King Cave (Forever Evermore, #2)(134)
By remembering to breathe.
Chapter Twenty-One
I woke in the early morning hours to the smell of smoke.
Not cigarette smoke, and not the smell of Ezra’s scent and tobacco mixed.
It was the scent of cinder and wood…and fuel.
My gaze flew open as I instantly tightened my embrace on Ezra, my head popping up as I scanned the room. A soft wolf’s growl echoed from my chest until I saw Cahal standing in front of the window I had been sitting under last night, the early morning rays outlining him as he stared outside, frozen in place. He gave the impression of an angel of darkness, his form appearing completely black while the golden light shone around him. Another sniff, and I realized the stench was coming from him.
He spoke, his voice void. “She wanted to be cremated.”
I stayed silent, motionless, waiting for what I already knew he was going to say.
“They had her in the morgue already.” He paused. “There were Com police everywhere inside. I could hear them talking.” Another pause. “They had no respect for the dead.”
Warily, I extracted myself from Ezra, careful not to wake him. “Are they all dead?”
“Of course.” Unpretentious words. “They burned right along with my mate’s body.”
I rested back against the wall, crossing my arms, my head dropping as I tried to figure out the implications of his actions. I would need to get a newspaper or find a TV to see if he had been caught on film doing this. It wouldn’t help the war negotiations to have an Elder — Elder-f*cking-Zeller — caught murdering, even if he was deranged at the time from the loss of his mate.
“I don’t blame you,” he stated bluntly. “I try not to blame others for my actions, or the actions taken by those I love.”
I froze, feeling light-headed in relief, but still, the guilt was there. Deep inside, it was always harder not to blame oneself. Guilt was a heady burden that took too damn long to overcome.
“I’ve learned, Lily, that in this shithole of a life, each person has to live with the costs of their own actions. Someone may tell you to do something, in fact, order you to do something, but in the end, it’s always your choice how you handle the situation.” He cracked his neck, then blatant words. “She was scared. She didn’t think. She should have been more cautious when she went into the back room. That is neither my fault, nor yours. She shouldn’t have been so careless, and the person who shot her shouldn’t have pulled a gun. Had either of those two things not occurred, she would be alive right now, as would the individual who shot her.”
My hand covered my mouth, hearing his experienced, analytical mind reasoning it all out. This was a f*cking man made of a different breed than most. He wasn’t heartless, as his actions last night showed when he killed many over the loss of his mate, but life, his experiences — the war more than likely — had taught him how to push past grief differently. To step back from the pain to find reasoning. And, possibly, the truth.
He was f*cking scary as hell.
We stood in silence for many minutes, lost in our own thoughts, the sun rising higher.
Eventually, he cleared his throat. “I want to thank you.” Again, I stilled, but this time in shock. “Thank you for saving my life, my son’s, and Antonio’s. It couldn’t have been easy doing it alone.” Soft words. “Thank you for taking care of Ezra last night when I couldn’t.”
My chin quivered, but I dropped my hand from my mouth and stared him directly in the back of his head. “You’re welcome.”
He nodded once. “You need to find your Prodigy today.”
My gaze instantly went to Ezra’s sleeping form. Even in slumber, his eyebrows were furrowed, his jaw clenched. His respite hadn’t come until many hours after he had initially awoken. And still, pain practically radiated from his resting form.
“I’ll be here for him,” Cahal stated, his voice sounding more direct. My head snapped up and I saw he had turned and was watching his son. He murmured quietly, “You still need to do what you came to, and he will still need to do his duty.”
Straight to the crux of the matter. Duty. What we lived and breathed. I despised it most days…but hating it didn’t change the fact it still needed to be done. By me and him.
Our f*cking duties as King Vampire and Queen Shifter.
My lips curled cruelly. “Just breathe?”
His gaze slammed to mine. “Precisely.”
After cleaning up, since I still had blood on me, by sneaking into the house down the street after watching the owners leave for work, I called for a taxi service from a nearby gas station while skimming the headlines of the day’s newspaper. The attack on the ice-cream parlor made front page news, an unknown Vampire being named the culprit of the killings, but more suspects were on the loose, driving a Hummer — it gave my license plate number — which had been spotted leaving the scene of the crime driving sporadically. I had at least been smart enough not to take the Hummer out, just in case this had happened, plus there had surely been cameras around the grocery store I had driven through. Also, from what I read in the article, Cahal had been intelligent enough to leave witnesses at the morgue’s explosive fire — the reason why they hadn’t been able to identify Vivian — who believed delinquent teenagers had started it.