Vito looks at him as if it is obvious. “To help her, of course. If you called him here and told him that you were giving up on her and that he could have her, don’t you think he would jump at the chance to tell her about her daughter and take her straight to her?”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Constantine snarls. “Have you completely lost all of your senses?”
“It’s a good plan,” Devon says from the doorway. “Try it.”
Constantine turns to him and any sort of alliance that they have had over the last three months evaporates in that instant that he sided with Vito. “Stay out of it,” he says. “It isn’t up to any of you.”
“Look,” Devon says, sidling into the library with a beautiful, blue-eyed, black-haired woman behind him. “We all hate this obsession she has. But she isn’t going to stop until she has her daughter. Isn’t it better to get it over with and then we can all move on with our lives?”
Constantine glares at him and then turns his eyes to the woman. “Must we discuss this in front of outsiders?” he says derisively.
“Xyla is very much aware of the nature of the goings-on in this house,” Devon says candidly.
Xyla. Some relation to Xane, he supposes. “I am not giving in to that beast. Not a fucking chance,” he says with finality. Oh, the shame of it. His ego just won’t allow it.
“Well, we have to do something,” Devon says, and Vito makes a noise of agreement. “She is no fun at the moment.”
Constantine has to agree with that statement. He hasn’t had any fun with her for days and it is killing him. He is this close to calling Sebastian to help out in that area, but after the fight they had over Clem and Aefre’s accusations to him about going to Sebastian last time, he won’t give her the satisfaction.
“Just think about it,” Vito says quietly.
Constantine grimaces and nods stiffly. He will agree to think about it, just to get them to shut the fuck up about it.
After a long, awkward pause, Devon wraps his arms around the, thus far, silent Xyla, and Astraports them off to wherever. It really agitates Constantine that the boy has that power. Vampirically speaking, he wouldn’t have acquired the gift for another seventeen hundred years, if ever. It makes Constantine even more determined to get rid of his own Vampire. A quest he has had no success in yet, only due to the fact that Xanthe is nowhere to be found.
Apparently.
“We need to be here for her, together,” Vito ventures.
Constantine spins around. “I need to be here for her. No one else.”
“Whatever your feelings on the matter, I am not going anywhere,” Vito replies.
“You will if I make you go,” Constantine says menacingly.
“Aefre won’t let you,” he says. “She wants me here, to help heal me after my ordeal.”
The smugness in his tone works on Constantine’s last nerve. “Ordeal, hah. Does she know that you were treated better than a king? That you were kept fed and entertained? Educated?”
Aefre doesn’t know. She told him that when she burst into the dungeons it was in complete darkness and that Vito has suffered all of this time.
The exact opposite is true. He lived in opulence. Yes, locked away, but he wanted for nothing. He was kept separate from the others. He was revered as a Dark Fae Vampire and taken care of accordingly. Aefre doesn’t know that when she swept in to rescue them, her magick blew out all of the candles, submersing them all into the blackness of the underground, and it was by sheer coincidence that Vito was with the others at the time, and of course, Vito has never mentioned it. Constantine only found out a few weeks ago, after Aefre had forced him to apologize to Vito, when he tried to make peace with Corinne in an effort to help Aefre. He has been sitting on it, waiting for the right moment to reveal this and, of course, he chooses the moment that Aefre isn’t even in the Realm, never mind on the receiving end of his news. Fucking idiot.
Vito just smiles at him. “Corinne may have overplayed it,” he says with a shrug.
“I should kill you for deceiving her,” Constantine says.
“Then you should also kill yourself,” Vito replies. “You are the master of deception.”
“I do it to protect my wife. What is your excuse?” Constantine asks him.
“I love her,” Vito says.
Constantine launches himself at Vito with his fangs and claws drawn.
Chapter 2
The Dark Fae Kingdom, July 2014 – Aefre