wish I could make it better for you, but, unfortunately, there is nothing I can do. I do hope I can help you get past this, though, because it is in the best interests of the Amadis and humankind. I believe the attached video may help you let go of your past and accept your future.”
I stared at the message for several minutes, trying to understand it. The words didn’t sound like Rina’s and I just couldn’t believe she would actually deliver such a message in an email. This was all out of character. It must be really bad. A lump grew in my throat with this realization. Whatever the video showed, it was something she couldn’t tell me on the phone or even deliver through Mom. So bad, neither of them could even voice it. I instantly knew I didn’t want to watch the video. Yet, acting on its own accord, my trembling hand moved the mouse to the file and double-clicked.
Ian, the ugly Irish ogre who’d dropped the bomb on me about the Amadis plan for my marriage, appeared on the screen. He stood in a darkened room, a spotlight trained on him, wearing black leather pants, a black trench coat and no shirt. His red hair provided the only real color to the scene. His lips pulled back, exposing his crooked teeth, whether in a grin or a snarl, I couldn’t tell.
“We know ya want to go to the media,” he said in his Irish accent, “to protect your lil lassie’s reputation. But ya might want to think twice ‘bout that. If you do, if you acknowledge Seth’s existence in any way, heads will roll.”
He cackled his disgusting laugh as the recording cut to another scene. This one had all the appearances of a group of terrorists with a hostage, just like those seen in the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Several men dressed in Middle Eastern tunics, sabres hanging from their leather belts, stood in a circle around someone unseen. Those in front of the camera moved to the side. My breath caught.
“Oh, no,” I gasped.
The shirtless hostage knelt on his knees, a burlap sack over his head. One of the terrorists—a Daemoni, I assumed—held his sabre to the hostage’s neck. I had no way of knowing for sure without seeing the face, but the build seemed close to right, too close, from what I could remember. And then I saw it. My hands flew to my mouth. The blood drained from my head, coagulating into a ball in the pit of my stomach.
Just below the curve of the knife, on the hostage’s chest, barely visible over his heart, a darker pigmentation against the rest of his pale skin. When our souls were joined in marriage, it had burned bright red. The Amadis mark. Choking, gasping sounds gnarled in my throat, the scream unable to pass the huge lump.
“You tell the world anything, we show them this,” Ian spoke in a voiceover.
“Alexis!” a voice screamed. A very familiar voice. One I had heard only in my dreams for over seven years. It careened into a wail of tortured agony.
Then the Daemoni with the sabre jerked his arm. The camera’s view dropped, but unlike the news producers who cut away from the gore at this point, it angled in on the burlap sack, now rolling on the floor in a pool of blood.
Chapter 4
I felt completely numb. I sat completely still, only my finger moving on the mouse to click the Play button over and over and over again. My brain refused to register what I saw as I watched it replay, as if I watched some amateur video staged in Hollywood, fake blood and all. But slowly, the reality of it slithered its way into my mind. And all I could think was, It’s not him.
“Mom?” Dorian asked, running into my office sometime later and making me jump.
I slammed the laptop shut. I couldn’t let him see that. He couldn’t know about the video at all. Because it wasn’t real. And that hostage wasn’t his father.
I opened my arms and he climbed into my lap. I held him tightly against my chest, the pressure of his body like a catalyst to keep me breathing.
“Alexis,” Mom called from down the hall. I could tell she rushed toward us with each syllable sounding closer. “Rina’s email account’s been hacked. Don’t open—”
She cut herself off as she charged into my office and saw me. Something on my face must have told her I’d seen the video because her own face crumpled with what should have been my pain. I simply shook my head. She pulled in a deep breath and rearranged her expression.
“Come on, Dorian, honey, Uncle Owen’s making you breakfast,” Mom said. My arms fell numbly to my sides as she pulled Dorian off my lap. He ran off for the kitchen.
“It’s not him,” I whispered.
Mom closed the door, came over to me and swiveled my chair around to face her. She squatted in front of me, her hands on my knees.
“Honey—” she started.
“It’s not him,” I repeated, louder now.
“We don’t know—”
“I said it’s not him!” I threw my hands to my face. My body began trembling again. My head shook back and forth. “It’s not him. I don’t know how I know. I just do. It’s not him, Mom. It can’t be!”
She rubbed her hands against my thighs. “I know, honey. I mean…I don’t know. I just know what you’re feeling. I know it’s hard to believe.”
“I don’t believe. I know!” I cried into my hands. “Don’t you? Can’t you feel the truth?”
She sighed. “You know I haven’t been able to feel anything at all. And we haven’t been able to find anything. We’ve tried to send soldiers in, but, if the Daemoni do still have him, we have no idea where.”
I stopped shaking as I listened. She’d never given me so many details.
“They lie so much, we never know what to believe. And Rina’s heard nothing from her other sources about any of this.” She sighed again. “And this video…we’ve never been able to figure out if it’s him or not. Our people examined every frame and couldn’t determine if it was even real, let alone who the hostage was.”
I dropped my hands from my face. “What do you mean? You’ve seen this before? You’ve known about this?”
She grimaced. “Yes, honey. We’ve had this video for a few years.”
“A few years?” My jaw dropped with disbelief.
“When the media did that whole character bashing about your having Dorian so young and out of wedlock, we were going to make an official statement. But then the Daemoni sent this video, threatening to send it to the media worldwide if we said anything at all. We decided it best for you and Dorian that we just keep quiet. Ignore the rumors and let them run their course.” She paused, then added quietly, “No one wanted you to see this.”
“Until now.”
“We don’t know who sent it or why.”
“It’s obvious why! The council wants me to move on and they thought this would convince me. Well, they’re wrong. It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me!”
The next thing I knew, I sat at the head of my bed, my arms wrapped around our wedding picture and my knees drawn up in a ball. I didn’t remember if I had walked here purposely or had fled to the refuge of my room. I didn’t even know how long I’d been sitting here, rocking back and forth, whispering, “No, no, no.”
Before this, I’d already worked through the first four steps of the grieving process, getting stuck on the depression part…and sometimes moving backward. I had never reached acceptance, though. The council—at least one person—thought they could rush me into it with this video. But the idea back-fired. It pushed me back. All the way back to denial. Because I absolutely refused to believe my husband was beheaded in the video. In fact, with the way the camera cut away from the hostage and then the angle of the view…I couldn’t be certain there was even a head in the sack rolling on the floor. The scene really could have been staged, just theatrics, as Mom seemed to imply. But someone obviously wanted me to see it…and to believe it.
How stupid could they be? Did they really think I would be so easily convinced? Our connection was too strong. Or is it? I froze at this thought. I’d been losing him in my memory and now even in my dreams. Our connection had actually been quite weak lately. Mom knew that. Owen had probably figured it out. They said they hadn’t told anyone, but now someone on the council knew and tried to take advantage of my weakness. Tried to
