Shadow Rising (26 page)

“And not everything is gray. He kills and steals for prestige and coin. Occasional moments of goodness don’t make him worthwhile.”

“He’s more than you think he is!”

“And far less than
you
seem to think he is,” Sam replied, turning his head to stare at the small, dancing flame of the candle. “He is not worthy of you. You will not change my mind.”

Ariane flushed with anger and embarrassment. Sam knew. Of course he did. She had always been as transparent as glass. But now, after everything, for him to treat her like a child… she refused to listen to it. As much as she had looked up to him, there were some things about her, about people, that he was never going to understand.

“At least he’s stuck by me,” she said quietly. Sam said nothing, continuing to watch the flame. His silence, and the distance in his expression, brought her deepest fear, the thing that had plagued her every night since he’d vanished, to her lips at last. “You were all I had there, all those years. And you still left me there without saying a word. Do you… do you not care about me at all?”

Sam returned his gaze to her, his eyes full of some strong, unfathomable emotion, then said, “Ariane.
D’akara
. How can you even ask? I value you more than my duty. More than my own life.” He reached out, the gesture strangely tentative for him, and brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “The others considered you my failing. The one instance I could not allow fate to take its course. But I have never been
sorry for my actions that night. You are the only one of my blood. A strange turn of fate that I should look at you not as a warrior, but as my child.”

Everything inside of her went still. She could only manage a single word, but it was the only important one.

“You?”

He nodded. “I sired you, Ariane. The others let you live, thinking to have you be a constant reminder of what weakness can bring. To be my shame. But instead, you brought me the only light I have known in ages. I have guarded you as best I could.”

To hear the words, to know at last, brought her a kind of peace Ariane hadn’t thought she would ever experience. All the years of doubt, all the petty cruelties she had endured, ceased to matter. Whatever lies had been told, one thing, the thing she had counted on, had been real.

Sam had loved her. And she knew for certain that his love had kept her from the emptiness that would have consumed her long ago had he turned away. She slid her hand on top of his, finally understanding the bond between them. He was the closest thing to a father she had. And she knew there was one more thing he could give her.

“Who am I?” she asked softly. “Who was I?”

At first, she wasn’t sure he would answer. But after a moment, he began to speak, his sonorous voice seeming to fill the room despite how quietly he spoke.

“Your village was burning, sacked by a band of Normans who wanted to take what and who they could before moving on. My brothers and I had been in the country often, watching the upheaval, the transition. Looking for signs of… well, that hardly matters now.
He
was not there. But you were.”

After centuries of nothing but blackness in the place where her human memory should have been, Sam’s words stirred up voices and visions that began to whisper to her, as though she had needed nothing more than his admission to revive her past. She shivered, her skin going ice cold. It was like being whispered to from the grave.

“Are you sure you want to know? Sometimes the forgetting is a blessing, Ariane.”

She nodded, though she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill. “I need to know.”

“Very well,” he said, his voice laced with regret. “Here. I should have given this to you long ago.”

Sam’s fingertips were warm when they pressed against her forehead. Immediately, her eyes slipped shut as some sort of force passed through Sam and into her. It rippled through her body, lighting her up inside. Colors and sounds rose and swirled. And beneath all of it, she heard Sam’s voice.

“You should have been dead. Your family, your siblings already were. Your home was aflame, and the soldiers had dragged you outside…”

At his words, images, terrible images sparked to life. And she remembered it all, in a series of hideous flashes that hit her like punches. From the silent dark of her memory came the screams, the terror on her younger brothers’ and sisters’ faces when the men had come. It had happened so quickly she’d had no time to get them away, and her father, standing for them, was cut down so quickly. They had pulled her outside before she had seen what happened to them, but she’d heard their cries, wailing her name.

And then there had been fists and rough hands… tearing and grabbing…

She curled over in pain as the memories slammed into her one after the other, each more nauseating than the last. Her family. They had killed her family, even the little ones.

“I was called Anne,” she gasped out. “I remember their voices, calling for me.”

“I came upon you as you ran a man through with his own dagger,” Sam said, his voice sounding far away. “Such a will to live, though you were so badly beaten. The others would have savaged you worse for his death, though they never had any intention of leaving you alive. You looked at me.” He stopped, and there was a faint wonder in his voice when he began again. “You looked at me where I stood in the shadows, and for the first time, I could not walk away. So much fight in you, but so much pain. So much love. Everything we were forbidden, everything I had held in contempt… and yet it drew me as nothing had before. So I took you. And the blood took your memories, because I willed it so.”

She could see nothing but the faces of her family, so long hidden. Her father, his weathered face smiling in the sun. Braiding her sisters’ hair while they giggled and told each other stories. Holding her youngest brother in her arms when he’d awakened from a nightmare about their mother, who had already passed in the birthing of a stillborn child. It had been a hard life. But it had been full of love.

Was it any wonder that she had so keenly felt its absence ever since, even without knowing what it was she’d missed?

Slowly, she opened her eyes. The past vanished, and there was nothing but Sam, just as he had always been. Strong. Solid. Real. He lifted his hand to her face again,
this time to wipe away the tears she hadn’t realized were streaming down her cheeks. There was pain in Sam’s eyes, the first she had ever seen there.

“I am sorry, Ariane.”

“For saving me?” she asked as her tears flowed freely for the first time in this life.

“No,” Sam said. “For all your loss. I gave you new life, a new name, but I could give back nothing you really needed. I think… I had grown lonely. I’m so very much older than you know. To be in the world and never of it wears on a soul, even one as endless as mine.”

She smiled despite the tears, gave his hand a small squeeze. Finally, she thought she understood.

“No,” she said. “No apologies. You did the best you could with what you had, Sam. It was more than enough. I’m glad you found me. I’m glad it was you.”

His smile was warm and full of the love she knew was there even if he might never be able to use the word.

And now she realized why he had called for her. He needed her help.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Ariane said. “Whatever you need, I want to help set things right.”

Sam’s relief was palpable. “Thank you, Ariane. Lucan sleeps too deeply. I don’t know if he will wake again. If he does, it won’t be in time. I don’t want to risk you, but you have the strength, and I have no choice. The longer our kind hides Chaos, the deeper the rot he creates. It took me too long to see it. What we have done—all the souls we have given him to keep him just sated enough, sleeping—it poisons us, until we are not his keepers but his agents. Unless things change, the Grigori will not prevent the Rising. We will enable it.”

“So we start with Sariel,” Ariane said. She thought of the big, unyielding warrior and hoped Sam had a very, very good plan.

“You will expose him to the others. And I will try to sway the rest of the ancients in his absence. This Council meeting provides an opportunity I had barely hoped to have.”

She stared at him. “You want me to tell the leaders what he’s done? Why would they listen? I’m no dynasty leader. And he’ll be right there!”

“You are far safer in the midst of the strength of the dynasty heads. I won’t pretend there is no danger, Ariane. But if there is any way to destroy Chaos—and even now, I don’t know if it’s possible—it will take the combined strength of the dynasties. Sariel will never allow even an attempt at that. Chaos whispers to him, as he does to all of us when we are near him. I don’t know how long Sariel has been listening. All I know is that Chaos’s hunger has grown, and there has been no attempt to check it. Sariel is not himself.” He sighed. “But then, he was closest to Chaos before he fell. When he was one of us. Perhaps he mocked my weakness because he feared his own.”

“One of us?” Ariane asked.

“Chaos was an ancient once. He was Grigori. He is our brother.”

Stunned into silence, Ariane watched Sam sink back into the pillows, weakening before her eyes. They had been talking for some time, she realized… longer, probably, than he should have. She now knew that a wounded wing was a graver injury than it appeared. And if he—if
they
—were going to have any chance at pulling the Grigori’s dark secret out into the light without Sariel stopping
them first, she needed to let him sleep. There were some things that only the deepest sleep could heal.

“Rest now,” Ariane said gently. “We’ve talked enough. Everything else can wait for tomorrow.”

She had a great deal to think about, to plan. And, she realized with a sudden pang, she would have to find a way to tell Damien.

He inclined his head faintly. “Yes. I believe… that is best.” His eyes began to slip shut. “We’ll have to make preparations… tomorrow night…”

His voice faded away as his eyes closed completely. Ariane sat on the bed beside him, watching each slow breath. For so long, every day had been the same. And then she’d left, and it had been one change after another. Finding a place. Friends. Damien…

And now this. She’d spent centuries waiting for a chance to prove herself, to
matter
. It didn’t get much more important than removing her dynasty’s leader in order to take on a chained up, soul-eating demon that he happened to be related to.

With Sam behind her, she felt almost no hesitation. Except…

Ariane sighed and rose from the bed, walking toward one of the tall windows. There was no moon tonight, but the dark sky drew her nonetheless.

Even with everything Sam had revealed, her thoughts kept returning to Damien. What he would think? How he would feel? Maybe he would be relieved that she’d found something to do with herself that didn’t involve him. Maybe he would be happy to get back to his life, to be free.

Or maybe… he would care enough to stay?

By the darkened window, Ariane finally let herself wish it, finally accepted that the one thing she really wanted, even when presented with a world full of wondrous options, was simply to have Damien by her side. He was ridiculously imperfect and would probably never behave himself. He might never want a home beyond his rarely visited apartment. He might not even want her.

None of it mattered to her but the last.

Because she loved him.

The truth, so simple, shook her to the core. And it terrified her as nothing ever had, not even that final leap into the desert sky. Damien was damaged and difficult and scarred. But he had brought a color and life to her existence unlike anything she’d known before. He professed to be a liar, but with her, he had been brutally honest about his strengths and his flaws. More, he accepted her own.

Behind the shield he carried, Damien was warm, funny, surprisingly loyal… and lonely.

She understood what loneliness could do.

Ariane wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, though the night was warm. So much to think about, and so little time. She needed to find the right words before she went to Damien.

But right now, words failed.

All she had was the truth:
Come with me. Don’t leave me. I love you.

And the lingering fear, in the deepest part of her soul, that no matter how much she’d gained, nothing she could offer would ever be quite enough.

chapter
TWENTY

H
E WASN’T GOING
to look for her.

She’d gotten what she was after. Her large and frightening friend was safe, she was in a place where further attacks by Grigori hunters were unlikely, and from the look of things, she would soon have plenty more problems to contend with to keep her busy. Grigori problems, highblood problems… not his.

And yet as the night drew closer to morning and the vampires of the manor retired to their respective quarters to relax, Damien couldn’t seem to settle himself. Finally, rising from a comfortable chair in an uncomfortably empty room with a muttered curse, he set off to find Ariane.

He refused to let himself be disturbed by the fact that he knew, almost at once, that she wasn’t in the house at all. So what if he’d gotten used to her scent, the very feel of her presence? They’d been together a lot. And besides, it wasn’t unusual to want to think out in the open air. He did it often himself.

Within moments of stepping outside and shifting into a large, sleek cat, he’d nosed her out. She hadn’t gone far. Damien reached her quickly, moving fast and silent on four feet until she came into view, hidden in the peaceful silence of the local graveyard.

He hadn’t intended to lurk, but when he saw her, Damien had to stop, just for a moment, to drink in the picture she presented.

Ariane was perched atop a massive old marble headstone, her knees drawn into her chest, wings draping down behind her. To human eyes, she would have appeared just a part of the stone. But Damien could smell her, could see the shimmer of her pale hair in the darkness. He crouched beneath a tree nearby, blending with shadow as he watched her.