Unbound (The Captive #7)(72)
She didn’t know how she would do it, but she would find a way. When she’d first seen Braith’s head, she hadn’t thought she would be able to make it through the next minute. Then she’d made it through the one after that, until the minutes had become hours. One second to the next was how she would have to live from now on, while being ever vigilant that she didn’t slip away into the beckoning madness.
“Aria—”
“I’m not like Atticus. Well, maybe I am a little. I want her dead, but after her death, there will be so many who will still count on me. They won’t let me remain queen without Braith, and while knowing what a broken bloodlink can do to a vampire. I understand that, but I can be of help in other ways until…”
“Until what?” Xavier prompted when her voice trailed off.
“Until my time is up. I helped to start all of this, and I will see it through to the end and not just her end. If I die in battle against her, then so be it, but I’ll do everything I can to see peace and freedom restored to everyone.”
William squeezed her shoulder. “And we’ll all be here to help you do that.”
She turned with William to the doorway. Xavier and Tempest stood beside it. Xavier bent and pulled it open for her to descend. She hadn’t been able to go back inside yet. She still wasn’t sure she was ready for this, but she had to be. The humans knew what had happened at the palace earlier; there would be no keeping that revelation from them.
The door at the end of the hall was open, the people within abnormally subdued as they huddled close together. There were well over two hundred of them in the safe house now, and none of them had any idea of what to expect anymore. Their voices stopped when she stepped inside. Aria clasped her hands before her as the others entered the room to fan out beside her.
The straggling vampires they’d gathered along the way were all hiding in one of the nearby caves. Preferring not to stay in the safe house, some of the humans were also in the caves with the vamps. The humans here were willing to work with the vampires, but they weren’t willing to reveal all of their secrets by letting them know the locations of the safe houses. Aria didn’t blame them. If she hadn’t once been human and a rebel, she knew they wouldn’t want her standing here either. Xavier and Tempest were allowed in here because the humans had no other choice in the matter.
“Your Highness, is there anything we can get for you?” a young woman inquired.
“My name is Aria.” She struggled to keep the irritation from her voice as her fangs pricked and the beat of their hearts sounded like drums in her ears. The tingling in her skin now had nothing to do with the cold, and everything to do with all of the warm blood surrounding her. She didn’t recall the last time she’d fed, but even if it had been an hour ago, it wouldn’t have been enough to douse this hunger. “And no, thank you. Have the people we sent to spy on the palace returned?”
She’d been in the barn for the past hour, but before that, she’d stayed as far from the safe house as she could. The shifts of people and vampires they had keeping watch over the palace were supposed to switch; she wasn’t sure if that time had come and gone already or not.
“They have, Your… Aria,” a man replied.
“What did they learn?”
The man glanced nervously around the room. Her reddened eyes couldn’t be seen behind the lenses anymore, but sweat beaded their brows and their hearts beat faster than normal around her.
Act the same. Be normal. They’re uneasy because they think you’re just learning of Braith’s death. Keep it together and they will relax around you once more. Give them stability and they will continue to follow.
“The palace is under attack.” The man stepped back and gestured at the large, round table in the room. “They have surrounded the walls.”
Aria moved closer to discover they had created a crude drawing of the palace’s walls with coal on the table. Daniel could have made it a masterpiece; this one consisted of stick figures, x’s, and squiggly lines, but she understood it. She’d drawn enough plans of her own like this to be able to read this one.
“They’re attacking mostly in this area.” The man used a stick to point to where most of the x’s were clustered by the front gate. “But they’ve spread out and are attacking various places along the wall.”
“Looking for weaknesses in it,” Aria murmured.
“I believe so,” the man replied. He moved the stick to point toward more x’s positioned within the crudely drawn buildings representing the town. “They have more soldiers watching their backs throughout the homes here. Our men guess there to be about a hundred of them, but they’ll be able to get a better number tomorrow, if the storm clears, and once Sabine has her troops officially positioned.”
“A hundred will be easy enough to take out quietly,” William said. “We’ll have them down and be at Sabine’s back before she knows what happened.”
“And Sabine, where is she?” Aria inquired.
“Here.” The man moved his stick to a building near the end of the street. “It’s a brick home, no trees around it, at least forty guards, and it’s far enough away from the palace that she can avoid anything they might shoot at her.”
“But not what we can,” Aria said. “We’ll take out her men and set that house on fire, flushing her out like the rat she is. Once she’s out in the open, we’ll have her.”