Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3) (19 page)

This time I waited for a response, sinking my teeth into my lower lip to keep from blurting out anything else just to combat the nervous fear that danced around my lingering migraine. Weston fought down his anger, folding his arms loosely and observing me for a short time, before turning to the window again in an impression of feigned nonchalance.

“The Director is chosen by a majority vote,” he informed me evenly. “Everyone in the Klovoda is expected to appoint a favourite. My opinion will be called upon in the event of an even vote.”

He turned his eyes back to me as he finished, the expression in them expectant. He actually seemed to
want
me to conclude my theory.

“You don’t think Yas will be chosen,” I mused out loud. “You think it will be someone who doesn’t agree with you, so if I am ever taken to the Klovoda, you feel that
you
need to be the one bringing me there. You would never have allowed me to make contact with them on my own; my business with them is a convenient way for you to assert your claim over me. You want them to acknowledge that I am
your
test subject, not theirs.”

The expectant look in his eyes remained, though there was now a spark of appreciation. His mouth hooked up and he tilted his head forward, a silent acknowledgement.

“That means…” I spluttered out the words as the epiphany crashed into me. “That’s why your sons refused to let me meet with the Klovoda! They knew that you were only allowing me to stay with them because I
hadn’t
tried meeting with the Klovoda.”

Weston still refused to give me any vocal confirmations, but his body language remained open and honest, clearly admiring of my deductions so far. I really
was
important to Weston, but it didn’t entirely make sense to me. I found myself thinking about the conversation that I had overheard between him and Kingsling while locked in Kingsling’s basement, since that was the first time I had really begun to gain an understanding of how important Weston assumed me to be.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Dominic. I’m still the Voda, and I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. You need to release the girl. We agreed that we wouldn’t force her. She needs to be properly taught and integrated, like the others—not tested and tortured. Do you really think that she will help us now, after what you’ve done to her?”

“Frankly, I don’t care what she does,” Kingsling replied, sounding casual. “I don’t see why we need her, when we have the others. Can’t three of them be enough? We never expected
any
of them to survive, we hardly need four of them. Leave the girl to me, let me experiment on her.”

“She was always the strongest of the four. I’ve had my eye on her for a long time, and you know it.
She
is my choice.
She
will be the one to save us.”

“How…” I began, rolling the words around inside my head before I released them. “How… am I supposed to save you?”

He burst into a short, astounded laugh, slapping his hand against his knee. “You’re something, Seraph Black. You really are. I always knew it, but sitting here and seeing it play out the way I always imagined…” he shook his head, a wry smile settling about his lips. “You’re going to save us because you won’t be able to help yourself. I’ll bet that nobody ever explained this to you, but as Atmás, our powers directly influence our personalities, our preferences, our future.
My
power is the ability to control people, so that’s who I am now: I’m a manipulator. I’m driven to control people and outcomes. Your power is very specific… it’s a weapon, as we intended it to be… but you can also use it to heal people, which was a surprise to me. That means that you’ll be an instinctive, and a
fierce
protector. I won’t even need to tell you to do anything, you’ll do it all yourself.”

I scoffed a little bit. “I see what you’re saying; you really
do
think you’re some kind of master puppeteer.”

“If the shoe fits.” Weston’s tone was bland, showing no outward reaction to my insult.

I intentionally mirrored his pose, loosely crossing my arms low over my chest and parting my knees to better brace my feet against the floor of the limousine. I straightened out my shoulders and tilted up my chin, guarding my eyes and my nervous heart against his manipulation. Though in truth… some small part of me whispered that he was right. I only ever used the valcrick to protect or heal, and it had never even occurred to me that it could be used for any other purpose. I was
capable
of using it in other ways, but it wasn’t a natural thing for me; it was something that demanded a lot of concentration and delicacy. I had used it to hurt people, without a doubt… but that had only ever been to prevent harm from being done to myself, or to other people around me. It had never even occurred to me to use the valcrick for
fun
, or to get something that I wanted.

And what about the forecasting? If Weston was right… how would
that
influence me?

“Did anyone ever warn you about the perils of creation, Weston?” I asked solemnly, pushing away my private concerns.

I was lucky that he hadn’t yet attempted to touch me and draw on my thoughts, but I wasn’t going to push that luck. I assumed that the best way to prevent him from trying to read my mind would be to keep openly
speaking
my mind.

He rolled his eyes a little. “Are you going to revolt on me, little creation?”

“I’ll tell you a story. Just a little story, so that you understand the consequences of what you’re doing and what you’ve already done, since you seem to think that you’re exempt from the natural order of things. There are many creators in the world: from those who tend to their gardens and bake in their kitchens, to those who build and paint and sing. There isn’t any doubt that these people create, but there
is
speculation about the quality, the
rightness
of their creations. The one thing a creator must always learn is that, while living things
can
be controlled, the outcome of those manipulations cannot be. You can bend people and force people and manipulate them as much as you want, but you can’t control the result; or the resulting person. That isn’t in your power. Maybe you think torturing your son is a good way to determine who is bonded to him, but by torturing him, you created a person who doesn’t care about consequences when it comes to himself.

“Now, because of you, there isn’t much that Silas
won’t
do, to protect the people he cares about—especially from you. If he cares at all about his Atmá, you can be sure that he will die trying to keep her away from you: that’s on you, Weston. That’s your fault.”

He pulled a deep breath into his lungs as I finished talking, his chest expanding and his eyes narrowing. For a moment, I was afraid that I had said too much, but eventually, he leaned forward, resting his forearms over his knees.

“There isn’t anything that you can tell me about Silas that I don’t already know, Miss Black. But
you
… you’re a different story. Do you think I’m creating a monster out of you, hmm? Is that it?”

I stopped to think about it, but found that it was almost impossible to be that objective about myself. I simply didn’t know. I didn’t know whether I had been changed beyond repair by all of Weston’s games, and I didn’t know if any of the changes were good or not. I also didn’t know what to attribute to Weston, and what to attribute to the messenger.

“What do you expect me to do, Weston?” I was suddenly very tired. “I left your sons, they can’t keep me away from you anymore, I went to the Komnata, I’ve done everything you asked, and with a bomb around my neck no less. So, what do you want?”

“
What
?” He made to shoot off the seat before remembering that he was in a car, resulting in him perching on the very edge, tension lining his limbs. “What
bomb
?”

I sat back and ran my fingers over the collar, lighting up the word. “My stalker is back. He told me to get out of Maple Falls.”

Weston frowned, sitting back in his seat. He was looking right at my collar, but I had a feeling that he had slipped into thoughts of something beyond us.

“The Klovoda have had agents attempting to track this person down for months now,” he admitted, narrowing his eyes even more. “It’s almost as though he doesn’t actually exist.”

“He does,” I insisted. “He’s…” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Weston that the messenger was my twin, but if there was one thing that I had learned in the last year, it was to keep my secrets to myself unless I was sure of their reception. “He’s… very real,” I said instead.

Weston continued frowning, but eventually he pulled his phone out and dialed a number.

“Jack? We need you for something…”

I turned my head into my hands as Weston spoke, my headache returning with a vicious shove that almost knocked me back into the seat. I gathered from the conversation that Jack’s Atmá power could somehow help with preventing my head from going
boom
, but I was finding it hard to concentrate on eavesdropping properly. Weston must have understood that my headache was back, for he didn’t resume our conversation after his phone call. We drove the rest of the way in silence, pulling off the main roads into sprawling country lanes as the civilisation around us seemed to fade away once again. I was now convinced that the Klovoda or Weston bought up the plots of land surrounding their most important landmarks so that they could enjoy seclusion.

We stopped at no less than six gates, looking as harmless as simple fences or property lines—though there just
happened
to be a man standing at each of the gates, ready to unlock it for us, and I knew that they were less than harmless. They wore simple clothing, and had a chair often tucked nearby, with a pack hung over the back. I wondered where they were hiding their weapons. After the sixth gate, I caught sight of something poking into the sky, and I shuffled over to the window, squinting at it in the darkness. It was dimly lit-up, a glow emanating from some kind of towering spire. A bulky silhouette separated itself from the dark horizon, forming great big stone walls and house-dotted streets winding up the hill to the tall structure in the middle.

“Le Château de Duke Gabriel,” Weston informed me, his eyes on me instead of the shapes forming on the horizon. “Built by the original Materialist—though it was only what remains in the heart of what you see now, as many Materialists over the years have added to it. The original Materialist was French, and missed his home, so he decided to bring a little of France to America. He named it after the Voda—”

“Duke Gabriel?”

“Of course… back then, there was no Klovoda, only the Voda and his people. They called him a Duke, after the first duke in a peerage of the British Isles was named in 1337. They liked that title, because it was derived from the Latin
dux
, meaning leader; and that’s what the Voda was: a leader. They changed it much later when a Bosnian Voda, who was also a Seer, predicted the decline of the British Aristocracy. He instated a council to help with his task of leading the Zevghéri people, and named them after the Bosnian word for ringleader,
kolovoda.
That was when he abandoned the title of Duke, and took on the title of Voda.”

I finally turned my eyes from the castle to blink at Weston. It was strange to think that the Zevs had a history, though I had been made aware of it before. I wondered what the previous Vodas would think of Weston. Or… perhaps even what they would think of
me
. The secret heir to everything.

“Are you the only one that lives there?” I asked, disbelief tinging my voice. The property could have encompassed an entire town.

Weston laughed, but I thought I heard a tinge of sadness in the sound.

“It’s just me, and close to thirty housekeepers and grounds-staff.”

I pushed the feeling of pity from my heart, because Weston wasn’t actually cast off into solitude. Close to thirty housekeepers and grounds-staff was more than enough to keep any person company; if Weston ignored them out of some stupid idea of status, that was his fault.

The limousine stopped at a gatehouse, where an inner courtyard housed another two limousines, and several more luxury vehicles. Perhaps I would drive a beat-up Nissan for the rest of my life just to spite the car-loving Zevghéri population. I followed Weston out of the car and caught sight of his driver for the first time, as the older man parked the limousine and got into a compact, black Audi. I came to the conclusion that the limousine wasn’t exactly suitable for climbing the steep, narrow streets of
Le Château de Duke-Gabriel
just as Weston opened the back door of the Audi and motioned for me to get in. I wasn’t comfortable sitting in such close quarters with him, so I ignored the offered seat and hurried around to the front passenger door, sitting beside the driver. The older man looked over at me, smiling slightly, and Weston climbed into the car with a sigh.