Page 75 of Taste of Death

She took a long moment to respond to that, blinking slowly. “Okay. What haven’t you told me?”

My fingers drummed nervously in my lap. “There’s a cursed member of my clan here, in my house. I captured him fifty years ago, and well, he’s been here ever since.”

Amy stared at me, wide-eyed. “Here? Where?”

“In the basement level. The house is safe. There are multiple security doors between the main floor and his… his cell.” I leaned my head back, letting it thunk against the headboard. “No matter how much I told myself that it was to find a cure, that everything would be justified if I could undo the Curse, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been holding one of my kin prisoner for this long.” My head shook from side to side. “And now that I’m almost certain there is no cure, that the damage is done, I don’t feel right keeping him down there. But there’s no way I can release him. He’s a danger to others.”

“Novak.” Amy had sat up and was now at my side, her hand reaching for mine. Her expression was calmer than I expected. “Who is he to you?”

My eyes closed and my throat tightened. “He’s my brother.”

Amy’s face fell with sorrow. “Oh, Novak… ”

“I swear I was trying to help, to do my duty for Rathka’s Order.” Once the excuses and justifications spilled from my mouth, there was no stopping them. “All I wanted was to make my clan proud, to be more than a do-nothing second son. I worked forcenturiesto save them, to decode this curse down to its atoms so they would find me worthy of the clan’s name. If I cured them all, brought Rathka’s Order back to its former glory, that would mean something, right? I didn’t even want anything in return. Just an ounce of pride, a single fucking acknowledgment from my father and brother would have been enough. It would have beeneverything.”

Amy was silent at my side. If I didn’t feel her hand over mine, I would have thought she’d left the room.

“I’m seeing now how delusional I was.” I rubbed my temples, suddenly feeling an ache behind my eye sockets. “Even if I had cured everyone, they would have found a way to credit someone else for it, to diminish what I had done. Nothing I ever did made them respect me in the past, so why would they start now? Even if they did give me some hollow appreciation, it wouldn’t have been enough. I wasstarvingfor my father’s approval. I would have tried harder, done anything for more scraps.”

A bitter laugh escaped me. “Just fifty years ago, I was convinced that all I needed was tissue samples from a live specimen. If I captured one of them, I would be that much closer to figuring it out. I realized it was my brother because of the scraps of clothing left on him, and his signet ring. I had daydreams, fucking fantasies even, of him hugging me after he was cured, telling me he was so proud of me. That he was so grateful to have his mind back, his life back.”

I shook my head again. “But that’ll never happen. It doesn’t actually matter that I’m the last one left because I was never one of them to begin with. That was the one truth they never let me forget.”

A long silence followed, and I felt a strange emptiness in the center of my chest. Like the vault I’d kept everything hidden away in was suddenly wrenched open and the contents had taken flight. I was afraid to look at Amy, to read the expression on her face now that my deepest, ugliest truth was out there.

But she had come to me when she was at her lowest, found shelter in my arms, during an emotional storm. I had to trust that she would hold that same space for me.

By the time I gathered the courage to look at her, she was already crawling into my lap. When I opened my mouth to speak, her kiss pressed me into the headboard.

Chapter 23

Amy

Iwanted to kiss Novak until I was all out of breath. I wanted to run down to the basement and yell at his brother about what an asshole and a terrible family member he was. I wished I could go back in time and tell young Novak he was worthy of love and recognition in spite of his shitty family treating him like an outcast.

He needed those words right now, and I could only hope he valued my opinion enough to take my words to heart.

“They were wrong about you,” I whispered against his mouth. “So, so wrong. Don’t you see? You’re better than all of them ever were.”

His hands trembled slightly as they held lightly onto my waist. It couldn’t have been easy, confessing everything he did just now. He seemed to feel guilty about keeping his brother imprisoned, although he could rot for eternity down there for all I cared. From the sound of it, he’d been a bully. I knew the type well.

“You’re such an incredible person, Novak.” I held his face between my hands. “You’re kind and honest and so selfless. You could’ve passed me off to someone else that first night we met, let me be another vampire’s problem or finished me off by draining the rest of my blood. You encouraged me to repair my friendship with Tavia. You held me all night while I cried without making me talk about it. Fuck, you’ve spent centuries trying to find a cure for a family that never appreciated you. That speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.”

Novak’s arms went tighter around me as I spoke, his forehead leaning heavily against mine.

“I’m tired,” he admitted in a hoarse whisper. “So fucking tired of carrying all of Rathka’s Order on my shoulders. None of them are here to tell me I’m not doing enough, but I hear their voices all the same. Upholding my duty to the clan is what I’ve been trained to do since birth, and I don’t know how to stop.”

His head came forward until it rested on my shoulder. I raked my fingernails over his scalp, massaging the tight muscles in his neck.

“You’re not alone,” I told him. “You have me. And if you need me to hold onto you while you let it all go, I’ll be right here. You don’t need Rathka’s Order. You can choose to free yourself from them.”

He leaned his forehead against my neck, arms clamped around me in a tight embrace. “I’ve never felt like I had choices. I was raised to put the clan above all else, and look where that got me. Trying to please ghosts, and monsters in my basement.” His head lifted, brow pressing to mine. “You’re the first thing I’ve wanted selfishly. I want you around for the simple fact that you make my blood sing in my veins.”

My heartbeat accelerated, screaming a beat that sounded like, Choose me. Be the first and only person who has genuinely wanted to keep me.

“Nothing bad will happen if you choose to be selfish,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “No one is here to make you feel guilty about your own happiness. And if your ancestors want to haunt you from their graves for choosing yourself, I’ll happily tell them to fuck off and leave you alone.”

That earned me a smile and a soft chuckle. “My mother would one-hundred percent say that Temkra brought you to me, and I should never refuse gifts from the goddess.”

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