“Once the decision was made, the Church acted quickly, for that time. There weren’t any trials, not for Vampyres. It was extermination. Inquisition officers seized the estate in the name of the Church. I found out afterward, when a servant who had been with my family for years came to tell me the news. There were no bodies to bury, of course. All the Vampyres had turned to ash.” He paused and took a deep breath. “He said the women had been brutalized by the soldiers before they’d been killed, and everything in that young, naive boy broke that day.”
She didn’t think before she acted. She put a hand over his as it rested against his lean thigh, and his fingers closed around hers in a strong grip. “They killed her and took everything? You didn’t have anything?”
“Nothing. I had no legal recourse either, as I had renounced all worldly possessions with my vows. Even my horse was technically the Church’s.”
“What a colossal betrayal,” she whispered.
He gave her a small, ironic smile. “I stole my horse, and a sword. I stole other things too, to sell, so I could make passage to Italy to where Julian resided at that time. He had been a famous commander of a Roman army, and I needed to know how to go to war. We made a bargain. I swore I would come back to serve him once I had done what I needed to do. He turned me, and taught me. Then he set me loose in the world and said, ‘Come back when you’re finished.’ It took me ten years, but I came back to him.”
She asked from the back of her throat, “Did you kill everyone responsible?”
His gaze turned fierce and hot, as it had the first time she had asked him if the stories were true, although his soft, even voice never altered. “Oh, yes.”
“And you’ve been serving Julian ever since.”
He inclined his head. “He’s my sire.”
She nodded. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. How had he put the pieces of himself back together?
Somehow the core of him had survived.
He wasn’t a monster. He was courteous and thoughtful. Self-disciplined and well-mannered. How had he coped with such a shattered faith?
She became aware of her hand, wrapped in his. Growing self-conscious, she tried to let go, but he tightened his grip and said, “I told you all this, because you have the right to know who your patron is. You should be able to reconcile in your mind all of those things you know about me, and you should know that no one who is under my care will ever come to harm like that again. Not ever. I swear it.”
Realization crushed down. He had taken so much time and effort, all to reassure her, when she had every intention of leaving anyway.
They weren’t going to make the dance lesson after all. She couldn’t go on without saying anything. Now it was her turn to grip his fingers. She met his gaze and said, “I have to leave in the morning.”
Surprise flared in his expression then settled into coldness, and he pulled away from her touch. “I see. My apologies, if I’ve offended you in any way.”
What? No!
She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket before he could stand. “Your story didn’t offend me. I was incredibly moved and saddened, and I wished I could do something to protect that boy from all the horrible things that happened to him.”
The coldness eased somewhat, but while he didn’t pull away, his body remained stiff. “Thank you,” he said. “But then why leave? I thought we had made progress. You’re no longer afraid, and you seemed pleased enough last night. When did you decide this?”
She put her face in her hands and rubbed eyes that had gone dry and gritty with tiredness. “This morning. I was going to tell you. I should never have put on the dress and shoes, but they were so pretty, and I wanted to see if we might be able to waltz again before I told you. Just ninety seconds more.”
He took both of her hands and pulled them down, and she saw that he had moved to straddle the bench to face her fully. Searching her expression, he asked, “What happened?”
She hesitated, her mind racing. She didn’t want to tell him, in case that provided some kind of buffer. But what if it didn’t? He had a right to know what kind of danger she had brought to his estate, so that he could guard against it. She couldn’t betray him, or the others, by leaving them in ignorance.
“I’ve made a powerful enemy,” she said. “And he’s vindictive. I thought I might be able to disappear, or if he found me, just being in your household would be enough to back him off, but this morning I realized I was being stupid. Just me being here has put you and everybody else in danger.”
He looked calm, but his gaze had turned deadly. If he had looked anything like that at the Vampyre’s Ball, she would have been terrified. As it was, her breath shortened.
“Who is it?”
She realized he still held both her wrists in a gentle, entirely unbreakable grip. “I think I’ve told you enough.”
“It’s Malphas, isn’t it?”
Hearing Xavier speak his name aloud shocked her, and her heart began a slow, hard clanging in her chest. Tightening her hands into fists, she pulled at his grip. Somewhat to her own surprise, he let her go. “How do you know that name?”