Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Chapter 12: Worries and Weakness (revised)

I spent the next day (and night) dreading Keel's arrival like the coast dreads a hurricane, waiting to see if he'd make good on his threat, but he never showed. Somehow that made it worse. It gave me time to rattle each horrible possibility around in my head. I'd always been careful with him, even before his transition, never talking about my family or the location of my real home beyond the vaguest of vagaries, but Keel was smart, and with the bond in play there was no definitive way of telling what he knew or which of my secrets had been divulged. The more I thought about it, the more I became positive that whatever he'd learned would be the thing he'd use against me now.

Because if I were Keel, that's what I would do.

First, however, he'd draw this whole thing out, just like he was doing. He'd make me wait and then wait some more. And suffer. Because he'd know I'd imagine every worst-case scenario, and he would let that take me apart piece by piece. If he broke me, I couldn't be anything but obedient, right?

Coming to terms with what Keel had become and what he wanted from me was a lot like going through the stages of grief: first denial, then anger, then the rest of it.

By the end of that first day, I'd made it all the way to depression. Bargaining, after all, proved useless. I could try to appeal to Keel's regal responsibilities, which hadn't proved as disastrous as other approaches, but if I didn't know what triggered his anger, chances were I was destined to repeat it regardless.  Worse, I didn't trust myself any more than I trusted him, especially not after that horrifying blood-guzzling, robe-ripping incident.

I wasn't a vampire. It wasn't possible for me to become a vampire. So why was I all hot and bothered for Keel's blood? It didn't make sense. Then again, nothing made sense since my return.

That question led to several hours of fretful, pointless pacing, and then a restless sleep which turned all my questions into hideous, pestilent, dream-time beasts that pursued me with glistening claws and knife-like teeth until I awoke crying and scared, my tear-soaked pillow cold and clammy and sticking to my cheek. All my nightmare monsters had real-world roots. I had no idea how I was supposed to find my place in the compound, and no idea how Keel and me were going to come to some kind of accord without losing something of myself in the process. 

But it wasn't as simple as that either. As the night in question replayed itself in my head on an endless searing loop, my brain stuck on something wonky. If Keel wanted an heir so badly, why did he stop me? Was the sin of biting him, of taking his blood, so much greater than the sum of his desires? 

Of course, you idiot, you attacked the king.

Still, it felt off. Keel's father would have taken what he wanted and then whipped me for my crimes and insolence. Keel had stopped. He could have had exactly what he wanted with zero resistance, but he had stopped. 

As the first twenty-four hours of solitude bled into the next, I tried to use that anomaly to scrape up enough optimism to concoct a different angle to work, one that didn't require my suddenly fitful magic, but my restless sleeps left me tired, miserable and foggy-headed. Worse, the clock kept on ticking. Keel wouldn't stay away much longer. He wouldn't deprive himself of my precious sorcerer's blood any more than necessary.

When my next meal arrived, I bounded across the room in an attempt to make small talk with the Nosferatu delivering the tray. I'd lost my old ally, but perhaps I could make a new one. My waiter was as rail-thin as Arthos, but he walked with an obvious hunch, as if trying to become smaller, less noticeable. He kept his gaze so rooted on my food that the sound of my approaching footsteps caused him to start. I'd managed all of three words in greeting before he released the rolling tray and fled the suite, refusing to even glance in my direction. At least I still scared one vamp. Or did I? Maybe he feared Keel would execute him for communicating with "his sorcerer." That thought did nothing to lift my mood.

I picked at my steak and potatoes half-heartedly, spearing a large chunk of broccoli then dropping it again, my appetite swallowed up by the ceaseless engines of worry. I didn't even eat a third of it before I abandoned the meal for more pacing and a fresh burst of frustration.

I hated feeling helpless. I hated Arthos for all the half-truths that he told to bring me here. I hated Keel for everything he'd become and everything he wanted of me. And I hated the bond for the way it betrayed me in his presence. It was like that old stupid electricity times a million. Go figure, the bond had fired warning shots and we hadn't listened. 

Or rather, I hadn't. Keel had never lied about the effects of the transition and yet I'd chosen to kiss him. I was the one who'd bonded us. I was even the one who'd led him from the shower to the bedroom, giving him the most sacred part of myself, all the while knowing what he would become. He might have shown up in my cell, starting all this, but I'd had more than a bit of a hand in leading us to this ruin.

In those long, lonely, waning hours of the second day I became so consumed by that hatred, it felt as if it was rolling off me in fetid waves, tainting the air around me and turning it stale.   

I ran a hot bath and soaked, trying to scald the darkness away. More than anything, I wanted to be clean and pure and innocent again. But I'd never be able to scrub off the taint of the supernatural. It lived in my blood before I was aware of it. It developed in the womb, long before Keel and compound. My ignorance to it didn't change its presence.

Maybe I was destined to become tangled up in it even without Ephraim's best intentions screwing things up. As I lay there in the cooling water, skin pruning while the vanishing bubbles lapped up against my legs and neck, I thought of Anna and Jenny and how much I wished things were like they once were. All about boys and dances and upcoming exams, and dreaming about cars and college and vacations I'd now never take. If I could go back there, I'd never complain about shopping or too much homework or chores or anything mundane like that ever again. The future used to seem so vast, open and full of possibilities, now despite all my incredible magical gifts it looked a lot like these four walls and the king's bloodstained fangs.

Why the hell had I come back?

Because he'd threatened Lucia. The words popped into my head and all the invisible, dangling threads crashed down at once.

Oh god.

In that moment, I was as certain as I'd ever been certain of anything that he was going to play the one card guaranteed to work.  My stomach lurched in abject panic and I leaned over the side of the tub and threw up all over the white marble floor.