Shadow Rising (Dark Dynasties #3)

“But Sariel thought I knew something. He wanted to get me alone. Spend time with me. I thought it was strange.” She shook her head. “One more reason they would never have let me come after you, I guess. I was so furious they chose Oren.”

The corners of Sammael’s mouth turned down, and weakened though he was, he still looked incredibly dangerous.

“Oren. A waste. Sariel considered him a perfect example of what our dynasty should be. Loyal. Cold. So ironic, that a ‘perfect’ Grigori should be so jealous of the most mortal among us…” He trailed off at that cryptic statement, then shook his head. “Well. I am glad you escaped, then. Sariel has grown paranoid in recent years.” Sam’s eyes darkened to an indigo burn. “He should be.”

“And yet you left me there,” Ariane said, all her hurt and anger rising to the surface. It had been different when she’d thought Sam had been taken, somehow. But knowing he’d left her in the lion’s den purposely, because he had just as little faith in her as everyone else, was a dagger in the heart.

Sam gave a small shrug, his face tightening just for an instant, as though the motion had hurt him. “I left knowing that I would eventually be hunted by the strongest among us, d’akara. It’s only chance now that I’m still alive. The risk to you was unacceptable.”

Her eyes widened. “You, the only one I had in that place, let me think you were out here hurt or dead. I’ve been hunted by my own. I had to take Oren’s life. And the other Grigori here with you? I’m almost positive that he’s the one who nearly killed me and the Shade who’s been helping me! How is any of that more acceptable than just telling me the truth?” She saw something flicker in the depths of his eyes, then acknowledgment, at least, and maybe even a little guilt.

Sam’s head drooped slightly. “Even the ancients often fall short of perfection, Ariane. Rail at me if you wish, but take pity on Lucan. We did not expect you. And he has seen horrors that make him quick to turn on our own kind.”

The words gave her a chill. “But he killed innocents. Manon… and that poor clerk…”

The hard lines of Sam’s face softened just a bit. “Ah, d’akara, there are few innocents in our world. Manon’s rot went as deep as any other. His reach was longer in the city than even I knew. One of his men had sighted Lucan with me. That alone would have been enough to bring Sariel down upon us, and we were not ready. Manon was demanding payment from me for his silence, and still I knew that he would sell the knowledge elsewhere… ancients leaving the fold, conspiring. Sariel could not be sure I had disappeared voluntarily. But Lucan has been gone a year, and there could be no doubt that he had run—and why. For the others to know we were together would have raised the alarm sooner than I wished.” His eyes glowed softly in the near-dark.

“Leaving the fold? I had never even seen Lucan before!” Ariane said, her volume rising. None of this made sense.

“He was there. Unseen. Like many things.”

And she knew, all at once, that there was indeed something nightmarish beneath the sand of what had been her home.

“Chaos. The soul eater,” she murmured, all of her anger leaving her at once, turning deadly cold.

Sam studied her a long time, his face unreadable in the shadows. “Clever child. I underestimated you. How did you learn of the demon?”

“I had some help from the Shade your friend tried to kill,” Ariane said. Her joy at seeing Sam had tangled into a jumble of darker emotions. Only now, after she had been among other vampires, did she realize just how alien he was in some ways.

Sam’s distaste was obvious.

“Ah, yes. The Shade. You surprise me with your choice of company.”

The rebuke didn’t sting the way it once might have.

“His name is Damien. Apart, neither of us would have found you,” Ariane said. “I can see what you think of that, but it’s true. Not everything in the world is black or white.”

“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.