Bound by Flames

Author:Frost, Jeaniene [Frost, Jeaniene]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Adult, Vampires
ISBN: 9780062075826
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2015-01-26T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Dawn wasn’t far away. I sensed its approach in the lethargy that crept up my limbs, making them harder to move.

Of course, that could also be from over-satiation. Vlad had wanted to hear me plead from passion several times, as it turned out. I’d been drowsily tracing my hand behind his neck when a familiar essence trail flared beneath my fingers, reviving me as if I’d been doused with a bucket of icy water.

“I forgot to tell you something,” I said, then cursed at my choice of words, not to mention my lack of tact. Way to ease into a highly personal, traumatic subject, Leila!

“What?” he said, and though his tone was normal, his shields went back up.

I closed my eyes, still cursing myself. “First, let me apologize for not telling you sooner. It’s not that I forgot, really, it’s just . . . well, a lot’s happened, as you know, and—”

“What?” he repeated, his tone sharper now.

I opened my eyes, not surprised to find him drilling me with his Interrogation stare. Under that hard, unrelenting gaze, no one in their right mind would give him anything less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which is what I’d intended to do anyway.

“It’s about Clara.” When he showed no reaction, I amended, “Your first wife, Clara.”

That widened his gaze a fraction, though he still didn’t blink or look away. “What about her?”

I don’t know why, but I touched the spot on the back of his neck before I spoke. The first time I’d felt it, I’d known it was hers. Though faint from age, the essence imprint still pulsed with the kind of love that time could never fully erase.

“When Szilagyi found me during the castle attack, he said he was going to kill me just like he’d killed your first wife.”

“Clara wasn’t murdered, she jumped to her death,” Vlad said, unknowingly echoing the same denial I’d made.

My hand left his neck. “Szilagyi said he erased everyone’s memory of him being there so you’d think that. He wanted your guilt over Clara’s ‘suicide’ to crush you, but . . . he told me he pushed her off that roof, and since he’d intended to kill me when he said it, he didn’t have any reason to lie.”

Vlad said nothing. His emotions were still locked down, but from the new rigidness in his posture, he was now questioning what he’d believed for over five hundred years.

If I were still human, I would have held my breath as I waited for his response. He’d loved Clara so much that his self-appointed culpability in her “suicide” marked his worst sin. Besides, judging from his emotions, Vlad had already been tightrope walking between a justified need for vengeance and a near psychotic obsession to bring Szilagyi down. Would this end up pushing him over the edge?

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have told him.

“Even if he had no cause to lie, I can’t bring myself to trust Szilagyi’s word,” Vlad said at last.

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