I knelt down. It was too dark to see much of anything in the new tunnel. Before I started forward, I reached back and grabbed on to Naomi’s wrist, pulling her gently down beside me. She lowered herself easily. This close I could see her face flush with my blood. Thank goodness I hadn’t been too late. Finding her had been the right decision, any later and it could’ve been disastrous.
“Listen,” I murmured. “I appreciate your willingness to support me no matter what, but I want you to know you always have a choice. If you disagree with me, you can say so. I don’t expect you to follow me blindly. In fact, I don’t want you to. I value your input way too much. This isn’t a monarchy, and it will never be. Honestly, most of the time I have no idea if I’m making the right choice. The only thing I have to rely on is my gut, which is made up of an extremely bossy she-wolf, and common sense. My wolf is the equivalent of your vampire tutorials, except I don’t always understand what she’s trying to tell me. It’s been a steep learning curve and she’s the first one to call me slow on the uptake. I do promise to make the best choices I possibly can, but I can’t always guarantee they will be the right ones. Do you understand?”
“I do.” She nodded. “But the difference is I have faith that you will make the right choices, where you are still unsure. Your confidence will bloom over time.” She smiled. “The Hag was very clear those many years ago when she told me I would have a choice to pledge myself to someone who was worthy. I did so, and I have no regrets. You are worthy of my pledge in every way. I will follow you.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “But I want you on my team, not as a silent follower. If you believe fate has steered our paths together, and we are in this ridiculous tunnel together for a reason, then I need your help. Vampires, ghost, barriers, magic, politics—I need an intelligent guide by my side to make sense of it all. I have limited knowledge of how the supernatural world works and my only real concern right now is keeping my father alive. He’s the entire reason I’m in this place.” I gestured around the earthen walls. “We have to make sure he lives, and to do that we need to talk about the barrier and why we should or shouldn’t blow it up. I feel like this is a huge decision and it will affect him in some major way.” Whether or not to blow up the barrier was beginning to nag at me.
The ghosts whispered around my body, not liking that I’d taken a short break. I hadn’t heard anything after us in the tunnels, so we had a minute more to spare.
“You must go.”
“The barrier must come down.”
“You cannot wait any longer.”
I ignored them as Naomi nodded. “Forgive me for not being so vocal,” she said. “It is difficult to shed hundreds of years of servitude. The Queen has never asked for our opinions on anything, so it does not come naturally to me.”
“I understand,” I said gently, “but I’m asking you now.”
“We were told the barrier was to keep us safe, that it was dangerous and unthinkable to tamper with it.”
“Is the barrier the ward I felt when I first came over the wall? Are we talking about the same thing?” Now that I thought about it, that ward carried the same tartness as the other curious spells.
“Oui,” she answered. “It is the same. Only, it is not a standard ward. It acts as a shield over the entire Coterie, like a protective dome.”
“It has to be extremely powerful if it can keep incorporeal beings trapped inside. But I was able to pass through it no problem this morning. The boys couldn’t until the Queen let them in. Why do you think I was able to cross it?”
Naomi shook her head. “It shouldn’t be so. It keeps out even the strongest supernaturals. It is very old and has been in place since this mansion has been in our possession. There are rumors it’s been crafted from the Queen’s own blood.”
“But vamps can’t wield spells.”
“Eudoxia is not … ordinary,” she said, her voice dropping automatically from years of obedience. One does not gossip about their Queen freely. “She is able to cast spells. Some believe that spell casting is her special gift. Others believe … she is more than vampire.”
My eyebrows jumped to my hairline.
That was big, gossipy interesting news. More than a vampire meant she had been something supernatural before she’d been turned. “I’ve seen her power manifest physically,” I commented as I thought back to our first meeting when she’d shot her white light straight into my chest, “but I figured it was because she was so old. That her power had grown so much it had manifested itself physically.”
“Non,” she replied. “She has always had the ability to cast spells.”
That was extremely valuable information. I sat back on my heels. Naomi and I hadn’t had a chance to talk about anything since she had pledged herself to me. I must fix that as soon as I could. Information was power, and I needed more if I wanted to win. “That puts an entirely new spin on all things Eudoxia. A Vampire Queen who can cast spells must be incredibly rare. The vamps must keep that news very close.”
“We are required to keep her secrets above all else. If she finds out I have betrayed her, she will kill me.” Naomi shrugged her petite shoulders. “But she has already tried to kill me, so it is of no consequence any longer.”
I smiled. “Do you have any idea what else she may be?”
“Non,” she said. “That is a true mystery.”
“You linger too long,” a whisper hit my ear.
“They are coming now.”
“Time wastes.”
I batted the ghosts away with my hand in irritation. “The ghosts are telling me we have to move. One last thing—do you think my father can cross the barrier to get to us?”
She shook her head. “No, I do not believe so.”
I inclined my head at her. “Then the barrier comes down. Our decision is made.”
“Oui. We must take it down,” she agreed. “For your father’s sake.”
I started to crawl through the hole. “Naomi, do you still have your cross?” The Lunar Goddess’s trinket was very valuable. There was hope in my voice, even though I knew the answer already.
Her voice was dark. “Non. It was Valdov’s most favored who carried me to the crypt. They wrapped me in silver chains and I could not break free. They took it from me before they bound me to the Strigoi.”