not like any other woman I’ve ever met,” he was saying, his gaze intent on hers. “I didn’t think you did, but you seemed really to mean it when you said you were going to save mankind from creatures like myself. Nothing was going to stand in your way. And nothing has. You’re amazing. You know that, don’t you?”
Amazing? She was amazing? No one had ever called her amazing before. Weird, yes. A flake, often. Crazy, lots of times.
But never amazing. She couldn’t believe Lucien even remembered that conversation at the museum in front of the Joan of Arc painting … her favorite painting, because Joan of Arc, like her, made predictions that at first no one believed. But soon she convinced enough people that she was telling the truth that she was given an audience with the king, and eventually her own army to command.
Still, this was hardly the kind of discussion you’d expect someone who’d been around for half a millennium to remember.
But he had.
Lucien seemed to realize she’d been rendered speechless by his revelation, and laid a hand over hers.
“You have every reason to despise me,” he said. He was still smiling ruefully to himself. “As you’ve so aptly pointed out, I didn’t just endanger your life—and the lives of all the people you love—when I came into it, I ruined it. Not a moment goes by that I’m not still fully aware of this fact. More than anything in this world, I wish I could take that back—even more than I wish I could bring back the lives my father and half brother took before they were eventually stopped. But I can’t. And the last thing I want to do now is put you in jeopardy again. But I feel like I already have. So all I can do instead is take this opportunity to make sure you know how I feel …” The strong hand tightened over hers. “How I’ll always feel. Not that I expect you to feel the same way, or that I have any hope at all that it will make a difference.”
“Lucien …”
If she could have thrown herself into his arms and started kissing him wildly then and there, she would have.
If she could have said, “I love you, too,” forgotten all about the vampire thing—the fact that he was dead and she was alive and she had family and friends and, oh yes, an entire species who was depending on her—she would have.
But she couldn’t.
Because considering his weakness—and what she’d been dreaming lately—it seemed more vital than ever that one of them, at least, keep their head.
“Lucien,” she said again. “Remember that night we were in the museum, and you showed me the woodcut of the castle where you grew up, and told me about your mother?”
His grip on her hand loosened slightly.
“I remember,” he said, flinching a little. “But it’s hardly a good idea to bring up a man’s mother at moments like this, Meena …”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it can’t be helped. You told me she was your father’s first wife, and that she was very beautiful and innocent, and that he loved her very much. You said after her death, people used to whisper that she might have been an angel …”
Now he pulled his hand from hers entirely.
“And now definitely,” he said, sitting up, “isn’t the time to be bringing up angels.” He threw a speculative glance at the window, which was nailed shut, and had the largest crucifix of all hanging over it. “Although I could see how it might be difficult for you not to around here.”
“Lucien, you have to listen to this,” Meena said urgently. “I keep having this dream. It’s been the same one every night. And I think it’s about you and your mother. I don’t know who else it could be. It takes place in that castle in the woodcut. I went online to research where you grew up—Poenari Castle—and it looks like the same place. In the dream, this woman is sitting on a seat by a window, reading a book with a little boy. The little boy looks exactly like you, and so does the woman. She has long black hair and big dark eyes and is wearing a blue dress—”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.” Lucien’s voice was curt. “So you keep having this dream. So what? I thought your gift was that you could see into the future, not the past.”
“It is,” Meena said, a little hurt by his harsh tone. “I mean, it was. It always has been. But lately, I don’t know. I think it’s been changing. Getting stronger, or something. Because, Lucien, in this dream, the part from this book that the woman is reading to this little boy—who I think is you—is about good and evil. I don’t know how I can understand what she’s saying, because she’s speaking in a language I’ve never heard before. But somehow I can. She’s talking about how none of us is completely good or completely evil, and all of God’s creatures—she stresses this part, all of them—have the ability to choose. How evil can’t exist without good, and how even some of God’s angels—”
Lucien started to get up from the bed, clearly eager to get away from her.
Only he couldn’t, because whatever was wrong with him, it seemed to knock him back, and off his feet. He sank down again onto the mattress, kneading his forehead and muttering a curse.
“Lucien.” Meena crawled toward him and laid her hands upon his shoulders. “What? What is it? What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing.” He barked the word with such surprising savagery, she dropped her hands.
Now, finally, she felt afraid.
Of him.
What had she done? What had she said? She’d thought he’d be glad to hear about her dream. It wasn’t a sad dream. To her, it was a hopeful dream … even if no one else in the Palatine agreed with her that it meant demons had within them the capacity to be good.
At the very least, she’d argued—particularly with Alaric Wulf, who disliked her mentioning the dream so much, he almost always left the room in a rage whenever she brought it up—it meant that whatever his father might have done, Lucien Antonescu had had a mother who’d loved him, and taught him right from wrong … at least until she’d killed herself by throwing herself into the river that ran beneath Poenari Castle … the river that came to be known, forever after, as the Princess River.
Maybe it was this painful memory of his mother that caused Lucien to swing suddenly in her direction, seize her by both shoulders, and bring her roughly toward him.
There was no sign of weakness in him now. Whatever it was Meena had said to upset him, it seemed to have rid him of that, at least.
“What?” she cried, her heart jackhammering. “What is it?”
He didn’t say a word. He just looked down at her, his dark-eyed gaze seeming to rake her with a need she couldn’t understand. For a moment, she could see in the lamplight that there was a muscle or a nerve twitching in his cheekbone, just above his jaw. It was almost as if he was trying to keep something contained, and not quite mastering it. She stared at that muscle fearfully, watching it jump, asking herself what it was he so badly wanted to do or say that he couldn’t quite seem to bring himself to. She wondered if she needed to run for her cell phone, which she’d left in the next room …
But before she had a chance, he’d lowered his mouth to hers.
And then nothing else seemed to matter. All that mattered was the roughness of his slight five o’clock shadow as it grazed her and the way his arms slid around her, cradling her as gently as if he were afraid she might break if he held her as tightly as he wished to …
… then the growing urgency with which he deepened the kiss, the fierceness with which he grasped her to his long-dead heart when he realized she wasn’t going to crumble beneath his touch.
She lifted her arms to wrap them around his neck, even as he was crushing her against him, making her feel things just with his lips and tongue that she hadn’t felt since … well, since the last