Promise (23 page)

"Shut the hell up, Ian!" Tristan nearly
jumped out of his seat. Several people glanced over at us
again.

My throat closed in and my stomach knotted as
I realized what Ian said.
Is it true?
I tried to believe
what Tristan had told me, repeating it to myself.
Deception is
his most powerful weapon.
Ian carried on in a mocking tone and
it was too hard to block out.

"Oh, yes…Princess Alexis and King Tristan,
the perfect combination, making the most powerful Amadis baby
ever." Ian bounced in his seat with excitement as he watched my
reaction.

"
What
?" I choked.

"
Don't listen
," Tristan whispered.
"He's just trying to take advantage of the situation, turning
things around."

He stood up and leaned threateningly over the
table toward Ian. His voice was low, but no longer a whisper. "If
you don't shut the fuck up, I will make it so you can never talk
again. Witnesses or not."

"You two got a problem, take it outta here,"
the bartender called over in our direction.

Tristan held his hand out to me. "Come on,
Alexis, we're done here."

I started to move.

"Ah, so ya don't know yet," Ian said to me,
stopping me, somehow mesmerizing me with his voice. Or maybe it was
those pale blue eyes, like shallow pools of water, just deep enough
to pull me under. "Looks like Seth's the one who's been doing the
deceiving. What'd he do?
Pretend
to fall in love with you?
He's the best liar, I'm sure ya believed every last word…every
kiss. Did he feed ya the Amadis
lie
? Did he tell ya that
you're
meant
to be together when
he
don't even
believe it?"

The air caught in my throat as I tried to
breathe. My chest squeezed and my pulse throbbed in my ears. I
looked up at Tristan, my eyes wide and burning. With no air, my
voice was small. "Tristan?"

He turned stiffly to look at me. Muscles in
his neck bulged and his fists clenched, veins popping out.

"I'm sorry you had to find out this way," he
said flatly. Then he turned back to Ian, his eyes hard as marbles,
his voice cold as ice. "She means
nothing
to me. Leave her
alone and deal with
me
."

The air I'd been holding in my lungs came out
in a whoosh. I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes.

"So you
did
lie to her. Back to your
old ways, huh?"

Too fast to even see, Tristan had Ian pinned
face down on the table, his arm twisted sickly behind him. "GET THE
FUCK OUT OF HERE
NOW
!"

I trembled on the rickety wooden chair as
everything inside me plummeted to the darkness of hell.
It
is
true. Tristan's been lying.
I heard a choking sound and
thought it was Ian but realized it was me, my chest heaving, my
throat squeezing.
He doesn't really love me
.
Tristan.
Doesn't. Love. Me
.

Ian rolled his eyes up to me, drinking in my
reaction.

"Looks like my work is done here anyway," he
said with a smirk. "Ya know you'll be welcomed back where ya
belong, Seth…if the Amadis don't kill ya."

Several people surrounded our table by then,
including Owen and the blonde. I couldn't focus on everything going
on as I tried to simply
breathe
.

"Vanessa, I swear to God, if you touch her,
I'll come after you myself," I heard Tristan say from what seemed
like far away.

"So now you're swearing to
God
, huh?"
a musical voice responded, sounding just as distant.

There was a lot of commotion and then I heard
Ian's cackling and a chiming laugh fade toward the door. I vaguely
heard Tristan say we were leaving, too, but I couldn't move. I was
frozen, lost within myself.

Tristan doesn't love me. He never did. It
was all just a lie.
His words echoed in my head.
She
means
nothing
to me
. I wrapped my arms around myself,
clutching at my abdomen, my chest still heaving. My heart felt like
it had been squeezed until it ruptured and now just sat in my
chest, limp and lifeless, a burst balloon.
I'm just an
assignment to him. Nothing else.

Tristan came over to me and I shrank away
from him.

"Alexis, we need to go." He reached out for
my hand and I jumped off the chair, knocking it over. "Let me take
you home and explain."

"
Don't you touch me!"
I screamed, not
caring who surrounded us.

He grabbed my wrists with one hand and pulled
me close to him, holding my chin firmly with his other hand to make
me look up at him. He was too strong for me to break loose. "You
have to listen to me because you can
not
believe him."

"But you even said…," I choked out.

"I told you I'd have to say things I didn't
mean. You have to believe me that I really love you, Alexis.
Please
believe that. Please
trust
me."

No, he said he would have to say things he
didn't
want
to say
. There was a difference. He even lied
to me now. The tears disappeared as anger enveloped me. I broke
away from him, yanking my hands out of his. My voice rose in volume
and octaves so I didn't even sound like myself.

"
Trust
you? After all this, you expect
me to
trust
you? This whole thing has been nothing but a
lie!
You
are a liar!
You
are the deceiver! And you
are so good at it because that is what you are
made
to
do!"

I glared at him as if he were a monster. I
didn't even know who he was. His eyes—his whole face—filled with
pain. And I was glad. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to hurt
like hell. Because he had done the ultimate pain job on me.

"Go back to wherever you came from, Tristan,
because you don't belong with
me
!" I ran through the pub,
out the door and across the street to the beach.

Although the sand made it difficult,
following the beach was the quickest way home. I ran for a while,
not noticing the rain, not caring how dark it was, with only the
light of the moon reflecting on the water. Someone came out of the
darkness and grabbed me by the waist. I kicked and screamed.

"It's not
safe
for you out here,"
Tristan growled.

"I don't care!" I yelled, still kicking and
thrashing my arms. "I'd rather be dead!"

"Alexis, please don't say that," he murmured
in my ear.

"You've already ripped me into pieces. I'm as
good as dead, anyway!"

"Lexi,
please
…"

"Let me take her, Tristan." Mom's voice came
from the darkness. I saw her small frame step out of the black
trees and shrubs lining the top of the beach. "I've got her
now."

I squirmed and Tristan let me go. I ran into
Mom's arms and fell against her, my body racking with sobs.

She held me and stroked my hair while I
cried, the rain pouring on us almost as fast as my tears. "Let's go
home, now."

We left Tristan on the beach, standing alone
in the rain. The last image burned on my eyes was his beautiful
face contorted with agony.

Chapter 1
6

As soon as we were home, I stripped my wet
clothes off, put on sweats and a t-shirt, crawled under the covers
of my bed and sobbed.
He doesn't love me. He never did. I mean
nothing to him.
The phrases chanted in my head like a sick
mantra. When my stomach and chest hurt too much to sob anymore, I
just lay there, tears streaming silently. I don't know when I fell
asleep or for how long, but when I woke up, it was still dark and I
was still crying.

As the new day dawned, I realized it was the
first day of the rest of my life without Tristan. Without love.
Without hope. When the tears didn't come, anger did. Anger at
Tristan, anger at my mother, anger at myself.

"How could he do this to me?! Why would she
let him?!
How did I fall for it?!
" I screamed at the walls
and the ceiling. I beat on my pillows and bed, letting them take
the wrath, and finally broke down into sobs again…then silent
tears…then exhaustion.

Sometime in the late morning there was a
knock on my door.

"Go away!"

"Alexis, I need to talk to you," Mom said
through the door.

"I said to go away!" I turned over on my
side, facing the wall, my back to the door in case she came in
anyway, but she didn't knock again or say anything else.

Later that afternoon, I quietly slipped to
the bathroom, relieved Mom didn't catch me. When I came out,
though, she was waiting, a look of deep concern on her face. I
glanced past her, into the living room, and saw the familiar
sandy-brown hair over the top of the couch. Fresh tears sprang into
my eyes.

"Leave me alone," I muttered and rushed back
to my room. I swung the door closed, but she caught it. I crawled
back into bed, my back to her.

"Alexis, please let me explain," she
said.

I turned over and glared at her. "Why? It's
all just bullshit lies."

"That's why. So you can understand the
truth."

I sat up and hardened my eyes. "You mean the
half-truth—no, not even half, the
partial
-truth. You two
never tell me the whole truth. The only two people in this world
who I thought I could trust. Why should I believe anything now?
It's all
lies
!"

"You have to believe he really loves you,
Alexis."

I glared at her. "And
that
is the
biggest, bald-faced, bullshit lie of them
all
!"

I heard heavy footsteps, then the front door
open. Mom looked over her shoulder toward the door and then back at
me. "You're killing him, you know."

"Good! He's already all but killed me. In
fact, I would have been better off if he
had
killed me when
he wanted to."

The front door slammed shut. He'd heard that.
I was glad.
Not really
. No, not really, but I
wanted
to be glad.

Mom came over and sat at the end of my bed. I
scooted myself away until my back pressed against the broken
headboard, a casualty of my anger fits.

"You know what really gets me,
Sophia
?" I fumed. "You knew all along. You let all this
happen. You're supposed to be my
mother
."

Her eyes narrowed. "That's
exactly
why
you need to listen to me, Alexis. I
am
your mother. I would
not let anything or anyone intentionally hurt you. Do you really
think I would have let this go on with him if I didn't believe he
truly loved you?"

"Wasn't that the
plan
?" I spewed.

"You don't even know the plan. You're all
worked up about something you don't understand."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "So educate
me. Tell me what I'm missing here that makes the lies okay."

Mom studied my face, took a deep breath and
blew it out. "Over eighty years ago, when I went through the
Ang'dora
, we thought our bloodline would die out and the
Amadis would collapse. Remember, the Amadis is a society. Our
family started it and continues to rule it. It'll fall apart
without us. I was the last in our bloodline and I'd had no
children. Since no one had ever reproduced after the
Ang'dora
, your conception and birth seemed like miracles to
us. Realizing there was hope for us to continue, it was decided
it'd be in our best interest of survival—possibly our
only
chances of survival—if you joined with the strongest, most powerful
male with original Amadis blood…."

"Tristan," I spat.

"Yes, Tristan. A child from the two of you
would guarantee our survival for many centuries. I can't tell you
what it means for the Amadis to survive, but perhaps you can
understand if you remember the Daemoni are our enemies and, well,
let's just say it's not good for them to be left without us."

I nodded reluctantly. I knew where this was
going.

"So where does this farce of a relationship
and love come in?" I demanded. "Haven't the Amadis heard of in
vitro fertilization?"

Mom shook her head. "Just back up a bit here.
When you were born, I took you to the Amadis and that's when the
council made its final decision…the plans for you and Tristan. I
adamantly opposed it, believing it would not turn out well. Tristan
opposed it, too. He thought it wasn't fair to you. But the council
was settled.

"The council, in general, believed the two of
you were meant for each other and you would be true soul mates.
They tried to convince Tristan and me, but neither of us believed
it possible. We both eventually agreed to the decision, though. For
the next eighteen years, he went his way and I took you my way. I
figured at some point, when you were much older than you are now,
the two of you would find a way to make it happen and then go your
separate ways.

"After waiting and brooding over this for so
long, though, Tristan became curious. As soon as you turned
eighteen, he came looking for you. He's told you the rest from
there."

I stared at Mom. I still didn't get how the
last nine months had anything to do with it. "So it was all just a
set-up. Why did he have to lie about
loving
me, though? How
can you
justify
that?"

"I don't believe it's a lie, Alexis," she
answered quietly. "I
feel
it's the truth. I've felt it since
the day I came back from that trip and saw how happy you two were
together. I just didn't want to feel it then. But not wanting it
doesn't make it go away. I believe the council was right and you
two were meant to be together. You
belong
together."

My eyes hardened with my heart. "I don't buy
it. He came here to complete his little assignment so he could get
on with his long, miserable life. I was just a responsibility and
he wanted to get it done and out of the way."