Blood & Honey #1

Chapter Thirty

"You shouldn't be here." Marianna keeps her watchful gaze on Kinley as I stand next to her on the balcony that overlooks the east courtyard.

Kinley is down below in a black silk nightgown, walking the garden as the half-moon and stars give her light. She has her face to the wind, letting the cool breeze swirl her unbound hair all around her.

"Fever again?"

"Afraid so. She has not fared well since her arrival in Valderanna. She can't get comfortable and when she is able to find sleep, she tosses and turns in unrest."

Marianna's bloodline has been frozen. One of her sisters refused to sacrifice her firstborn so the Medici bloodline has been halted, forever barren until the child who should have been handed over dies.

In many ways, Kinley is the only child Marianna will ever have. She cares for Kinley as if she carried her in her womb.

"How much time do you think she has?"

The Dark Prince's crowning ceremony is tomorrow. It will be a full day of celebration that will extend well into the night and I fear it will be too taxing on Kinley. She is declining fast, the angel within her determined to take her before the Prince can hurt her again. Or maybe it's me. Kinley did say her nosebleeds sped up after she met me.

"If you had asked me this morning, I would have said a few hours. She seems to be doing better after the Prince forced her to drink some of his blood. Her fever went down, yet a mild one still lingers. It's impossible to know: a day, a week, a month? It's different every time."

Marianna swears under her breath when she turns and sees I am gone. I've done my best to stay away from Kinley, not wanting to chance the Dark Prince using her to get back at me. How can I stay away knowing that I could lose her at any moment to the vengeful angel that dwells in the place her love for me used to reside?

"I was wondering when you would show up." Kinley continues keeping her eyes closed and her face lifted to the wind.

I step closer to her, using the coolness of my body to help soothe the discomfort of her feverish skin. "It was best if I stayed away."

"Yet here you are." She turns around to face me. "Do you know what the most frustrating part of all this is? It's that I've learned I've had over two hundred different lives and I can't remember a single one. I'm an immortal whose existence amounts to nothing. I'm like a gust of wind. Here one minute, gone the next." Kinley brushes past me, taking a seat at the fountain in the center of the courtyard as she gazes at the clear night sky.

She jumps in surprise when I "materialize" right next to her. "What do you want to know? I can't fill in all the blanks, but I've known you for more life cycles than you think."

"Marianna said the Dark Prince performed a ritual to call my soul back to my body because I died before he could turn me immortal, so how did I die? Did one of your kind kill me like they had the girl I replaced? "

"One of your own kind killed you out of jealousy."

"What?" Kinley's head snaps from watching the twinkling stars to me.

"You weren't the only one who died that day. Another human died too. It was the day before the Prince was going to announce who his next Massarra would be. When the servants came to help get you ready, you were both found dead-poisoned. The other human wanted to make sure she was chosen and not you. Everyone knew by then you were his favorite. She tried to make it look like a vampire did it, even poison herself. But she made the mistake of using a different poison for herself. She didn't realize we could smell the difference."