I turned around to look at him, because there was something in his voice. “What dilemma?”
He frowned. No, it was more like a full-blown scowl, which I guess he could risk, being currently hidden from the room. Doubly so, since the consul’s guards had also drifted over here, leaving us behind two walls of vamps and cut off from everything.
But it was still strange.
Like the small shiver that suddenly went up my spine.
“You and Dorina.”
It was my turn to frown. “What about us?”
Mircea suddenly gripped my arm. “Do you think to hide it from me? I know exactly how powerful she is, what she can do. I know what she can do to you.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my stiff, backless slippers. I wasn’t ready to talk about this right now. I wasn’t ready to talk here at all, where the walls had ears and Marlowe, damn him, was probably listening in no matter what Mircea said. Not that I thought I’d be any more prepared back home.
“We will discuss it now,” Mircea said grimly. “If she already has this much access to your mind, there’s no choice. We have to act, and act soon.”
“Act how? What are you—”
“These new weapons. They aren’t normal magic, the type the mages produce. Our kind can’t manipulate that, can’t use it. We can buy it, at a high cost, from others, but that’s all. But this . . . The energy in those weapons was taken from the life force of the creatures providing it.”
“What? Then the soul thing . . . is true?”
“Soul thing?”
“Something some of the fey believe. That their souls are, well—that somehow they end up in their bones. Ask Caedmon.”
“I will.” Mircea looked at the fey king, still arguing with Louis-Cesare. The expression did not bode well for him. “All we know for certain is that the weapons are utilizing life magic, the same kind we tap into when we feed. And that kind of magic we can utilize; we do so every day!”
“So?”
“So that cache that the mages stole back tonight, if we could find it again . . .” He licked his lips. It was such an uncharacteristic gesture that I stared. He didn’t notice. “There should be enough.”
“Enough for what? Mircea, what are you talking about?”
His eyes found mine again. “The problem with separating the two of you was always the amount of power it required. Especially now, with the age gap between Dorina and me insignificant. On my own, I cannot hope to contain her. But with the power in those weapons . . .”
I gripped his arm, the shiver a full-on shudder now. “Mircea! What are you saying?”
Dark brown eyes bored into mine, fierce and compelling. “I’m saying . . . that I might be able to rebuild the wall.”
Chapter Forty-nine
I stared up at him. This close, he and Radu could almost have been twins instead of brothers. The arched brows, the patrician nose—just a little too straight for aquiline—the high cheekbones and the sculpted lips were all the same.
But no one would ever have any trouble telling them apart.
Radu had a slightly more delicate cast to the features, which had earned him the sobriquet “the Handsome,” once upon a time. Mircea was plenty handsome himself, but it wasn’t the same type. There was a sweetness to Radu, a gentleness that had somehow survived everything that had happened to him. His thick lashes and bright eyes had always reminded me of a stag: beautiful, regal, occasionally silly, one of nature’s great works of art.
But lovely as it was, and as powerful as it could be at times, a stag was still prey.
And Mircea could never be that.
He was the wolf in the darkness, the eagle flying overhead, the predator you never saw coming. The eyes could melt with genuine feeling, or brighten with laughter, or charm or seduce or any of the other thousand tricks in his repertoire. But if you looked close enough, you could see them, even then: the watchful eyes of the predator, staring back at you.
I recognized them because I had them, too. I sometimes wondered if that’s why we clashed so often. We were too alike: too stubborn, too suspicious, too . . . something. We’d never had an easy relationship; I doubted we ever would. But I wanted that relationship, no matter how much I’d denied it—wanted it fiercely.
And so did Dorina.
She might resent him, even hate him, but she loved him, too. I remembered that pang of longing she’d felt in the hall, while he searched for her. Remembered and experienced it all over again, because it echoed the same emotion in me. She loved him, however much she didn’t want to; loved him despite knowing it wasn’t returned; loved him even after he locked her away.
And now he was planning to do it all over again?
How could he do that?
How could he even think that?
“Because I want you to live.” Hard hands gripped me. I struggled, but was too weak to break his hold, to do anything but stare up at him in disbelief and pain—hers, mine, ours, I wasn’t sure anymore.
How could he do this?
“Listen to me!”
“I’ve listened to you for five hundred years, and what has it got me?”
“Life!”
I laughed, and it was cruel. I heard it in my voice, but couldn’t stop it, didn’t care. “Yeah, and I’ve enjoyed it so.”
“More than you would have if I’d done nothing!”
I’d finally managed to pull away, and had started to walk off to clear my head, but at that I rounded on him. “How do you know that? How do you know anything? You don’t know much about me, and less about her! Maybe she could have compensated in time; maybe we’d have reached some kind of balance. Or maybe not. Maybe we’d have been torn apart like all those other dhampirs, and died screaming, but you don’t know. Because you had to interfere, to handle everything, just like you always do—how has that worked out, Mircea?”
“Better than the alternative!”
I spread my hands. “How? I’ve spent centuries scrabbling, half-mad, on the edges of a society that hates me, looking for a foothold I only found because of her. Meanwhile, she’s been caged like some kind of animal, only able to emerge when there’s something to kill, abandoned, alone—and now you’re planning to do it all over again!”
A hand like steel found my arm. “I am planning to save your life! Something you will not have if she banishes you. And you’ve thought about it—don’t deny it. That word came from your head, not mine. You’ve thought—”
“Maybe I have.” I struggled with his hold and went nowhere. “It doesn’t mean she’ll do it!”
“And it doesn’t mean she won’t. Vampires have a constant war between our two natures, pulled by the beast on one hand and our humanity on the other. Forced to reconcile the two because we don’t have a choice. You do. And now so does she—”
“I’m not listening to this.”
“Yes, you are. For once you are going to listen—”
“For once? For once?” I stared at him.
“You never listen—”
“You never talk!”
“Well, I’m talking now.” It was grim. “We vampires have no choice but to blend our two natures, to come to equilibrium or to go mad—and some do. Unable to reconcile the monstrous part of themselves that every human has, but that every human does not have to feed. We cannot hide from what we are; we have to prey on others to survive. But we cannot give in to it utterly, or we risk becoming the monsters we are so often thought to be. It is a constant balancing act and there are times—oh, yes, there are times—when we would love to banish one part or the other.
“What if we could?”
“You wouldn’t. Go back to being human?” I laughed, because that comment deserved it. “No vampire would do that.”