Donna wasn’t happy, but Mia had been firm. If she didn’t have but a few more months to be her real self, she wanted to spend that time doing what she loved best. Spending time with the people she loved best.
That wasn’t a long list. Kate was going to close up the house in New York, get her affairs in order, and come back to Denver. Mia would see Donna every day. And that just left…
“Val?” she said, just a whisper. She felt stupid, but she had to try. Donnahad seen him.
She took a deep breath and continued. “I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you even want to. If you don’t, I get that. I…hell, I denied that you exist, and…” She bit her lip, not willing to admit that it had taken someone else laying eyes on him for her to believe what he’d been telling her all along. “But. I miss you. So much. And I wondered if, maybe, if you don’t hate me, you might–”
He materialized two feet in front of her, swirling into existence, unbearably beautiful. Unbearably sad.
Her chest squeezed. “Val. You came.”
The barest hint of a smile lifted at one corner of his mouth; the expression didn’t touch his eyes, flat and low-lidded with unhappiness. “You called, didn’t you?”
She had the sense of balancing on an edge; if she said the wrong thing, he’d disappear again, maybe for good this time. She couldn’t bear to risk that. So she took a breath and kept her voice soft, careful, affectionate. “I didn’t think you could hear me, though.”
The tiny smile twisted, became mocking. “I have plenty of time to sit alone and contemplate my captivity. What else do I have to do but pine and listen? Waiting like a maiden in a tower.”
Except he wasn’t in a tower, was he? But a basement. She imagined it: windowless, slimy stone walls. And he’d said chains, too, hadn’t he? Oh, God.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m glad you’re here. I wanted a chance to apologize for the things I said to you at the hospital. I never should have–” He didn’t meet her eyes, instead studied a place on the rug. “Youarereal. I know that. I shouldn’t have said otherwise. I was angry, and scared” – no, really, she’d been nothing, fighting the void – “and I lashed out at you. You didn’t deserve that, and I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
He held still a moment, not even blinking. And when he lifted his head, he moved as if it was heavy on his neck. Something about his edges weren’t right…as if they bled. She squinted and saw the tiny feelers of smoke lifting from his shoulders. The projection wasn’t strong, it didn’t want to hold. She must have made a face, or some kind of noise. She caught her hand lifting away from the bed, wanting to reach for him.
He nodded. “Do you want to see what I really look like?” Before she could answer, heflickered, like the image on an old TV, and then he was no longer the polished prince he’d always presented. He was no longer even standing.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, hands in his lap. Like the first time he’d appeared, it was his hair that caught her eye first. Not the sleek cascade, or the tidy braid, but a greasy, snarled rat’s nest that poured over his shoulders in knots. Frizzy and unkempt, and dull. Gaunt-faced, glassy-eyed, he wore heavy smudges of dirt, and raw, reddish patches that might have been burns or bruises. His clothes were rags, rotting off of his body. His long, beautiful fingers were grubby. And his wrists, she noted, were connected by a length of chain, and two heavy, flashing silver cuffs. Those cuffs were the only clean things on his person.
She knew she made a sound this time, low and choked, a sudden sob caught in her throat. “Val.”
“This is me,” he said, turning his palms up. The chains hooked to his cuffs rattled. “Behold: Radu the Handsome. Prince. Hostage. Whore. Brother-killer.” His smile was a horrible, emotionless facsimile.
She trembled silently a moment, and then she realized the shaking wasn’t fear; it was rage. She wanted to throttle whoever held him captive. “Who did this to you?” she asked, and the ferocity in her tone lifted his head, widened his eyes a fraction, so he almost looked alive again.
He blinked at her a few times. “It doesn’t matter–”
“Yes it does!”
Another blink. He shrugged and looked down at his grimy palms. “The first time – the initial capture – that was Vlad’s people. His Familiar, and his humans, and they knew – they knew how to subdue me. They kept me for a while, and then passed me along to some monks…” He shook his head. “It’s been many people. It doesn’t matter.”
She wanted to scream. Wanted to throw up. She curled her hands into fists and squeezed until her nails bit into her palms.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you–”
She shut her eyes, briefly, because how did her traitorous brain even begin to compare tofive-hundred-yearsof captivity? But he’d asked, and he sounded like the answer matter. She nodded and met his gaze. “Yeah. Inoperable brain tumor. They can try chemo and radiation, but…They don’t think that will do anything but buy me some time, and I…” She took a deep breath and pushed past the wall of emotion that threatened to crowd out the nothingness inside her. “Whatever time I have left, I want to enjoy it. Not lie around in a hospital being sick.”
He stared at her with open sorrow. “Oh, Mia. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
There was nothing else to say after that. They sat there in companionable, if grievous silence. Until exhaustion pulled her down sideways onto the bed.
Val was still sitting there, watching her, when her eyes finally closed.
~*~
She was awakened an indeterminate amount of time later by the ringing of her phone. She floundered a moment, slapping across the bed for it, noting in the process that Val was gone, and that the time flashing on her nightstand clock read 3:14 a.m. She squinted at the phone screen, trying to place the unfamiliar number, and finally just thumbed to answer; Dr. Patel had said he wanted to pass her case along to another specialist in Pennsylvania, and maybe…
Her sleep fog evaporated and she realized no doctor would call her in the wee hours just as she was saying, “Hello?” heart thudding fast now. This wasn’t a professional call. Maybe a wrong number…
