The Heart's Ashes (77 page)

“
No! Let me go!” I yelled, pushing his big confining hands
away. “Let me go to him. I have to see him, Mike. Let me
go.”

“
Baby, I’ll let you go, just calm down, okay, I just need you
to calm down.”

“
No, he’s alive. He’s alive.” I took a jagged breath, which
slowed my heart as my eyes widened again. “He’s—he burned. He felt
that! He felt that when…when…”

“
Yes.” Mike closed his eyes.

“
Oh God.” My knees buckled and I slid down the wall; Mike held
me up by the hips. “Oh, Mike. I was there. I was right in front of
him, and I—” I replayed the image of his fingers on the tiles—just
out of reach. “I could’ve helped him. I—”

“
No. Ara, you couldn’t, baby.” He bundled me into his arms,
squeezing me against his chest. “There’s no way you could’ve helped
him. Jason was too strong—he would’ve hurt you more.”

“
You—” I looked up at him. “How could you do this to me? How
could you let me believe I killed my husband?”

“
We didn’t know, Amara,” Morgaine piped up. “We thought you
were—”

“
You
should’ve known.” I pointed at
her. “You—with all you’re ‘getting people’ bull crap. You should
have felt it in
my
soul. How can you have been so ignorant? Do you know what
I’ve been suffering? You’re monsters,” I yelled. “All of you. I
hate you.”

Mike squeezed
me tighter, whispering something in my ear as I screamed—pushing
out from his chest.

“
I hate you. I hate you. Get off me. Let me go to him. Let
me—”

“
What’s going on!” Emily burst through the door and covered
her mouth. “Ara. What is it? What’s wrong?”

“
Ara thought David was dead all this time, Em,” Mike said,
wrapping his arms around my waist from behind as I folded over and
kicked against him. “She just found out he’s alive.”

The world
seemed to move around Emily, pulling her backward as realisation
washed over her frozen expression. “Ara. Oh my God. I never
thought—” She stole me from Mike’s arms; I went willingly, sobbing
against her neck. “But of course. Of course you would’ve thought
that. You don’t know about immunity. Oh, Ara, it’s okay.” She
stroked my hair. “It’s okay, you can scream. You can hate us.
You’re right to hate us—we let you suffer because we’re all too
stupid to realise what we’ve done.”

“
Where is he, Em?” I howled. “Where is he? I need to see
him.”

“
Okay.” She held me out by my shoulders and nodded. “Okay, you
can see him. Right now. But you need to calm down first, okay? Do
you think you can do that?”

I stifled my
sobs, leaving nothing but a violent quiver in my chest. “Yes.”

“
Okay,” she whispered, smiling at my poor composure. “We’ll go
see him, then.” Emily looked over her shoulder; “Morg. Prepare
David. Let him know Ara’s coming.”

“
Emily?” Morgaine folded her arms. “You know David
will—”

“
I don’t care what David wants!” Emily said. “Ara is his wife.
She’s going to see him—he’d do the same.”

“
You know what—that’s true. So true it’s not even funny how
well you know him, Emily.” Morgaine’s humoured grin dropped and her
eyes narrowed slightly.

“
Emily can read David’s feelings,” I informed.

“
Really?” Morgaine said slowly, rolling her shoulders back
slightly with her tone.

“
What’s wrong with that?” I asked, looking between the two of
them.

Morgaine took
a deep breath through her nose and nodded. “It just means they have
a special connection.”

“
Morg?” Emily said. “Go get David ready.”

“
Fine. But, Amara?” She stopped.

“
What?”

“
He’s—” She looked at Mike, then back at me. “He burned. You
know what that means, right?”

I took a deep,
carefully considered breath. “It was worse to believe he was dead.
I...I mean, burned? Mutilated? I can handle that—” I looked at
Mike, then Emily, “—but not dead.”

“
Very well.” Morgaine left.

“
Ara?” Mike looked down at his hands, clutched in front of his
legs. “I’m so damn sorry, baby. I never,
never
intended you to be hurting so
bad. It just didn’t occur to me that you weren’t in on the
plan.”

“
What
was
the plan, Mike? How did you come to the conclusion that
sending David in there to die was a good idea? What was it supposed
to achieve?”

“
Not what you think.” Mike looked at Emily.

“
Ara,” Emily started, “Morgaine mentioned a child?”

“
Yeah, freaky-prophecy-child with
great power
.” I waved my hands
around in the air.

“
Well, that child must be conceived of pure blood—which is
your blood, and as the prophecy states…” She looked at
Mike.

“
The blood of Knight.”

“
Night? As in...starry night?”

“
No.” Em stepped forward, standing closer to Mike. “As
in...David Knight.”

“
It has to be
David’s
?” I asked, my shoulders
launching forward into my words.

Emily nodded.
“Drake ordered David dead to stop that prophecy from
eventuating.”

“
But, he’s not dead.”

“
Right, which gives us some time, Ara,” Mike said. “We lost
most our knights last night, and while we might’ve taken down half
the Set, if Drake were to get word that David survived, he’d send
an army out for you now. As one, you mean nothing, but together,
you have the only weapon that can actually stop him.”

“
Whoa, whoa!” I held my hands up, taking a few steps backward.
“Stop him? Stop
Drake
?”

“
Ara, you’re a pure blood—you can create armies of vampire
killers. He’s not going to let you live, he will come for you,
whether you care or not,” Emily said.

“
When?”

“
Not right now. You’re weak, and without the possibility of a
child, you’re no more a threat than a little girl with a toy
gun.”

“
But that will change, and it’ll change quickly,” Mike said.
“David had to die to give us time—to give Drake the illusion of
safety for a few more weeks until we could get you strong, trained,
and on the throne—ready to fight.”

“
Wha—throne?” I gaped. “Did you just say
throne
?”

“
Yes.” Mike laughed lightly. “Baby, you’re royal blood, and by
birth right, you should be on the thro—”

“
Whoa.” I raised my hands again. “No more. Stop saying that.
What—what throne? What is this, some kind of monarchy?”

“
That’s exactly what is it.” Morgaine walked back in. “Well,
of a sort—not like a human monarchy, though, and yes, you will rule
the Three Worlds.”

“
The Three Worlds?”

“
The Vampires, Lilithians and Humans.”

“
Humans? No one rules humans.” I folded my arms.

“
Um, well, actually, vampires do—the humans just don’t know
it. But, who do you think has been protecting their species all
these centuries—stopping them from wiping each other out—leaving
the vampires without food, and then, in turn, us?”

My hand flew
to my head and wiped furiously at the overload of information.
“This is insane.” I need to pace the floors; “So, my vampire
husband, whom I watched burn after his brother threw him on the
fire, is alive, and now you expect me to believe in tales of kings
and queens?”

“
And knights.” Mike stood taller.

“
Oh, yes, knights,” I said sarcastically. “That’s right—then
men who stormed that castle with
swords
.”

“
Venom-tipped swords,” Morgaine chimed.

“
This is ridiculous. Where’s David?”

“
He’s in my room,” Mike said.

I pushed past
him, shoving his chest, hard.

“
Ara, wait, you can’t go in there alone,” he called, but his
voice stayed where I left him.

Chapter
26

The tiles
glided under me, moving, I was sure, because my feet weren’t. They
stopped by Mike’s door and the hallway closed in around me, the
walls hugging my shoulders, while the echo of a tap left dripping
in the bathroom dragged me, forcefully, to the memory of my
nightmare passed.

My hand
stopped, hovering over the handle, the weight of one push being the
fork in the road—the moment that could change things inside me for
the rest of my life. If I do this—if I open this door, there’s no
going back; what I may see in my husband could haunt me for
forever.

With a breath,
I pushed the door open; “David?”

No one
responded.

“
David. It’s me.” I knelt down beside the bed, slipping among
the shadows, grateful not to see just yet. A firm silhouette rested
like a mound on Mike’s bed, and warm heat simmered off it, the
putrid, puss-scented reek of rotting skin making me hold a breath.
When a shadow blocked the dim light from the hall, I looked up.
“Em. Is he alive?”

“
Yes, but he’s not bothering to breathe—he’s in too much pain,
but he is alive.”

“
Pain?”

After a long
sigh, Emily walked across the room and placed her hand on the
bedside lamp. “I hope you’re ready for this, Ara.”

“
Wait.” I jumped up and grabbed her wrist. “How bad is
he?”

“
Bad?” She almost laughed. “Put it this way, Ara, when we sent
him off with the Warriors, he was weak, really weak, and so
battered already. Take that and mix it with what we assume was
around twenty minutes in a roaring fire, and bad doesn’t even begin
to describe it.”

“
Twenty minutes?”

“
Yes, we think. By the time you told us what happened, it’d
already been four hours since we rescued you. When Morgaine’s
knights got there, though, David wasn’t on the fire anymore.
Someone pulled him out.”

“
Who?”

“
We don’t know, but they just left him there.”

“
Do you think, maybe, he pulled himself out?”

Emily shook
her head. “The caplet of venom he bit into was enough to put him in
a state-like-death for over six hours. There’s no way he pulled
himself out.”

“
Caplet?”

“
Yeah. Venom of the Created. He bit into it when you bit
him.”

“
But...I thought he was immune?”

Emily breathed
out through smiling lips; “No one is immune to that much venom in
one dose. Like drugs—you can a have a little, but too much and
you’re down.”

“
So, my venom, in a high enough dose, could still kill
him?”

“
Not sure. He was weak when he swallowed Morgaine’s venom,
but, are you really willing to test that on anyone?”

“
No.” I considered the mound for a second. “Do you think
Arthur pulled him out…maybe he…?”

“
I don’t know. All I know is that Morgaine examined him and
said, from the looks of his skin, he had to have burned for at
least twenty minutes.”

“
Is there anything left of him?”

“
How ‘bout I just turn on the light.”

“
Wait.” Mike swept into the room and wrapped his arms around
my waist—linking his fingers in a tight belt of restraint. “Okay,
do it.”

The light
spread to each corner of the room quickly, lighting up flash images
as I turned my face away, closing my eyes around a hairless head,
the skin cracked and charred, like lava simmering on water. “That’s
David?” I covered my mouth, inching closer to Mike. “That’s really
him?”

“
Yes,” Emily said.

“
Ara, just look—just open your eyes,” Mike said.

With my hand
tightly holding possible vomit in, I shook my head.

“
Ara, will you just look!”

One eye at a
time opened slowly, blurring, focusing on the light in the room
before shifting edgily over the twisted, unmoving life form. “Oh
God.” I pushed out from Mike’s arms, landing by the bed. “He’s
bad,” I noted, my eyes running over the black cage of skin,
revealing a prisoner of blood and yellow liquid, seeping out
through interlaced fingers of raw, stretching skin.

“
He’s not that bad,” Mike said.

“
He’s not as bad as I imagined.” I wiped a tear from my
cheek.

His mouth was
completely melted together; a section of his chin fused to his
chest, and one arm stripped of the flesh—all the way down to grey
bone.

“
Was he conscious?” I looked at Mike. “You said he burned
alive. Did he know what was going on?”

“
Under venom, you’re in a lockdown.” Morgaine appeared in the
room. “Its sole purpose is to paralyse the body, but—”

“
Not the mind,” Mike added solemnly.

“
He knew.” I covered my mouth. “When Jason lifted him—he knew
he was going to burn.”

“
Yes. But it was always a risk, Amara. He went willingly to
that fate, knowing he was saving your future.” Morgaine touched
David’s fingertips—the only two fingers on his body that weren’t
charred. David twitched.