Haunted by the King of Death (12 page)

“I promise I will not allow anything to happen to him.”

He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to make him promise such a thing, whether it was the thought of Snow being overwhelmed by his bloodlust or Aurora risking everything to be with her mate, or something he didn’t want to consider.

All three of them stared at him in silence for what felt like hours, and then Aurora smiled at him. Positively beamed. His skin crawled. She was too good. Too damn pure. He wanted to rip that smile off her face so she couldn’t turn it on him again.

Grave tamped down that vile hunger and managed to wrestle it back under control. He wouldn’t harm her. He could see that she meant the world to Snow and that she was good for him, and he was glad.

One of them deserved a shot at sanity and kicking their bloodlust, and Snow definitely deserved it more than he did.

Maybe he would just fade gracefully from existence.

No one would miss him.

The three realms would be a better place for it too.

Snow lifted his head and looked over the top of Aurora’s right at him, his blue eyes narrowing as his white eyebrows pinched hard above them. Grave had the oddest sensation that Snow had heard his thoughts and that look was meant to warn him that there was no way in Hell he was going to allow Grave to fade away.

He wished he had that much fight left in him, but coming here to the theatre had made him realise some things. He was tired, and he had never felt so cold and alone as he did now. No, that wasn’t true. He had felt cold and alone for decades.

Since Isla had betrayed him.

“Who is she?”

Grave snapped back to the room and stared at Snow. “Who is who?”

His cousin’s gaze was unflinching and merciless. “The female who did this to you.”

His first instinct was to dance around things and ask ‘did what to me?’ but he didn’t see the point when Snow crossed his arms over his broad chest and set his jaw, making it clear that he wasn’t going to give up. Dog with a damned bone. Typical of his cousin.

Grave sighed and gave a pointed look at Aurora.

Snow shook his head. “She’s staying.”

He huffed again. Stubborn bastard.

The weight of their gazes pressed down on him and he struggled with the words, with his feelings, all of his usual confidence draining away as he considered what he was about to do. He wanted it, but he feared it at the same time. No one knew about what had happened to him, and he hadn’t realised how much he needed to confide in someone until he had set eyes on Snow again.

Gods, he felt pathetic.

He blamed Isla for this weakness and then immediately took it back, and that only made his mood worsen to the point where he was close to snapping at his cousin to leave him alone and turning his back on his family.

Again.

He shut out Antoine and Aurora, focusing solely on Snow, and swallowed his pride.

“She is my mate.”

Antoine chuckled, the sound out of place in the thick silence. “You are a fated mate for someone? Poor bastard.”

Grave shrugged. “Thank you.”

Antoine shook his head. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about the female. What did she do to deserve you as her mate?”

“Brother,” Snow warned but Antoine ignored him and kept grinning at Grave.

Grave considered punching it off his face but settled for glaring at him as he thought about Isla and what she had done to him, and fury kindled in his black heart, slowly spread inky tendrils through him and tugged at his bloodlust.

“Maybe it is because she is a callous bitch?” he barked and felt nothing when Aurora flinched and backed towards Snow, and the male growled at him in warning. He pinned red eyes on Antoine and advanced on him, his breaths coming harder as everything Isla had done to him swam in his mind, stoking his rage to new heights. “She pulled me into a bond, spinning lies and false feelings, making me believe that she was in love with me too, and then she betrayed me. Fucking phantoms.”

He knew he had said too much when Antoine’s smile disappeared, his expression turning sombre and deadly serious.

“A phantom?” Antoine pushed him in his left shoulder, and the bastard was lucky he had chosen wisely and hadn’t touched his healing right one or he would have ripped his throat open with his fangs. “But you are solid. A male who mates with a phantom becomes incorporeal like them.”

Grave growled. “Not if she is corporeal at the time. She had some mage do a spell on her to make her solid… apparently it is wearing off.”

Snow raked blue eyes over him. “You are becoming a wraith.”

“What happens when you become one?” Antoine had moved through serious to concerned, and Grave wasn’t sure how to process that. He couldn’t remember the last time his younger cousin had looked as if he gave a damn about him. “Something tells me you’re not just becoming a phantom, Grave.”

Grave looked away from him and blew out his breath. There was little use in lying now. He had started and he would finish telling his cousins everything, because it was lifting some of the weight from his shoulders and some of the black clouds from the horizon ahead of him.

Even when it gave fear a hold over him too.

He had thought about what was going to happen, but talking about it to someone made it feel more real, and more unavoidable, and his need to escape the future that seemed set out for him was so strong that he could barely breathe.

Gods, that part he kept denying kicked off again, wishing Isla would find the mage, and this time it pushed him to find her and help her, to place this problem before his other one.

He looked at his family, torn between hunting the demon and hunting down a mage. Saving them or saving himself.

Either way it would be saving Isla.

Her name was poison in his mind, but a balm to his heart, and he didn’t understand how he could both hate and love her at the same time.

She hadn’t only betrayed him.

She had condemned him.

“I will not become a phantom,” Grave said, little more than a whisper but his voice seemed loud in the silent room. “I am fading.”

“Dying,” Snow snapped. “Say it straight, Cousin. You are dying.”

Grave nodded, and damn, it felt as if he had just taken a step closer to that fate, had made it real by accepting it.

“I will not let that happen,” Snow echoed his thoughts and Grave had to admire his cousin’s tenacity. Dog with a bone. “We will find someone to fix this first and then we will tackle the demon.”

Grave wanted to refuse, but he didn’t have the heart, and sense said that it was the right course of action. The demon hadn’t attacked anyone yet, and attempting to fight him when he was weakened by his condition was a death sentence, and he preferred to remain alive.

“I know some places we can begin looking for a mage.” As he said those words, fear slowly tightened its hold on him, sinking claws deep into his heart.

Isla was looking for a mage too.

He didn’t want to think about what might happen if they crossed paths again, not because Snow would be with him and was liable to attack her, and that would trigger an episode of bloodlust in Grave that he knew he wouldn’t be able to control, but because he wasn’t sure whether he was strong enough to see her again.

He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to resist the feelings he still had for her.

Lost in thoughts of Isla, he barely paid attention as Snow and Antoine laid out a plan. It was only when he found himself standing in a small bedroom on the second floor of the theatre, staring down at a single bed, that he became aware of the world again.

Aware of something other than his mate.

He stripped down to his black boxer shorts, lay on top of the dark grey covers, and rested his hands on his stomach. A twinge shot through his right shoulder. He grimaced and rubbed it, stared at the ceiling as he worked to soothe the knotted muscle, and lost himself again.

The mark on his back warmed, and he didn’t close the connection Isla was forging between them. He allowed it to blossom and thoughts of her to come with it, to fill his mind and steal him away from the world, filling the quiet hours of day as sleep eluded him.

Someone knocked on his door, pulling him away from her at last, and he frowned as his senses warned the sun was setting and he hadn’t managed to sleep at all. He dressed and opened the door, and Aurora was there. She dropped her gaze to his riding boots and twisted her hands in front of the waist of her white dress.

“Snow is ready.”

Grave eyed the fresh set of marks on her throat. Snow was ready and fed by the looks of things. His stomach growled at the thought of blood and he swore he would find some soon. His healing injuries demanded it almost as fiercely as his bloodlust.

Maybe he would drain the mage dry after the spell was done.

He followed the petite raven-haired female down to the backstage room where Snow was waiting, deep in conversation with Antoine. A pretty blonde stood beside him, rocking a small bundle of black in her arms, a contrast against her blood red dress that had Grave’s stomach rumbling again.

An unruly tuft of pale hair poked out of the black cloth.

“Bop.” The female tapped the baby on its nose and it wriggled and laughed. When it stilled, she did it again. “Bop.”

Grave edged closer and tried to get a look at his new relation. The female lifted her head and he waited for her to frown at him or say something to drive him away.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said, surprising him with a bright smile that reached her forest green eyes. “I’m Sera and this little bundle is Helena.”

She tilted the baby towards him and Grave canted his head as he looked at her, into pale blue eyes and at white-blonde hair that were a painful reminder but one he couldn’t look away from.

“It is a coincidence.” Antoine’s voice sounded distant to his ears.

Helena wriggled again, pulled a face of sheer frustration as she tried to escape the blanket, and Grave still couldn’t stop staring at her.

“Sera insisted.”

“I like the name,” she shot back, a touch of malice in her tone now. “You never gave me a valid reason not to call our daughter Helena.”

“It was my mother’s name,” Grave said, his own voice sounding as if he was listening to it from afar. “She looks like her.”

“I know.” She tucked the baby close to her chest and tapped her nose again, eliciting another laugh. “I thought it was an honour to her, like your brother Bastian is named for Antoine and Snow’s father.”

Snow placed a hand on his shoulder, snapping Grave out of his stupor, and he looked across at his cousin where he stood beside him. Pain filled his cousin’s blue eyes and Grave shook his head, silently telling him that he didn’t need to apologise.

After everything they had been through in Hell together, all the missions that had fuelled the rise of their bloodlust, they had a bond that was stronger than blood.

It was that bond that had Snow coming to his aid, just as Grave would always go to his when he needed him.

He only wished he had been home that night when Snow had needed him most, not far away in Hell, bent on taking command of the Preux Chevaliers, caring only about his own life and neglecting his family.

Snow slipped away from him, returning to Aurora, and Grave looked away as she showered affection on him. He was finding it hard to keep his thoughts off Isla as it was. Watching Snow with Aurora would only give his phantom more power over him, until she haunted his every waking moment.

“It is an honour,” he said to Sera, not wanting her to feel she had done wrong by choosing a family name for her child.

In a way, he was glad she had picked his mother’s name, because the babe was beautiful enough to bear it and perhaps it would help her grow into someone as kind and caring as his mother had been.

He bowed his head to Antoine and Sera, and little Helena, and led himself to the main foyer of the theatre. It was quiet, dark and cool, a thousand miles away from the busy palace he called home, where the temperature rarely ventured anywhere near cold.

And his home was a million miles away from the world of snow he had grown up in, a frigid and icy landscape where summer had been mercifully short and winter had been long, and filled with days where the sun refused to creep above the horizon.

“Ready?” Snow’s deep voice transported him back to that world, to a time when he had been young and carefree, and they had been on the verge of venturing forth from their castle for the first time, heading for the mortal villages to find females to feed from, among other things.

Grave nodded and spoke in the old tongue, echoing the words he had said then. “As I will ever be.”

Snow chuckled and walked forwards, and Grave paused to watch him. He wore his hair the same, overlong and messy, but gone were the thick fur cloak, tunic, trousers and fur-lined boots, replaced with a figure-hugging pair of black jeans, heavy soled leather boots, and a black t-shirt.

He still had the gait of a warrior though.

Snow paused on the portico of the theatre. Grave joined him and frowned as he sensed his cousin’s hesitation, the fear that flowed through him as he eyed the mortals coming and going along the street and then the evening sky.

“Don’t get out much?” Grave looked across at him.

Snow shook his head and cracked a smile. “Just a short stint now and then to test me.”

“And how often does it go horribly wrong?” Grave couldn’t resist asking that question, mostly to tease his cousin but partly because he wanted to know just what he had signed up for.

His smile widened. “Seven out of ten times. Aurora is getting good at teleporting me quickly back to the theatre and calming me.”

Grave needed to look into angels more. Teleporting was a handy ability, one he hadn’t realised she would still possess after leaving her home.

“Maybe she should have come with us, if she can teleport and soothe your bloodlust.”

Snow growled, flashing fangs at him. “She is an angel. She cannot enter Hell without suffering greatly and you know it.”

He did know it, and he regretted suggesting it as he saw the pain in Snow’s eyes and the male glanced back over his shoulder into the theatre, a look of longing on his face. He hadn’t considered how difficult this would be for his cousin, not only going to Hell but leaving the woman he loved behind. Vulnerable. A demon was targeting her too.