“Good.” I grinned.
“Show me the page.”
“Oh. Um—” I pulled it from my pocket and handed it to Jase.
He scanned the symbols slowly, his lips closing, eyes getting smaller and smaller. “I need light.”
“Jase?” I whispered in a kind of loud voice. “What are you doing? We need to get out of here.”
“I can’t see properly, but—” He laid the page on the table and waved his phone over it, lighting the up the small space around us. “This isn’t right.”
“What’s not?”
“This ink. It doesn’t match the date on the parchment.”
“What do you mean?” I spun the page around so I could see.
“Look.” He pointed to a weirdly shaped letter. “To the average vampire, this is just an ordinary document, but to my expert eye, this symbol, which indicates the text was written at some point in the fifteen-hundreds, doesn’t match the age of the ink. This ink—” He licked his thumb and rubbed the corner of the page a few times. “It’s less than ten years old.”
“How do you know that? Wait—” I put both hands up. “Don’t tell me. I probably don’t want the lengthy explanation.”
He touched my arm softly. “Let’s just say it has a lot to do with pigment.”
“So, what does that mean—if this document is a forgery?”
He stood straight again slowly. “I’m not sure.”
“Do you think maybe the dagger isn’t what we think it is?”
“Anything could be possible.”
“But, wouldn’t Arthur have known the document was forged?”
“No.” He laughed and folded the page up, handing it back to me. “It’s just not his area of expertise.”
I smirked, catching the swagger in his tone. “Oh, big-noting yourself, huh?”
“Big-noting?”
“Urm, yeah, it means . . . like, to boastfully exaggerate your own worth.”
His lips turned down with thought. “Well, I am pretty darn clever.”
I wrapped my arm around his waist and we wandered out of the weapons room. “Yeah, even I have to admit that.”
***
Quaid walked me all the way down to the secret garden, giving tips on how to swing my sword and position my feet, stating that I didn’t really need to practice privately because I was a better ‘swordsmen’—his words—than any of the men in the Core. And I knew that, but the ‘private’ practice was merely a clever cover.
I farewelled him, asking him to wait outside in case I ‘cut’ myself, and pushed the heavy door to the Garden of Lilith open, holding my breath the whole time.
The door closed with an eerie echo, sealing me in, and a dark figure showed itself, his familiar black cloak brushing the ground as he stood and cast his gaze upon me. I stopped to take him in: his short dark hair, set in thick, wavy locks around his face; his pale skin, so youthful it was almost painful to look at, and then there was his eyes: the cobblestone path under me led the way in pale blues and creams to his feet, the grey bark of leafy green trees behind him creating a backdrop of nature’s pleasantries, all lit warmly by the golden rays of the midday sun, making the water in the fountain beside him sparkle—but none of it compared to the brilliant blue of his eyes, how they drew me into him without need for footsteps, leading us face to face, as if our eyes had locked but an inch away.
“Amara,” he said, bowing his head.
I snapped back into myself then, noticing the sudden distance that lay between us. “Hello, Drake.”
“Please—” He turned and offered the small white garden table behind him. “Take a seat.”
“Of course.” I nodded to wake myself up, readjusting Nhym in her belt as I walked. Brown boots over shadow over cobblestones, I took the two steps leading up to the garden and offered my uncle a smile.
He smiled back, drawing a chair from under the table for me. “You look lovely in yellow,” he said. “Just like my little sister.”
I sat down, turning my sword belt so Nhym aimed at the ground, not my knee. “Yellow’s my favourite colour.”
“Is that so?” He sat down, his brows moving up in surprise. “It was Lili’s too.”
“Well, we were related.” I leaned an elbow on the table, removing it quickly so I didn’t seem ill-mannered.
“Yes, you were, weren’t you?” He considered me for a second. “And I must say that, of all her descendants, Amara, you are by far the prettiest. I can only pray my child will be just like her mother.”
“Your child?”
“Yes,” he said, motioning to my belly. “We’ve waited such a long time for this miracle. In fact, I brought a gift for her.”
I sat back a bit, preparing myself mentally as he reached into a small leather bag on the side of his belt. Clearly he and I were in for a bit of an argument today since he’d already claimed my baby as his own.
“This belonged to my beloved wife when she was alive.” He laid something on the table, keeping his long, youthful fingers over it for a second. “I thought you should have it. Wear it while she grows inside you.”
“Whoa. Hold on.” I put my hand up and, at that moment, Drake drew his away, revealing a giant oval, almost gaudy-looking emerald stone, set into a fine weave of golden chain. “That’s beautiful, Drake, but . . . did you just say your wife is—”
“Growing inside you,” he stated factually, his eyes moving then to my belly as if he looked upon her for the first time in centuries—his beloved Anandene.
“Okay.” I blocked his view, crossing two hands over my midsection. “Let’s get one thing straight here. This is not, nor will it ever be, that witch!”
“Witch!” He shot up out of his chair and stood over me, darkening the sun with the mere presence of anger. “You will do well to remember that I loved that witch, and have gone to great lengths to see her reborn, Amara-Rose. Speak ill of her again and I will knock you unconscious. Do I make myself clear?”
I could only nod a few times, both arms wrapping my baby, sheltering her from the raw emotion emanating off that vampire.
He sat back down, and the sun came out again, the birds in the trees making merry little songs around us once more, while the leaves on the trees danced in the wind. “You have heard many stories about this contract, I am sure. But only one is true.”