit to me, and then go home."

I hesitated for a moment, considering his one-sided bargain. If I told my family to yield, perhaps they really would. I
was
their leader. I could save lives. I fingered the bloodstone at my throat, hearing my birth mother.
Don't do it, Antanasia. . . . Don't make your first act one of submission, even to Lucius. Especially, now, to Lucius. . .

"No," I said firmly. "You
did
destroy the pact, you are to blame for ruining the peace, and the Dragomirs will not kneel before a ... a bully."

Lucius smiled at that, a small shadow of his old mocking smile. "Is that what you think me to be, Jessica? That I am a bully, like pathetic Frank Dormand?"

"You're worse," I said.

His smile grew sad. "Indeed I am. Frank, for all his faults, for all his small cruelties, never even dreamed of
destroying a
woman as magnificent as you."

I was still struggling to find the right words to reply when Lucius turned on his heel and left us.

Chapter
63

AFTER MY FAMILY departed, none of us having even touched the feast that had been carefully prepared to celebrate my return, I retreated to my room, where I sat for several hours, pulling a chair up to the leaded windows, just staring into the darkness. I couldn't even think about sleeping.

What can I do to save my family? To save Lucius? Can I still save Lucius
—
or is he really beyond redemption, as he believed?

Outside, a wolf howled in the mountains. I had never heard a live wolf cry out before, only in movies or on TV, and the sound, carrying across the wilderness, was so mournful that it nearly made me cry. Everything about my trip was summed up by that miserable, beautiful, poignant sound. Lucius was alive—but he might as well have been gone. My heart still ached, perhaps more, because I had entertained such high hopes for our reunion. Lucius had been right. It had not gone as planned. I was devastated to find him so changed.

And the revelation about the plot to destroy me .. . that had shaken me to the core. Yet I didn't believe that Lucius had been complicit, as he'd said. The plan was Vasile's strategy. Perhaps there had been a time when Lucius, twisted and nearly crushed under Vasile's thumb, would have been capable of entertaining the possibility of such a dark act. But he'd changed in the United States. As he'd said himself, he'd seen a new way. He had told me,
"For my children, it could have been different
..."

I also recalled his words earlier that very evening.
"I saved your life by breaking the pact."

By refusing to honor the clans' agreement, Lucius had actively striven to save me from Vasile's scheme, willingly risking his own life. He had known that Vasile would try to destroy him for insubordination.

Lucius would always protect me.

For all my parents' warnings about the Vladescus' ruthless-ness, for all Lucius's own vehement assertions that he was dangerous to me, I knew differently.

But how could I make
Lucius
believe that he would never do me harm? That we still belonged—and would always belong—together?

There were no answers in the blackness outside the window, so I rose from my seat and opened my suitcase to unpack.
At the very least, I will not run home, as Lucius desired.

As I unfolded my clothes, my copy of
Growing Up Undead,
which I'd tucked in at the last minute, tumbled to the floor. Picking it up, I thought back to the day I'd discovered the manual near my bedroom door, Lucius's bookmark gleaming in the morning sun. I'd hated the gift, then. But Lucius had been right. In spite of its cloying tone, the book had been a good guide through a confusing time. An accurate resource. Almost like a confidante, when there'd been no one else with whom I could discuss the changes taking place in my body, my life. Sitting on the bed, I opened to the final chapter, which I'd purposely overlooked as my feelings for Lucius had grown stronger and stronger.