Love Between Two Worlds - Chapter 5

  

Chapter 5 — The Truth Beneath the Blood

(Rewritten)

For several seconds Amelia heard nothing but her own heartbeat — too loud, too fast, hammering against her ribs as though it wanted out before the rest of her decided whether to run.

The rider's words hung between the trees, impossible to unhear, impossible to set down.

What you are.

She looked at Adrian. He still stood between her and the riders, blade raised, shoulders locked rigid. The violet moonlight caught the silver edge of his weapon and left the rest of him in shadow — his face unreadable, his stillness deliberate.

"What am I?" she asked again, and this time her voice didn't shake.

He didn't turn.

"Amelia. We need to leave."

"No."

His head tilted, just slightly. "No?"

"You don't get to do that again."

"Do what?"

"Tell me there's no time. Tell me to run. Tell me you're protecting me while you keep me from knowing what I'm being protected from."

The lead rider let out a soft, humorless laugh. "She has Eleanor's temper."

"Silence," Adrian snapped, not looking away from Amelia.

"You hear that, girl?" the rider called. "Even now he won't tell you."

Amelia stepped out from behind him. His arm swept across her path instantly.

"Stay behind me."

She pushed it aside. "No."

He looked at her then — really looked — and something passed between them that was equal parts frustration and fear and something else neither of them was willing to name out loud.

"Amelia—"

"You knew my grandmother for thirty-two years. You knew about Elarion. You knew these people would come for me. You knew exactly what this ring was the moment I picked it up." She lifted her hand, the ring still glowing faintly against her palm. "And you still haven't told me why they want me."

His jaw tightened until a muscle jumped in his cheek.

"Because the truth could put you in more danger than not knowing ever could."

"I'm already in danger, Adrian. Look around you."

That landed. He had no answer ready for it, and his silence was answer enough.

The lead rider lowered his spear an inch, something almost like satisfaction in the gesture. "At least she understands that much."

"You've said enough," Adrian told him.

"No." The rider's voice cooled several degrees. "We've waited thirty-two years for this. We have every right to speak now."

Amelia frowned. "Waited for what?"

The rider's gaze dropped to the ring, and something in his expression sharpened into hunger.

"For the heir to awaken."

The words moved through Amelia like cold water finding a crack.

"The heir of what?"

Adrian's hand closed around her wrist before she'd finished the question.

"We're leaving. Now."

She pulled against his grip. "Not until someone answers me."

"Now, Amelia."

Something in his voice stopped her — not anger, not urgency for its own sake, but fear. Real fear, the kind that didn't perform itself for an audience. He wasn't afraid of the riders in front of them.

He was afraid of what would happen if she stayed to hear the rest.

Adrian turned toward the mounted line, his voice carrying clean across the clearing.

"Tell your king the Hart heir has returned."

The lead rider's mouth curved into something colder than a smile. "You think he doesn't already know?"

Adrian's grip tightened on her wrist.

"Run."

The riders leveled their spears as one, and Adrian hauled her into the tree line without waiting to see what came next.

They ran.

Branches raked at Amelia's face and arms; roots caught at her boots like the forest itself was trying to slow her down. Shouts rose behind them, closer than she wanted to believe, but Adrian never once slowed his pace.

"Where are we going?" she gasped.

"North."

"Why?"

"Because the eastern road is watched, and I'd rather not test how closely."

"You could have mentioned that a little earlier!"

"I'm beginning to regret not mentioning quite a lot of things earlier."

Despite everything, despite the spears and the fire building behind her ribs, Amelia nearly laughed.

Nearly.

Then something detonated behind them, and the laugh died before it reached her throat.

The forest shuddered. Adrian stumbled, caught himself, spun back the way they'd come.

A wave of blue fire tore through the trees where they'd been standing seconds earlier, close enough that Amelia felt the heat of it against her cheek.

"Adrian!"

He recovered fast, closed his hand around hers again. "Keep moving. Don't look back."

She didn't. They pushed deeper into the dark until the shouts of the riders thinned to nothing behind them, swallowed by distance and the endless black trees.

Finally Adrian stopped beside a tree so massive its roots rose above the ground like the ribs of something long dead, forming a natural hollow. He leaned back against the trunk and, for the first time since the study, let himself go still.

That was when Amelia saw the blood — spreading dark across his shirt beneath his shoulder, more of it than made sense.

"You're hurt."

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"It's nothing."

She stepped closer anyway. "Let me see it."

"No."

"Adrian."

He looked at her then, and something in his face gave a fraction of an inch. She reached for the torn edge of his coat; his hand caught hers before she got there.

Neither of them moved.

His fingers were warm. Hers were trembling, and she hated that he could probably feel it.

"You shouldn't care about me this much," he said, quiet, almost to himself.

"Why not?"

"Because people who care about me tend to get hurt."

She pulled her hand free, slowly, deliberately. "Maybe it's time you stopped deciding what I'm allowed to care about."

Something shifted behind his eyes — before he could shape it into words, the ring flared between them.

They both looked down.

The crescent moon and its seven stars had stopped being silver. They burned gold now, bright enough to cast shadows, and a thin filament of light climbed from the band up along Amelia's arm like something alive.

She gasped as the forest dissolved around her.

Eleanor again — but not alone this time. She stood inside a vast chamber cut entirely from stone, ringed by figures in white robes, a throne of black crystal rising behind her like something grown rather than built. Adrian stood at her side. Younger. Angrier. Afraid in a way Amelia had never seen on him.

A man approached, his face hidden behind a mask of beaten silver.

"You swore the child would never know," he said.

Eleanor lifted her chin, unbowed. "She deserves a life of her own."

"She is not merely a child."

"She is my granddaughter."

"She is the last of the bloodline."

Eleanor's eyes filled, but her voice didn't waver. Adrian stepped between them, one hand already on his blade.

"You will never touch her."

The masked man laughed, low and unbothered. "You cannot hide her forever, Vale."

The vision shifted. Eleanor stood before the door at Blackwood Manor now, the silver ring resting in her open palm, Adrian beside her.

"Take this," she said.

"You know what it will do."

"I know."

"When she comes of age, the door will call to her."

"I know."

"And when it does, they will come for her."

Eleanor turned to face him fully. "Then protect her. However long it takes."

The vision shattered like glass, and Amelia pitched forward into the dark that rushed back in to replace it.

Adrian caught her before she hit the ground, one arm hard around her shoulders.

She clutched at the front of his coat, still catching her breath. "My grandmother knew."

"Yes."

"She knew this would happen. All of it."

"Yes."

"And you promised her."

He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

Amelia looked up into his silver eyes, close enough now to see every fracture of worry in them.

"What am I, Adrian?"

He held her gaze, and for the first time since the corridor, there was nowhere left for him to retreat to. No mystery to hide behind. No half-truth polished smooth enough to pass.

"You are the last descendant of the House of Hart."

She waited. "That's all?"

"No." He swallowed, and even that small motion looked like it cost him something. "The Hart bloodline once ruled Elarion."

Her heart seemed to stop for a full beat.

"You mean—"

"Your grandmother wasn't only hiding you from Elarion." His voice dropped low enough that she had to lean in to catch it. "She was hiding Elarion from you."

Before she could ask what that meant — what it truly meant, past the words themselves — a horn sounded again, closer than before, cutting through the trees like a blade of its own.

Adrian's head snapped toward the sound. "They've found us."

He pulled her to her feet. "We have to move."

She didn't.

"Adrian."

He turned back, impatience and urgency warring in his face.

"Why did my grandmother leave Elarion in the first place?"

His expression went carefully, deliberately blank — the same blankness she'd learned, over three chapters of near-death and half-answers, to recognize as a wall going up.

"Because she fell in love with someone she was forbidden to love."

"Who?"

He said nothing.

And in the silence that followed — in every hesitation before this moment, every flinch at her grandmother's name, every long enough he'd offered instead of an actual answer — Amelia found the shape of the truth waiting for her, obvious now that she knew where to look.

"Was it you?"

Adrian looked away.

That was answer enough.