Page 117 of Chain Me
“That day after Raphael…” He began. “I knew the second your eyes reopened, still bright with mortality, that something had changed. That, in my impulse, I’d broken some boundary that could never be repaired.”
And I sensed he wasn’t speaking of me any longer.
He brushed his lips across my forehead, lingering as if to impart his next confession into my very soul. “Your sister knew. She wouldn’t even let me do the one thing that I thought might save your life unless I agreed to leave you in exchange.”
I flinched, recalling the strange tension that had grown between Georgie and me.
“I tried to find Adara,” Dublin continued. “If I had, I could have demanded she fix it. I knew Mero was waiting for me—that he would use any pawn he could to lure me to him. Every waking second, I could hear him hissing in my ear. Reminding me of his goddamn curse. And when I returned, I knew, even as all logic warned me to deny it. He was right.
“How much one could crave what life could offer, beyond this tormented existence. In a way, perhaps I’d always consoled myself with the belief that ultimately…I could always end it. What did I have left to cherish?” He gripped me tighter, pulling me against him.
I remained still, letting him hold me.
“Perhaps I would have surrendered it anyway,” he murmured. “Had I known. The ability to die. To follow you…” He pulled back, turning across the foyer. “Get some sleep. I’ll make you something to eat. Should I prepare the baklava?”
“Yes,” I whispered hoarsely, letting him retreat alone.
Something told me that now was not the time to argue. He needed silence.
And I needed to allow him that reprieve no matter how my heart twisted in agony.
Obediently, I went to my room and crawled beneath my blankets, but sleep wouldn’t come. Doubt, that terrible thing, crept into my thoughts, but it felt different than before. Less disembodied and formless.
More desperate: a warning plea that dragged me into the hall and through the rest of the house.
Move…move. Move!
“Dublin?” I called for him to no response as I crept down the staircase in nothing more than a thin nightgown. “Dublin?”
I kept going, exiting the servant’s wing on bare feet. My breath escaped me in pants as I raced down the walkway in the moonlight, driven faster. Faster. Eventually, I sprinted more than walked. Then ran. The wind nipped at my hair, turning it into a cape that fanned my shoulders as I wound up breathless before a structure that had never seemed more imposing.
My hand shook as I pushed the door open. Something wouldn’t let me turn around. It was as if a hook had caught the center of my rib cage, tugging me forward ruthlessly.
A slave to the impulse, I descended the steps, passing the angel. I shivered, venturing deeper. Deeper still.
Then farther within the mausoleum than I’d ever been, in a section so distant that even Georgie and I had never explored it. Near the final chamber, barely concealed behind another hunched angelic statue lurked a doorway.
I hadn’t known it even existed: a wide chamber containing a single stone sarcophagus, cut into the heart of the crypt itself.
A man was lounging outstretched on the stone lid. He glowed as if bathed in moonlight—though I couldn’t make out any windows or entrances. Nonetheless, I had no trouble seeing him in excruciating detail.
Rich, dark skin set him apart from the colorless backdrop. Closely cropped black hair enhanced his stern features, no less beautiful than Dublin or Raphael’s. In contrast to their formal dress, he was wearing a plain gray shirt and jeans that seemed insulting in comparison to the regal tilt to his chin.
I knew his name instantly, even without an introduction.Mero.
“And now,” he declared in a voice that reverberated like thunder, “we may begin. Did you really think I’d let you confront me without allowing dear Eleanor to hear the truth as well?”
He was speaking to someone I didn’t realize was standing nearby until I turned, spotting him there. Dublin. Confusion mingled with the fear goading my pulse into a surging rhythm. François had claimed the crypt was protected—a vampire could only enter invited.
Though Mero supposedly had invested in the Grays since our humble beginnings. In a sense, this land belonged to him over anyone else.
And he had presented Dublin with an invitation he couldn’t refuse.
“And here I am,” my Devil said, his arms outstretched. “You lured her here, and why? So that she can see how callously you toy with her family? Go on and reveal your final pawn.”
“My pawn? I made it no secret that I held her.” The man grinned in a stunning display of white teeth and stood. Gracile movements propelled him upright with the elegance of a dancer. “You merely chose to run and hide rather than face me, Cael. But alas, here you finally are. So, as you wish…” He brushed his hand across the lid of the sarcophagus behind him. The simple gesture seemed incapable of the strength required to knock the stone slab aside in a cloud of dust.
I stiffened in anticipation of a body—and there was one.
