CK blinks slowly at me and my description. “I know what it was,” he croaks out.
“You do?” I ask him with an arched eyebrow. “How do you know?” Seems more important than asking what the substance is for some reason.
He gives me that pained look that he gets when he doesn’t want to tell me something about his past.
“’Bastian, please leave us,” he says quietly.
“Err, no,” Sebastian says. “I want to hear this. You were supposed to find a way to reverse me. If there is a way, now I want to know what it is.”
CK clenches his fists at his sides in a very clear effort not to punch Sebastian’s lights out at his comment.
“You were trying to find a way to reverse-turn Sebastian?” I ask in disbelief. But somehow, somewhere inside my head, I already have knowledge of that. And it seems that Sebastian was reluctant at first, but now that I am no longer a Vampire, he doesn’t want to be either. I can see this being a massive issue.
“I was looking into it,” CK says. “Because of his treasured Faerie nature.”
“Oh,” I say and look down.
“So?” Sebastian asks. “What was it?”
CK turns to him and says, “Please leave us. I need to speak to my wife alone.”
I am not so sure that is going to work, but it does. Sebastian nods once and steps around CK to bend down to give me a very sloppy kiss on the mouth. He gives me a wicked grin as he can see that it has brought out Aeval and he says, “I will get you to the front, my love. It won’t be long until we are together.”
He vanishes from sight a microsecond before CK would have had his hands on him, to my relief. I cannot bear another one their fights.
“What is it that you don’t want to say in front of Sebastian?” I ask immediately.
He takes my hand with an adoring gaze, probably to make sure that I am back to his wife and not Sebastian’s. Christ, this is going to start getting complicated if I don’t somehow manage to merge everyone into one.
“I don’t want to tell you either, my sweet, but I feel that I must,” he says and leads me to the sofa to sit down. He sits a little bit away from me, no doubt due to my just-fucked state, and clears his throat.
“How much do you know about how I was made?” he asks carefully.
I try not to think back on that imagery. It is not very pleasant. “Just flashes of images. Nothing concrete, or whole,” I say.
He nods. “Well, as you know, we have learned that your mother is the one who made me. I certainly saw Her, but I didn’t know who She was at the time. As I lay there, torn and gutted, She bent over me and slashed Her wrist open. She gave me Her blood. That is what created me. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that it was black and there were little flames in it as it poured out of Her wrist and into my mouth. It tasted just like you described: evil.”
“So, my mother’s blood created the Initial Vampires. I guess that makes sense. But it is also Her blood that can reverse-turn a Vampire. I can’t even begin to understand how that works,” I say.
“I don’t either,” he says. “But it seems that Xanthe somehow got hold of Tiamat’s blood and fed it to you.”
“Do you think Tiamat gave it to her?” I ask. “Do you think She wanted this for me?”
“I don’t know, my sweet,” he says, shaking his head.
I know how hard that must have been for him to tell me about his creation. “Thank you,” I say and give him a kiss.
He just nods and then stands up. “If you wouldn’t mind going to shower, I need to go and speak to Sebastian about his behavior,” he says and then Teleports off before I can complain to him about it.
“Liv?”
I turn to the doorway and Cole is standing there looking shifty.
I stand up quickly and go to him, only to stop halfway when he holds his hand up.
My heart lurches into my throat as he is holding up his wedding ring.
“I don’t need to think about it. My first reaction was to get out and I am going to follow it,” he says quickly.