Page 94 of Deadly Alliances

“Why not? You pined over my mother for sixteen years after she left you,” I shot back, anger at his degradation clouding my fear. “Or was your love for her just a lie?”

Not a second after the words left my lips, something struck me hard across the face. My hand instinctively rushed to cover my throbbing cheek, and I caught the blur of his white hand still raised from his slap.

“You will not talk back to me,” he hissed in a dangerous whisper. “I am your father, and you will speak to me with the respect that title deserves.”

I pressed my hand against my cheek, refusing to look at him and show him the mortified tears that stung my eyes.

“Yes, I continued to love your mother after she ran away, and I will love her until the end of time,” he said. “But she didn’t reject me. She ran away out of fear and confusion. This boy clearly doesn’t see that you are superior to him in every way and that he should worship the ground you walk on. He is an arrogant dragon brat, just like the rest of his filthy bloodline. Even if he did love you and wanted to join our cause, I wouldn’t let you be with him. He’s beneath you. If you must consort with a shifter and not an appropriate suitor of noble vampire blood, then giveyour affections to Kendall. He is a mer and a noble at that. He’s not worthy of my daughter, but at least he comes close.”

Every vile word that came out of Hadrian’s mouth boiled my blood hotter and hotter. If the turquoise necklace was dangling around my neck, my ursa might have rampaged out of me then and there. That Hadrian thought he could control me in matters of the heart made me furious. And what was worse was that he wanted me to be with Kendall.

“There will be no more dungeon rendezvous for you,” he said with finality. “Clearly, your guards aren’t doing their job, or you would never have made it to the dungeon in the first place.”

Suddenly, Hadrian vanished from the seat in front of me, and the horrifying sounds of snapping bones and squishing liquid preceded two short-lived, agonized screams. I spun in my chair to see Hadrian standing over the corpses of my guards, their oozing hearts in both of his hands. I didn’t want to—I told myself not to—but I couldn’t help but look at the bodies of the vampires that had been my shadows since I arrived. The image of their mutilated chests burned into my memory. I fought the urge to throw up.

Hadrian tossed down their hearts and stepped over their legs, taking a red handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiping his hands with it as he returned to his seat.

“I don’t enjoy hurting people,” he said as he continued to wipe the blood from his fingers.

Liar!I hissed in my mind, the rest of my body frozen in shock and horror.

“You will be given four new guards. Please, be a good girl, and don’t make me hurt them, too. If I have even a suspicion that you’ve been to see the dragon again, I’ll kill him and make youwatch.”

Then he rose from his seat, leaned over my shoulder, and planted a kiss on my forehead.

“See you at dinner,” he whispered, then left me in the room with the guards whose hearts I might as well have ripped out myself. Their deaths were on my hands as surely as they were on his.

***

I didn’t go back to my room. I knew I could be too easily found there, and I didn’t want to be found. I wanted time to think.

So I went to the only place where I could be truly alone, where even my guards couldn’t follow me: the girls’ bathroom in the Initiate quarters. I went inside and curled up in one of the stalls, so that even if one of the Initiates came in, they wouldn’t bother me, especially with my four new guards standing watch just outside the door.

Hadrian really was a monster. He murdered his own guards right in front of me, and they hadn’t done anything wrong, save for not reporting all the times I slipped away from them. There was no need, since I always came back. But I wasn’t going to dwell on the guilt over their deaths. I wasn’t the one who killed them. Hadrian was. He really was heartless.

I sat in my stall for at least an hour, trying to shake off the shock of his brutality. I needed to have a clear head for what was to come. The escape needed to happen tomorrow at noon, when the sun was at its highest, and the vamps couldn’t come after us if they caught on. I needed to be ready.

When I was finally calm, and all the tears had dried, I left my stall and looked in the mirror. My reflection was not the samegirl it used to be. The mildly rebellious blue streaks of my over-sheltered youth were still there, but the face looking back at me was the face of a woman who had seen suffering and pain and death—and was stronger for it.

Just before I was about to turn away, I noticed something on my arm. There was a strange little red dot. I looked at my upper left arm, only then noticing the slight itch. Had I been bitten by a bug? With how cold it always was here, I didn’t think mosquitos could survive, much less compete with all the other bloodsuckers.

I rubbed at it, and the skin beneath hurt. Odd for a mosquito bite. Whatever. I had more serious things to worry about than a minor irritation. I left the bathroom and went straight to Alex’s room. My guards were good little dogs and didn’t follow me in.

“Hi, Arya. Wanna play?” he asked with that innocent smile I adored, and comfort warmed inside me at the knowledge that I was doing the right thing.

I knelt to his level and grabbed his shoulders, then, using my siren voice, said, “Tomorrow at noon, you will follow Shea wherever she takes you. You will not argue or make a sound, and you will forget this conversation.”

The glazed look came and went, and then I said, “I’ll play later. Right now, I need to use your servants’ access. Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I put my finger to my lips.

Alex gave me a mischievous smile. “Okay.”

“Thanks, kiddo.” I ruffled his hair and hurried to the hidden door in the wall.

I’d never opened the hidden door before, too afraid a servant might be coming out and catch me, but tonight, I had no such fear because I knew I would handle it if I had to.

Luckily, there was no one in the narrow, dark corridor, just an empty winding staircase. I securely closed the door behind me and practically flew down the steps, descending as quickly and quietly as I could. At the bottom of those steps was an elevator, and I rode it to the bottom.

When the door opened, I found myself in a short corridor. Another hidden door stood at the end. I cracked it open and peered through it. The bright kitchen on the other side was empty, so I pushed through. I hurried through the Grand Hall, descending to Kendall’s room, trying to be invisible so no one could place me.

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