Captured (The Captive #1)(49)

Tears streamed down her face, she couldn’t get the buttons together. Jack was back before her, his eyes sad, the sympathy in them almost more than she could bear. “You let him feed from you.” Aria blinked at him as he buttoned her shirt swiftly. She was not embarrassed that Jack was seeing this much of her, nothing else could faze her at this moment. He grasped hold of her shoulders, shaking her gently. “Aria, you need to listen to me, and you need to focus on me for a moment, it’s important.”

She managed a nod, and she just barely managed that. “He fed from you.” It was not a question. In fact it was quite obvious that Braith had fed from her as her slip was stained with blood, so was the bed, and she could still feel it against her neck. She winced slightly as Jack brushed at the blood on her neck, rubbing against the sore wounds upon her. “Did he give you any of his blood?”

“Excuse me?” she asked in surprise.

Jack was growing frustrated with her. “Think Aria! This is important! Did you feed from him?” he enunciated clearly.

Aria blinked as she tried to recall the night, but her mind and body shied away from the painful memories. It was too much. She couldn’t think about it. It had all been a lie. A cruel, brutal lie that she had thought meant so much more, when in fact it had meant absolutely nothing to him. She was nothing but a blood slave after all. She didn’t know why he had waited so long to feed from her, and she didn’t want to think about it. There was no way that she could figure out what he had been thinking, or doing, or why. She was not cruel and manipulative like him, she would never understand why he had done this to her. It didn’t matter anymore. It all meant nothing. For the first time in her life she had been a silly fool who had allowed her defenses down, and she had gotten what she had always expected. Nothing.

“Aria!” Jack growled.

She blinked him into focus, shaking her head slightly. “No, I… No. What does it matter anyway?”

“It matters. Are you sure?”

She bit on her bottom lip. There had been dreams, so many wonderful dreams of peace and love and security. There had even been a dream about something sweet and wonderful tasting, but they had been nothing more than dreams. They couldn’t have been anything more, he was engaged after all, and therefore he never would have told her he loved her. Because his heart already belonged to someone else. Dreams, nothing but awful, shattered dreams.

“No,” she whispered. “No, I didn’t.”

Jack heaved a sigh of relief as he nodded. “Good, good. We need to go.”

She didn’t respond as he seized hold of her arm, pulling her through the library, sitting room, and then into the bedroom she had first used upon arrival. Max was standing by an open doorway that she had never seen before. It seemed to have magically appeared in the wall next to the bed she’d slept in. Max’s eyes widened as he caught sight of Aria. For a moment, the sight of her friend was enough to make her forget her pain. A soft cry of happiness escaped her as she raced forward, throwing herself into his open arms. He had lost weight, his face was gaunt, his eyes were far wiser and sadder, but his arms were still warm and secure as they wrapped tightly around her.

“Later, later.” Jack was pushing them toward the open doorway, shoving them into a dark tunnel.

“What is this?” Aria gasped.

“Security tunnels, all the apartments have them. They lead out of the palace. We have to go fast though; they’ll kill us if they find us, and personally I don’t feel like being caught and branded as a traitor. It is not a pleasant death,” Jack informed her.

Aria imagined it probably wasn’t. She kept her hand tight in Max’s, taking strength in his warm touch. She was struggling not to cry as they fled through the dark tunnels with Jack leading the way. She could barely see through the darkness, but Jack moved with unerring speed and sureness. She didn’t look back until they reached the end of the tunnel, and then she only paused for a moment. She vowed that she would never look back after this, never think about anything that had happened within those hated walls again. Though she wanted it desperately to be true, she knew that she was lying to herself.

She stared down the darkened tunnel for a long moment. Her heart was broken; her chest ached with the force of the agony consuming her. She was leaving that palace and that world behind, she would never return to it, but she knew that it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would never escape what had happened within those walls, never be free of the agony inflicted upon her. Though she didn’t want it to be true, she knew that it was. She also knew that she would never be same, knew that the woman that walked out of this tunnel was far different than the girl that had first entered as a captive.

Max tugged on her hand, pulling her forward, tearing her from her melancholy thoughts. She turned away, fighting back the tears of hurt and anger that burned her eyes. She would never look back again; especially not now that she had her freedom, and would soon have her family. They plunged into the wonderful sanctuary of her beloved woods, blurring easily in with the surrounding forest.

***

Braith was shaking; rage consumed him, boiling through his blood, causing his eternal darkness to turn a fierce shade of red. She was gone. He had known it the moment he stepped back into his apartment. He had sensed her absence when he had been downstairs, but it wasn’t until he had returned that the lack of light, and her beauty, confirmed his fear.