The Blood is Love (Dark Eyes 2)

I eye Kaleid suspiciously as he starts to walk away along the river of blood. I can’t tell how much of his asshole switch flipping is due to being closer to his father, or the fact that Solon isn’t around anymore so he doesn’t have to pretend to be nice to me.

Fuck, it’s probably both. I knew he never liked me, all those smiles were just for show.

Did Solon know it? I think. Probably. Maybe not. I know he doesn’t trust Kaleid, but he probably didn’t think he’d turn into a jerk so fast.

“Hurry up, princess,” he calls over his shoulder at me. “You have plenty of time for regret later.”

Natalia gives me another sympathetic look and places her hand at my elbow, gently guiding me forward.

“So do you know where we are going?” I ask her, keeping my voice low, though I have no doubt that Kaleid can hear everything we’re saying and probably thinking.

“No clue,” she says.

“So what, we’re just going to walk until we find his house or something?”

She gives me a small smile. “Or something.”

“And he’s going to be happy to see you?”

“Oh, fuck no.” She lets out an acidic laugh. “No, we had a falling out worse than Kaleid did.”

This piques my interest. “What happened? When did it happen?”

She frowns. “Maybe forty or fifty years ago? I don’t know for sure, I don’t really keep track of time.”

I have to say, even though I’m used to being around vampires, Natalia is the first female vampire I’ve spent any amount of time with, and though she looks the same age as me—twenty-one—and was that age when she turned, it really throws me off to know she’s been around for so much longer than that.

“But,” she continues, “I just kind of snapped one day. My father, he runs a pretty tight ship. Regulated and controlled to the extreme, for everyone but him. He pretty much kept me like a fairy-tale princess in a castle. I couldn’t go out, couldn’t date, couldn’t mate, couldn’t do anything but stay with him, for hundreds of years. He even controlled who I fed on.”

“My god,” I say. And I thought my parents were overprotective.

“Anyway, I’d fallen in love, you know how the story goes, and my handsome prince came to rescue me and…” she trails off, sucking in her lip for a moment. “Well, Skarde killed him.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, instinctively pressing my hand against my chest.

“Yeah. I’m sure his head is still on a pike outside the palace. You know how some say Vlad the Impaler was the original Dracula? Well, Skarde was doing that a century before him. It’s his hobby.”

“Well, Solon collects the skulls of people he’s killed and keeps them in a storage locker,” I say. “So I see where he gets that from.”

“Mmm,” she muses. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But I guess that’s the same for all of us.”

“So then what happened after he killed him?”

“I disowned him,” she says.

“And he let you leave after that?”

She nods. “He takes family seriously in a very twisted way. The minute you disown him, you’re out forever. You’re an enemy.”

“I assume Solon went out the same way?”

“Yep.”

“And Kaleid?” I whisper.

Her eyes dart up to him ahead of us and her lips thin out, giving her head a furtive shake.

As in no. Kaleid is still welcomed into the fold.

Suddenly Kaleid stops walking and glances at us, a cold glint in his eyes that doesn’t match his dimpled grin. “You should be grateful that Skarde hasn’t disowned me yet. I’m your only way in.”

“And me,” I point out as we catch up to him. “You need me just as much.”

“So what is the plan now that Solon and Valtu aren’t here?” Natalia asks, hands on her hips. “What if father decides to kill me on the spot?”

Kaleid shakes his head. “He won’t. We’ll just take Lenore and say that we captured her for him. Tell him that you’re trying to earn your way back into his graces. Beg. Get on your knees. Cry. Make a real big show of it. He’ll buy it.”

“You have too much faith in him,” she says. “He’s changed.”

“I’m the last one who saw him, not you,” he points out. “It’ll work. Trust me.”

Natalia frowns and I realize that his own sister doesn’t trust him any more than I do. I think the two of us women are going to have to stick together here.

“Anyway,” Kaleid says, looking off into the distance where the river of blood runs over the edge of the snowy bluff, disappearing below. “They’re here.”

My heart picks up the pace, not liking the gravity in his tone. “Who is here?”

“Our escorts,” he says, starting to walk again. “Come on.”

I exchange a wary glance with Natalia, but we keep walking until we come to the edge of the bluff. The river of blood turns into a bloody waterfall, splashing over the rocks into a red pool below, a group of smaller streams leading out across the snow, like a heart and its arteries.