A Blaze of Sun (A Shade of Vampire #5)(33)

I told Aiden what it was like to be married to him, what I felt like around him – how unworthy I was.

That night, Aiden listened. He barely even said any words of comfort. He just held me and let me cry into his shoulder as I told him horror story after horror story of all the terrible things I went through as a child and how it made me the woman I was.

When I finally finished telling him my story, he kissed me on the forehead and told me that he still loved Camilla and that he always will.

“Your past can never change that,” he assured me.

I gained his trust that night and in doing so, I had to pay the ultimate price. I had to bare my soul to him and let him see all its emptiness – an emptiness that his love and acceptance was able to fill. I knew what that meant. I knew that should I become vulnerable to Aiden – completely vulnerable to him – it would make what I had to do even harder than it already was.

He made love to me – gentle and tender as always – but not lacking in passion. When I woke up next to him, I realized that I was now faced with a new dilemma. Secured by the love Aiden still had for me, I searched myself for any hatred I still harbored toward my daughter and found not a single trace of it left. I no longer wanted to kill Sofia, but I was still forced to.

Chapter 19: Vivienne

I sensed her presence the moment she was brought within the vicinity of the island. Emilia. My heart began to race and my pulse doubled its pace. I dropped my shearing scissors and bolted out of my greenhouse.

“She can’t be back,” I began to mumble. “She can’t be here in The Shade.” Following my instincts, I sped towards The Sanctuary and sure enough, I found Xavier gently laying an unconscious Emilia on the bed inside one of the chambers.

Derek and Sofia stood nearby. Ashley was standing by the bed, holding a packet of blood, which I was certain was meant to heal Emilia. Corrine, on the other hand, was seated on an ottoman by the wall, staring suspiciously at Emilia.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. All eyes turned toward me as I stepped forward. “What is she doing back at the island? At the The Sanctuary of all places?”

“She needs care, Vivienne…” Sofia explained.

“Then she should get it from her own people, not from us. I don’t trust her.”

“Neither do we, Vivienne,” Derek spoke up, “but what are we going to do with her? She washed up on the shore and she’s beaten to a bloody pulp. We can’t just leave her out to die…”

That’s exactly what we should do. I knew that I was being ruthless, perhaps even dark and cold, but every fiber of my being wanted Emilia off the island. I turned my eyes toward the witch for help, but Corrine just gave me a shrug in response. I stared at Emilia’s motionless form. I shook my head. “This doesn’t feel right. It’s too much of a coincidence…”

Derek creased his brows at me. “What’s too much of a coincidence?”

As twins, Derek and I always had a strange connection. It’d been there when we were kids. I had a way of instinctively knowing his dreams or figuring out what was going through his mind at certain points, especially when it was needed.

“You’ve been dreaming about her. You saw her at the exact same spot you found her, did you not? At the shore near the Lighthouse? You thought she was Cora… The fact that it actually happened, you think it’s just coincidence?”

Derek shifted his weight from one foot to another as if he didn’t remember the dream and it just suddenly became clear to him. “I have to admit that it’s strange. But it was just a dream.”

I watched Sofia for a reaction. She looked at Derek in question. “You’ve been dreaming about Cora too?”

Derek shook his head. “No… This one… I remember the dream now. It’s just as Vivienne said. I saw it exactly like this. This was the exact same spot that I found Cora hundreds of years ago. I dreamed about it, I thought it was Cora who was on the beach, but it turned out to be Emilia.”

Sofia nodded, wrinkling her nose in thought. The idea of my brother being able to tell Sofia these things made me feel better about the situation, but I still could not deny the threat I felt just by seeing Emilia there. I knew that she was a source of power that we couldn’t afford to underestimate.

Xavier, one of my closest friends, stared at me inquisitively. He knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t be objecting this much if I didn’t feel ill at ease around Emilia. “Maybe it’s better we leave her this way…” He frowned.

Sofia objected. “We can take her down if she decides to fight against us once she heals. With all four of you vampires and Corrine here, she won’t stand a chance no matter how powerful she is, but we can’t just leave her like this. It’s inhumane.”

I grimaced at the way Sofia called it “inhumane” as if the creature we were talking about was anything close to being human. “She’s not human, Sofia.”

“Maybe so, but I am, Vivienne, and lest you forget, a part of you is too…”

That silenced me. How could it not? Ever since Sofia became a part of our lives, we seemed to be obsessed with getting our humanity back – humanity that we long ago tried to silence.

Ashley looked from one person to the other, still clutching the bag of human blood in her hand. “Are we going to feed the blood to her or not? It’s not like she’s going to die if we don’t. It will just take her longer to heal, right?”