Dark Tarot (Dark Carpathians)

“It isn’t me,” Dax said. “The Old One worries incessantly about her. If I don’t have my eyes on her every second, he gets crazy and acts like he might do a flyby.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “Now you’re just plain making up stories.”

Dax laughed. “That could be so. I do like to keep you close.”

“Since you did travel so much, Dax,” Adalasia ventured, “I wonder if you ever heard of the disappearance of a Carpathian child centuries ago. A little girl of about ten. She could talk to animals. No one ever found her, although apparently the search was conducted for months. Years even.”

“She supposedly wandered off,” Sandu continued. “No one believed she lost her way.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Dax asked. “The forests were thick. Very wild. A child easily could have gotten lost. If she was trying to conduct experiments, she could have ended up in the middle of a rock, and no one would be the wiser. If she fell and shattered bones, wild animals could have gotten to her.”

“She would have called out to the adults,” Sandu pointed out reasonably. “Few spoke of it, but the conclusion most came to was that she was taken.”

“Who would take a Carpathian child?” Dax and Riley exchanged a long, measured look.

A ripple of uneasiness went through Sandu. “We believe the child was taken by Xavier, the high mage, in exchange with a demon for the parasites he wanted in order to begin the destruction of our species.” Sandu continued to look between Dax and Riley. “Forgive me for prying, but you haven’t had problems with conceiving or carrying, have you?”

Again, a look passed between the couple. Riley gave a small nod and Dax sighed. “Riley is expecting our child now. She is quite advanced in her pregnancy for the second time. We are a little apprehensive, as there are three of us to consider. The Old One’s soul and spirit resides in me. He’s part of me. Twice, he had thought to move on, but in the end, he will not let this child slip away as the others did.”

There was a small silence, and then Adalasia leaned forward toward Riley. “Congratulations, you must be so happy to carry a life in you.”

Riley’s smile was radiant. “I am. We’re having a little girl. The Old One is pleased and isn’t in the least bit worried, so I haven’t been, either, at least not until Sandu told us of the little girl taken by the mage and exchanged for parasites. Is it possible that was what caused my first miscarriage?”

“If you are truly that far along, although you do not look it, and you are not having trouble, then I would say you are free of parasites, but it is easy enough for Dax or the Old One to search.”

“We prefer to hide the pregnancy,” Dax said. “We have enemies. I wish to learn more of this child taken by the mage in exchange for the parasites.”

“That was centuries ago,” Sandu said. “I apologize to both of you for bringing up something that is distressing. It is from the past, Riley. No one has so much as whispered of the child’s disappearance, that I know of, in centuries.”

“Yet now you speak of it,” Danutdaxton pointed out. “The child’s disappearance is important to you.”

Sandu rubbed the bridge of his nose, all the while retaining possession of Adalasia’s other hand. He needed the connection—their mind merge as well as the physical connection between them. Having Adalasia’s strength with his made for a much clearer path to the thoughts forming in his mind.

“Yes, although I did not realize it at first, not when my lifemate first spoke of the child’s disappearance to me, other than I realized that the mage she spoke of had to be Xavier. Over the last few years, we discovered he wasn’t nearly as powerful as we thought. He always used someone else’s genius, their platform, to build his work on. In this case, the parasites were given to him in exchange for this particular child.”

Sandu stopped rubbing the bridge of his nose and began to rub along his jaw. “What was it about this particular child that made her so valuable to the demons? Why would they bother to exchange their parasites for her?”

“Carpathian blood,” Dax said, his voice grim. His look to Riley was wholly apologetic. “They wanted her blood. Demons sacrifice children. We all know that. Carpathian blood has to be more valuable than any species other than perhaps . . .” He broke off, tilting his head as if listening.

Riley hid a smile behind her hand. “The Old One is objecting to Dax’s statement.”

“I believe the Lycans would object as well,” Sandu said, trying not to smile.

“Fine,” Danutdaxton conceded. “I stand corrected. Carpathian is among one of the most valuable species whose blood might be something the demons would want from this child.”