Inamorata

Prologue

I stood on the balcony and looked at the rising sun, content at the feeling of its warmth against my face. 

There was something strange about the sun.  Looking down at the gardens, I saw that it bathed the plants in its light.  They grew towards it, their leaves and stems reaching up like little hands trying to grasp something they would never reach.  Its light was reflected in the fountains as it made the churning water sparkle like thousands of shards of moving glass.  From where I stood on the balcony, it was a symbol of life. 

But I knew that up close, it could burn.

We lived in a world of deceptions and falsities.  There was a saying that went, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” but nobody could really differentiate between the two.  Someone who one thought to be his friend could be smiling at him during dinner one moment, and he, unknowing, would be sipping the wine his “friend” poisoned the next.  It was a game of blood and lies.  A game that I had found myself being dragged into.

Looking down, I saw the ring that the prince—no, Michael—had given me.  It was part of the Vampiric Trinity, carved out of the very stone that was the pinnacle of vampire kind.  It was ironic that I, a human, was the Holder of such an important artifact, as well as its brother in the form of a necklace, and the Mark of its master.

The necklace and the ring made out of the Devil’s Heart were the only jewelry I wore nowadays.  Though it was odd seeing my wrist without Noah’s bracelet, I could not forgive him for what he had done.  To side with Stephen in hopes of being able to see me again was one thing, but to drag my parents and sister into it with lies, and to refuse to let me leave even after I made it clear that I had an obligation to someone else, was another.  Though Noah still lived, he was dead to me.

Unfortunately, I could not say the same about Stephen.

Stephen was everywhere, and if not in person, always in thought.  He had rattled the kingdom—and its prince, especially—with his actions; he had been pushing his boundaries for decades, but had finally taken things too far, and he knew it.

I slipped my ring off of my finger.  It felt almost naked without it, but I held it up to the sun, squinting against the light.  I pinched the black stone and moved it back and forth, positioning it so the sun was perfectly held in between its circular edges.

“What are you doing?” an amused but familiar voice asked.  I smiled slightly, still looking through the ring at the sun.

“Good morning,” I answered, ignoring his question.  He laughed and moved to stand next to me.  He gently removed the ring from between my fingertips, took my hand, and placed it back on my finger where it belonged.

His arm encircled my waist, bringing me closer to him.  He pressed his lips to my forehead and I felt him smile against it.  “Good morning,” he murmured.

We stood against the railing of the balcony for a long while until the sun was full in the sky.  I thought about Alexandra, who apparently was furious at me because, as always, everything was my fault.  Oh, of course, it was my fault that her “engagement” to Stephen was broken off, as it was my fault for warning her not to agree to this engagement in the first place.

After swearing that she never wanted to see me again, she, along with my parents, who were not only livid because of the broken engagement, but were also disappointed that they had travelled such a long way and were never supposed to get any kind of “compensation,” left Vittoris and went back to Lumaria. 

Things had changed so much in such a little amount of time that I still wasn’t quite sure whether or not I was walking in a dream.  Though I had sworn I would never call myself a vampire’s Compeer, I found myself declaring to his cousin that I was, in fact, exactly what I had fought against becoming. I had once viewed the title as a lock of sorts, but little did I realize that it was actually the key.  And though I was the Keeper of the Devil’s Heart, the only heart I had ever wanted to hold was his.