“Goddess of the woods! What have we gotten into, Quinn?” Lucca cursed softly as he set his hands to Ariana’s shoulders and began brisking them to warm her up, even though her green and red Fae silk gown was entirely sodden and ruined, as was his beautiful silver-blue attire.
“Far more than we know, Lucca.” Quinn answered, grimacing as he inspected a ripped lapel of his Armani suit. “Fate, it seems, has a way of coming back around to bite a man.”
“Cruel bitch.” Lucca huffed back, and Ariana felt him reach a hand out towards Quinn as he stopped with her shoulders. “It’ll be a while before your Vampires or Alleno can find us, assuming they’re able to drive back Junius’ men. We need a fire, and I’m too tired. Give me your hand.”
“It would be easier if you just let me bite you.” Quinn returned with a dark humor now, though Ariana felt them join hands as Lucca wrapped around her from behind, holding her in his lap. Quinn was close also; and as Ariana felt him and Lucca twine their hands together like their magics had done earlier, she felt a spark of power surge between them. All of it was channeled into heat; before Ariana in the rocks, a small flame sprung to life, burning without fuel just like Lucca’s orb in the tunnel. But it was warm, and as Ariana breathed a sigh through her chattering teeth and shuddering, she felt both men do the same.
Cinching close to share body heat, their trio fell into an exhausted silence. Gazing upward as her shivers gradually slowed thanks to the fire and the two men wrapped around her, Ariana found herself mesmerized yet again by the beauty of the night. Golden light glowed around the ravine as the fire burned; but above, the deepest darkness of the night was framed by austere black cliffs. Filled with diamonds, the sky seemed to sear with silver-white fire as Ariana watched the full moon rise above the canyon now. She forgot her chill as she watched that light creep down the waterfall, illuminating their silver-blue cascades like a river of pale lava.
As it crept to her, Ariana felt the moon’s touch like a fire in her soul. Closing her eyes, she devoured the sensation of both Lucca and Quinn holding her; of being so safe in the night before the fire with the diamond stars and moon’s glow bathing her. As she did, she felt her body warm suddenly. Strength filled her as she began to recover; and she understood she was creating power in the night with her Fae revelry, but also drawing heat from the fire and the men holding her with her Vampire power. At last, she began to see how a Dark Fae could be more powerful than a regular Vampire or Fae, drawing energy from all sources of life.
Even though she still didn’t know what to do with it yet.
But something warm and good filled her now as she sat held by both Lucca and Quinn. As a sigh left her, she reached up, touching Lucca’s jaw as his cheek settled quietly against hers. She felt the deep radiance of her recovering power flow into him as he heaved a sigh also, his energy surging brighter suddenly from what Ariana gave him. Her other hand stole out to Quinn’s in the darkness; as she touched him, she fed him her recovering strength as well, like a slow breath of power in the night. As they all sat together before the fire, Ariana felt their calm energy surge brighter in a circle of sharing now, a long flow from dark to light and back to darkness.
Beautiful, as they took in the night.
“Such power you create, Dark Fae.” Lucca spoke as he heaved a deep sigh, pressing his lips to her temple. “Which is why so many of us fear you. And why Quinn and I sought that power… long ago.”
“What do you mean?” Ariana asked as she cuddled close to Lucca, glancing at Quinn. Still holding her hand as their trio gradually recovered, Quinn smoothed his thumb over her skin as if he found it comforting.
“Once upon a time,” Quinn spoke softly, meeting Ariana’s gaze by the light of the flames, “when Lucca and I were young… we sought your kind’s power, Ariana. Hotheaded younglings that we were, we knew little about the Dark Fae; even prior to the War of Rome, they were clandestine. But we knew one could become Dark Fae if one was attacked by a strong Master Vampire. We wanted to become Dark Fae to gain power for the battles ahead, for our Royal fathers and to protect our homeland in Rome. We didn’t know that it would eternally divide us. That one would stay in the Light… while the other fell to the Night.”
“So you really were Prince of the Summer Fae.” Ariana breathed to Quinn as a deep understanding moved in her. “You and Lucca were both born to Royal fathers – the old King and the one who would become King after the war. And you sought out a Master Vampire to turn you both Dark Fae so you could gain power in that war. But something went wrong.”
“We were betrayed.” Lucca spoke bitterly now, taking up the story. “Prince Valerio Incendari was my best friend, and I believed him when he said we could gain power for the fight ahead if we became Dark Fae. But the informant we thought we could trust with our quest betrayed us… Vampires ambushed us and cast us into a catacomb of Revenants from which we could not escape, thinking to take away two strong Captains for the Summer Fae. We fought hard, in a night that lasted longer than death itself. But even with power as strong as ours, Revenants eventually get what they want.”
“We were both drained to unconsciousness,” Quinn spoke now as he watched Lucca, his dark eyes haunted. “For that is what Revenants do, drain a person’s energy until they succumb, then allow them to wake in terror and do it all over again for as long as a person might last. But something interrupted their feeding. They were gone when I woke, in the care of Emiliana DiClario. And I was somehow a Vampire…”
“But Lucca wasn’t.” Ariana blinked, seeing the true origins of their ancient schism at last.
“Someone other than Emiliana must have rescued me from that catacomb, but I don’t know who.” Lucca shook his head with a sigh as he glanced at Quinn. “Even Alleno doesn’t know who rescued me – he found me unconscious in a stand of cypress trees not far from the catacomb and brought me home. I woke back at the palace in Rome, and though I was sick for many days from the Revenant’s draining, I was soon myself again. When Quinn summoned me to visit him in Florence, I was elated he had survived. But our dreams soon became a nightmare as I discovered my best friend had been taken into the Life of the Night. And I hadn’t.”
“I fought the change, even as I felt it burning all through me.” Quinn spoke softly now as he watched Lucca with a deep sadness. “I tried to resist becoming a Vampire, until the bloodlust and rage finally swamped me and I gave in.”
“But… doesn’t a person becoming Sired have to drink their Master’s blood to finish the ritual?” Ariana frowned. “Wouldn’t you remember Emiliana Siring you?”
“It often happens that the person becoming Sired doesn’t recall their Siring, Ariana.” Quinn spoke softly as he glanced at her. “The body and mind are in such a delirium that memories are vague, or wiped out entirely as the body is drained to death. Many people do not recall drinking from their Sire’s veins, and I do not either. But I woke as a Vampire, in Emiliana’s care. She had been in Rome during the War, and made up a story that she found me drunk under a bridge and Sired me – thus naming me DaPonti because of where I was found, and Quindici because I was the fifteenth Vampire-Fae she had Sired into the Dark Haven of Florence. She just liked the sound of calling me Barone to explain my high-bred manners, so she did. And so the Barone Quindici DaPonti was born. And Prince Valerio Incendari died.”
“Prince Valerio Incendariabandonedhis people, you mean.” Lucca spoke hotly now as his dark blue eyes blazed suddenly in the fire’s light. “You left us just when our need was greatest, facing off with the Vampires and the other Forbidden Lineages in the final battle for Rome.”
“I couldn’t fight for the Summer Fae in that last battle, Lucca.” Quinn spoke softly now, though there was an edge of iron in his voice for this ancient argument between them. “You saw how much I had changed, and my bloodlust was a wild thing. The entire Summer Fae army would have taken me for an enemy Vampire. I couldn’t let my father see me – he wouldn’t have understood what we had tried to do for our people. And he wouldn’t have recognized me.”
“You didn’t eventry, Valerio. You didn’t even try to see your father King Aurelio Incendari after you were turned, and explain what had happened.” Lucca spoke coldly to Quinn now, scooting away from the Vampire so their cozy cuddle was broken. Something warm and good snapped out inside Ariana as their togetherness broke, and a cold wind blew through her, making her shudder as her power flickered.
“Because my father was embroiled in a waragainstthe Vampires, Lucca.” Quinn spoke back just as sternly now, icy as his power surged once more in a black nimbus, partly recovered. “He would have seen only an enemy standing before him had I kept that audience in the throne hall you arranged. And you would have been punishedseverelyfor consorting with the enemy. Death, by my father’s law.”
“You left me.” Lucca spoke with a nasty heat now as he and Quinn pulled completely apart with Ariana positioned between them like a barricade. “You left mealoneto face that battle while you disappeared into the Night. And nearly everyone we loved died when Rome fell.”
“I did what I had to, to make sure you had a chance atstaying alive, Lucca.” Quinn spoke back now, fire flashing in his black aura as his gaze darkened. “But my father died in that battle and yours rose to Kingship, and I convinced Emiliana to create the Treaty of the Light and the Night to give the Summer Fae amnesty here in Florence, and history turns. And now you are the Summer Fae Prince and I am only darkness, living a life of shadows because of the choiceyou and I both madeto try and become Dark Fae. I embrace that. Do you?”
As Quinn’s tirade ended, he stared at Lucca with a dark gaze that pierced like daggers, his black nimbus flowing all around him in the night. But Lucca said nothing, only glowered back at Quinn by the fire’s light; standing abruptly, Quinn surged away across the stony beach, devoured by his black nimbus as he disappeared from view. With a blink at the sudden eruption, Ariana saw how deeply the two once-friends had been split by time. As Quinn managed to make himself disappear with his power just like Lucca had in the cemetery days ago, Ariana was left staring after where he had gone, her head whirling from the revelations.
When flares of golden light suddenly surrounded them in the night.
Surging up, Lucca thrust Ariana behind him as thirty Fae swaddled in dark shadows hemmed them in on the beach beside the waterfall. With a snarl, Lucca faced off with them as Ariana’s heart hit her stomach and she crouched into a fighting-stance – knowing they’d been found, and not by the right people. Though her power had bolstered him somewhat, Lucca was still exhausted and Ariana still had barely anything as they faced off with this new threat. And as these newcomers raised their power in a massive, shimmering grey nimbus all around the stony beach, she saw they didn’t wear the shining armor of the Brightwatch, but the same charcoal-silk garb Alleno had worn in the cemetery, and Lucca when he’d come to the Florence Hotel.
Their grey hoods up, their faces were swaddled in charcoal-black silk; only their eyes pierced the night, calm and hard like specters of battle as they hemmed Lucca and Ariana in. And as a tall man with a viciously iron-wrought stature moved forward, Ariana felt nothing but pure, terrible power from him as light-bending magic made his form come clear in the night. As he pulled his charcoal face-wrap down and cast back his deep hood, Ariana saw wheat-gold hair. The Summer Fae King Archivolio Bellari’s golden eyes were a fierce blaze as he stepped forward.
