Page 69 of Vampire's Breath

I scoffed. “You could just say I told you so and stop trying to sound all proper about it.”

Conall smirked, his fingers drumming on his cup as if he were deciding how far to push me. “Or had you listened to your intuition and stuck with it.”

I shook my head. “You are quite the ass some days, you know that?”

He sat back, stretching his legs and crossing his arms and ankles. “As the youngest of four assholes, I’ll remind you—I learned it from all of you.”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head, a bitter chuckle escaping my lips. There was no arguing with that. In nine hundred years of existence, we had rarely embraced the good.

Conall took another sip of tea. “So I have a question for you. One you may not like.”

I sighed, weary after the past few days. “There are a lot of questions I don’t like, but something tells me you’re going to ask it anyway.”

He tilted his head. “Are you ever going to tell Briar the truth?”

I chuckled dryly. “You mean the truth that I am the same Lord Lorcan who got her ancestor transported to Australia?”

He nodded. “Yes, that truth.”

I dropped my voice, my fingers pinching and pulling at the arm of the chair as I stared at them. “I don’t see what good it’ll do. It’s not like there’s anything that can be done about it. And really, doesn’t this entire search show that Briar is safer without me?”

Conall leaned his arms on the table. “You know, Cormac felt that way not too long ago.” He twisted the cup on the saucer. “And now look at him.”

I pulled my hand back and clenched my jaw. “Yes, but that’s different. Fated mates have no choice but to be together. Leave it to him to be fated to someone.”

Conall smirked and picked up his tea as though he wanted to say something but was holding back.

I pressed my lips together as my throat tightened. “I don’t think the same applies to Briar and me. She isn’t magical, so what would fate want with her?”

Conall smiled. “Maybe it isn’t the magic. Or maybe love itself is a different kind of magic.”

I snorted, glancing at my glass, wondering if getting another glass of whiskey would be too conspicuous. “I think you’ve been hanging out with poets for too long.” I didn’t want to think about his words.

Conall lifted his cup, holding it between both hands. “You know, it wasn’t too long ago I wasn’t the one hanging out with poets. I had a brother who believed in love and magic, who saw it in the everyday cracks of the world, in humanity itself. One who saw how the right music could shift the night, or a shared look could change the world. Now all you want to look into is the bottom of that whiskey glass.”

I narrowed my eyes, my voice low. “Yes, well, we saw where that got him, didn’t we? He shared his world with the wrong person and destroyed a woman’s life.”

Conall ran a finger around the rim of his cup. “You cannot continue to blame yourself for Ashdowne’s transgressions.”

The ghosts of my past were always there, lingering, waiting to come back to haunt me. It didn’t matter how many years went by. I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t right the wrong. And now the same thing was happening with Briar and me.

I traced the design etched into my glass. “I could have gotten Ashdowne out of there faster. I should have listened to my intuition then, just as I’m listening to it now.” The echo ofIsobel’s strangled sobs as we took her to her fallen husband still rang in my ears, even after all these years.

Conall chuckled, though the sound was devoid of amusement. “Ashdowne was always going to be a danger to other people. Once you turned him, and he got a taste of blood? That was it for him. Isobel did us a favor.”

I exhaled sharply, glancing at the clock. The numbers blurred for a moment before I refocused. “Yes, well, it still destroyed her life,” I muttered before a stony silence fell over us.

My phone rang, the shrill sound cutting through the air like a knife. I answered on speaker. “Patricia, what have you found?”

Her voice was clear and professional, but I swore I could hear the faintest trace of satisfaction. “Well, Lorcan, you were right. We found footage of Briar boarding the ferry in Aberdeen last night. She arrived in Kirkwall and spent the night at an inn. We just spoke with them, and they confirmed she was going to Tingwall to get the ferry to Wyre.”

I battled a smile, the tightness in my chest easing. We had finally found her. “Thank you, Patricia,” I said before hanging up, my tone measured. I looked at my brother, not wanting him to see the joy filling my heart. “Is that enough? Can we go back to Aberdeen now?”

Conall drained his cup with deliberate slowness, then nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll make sure the flight is ready. I’m sure Zadie will love it.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “She enjoyed the propeller plane we took from Aberdeen.”

Conall groaned. “Yes, but she didn’t need to bank hard enough that I could see the ocean from my side of the plane.”