“Is your boyfriend getting tired?” she asked slyly, and then laughed before I could answer.
“He isn’t my—” I began, and then bit my tongue before I said any more. Damn it, Laura!
She just laughed some more. “Yes, it’s close,” she said as the house shook from the wind and, finally, rain.
“It’s a bad one tonight,” Mircea said, looking around, although there was nothing to see. Nothing except dark, lightened by the greenish ghost light Laura shed. But he couldn’t see that. But his vampire eyes could probably make out the tunnel anyway, cut under the house by someone, long ago, Alphonse said for bootlegging. All I knew is it was dank and dark, and I hoped Laura was right. I wanted out of here!
“Stop.” She stuck her head clean through the wall, leaving me looking at the stump of her neck until she pulled back out. “Dig here.”
“It’s here,” I said to Mircea, who crawled up behind me, garden shovel in hand.
It didn’t take long. The box wasn’t buried deep, although a tree root had wound around it. I was practically vibrating with excitement by the time he finished and finally pulled it free. And then opened the old hinges.
“Is anything in there?” I asked breathlessly, unwilling to hope.
“Of course there is. I said so, didn’t I?” Laura demanded.
“I think so,” Mircea murmured, pulling out a decaying velvet bag.
And spilling the contents onto his palm: tarnished silver and gleaming gold, and dark rubies flashing in the ghost light.
And then more brilliantly, under the light of a dozen candles, because the storm had knocked the power out. But they lit my room well enough, as Mircea piled my hair on top of my head and clasped the best of the jewels around my neck. “There. What do you think?”
I just stared. I’d never thought of myself as pretty before, never once in my life. As far as I knew, no one had. But now . . .
He dropped his hands to my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “What a lovely woman you’re going to make someday.”
And in that moment, watching him stand tall and strong and handsome behind me, I believed it.
* * *
“I wanted to bring you to my court so badly,” he told me, as I surfaced from my own memory. “But I didn’t dare. The fear was . . . debilitating. The thought of the Circle claiming you, of you going into the Pythian Court, of you becoming another of those smiling girls who only knew one word . . .
“I left you with Tony, whose court was not watched as mine was, whose court was barely watched at all. I had the geis put on you, to keep you safe, until the power would pass . . . to someone.
“It seemed a long shot. Lady Phemonoe had an heir, a capable girl, by all accounts. I had no reason to believe she would not inherit. But hope is not reasonable—hope is terrifying and exhilarating and devastating and, frankly, sometimes stupid. But I clung to it anyway. I lived in hope.
“Lady Phemonoe died. The power passed. And it passed to you.”
“Why not tell me all this then?” I rasped. “I’ve had it for months—”
“And for months I’ve tried. I almost did, that night in London—do you remember? When I told you about my family?”
I did. He’d rambled on and on, about how his parents had died, how he felt responsible, a hundred things. He’d finally gotten to a point: that he worried over me, perhaps excessively, because of others he had lost.
But he never told me who.
He never said her name.
“I wanted to a dozen times,” he said now. “But I was afraid. Even hope can die, and I had clung to mine for so long it had become a comfort, a crutch, almost a friend. I had become used to telling myself: someday. Someday you will find the words. Someday your moment will come. Yet, once it did, I found that the charming words choked me—the easy smiles died on my lips. I wanted to ask, but once I did . . .”
“Hope was gone.” My voice was hoarse.
He nodded. “One way or another. And so I found excuses for saying nothing. And there were plenty of them, and none pretenses. The war, the consul’s demands, family business—a thousand things.”
“Then why now?”
“You know why. No one has ever waged a war like this, Cassie. No one ever thought to do so. But we have no choice, and so we will go. But before I do, I need an answer. Before I do, I need a yes.”