Shadow's Claim

“Love?” Daciano had talked about fate and bloodings and Brides. But he’d never mentioned love!

His eyes were mesmerizing as they caught hers. “I hate what you did. And still I love you.” With a bitter curse, as if he’d said too much, he drew away from her. Turning to sit at the edge of the pallet, he dropped his head into his hands. “I won’t let you go, dragă. You’ll stay in this underworld with me until your other life is but a memory.”

“Stay with you?” She righted her clothing with snappish movements. “After how you’ve treated me!” He’d abandoned her, then abducted her—never explaining his actions, nor allowing Bettina to explain hers.

His head swung up. “You are angry at me? You betrayed me repeatedly! And then, on top of everything, you used your power on me—on me. Apparently I was the last to know you’d recovered it!”

“I had no choice but to use it. And what about your actions? You humiliated me in front of my people! Not to mention what you did to Caspion.”

“You dare utter his name in my home?” A chilling malice laced his tone. “I blame him for your treachery. He talked you into it. You wouldn’t have betrayed me on your own.”

“He had nothing to do with it! I didn’t know what else to do! I was terrified for you.”

Double take. “So you poisoned me?”

“I had to— Wait. What?”

“You handed me that fucking goblet of blood, the one spiked with poison from the ring you always wore.”

She gasped. “Vampire, you believe I did that?”

Chapter 48

When Trehan registered her dumbfounded expression, hope bloomed in his chest.

Then logic reminded him that she and Caspion had the means, the motive, the opportunity. You reach, because you want her so badly. “If not you and the demon, then who would dare?”

She cried, “How about your cousins? The ones who are always trying to kill you!”

“They would never do something so dishonorable.”

“But you think I would?”

In a singsong tone, Salem said at his ear: “You’re both wrong.”

“Sylph! You followed Bettina here?” And remained? When I was about to take her?

“I’d morphed wiv her collar a split second before your mist came. Then I figured you were goin’ to nab her, so I tagged along to make sure you wouldn’t hurt her.” The being shimmered around the room as if excited. “Do you know how long I’ve been wantin’ to come here?”

Bettina looked as mystified as Trehan felt. “Salem, how are we both wrong? Who did it?”

“The vampire’s squire! Not twenty minutes ago, another phantom told me he’d heard the young vamp brag about mickeying Daciano’s carafe of blood.” Salem addressed Trehan as he said, “Seems the Horde lord you killed in the melee was his sire. The little bugger couldn’t murder you outside the ring, but he could hamstring you before a match so Caspion could take your head.”

The bloody squire poisoned me? That soon-to-be-dead vampire?

Not Bettina, then.

Trehan’s eyes widened, and his heart began to thud. Not Bettina! “This news is . . . welcome,” he choked out in utter understatement. “Now, begone from here.”

Salem chuckled. “Right you are, Your Kingness. Commencing me tour of the Realm of Blood and Mist—”

“I didn’t mean into the kingdom!”

Salem was already gone. And Trehan couldn’t stay angry, not with all the relief he felt.

In a quiet voice, Bettina said, “You truly thought I could do something like that to you?”

He traced to the edge of the bed, sitting beside her, just preventing himself from dragging her over his lap. “Bettina, I am sorry. I thought the demon had influenced you.”

She pulled her knees to her chest and turned away. “Cas wanted to defeat you on his own. He believed he could, until you went crazy.”

She will never forgive this. “I . . . didn’t know.”

“That night, I had just realized that I was feeling something deeper for you than I’d ever felt before,” she said softly, sadly—as if she was speaking about something long lost, never to be found again. “I saw that you had been poisoned, and I thought I was saving your life.” She gave a humorless laugh. “I believed I was finally going to be able to help.”

She’d wanted only to save me? He tried to speak past the lump in his throat. Couldn’t.

“I’d recognized that Cas was nothing more than my best friend—one I will always treasure. I’d accepted that what I felt for you was completely different. But then you turned around and humiliated both Cas and me.”

So we’d gotten past the demon at last, and I fucked my chances?

She continued, “I’d pointed out that you were about to get everything and asked you not to hurt him. But I guess consideration for us went out the window when you suspected me of poisoning you.”

He flinched.

“My coronation was a misery. Everyone had accepted you as their king, so when you forsook me, they thought there must’ve been a good reason!”

She’d already felt like an imposter in Abaddon, and he’d made it that much worse for her. “Bettina . . .” How to explain what had been going on in his mind? When even now he could hardly think? Instinct was riding him hard.

“I’ve been able to ‘rehabilitate’ my image, but Cas wasn’t so fortunate. He was shunned, forced to leave. He’s gone to the Plane of Lost Years.”

Then he’d gone to hell. I have definitely fucked my chances with her. How to make amends? How to—

Gaze narrowing, Trehan reached for the crystal around his neck, yanking it free. “This will be his.”

She faced him. “Pardon?”

“Caspion is a tracker? Consider this amends.”

“You’d do that?” She tilted her head. “When it’s been passed down through your house?” Trehan took her hand and placed the crystal in her palm, closing her delicate fingers over it.

* * *

Bettina stared down at the crystal, then up at Daciano. She had never seen a male look so anguished, as if he’d been gutted and was slowly expiring. “Vampire, I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t accept this,” she said, returning it to him. “Please put it back on.”

Brows drawn, he reluctantly did, his bemusement seeming to deepen—as if she’d rejected him anew.

“I’m only saying that you should think about a decision like this.”

“Think? Bettina, I can’t think. Since my blooding, logic and reason have vanished. As I said, all I can do is feel. And I’ve very little experience . . . feeling.”

“What happened between the morning after we made love and that twilight in the tent?”

“I don’t know how to explain myself, or even if it’s possible.”

“Try.”

“During the tournament, there’d been much . . . pressure,” he began haltingly. “It continued to build.”

“What kind of pressure?”

“Over that week, I experienced your attack firsthand, and it filled me with unimaginable wrath. And yet I