Lies in Blood (62 page)

He brushed his collar. “All in a day’s work.”

“
Now, come on.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him from the room. “We need to hurry.”

“
More for Quaid’s sake than our own. If Falcon sees him, Ara—” He motioned behind us to the lump of a guard on the ground.

“
I know.” I stopped right outside Arthur’s door, momentarily reconsidering this. “I don’t wanna get anyone in trouble.”

“
Well, there’s no sense in turning back now, sweet girl. Let’s just get it over with.”

“
You’re right.” I reached out to touch Arthur’s door handle, but stopped. “He’s not an early riser is he?”

Jase laughed breathily. “Most days, yeah.”

“
Great,” I said nervously. “Well, I’ll turn the handle, and you put him out as soon as the door’s open.”

“Okay. One . . . two. . .”

“
Three.” I pushed the door open and readied myself for Arthur to look up and ask what we were doing, but he was sound asleep in his bed, just a pile of blankets and pillows: snoring blankets and pillows. I shut the door behind Jase and I. “He snores?”

Jase just laughed. “Yeah.”

“
Wow. Who’d have thought?”

“Nah, wait for it.” He grabbed my wrist and stopped me. “Just wait . . . about . . . two seconds.”

I waited and, there it was: a deep, thundering roll of a sound like a handful of pebbles had been thrown down the back of Arthur’s throat. It peaked to a high whistle, his breath stopping for a second. And I held my own, pausing until his started again, hissing out of him like the deep groan of an angry cat.

Jase and I burst out laughing. I covered my nose with the back of my wrist so I wouldn’t snot all over the place. “I have got to stop laughing through my nose.”

“
Want a wipe?” He offered his sleeve.

I bumped it away. “I’m fine. Let’s just find this dagger.”

“
Okay.” Jase turned all business. “I’ll get inside Arthur’s head while you get the fake.”

“Right.” I nodded and tiptoed off to Arthur’s dresser drawer, slowly and quietly pulling it open while Jason positioned himself on the bed, placing both hands to his uncle’s head. The dagger was there, in its box, just where Arthur had left it—open to any who might want to get their hands on it. I was certain it was the fake. “How’s the hunt going?” I asked, stuffing the box under my shirt.

“
I—” He squinted. “Just gimme a sec.”

I huffed a little impatiently, looking around the room. The sun was peeking over the hills outside, bringing the dawn and all that came with it. The Guard would change over soon, and if we hadn’t finished our mission and climbed back into bed by then, someone would come along and find six men sleeping in the corridor.

“
Ara?” Jase said, but he sounded kind of nervous. “You’ve got it.”

“
Got what?”

He pulled his hands away from Arthur’s head and looked at me, then at the lump under my shirt. “That’s the real dagger.”

“
What?”

“
I’m not kidding.” He appeared by Arthur’s long oak table and waved me over. “Lay it out here. I wanna see it.”

I drew the box out from under my shirt and handed it to Jason. “Are you sure it’s the real one?”

“
As sure as the sun will rise,” he said, thumbing the lid open.

“
How can you tell?”

“
Because there is no fake.”

“
You’re kidding?”

“
Nope.” He grinned, closing the box again.

I looked back at Arthur. “That cheeky devil.”

Jase just nodded. “He’s pretty clever. I did wonder how he had time to forge a fake.”

“
It wouldn't have surprised me either way.”

“
Well—” He tucked the box under his arm. “Best we get this somewhere safe.”

“
Any ideas?”

“
In plain sight.”

“
Where in plain sight?”

“
The weapons room.”

I nodded. “Good idea.”

It was still dark down this end of the island, the sun hidden behind the tops of the trees, leaving the shelves, the rows of swords in stands, and the shields lined up around the space all shadowed and grey. The guard on duty had fallen asleep at his post before we even got here, so sneaking in hadn’t been tricky at all. Knowing where to put the dagger, however, wasn’t as easy.

“
So much heartache over such an ordinary blade,” I said absently, running my fingers along the jewelled handle.

Jase reached down from the towering shelf he was climbing. “Pass it up.”

As I went to close the lid, though, a small corner of yellowing paper caught my eye. “Wait.”

“
Ara, I’m hanging on with one finger right now.”

“Well, just . . . hang on for longer,” I said playfully and put the box down again, ignoring Jase’s sigh as I dug the frayed parchment out from under the velvet lining.

“
What is it, Ara?”

“
I—” I read it for a second. “Oh, it’s just the page describing how to use the dagger.”

“
Wait.” He showed a flat palm. “Don’t put it back in. I wanna see it.”

“
Okay.” I tucked the page into my jeans pocket and closed the box, tossing it all the way up to Jase.

He caught it awkwardly between his chest and the side of his forearm, then reached both hands up to the very top of the shelf, shifting and shoving things aside until he dropped back to the ground with a graceful bend of knees, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “All done.”

“
Great. And no one will know it’s up there?”

“
Not unless they take inventory.”

“
Good.” I grinned.

“
Show me the page.”

“
Oh. Um—” I pulled it from my pocket and handed it to Jase.

He scanned the symbols slowly, his lips closing, eyes getting smaller and smaller. “I need light.”

“
Jase?” I whispered in a kind of loud voice. “What are you doing? We need to get out of here.”

“
I can’t see properly, but—” He laid the page on the table and waved his phone over it, lighting the up the small space around us. “This isn’t right.”

“
What’s not?”

“
This ink. It doesn’t match the date on the parchment.”

“
What do you mean?” I spun the page around so I could see.

“
Look.” He pointed to a weirdly shaped letter. “To the average vampire, this is just an ordinary document, but to my expert eye, this symbol, which indicates the text was written at some point in the fifteen-hundreds, doesn’t match the age of the ink. This ink—” He licked his thumb and rubbed the corner of the page a few times. “It’s less than ten years old.”

“
How do you know that? Wait—” I put both hands up. “Don’t tell me. I probably don’t want the lengthy explanation.”

He touched my arm softly. “Let’s just say it has a lot to do with pigment.”

“So, what does that mean—if this document is a forgery?”

He stood straight again slowly. “I’m not sure.”

“
Do you think maybe the dagger isn’t what we think it is?”

“
Anything could be possible.”

“
But, wouldn’t Arthur have known the document was forged?”

“
No.” He laughed and folded the page up, handing it back to me. “It’s just not his area of expertise.”

I smirked, catching the swagger in his tone. “Oh, big-noting yourself, huh?”

“
Big-noting?”

“Urm, yeah, it means . . . like, to boastfully exaggerate your own worth.”

His lips turned down with thought. “Well, I am pretty darn clever.”

I wrapped my arm around his waist and we wandered out of the weapons room. “Yeah, even
I
have to admit that.”

***

Quaid walked me all the way down to the secret garden, giving tips on how to swing my sword and position my feet, stating that I didn’t really need to practice privately because I was a better ‘swordsmen’—his words—than any of the men in the Core. And I knew that, but the ‘private’ practice was merely a clever cover.

I farewelled him, asking him to wait outside in case I ‘cut’ myself, and pushed the heavy door to the Garden of Lilith open, holding my breath the whole time.

The door closed with an eerie echo, sealing me in, and a dark figure showed itself, his familiar black cloak brushing the ground as he stood and cast his gaze upon me. I stopped to take him in: his short dark hair, set in thick, wavy locks around his face; his pale skin, so youthful it was almost painful to look at, and then there was his eyes: the cobblestone path under me led the way in pale blues and creams to his feet, the grey bark of leafy green trees behind him creating a backdrop of nature’s pleasantries, all lit warmly by the golden rays of the midday sun, making the water in the fountain beside him sparkle—but none of it compared to the brilliant blue of his eyes, how they drew me into him without need for footsteps, leading us face to face, as if our eyes had locked but an inch away.

“
Amara,” he said, bowing his head.

I snapped back into myself then, noticing the sudden distance that lay between us. “Hello, Drake.”

“
Please—” He turned and offered the small white garden table behind him. “Take a seat.”

“
Of course.” I nodded to wake myself up, readjusting Nhym in her belt as I walked. Brown boots over shadow over cobblestones, I took the two steps leading up to the garden and offered my uncle a smile.

He smiled back, drawing a chair from under the table for me. “You look lovely in yellow,” he said. “Just like my little sister.”

I sat down, turning my sword belt so Nhym aimed at the ground, not my knee. “Yellow’s my favourite colour.”

“
Is that so?” He sat down, his brows moving up in surprise. “It was Lili’s too.”

“Well, we
were
related.” I leaned an elbow on the table, removing it quickly so I didn’t seem ill-mannered.

“
Yes, you were, weren’t you?” He considered me for a second. “And I must say that, of all her descendants, Amara, you are by far the prettiest. I can only pray my child will be just like her mother.”

“
Your child?”

“
Yes,” he said, motioning to my belly. “We’ve waited such a long time for this miracle. In fact, I brought a gift for her.”

I sat back a bit, preparing myself mentally as he reached into a small leather bag on the side of his belt. Clearly he and I were in for a bit of an argument today since he’d already claimed my baby as his own.

“
This belonged to my beloved wife when she was alive.” He laid something on the table, keeping his long, youthful fingers over it for a second. “I thought you should have it. Wear it while she grows inside you.”

“Whoa. Hold on.” I put my hand up and, at that moment, Drake drew his away, revealing a giant oval, almost gaudy-looking emerald stone, set into a fine weave of golden chain. “That’s beautiful, Drake, but . . . did you just say your
wife
is—”

“Growing inside you,” he stated factually, his eyes moving then to my belly as if he looked upon her for the first time in centuries—his beloved Anandene.

“
Okay.” I blocked his view, crossing two hands over my midsection. “Let’s get one thing straight here. This is not, nor will it ever be, that witch!”

“Witch!” He shot up out of his chair and stood over me, darkening the sun with the mere presence of anger. “You will do well to remember that I loved
that witch
, and have gone to great lengths to see her reborn, Amara-Rose. Speak ill of her again and I will knock you unconscious. Do I make myself clear?”