CHAPTER 008_HEARTBEATS AND LIARS
I heard it before I woke up.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Not one heartbeat. All of them. Dantes, two floors up, steady and slow. Diegos down the hall fast still buzzing from the night. Three guards outside my door. The woman in the kitchen with a knee dragging her foot every third step.
I sat up. Put my hands on my temples.
"Stop, " I whispered.
It didn't stop. Every pulse in the building hit me like fingers tapping on my skull. I breathed through it until it dulled. I could think.
Something changed in my trance. My moms voice was still at the back of my throat. I didn't want to look at it yet. This heartbeat was new.
I counted them without meaning to.
Thirty-one people inside the palace walls.
One of them was wrong.
I didn't know how. It wasn't the rhythm. It was like a color and one of the thirty-one was a shade off. Like a note played wrong in a song I knew my whole life.
I got up before I figured out which one.
Dante was in the corridor. He looked at me like he'd been looking at me since the archives like he was trying to decide how much of what happened was his fault.
"Sofia and Mia are at the east gate, " he said.
My chest pulled in two directions.
"How long have they been there?"
"An hour. I didn't let them in until you woke up."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted you awake when you decided." He said it simply. I didn't know what to do with that so I walked past him.
"Let them in, " I said.
Mia looked at the palace walls like they offended her family. Which they probably did.
She looked at me at Dante behind me then back at me.
"You're joking, " she said.
"Hello to you Mia."
"You're standing in a Blackfang palace looking like you belong here and you want to say hello to me."
"I don't belong here. I'm just not dead. That's the difference."
Her jaw moved. She wanted to say more. She swallowed it. That was as close to relief as Mia ever got.
Sofia came through the gate behind her. I felt it immediately. That off note. Louder now. Right there in her chest.
I smiled anyway. "Sofia."
She smiled back. "Leah. Thank God you're okay."
Her voice was slightly delayed. Like there was a second gap between when she decided to speak and when the words came out.
I hugged her. Her arms came around me. She smelled like her soap and everything felt normal. I told myself I was being paranoid.
I told myself that twice.
Mia cornered me within the hour.
"Explain " she said, arms folded in the doorway of her room. "From the beginning."
"There's a mate bond, " I said. "It's not something I chose."
"He's Lucas's brother."
"I know."
"His blood brother, Leah."
"I know that too Mia." I kept my voice flat. "I haven't forgotten what happened.. The bond is real and if I break it I'll die and so will the baby. So unless you have a solution I haven't thought of, I need you to breathe."
That landed. I watched it move across her face. The soldier in her went quiet for a second. Something older came up behind it.
"Baby, " she said.
"Yes."
She sat down on the edge of the bed. Just sat there. Mia, who never sat when she could stand. Mia, who I'd never seen stunned by anything.
"Silver and Black " she said quietly.
"Yes."
She was quiet for a time. Then she said, "Mom would have had something to say about this."
"Mom would have had a lot to say, " I agreed.
Something like a smile crossed her face. Almost.
That night I couldn't sleep again. The heartbeats kept pulling at me. Twenty-nine of them are normal. One wrong.
I got up. Followed it.
The crystal gardens were at the center of the palace open to the sky. The stones caught moonlight and scattered it everywhere so the whole space glowed blue. It was beautiful. I barely noticed.
Sofia stood in front of the crystal. Her back was to me. She wasn't moving.
I stepped behind a column. Watched.
She raised her hand. Pressed it flat against the crystals surface. The crystal darkened.. Inside it where her reflection should have been a face formed that made my blood go cold and still.
Lucas.
He looked older. Sharper. A long scar down the side of his face that hadn't been there before.. It was him. His eyes found Sofia's face in the crystal. He smiled like he always smiled, slow and satisfied like he already knew how things would end.
"She trusts you, " he said. His voice came out muffled through the crystal like a voice through water. "Well done."
Sofia's head tilted. "She suspects something."
"She suspects everything. It doesn't matter." He paused. "How close are you to the child?"
My stomach dropped.
I stepped out from behind the column. "Don't answer that."
Sofia spun. Lucas's face in the crystal turned to find me. The smile didn't change.
"Leah, " he said warmly. "I was hoping you'd come."
"Get out of here, " I said.
"She actually offered herself. I didn't even ask nicely."
I raised my hand. The mark burned white. I felt the light building in my chest that same wave from the night before. I let it rise because I was done being careful.
Then something happened that had never happened before.
A kick.
Small. Inside me. Unmistakable.
The light didn't just release; it detonated.
I flew backward. The crystal columns cracked. Three of them shattered completely fragments spinning through the air and skittering across the stone ground. I hit the wall. Slid down it sitting there gasping.
When I looked up Sofia was on her knees blinking, confused herself again.
Lucas's face was still in the crystal. Still smiling.
"Thank you, " he said. "That's all I needed."
The ground cracked between us. Not from my power. From something. Something, underneath the garden answering what had been sent to it.
A rift tore open in the center of the garden edges burning black air folding around it like paper catching fire.
"The gate is open, " Lucas said pleasantly. "Shall we see what comes through."