Upstairs in the formal dining room, the food that Tohr ate with the others was all texture, no taste. Likewise, the conversation percolating up around the table was just sound without relevance. And the people to his left and to his right were two-dimensional sketches, nothing more.
As he sat with his brothers and the shellans and guests of the mansion, everything was a distant, hazy blur.
Well, almost all of it.
There was only one thing in the vast room that made any impression on him.
Across the porcelain and the silver, on the far side of the bouquets of flowers and the curling candelabra, a robed figure sat motionless and self-contained in a chair precisely opposite his own. With that hood up in place, the only thing that showed of the female underneath was a pair of delicate hands that, from time to time, cut a piece of meat or forked up some rice.
She ate like a bird. Was silent as a shadow.
And why she was here, he hadn't a clue.
He had buried her back in the Old Country. Underneath an apple tree, because he had hoped the fragrant blooms would ease her in her death.
God knew she had had nothing easy at the end of her life.
And yet now she was alive again, having arrived with Payne from the Other Side, proof positive that when it came to the Scribe Virgin and the granting of mercies, anything was possible.
"More lamb, sire?" a doggen asked at his elbow.
Tohr's stomach was packed tighter than a suitcase, but he was still feeling loose in the joints and sloppy in the head. Considering that eating more was better than the ordeal of feeding, he nodded.
"Thanks, man."
As his plate was refilled with meat, and he volunteered for more rice pilaf, he looked around at the others just to give himself something to do.
Wrath was at the head of the table, the king presiding over everything and everybody. Beth was supposed to be in the other armchair at the far end, but instead, and as usual, she was in her hellren's lap. As was also typical, Wrath was more interested in paying honor to his female than feeding himself: Even though he was fully blind now, he fed his shellan from his plate, lifting his fork and holding it so that she leaned in and accepted what he provided.
The pride he so clearly had in her, the satisfaction he took from caring for her, the goddamn warmth between them transformed his harsh, aristocratic face into something almost tender. And from time to time he bared his long fangs, as if he were looking forward to getting her alone and sinking into her... in a variety of ways.
Not the kind of thing Tohr needed to see.
Swinging his head around, he caught Rehv and Ehlena sitting side by side, doing the lovey-dovey. And Phury and Cormia. And Z and Bella.
Rhage and Mary...
Frowning, he thought of how Hollywood's female had been saved by the Scribe Virgin. She'd been on the lip edge of dead, only to be pulled back and given a long life.
Down in the clinic, Doc Jane was the same. Dead, but returned, with nothing but good years ahead of her and her hellren.
Tohr's eyes locked on the robed figure across from him.
Anger boiled in his distended stomach, adding to the pressure: That fallen-from-grace aristocrat, now going by the name No'One, was fucking back as well, granted the gift of life anew by the goddamn mother of the race.
His Wellsie?
Dead and gone. Nothing but memory and ashes.
Forevermore.
As his temper started really buzzing, he wondered who you had to bribe or blow to get that kind of dispensation. His Wellsie had been a female of worth, just like these other three - why hadn't she been spared. Why the fuck wasn't he like those other males, looking forward to the rest of his years.
Why hadn't he and his shellan been granted mercy when they needed it most....
He was staring at her.
No... he was glaring at her.
Across the table, Tohrment, son of Hharm, was focused on No'One with hard, angry eyes, as if he resented not just her presence in this house, but the very breath in her lungs and the beat of her heart.
The expression did not favor his features. Indeed, he had aged so much since last she had seen him, even though vampires, especially those of strong lineage, appeared to be in their mid- to late twenties until just before they died. And that was not the only change in him. He was suffering from a persistent weight loss - no matter how much he ate at the table, he did not carry enough flesh on his bones, his face marked with hollowed cheekbones and a too-sharp jaw, his sunken eyes smudged with shadows above and below them.
His physical infirmity, whatever it was, hadn't stopped him from fighting, however. He hadn't changed before the meal, and his damp clothes were stained with red blood and black oil, visceral reminders of how all the males spent their nights.
He had washed his hands, however.
Where was his mate? she wondered. She had seen no evidence of a shellan - perhaps he had remained unattached all these years? Surely if he had a female, she would be here to support him.
Ducking her head further under her hood, she placed her fork and knife to the side of her plate. She had no more appetite for food.
Nor was she hungry for echoes from the past. The latter, however, was nothing she could politely refuse....
Tohrment had been as young as she when they had spent all those months together in that fortified cabin in the Old Country, taking refuge against the cold of the winter, the wet of the spring, the heat of the summer, and the drafts of the autumn. They had had four seasons of watching her belly swell with life, a complete calendar cycle in which he and his mentor, Darius, had fed, sheltered, and cared for her.
It was not how her first pregnancy should have gone. It was not how a female of her background should have lived. It was not anything that the fate she had intended for herself would have e'er provided.
Arrogant of her to have assumed anything, however. And there had been, and still was, no going back. From the moment she had been captured and ripped away from her family, she had been forever altered sure as if acid had been splashed upon her face, or her body had been burned beyond recognition, or she had lost limbs or eyesight or hearing.
But that was not the worst of it. Bad enough that she had been tainted at all, but that it had been by a symphath? And that the stress had triggered her first needing?
She had spent those four long seasons under that thatched roof aware that there was a monster growing inside of her. Indeed, she would have lost her social station if it had been a vampire who had abducted her and cheated her family of the most valuable thing about her: her virginity. Previous to her abduction, as the daughter of the Council's leahdyre, she had been a highly valuable commodity, the kind of thing that was sequestered and brought out for admiring at special occasions like a fine jewel.
In fact, her father had been making arrangements for her mating to someone who would have provided her with a lifestyle even higher than that to which she had been born....
With terrible clarity, she recalled that she had been tending to her hair when the soft clicking sound from the French door had registered.
She had put the brush down on her makeup table.
And then the latch had been released by someone other than herself....
In quiet moments since then, she sometimes imagined that she had gone down to her subterranean quarters with her family that night. She hadn't been feeling well - the precursor, likely, to her needing period - and had stayed upstairs because there was more to distract her from her restlessness up above.
Yes... she pretended sometimes that she had followed them down into the basement and, once there, had finally told her father about the strange figure that often appeared outside of her bedroom on the terrace.
She would have saved herself.
Saved the warrior across from her this anger of his...
She had used Tohrment's dagger. Right after the birth, she had snapped and taken the weapon from him. Unable to bear the reality of what she had brought into the world, incapable of drawing one more breath in the destiny she had been condemned to, she had turned the blade upon her own stomach.
The last thing she had heard before the light had claimed her was him screaming -
The screech of his chair getting shoved back made her jump, and everyone at the table went silent, all eating halting, all movement ceasing, all conversation cutting off as he prowled out of the room.
No'One lifted her napkin and blotted her mouth under her hood. Nobody looked over at her, as if they had all failed to notice his fixation on her. But from down at the far end, the angel with the blond-and-black hair was staring right at her.
Shifting her eyes from him, she saw Tohrment come out of the billiards room across the foyer. He had a bottle of some dark liquid in each hand, and his grim face was nothing short of a death mask.
Closing her lids, she reached deep, trying to find the strength she was going to need to approach the male who had just left so abruptly. She had come here to this side, to this house, to make amends with the daughter she had abandoned.
There was another who needed an apology, however.
And though words of contrition were the ultimate goal, she would begin with the dress, returning it to him as soon as she finished cleaning and pressing it with her own hands. Comparatively, it was such a small thing. But one had to start somewhere, and the gown was clearly a generational one from his bloodline, given to her daughter to wear, as she had no other family.
Even after all these years, he continued to take care of Xhexania.
He was a male of worth.
No'One was quieter about her departure, but the room fell silent once more as she rose from her seat. Keeping her head down, she left not through the archway, as he had, but through the butler's door that led into the kitchen.
Limping past the ovens and counter spaces and busy, disapproving doggen, she took to the rear stairwell, the one that had simple whitewashed plaster walls and pine stairs -
"It was his shellan's."
The soft leather sole of her slipper shoe squeaked as she wheeled around. Down below, the angel stood at the bottom step.
"The dress," he said. "That was the gown that Wellesandra wore on the night they were mated nearly two hundred years ago."
"Oh, then I shall return it to his mate - "
"She's dead."
A cold shiver went down her spine. "Dead..."
"A lesser shot her in the face." As No'One gasped, his white eyes didn't blink. "She was pregnant."
No'One threw her hand out for the rail as her body swayed.
"Sorry," the angel said. "I don't sugarcoat shit, and you need to know what you're walking into if you're going to give that back to him. Xhex should have told you - I'm surprised she didn't."
Indeed. Although it wasn't as if they had spent much time together - and they had plenty of topics of their own to tiptoe around.
"I did not know," she said eventually. "The seeing bowls on the Other Side... they never..." Except she hadn't been thinking of Tohrment when she had gone to them; she'd been worried about and focused on Xhexania.
"Tragedy, like love, makes people blind," he said, as if he could read her regrets.
"I'm not going to take it to him." She shook her head. "I've done enough damage. Presenting him with his... mate's gown..."
"Is a nice gesture. I think you should return it to him. Maybe it'll help."
"Do what," she said numbly.
"Remind him that she's gone."
No'One frowned. "As if he has forgotten?"
"You'd be surprised, my fair one. The chain of memory needs to be broken - so I say bring the dress to him, and let him take it from you."
No'One tried to imagine that exchange. "How cruel - no, if you're so interested in torturing him, you can do it yourself."
The angel cocked a brow. "It's not torture. It's reality. Time's passing and he needs to move on, fast. Take the gown to him."
"Why are you so interested in his affairs?"
"His destiny is my own."
"How is that possible?"
"Trust me, I didn't set it up like this."
The angel stared at her as if daring her to find falsity in anything he had stated.
"Forgive me," she said roughly. "But I have done enough harm to that fine male. I shan't be a part of anything that hurts him."
The angel rubbed his eyes as if he had a headache. "Goddamn it. He doesn't need coddling. He needs a good hard boot in the ass - and if he doesn't get one soon, he's going to pray to be in the shithole he's in now."
"I do not understand any of this - "
"Hell is a place of many levels. And where he's headed is going to make this stretch of agony seem like nothing but spikes under fingernails."
No'One recoiled and then had to clear her throat. "A way with words you have not, angel."
"Really. You don't say."
"I can't... I can't do what you wish me to."
"Yes, you can. You have to."