He moved away from the map as William and Daniel leaned closer to it. “We’ll send a small scouting team in first, have them canvas the area. They will be able to discover the weakest areas and the best places to establish our soldiers in. We will need to take the palace swiftly.”
“Dad,” she whispered, clutching her hands tightly before her. Her legs were shaking, her head was spinning. “The last time someone tried to take the palace it was a massacre.”
He wasn’t paying attention to her though as he moved away. Panic was thrumming through her. She couldn’t allow this to happen, she couldn’t allow people to die because her father wanted revenge for things that had never even occurred. At least not to her.
But they had happened to other people, and they were continuing to happen right now.
However, the rebels had made an attempt to take the palace when she was a child, and they had been decimated. In retaliation for the rebel’s defiance, the king had sent out thousands of troops that had razed, burned, and slaughtered their way through villages and forests. It was how her father had become the leader; the last one had been brutally murdered and hung within the largest village as an example of what would be done to others who tried to attack the palace.
“We will have to be smarter about it this time, go about it in a slower more methodical way.”
“I would like to go in,” William said softly.
Aria’s mouth dropped, she spun on her brother, her twin, her other half. “No William,” she breathed. “You cannot go in there.”
“Yes I can.”
“No! Your coloring, you’re too similar to me. They’ll know you. Tell him Jack. Tell him!” She was practically begging, and she was crying as she turned frantically to Braith’s brother. “Tell him about Caleb, and what kind of a monster he is. Tell him what Caleb would do to him if he discovered him in there! Tell him he is a fool! That they all are!”
“Arianna, enough,” her father said sharply.
“Who is Caleb?” Daniel asked softly.
“My brother,” Jack answered.
“The middle one,” Max elaborated.
“I thought you were held by the oldest brother,” Daniel said.
Aria wiped the tears from her face, shaking as she tried to regain control of herself. Acting crazed and wild would not help; it would not get them to listen to her. It would do none of them any good if she was a raving lunatic. She needed to be calm, and she needed to be collected if she was going to talk them out of this crazy suicide mission.
“I was,” she said softly. “Braith is a good man…”
“He’s not a man,” Max growled.
Aria glanced at him, hating the look of hurt and disgust that radiated from him as his gaze landed hard upon her. They would hate her, they would all hate her if they knew the truth, but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care. “My oldest brother believes in duty and honor. He values them highly,” Jack told them.
“Including holding young women hostage and using them,” her father interjected sharply.
“Braith was kind to me,” she said for the thousandth time, but none of them wanted to hear her.
“Caleb is not like Braith, or me,” Jack continued, his glance at Aria sympathetic but hard. “Caleb is like our father, cruel, twisted; vengeful. If he discovers that you are Aria’s brother he will torture you in ways that you have never imagined possible. Your hair color alone might be enough for him to take his revenge on you.”
“But your older brother wouldn’t?” William inquired the scorn in his voice more than apparent.
Jack stared hard at Aria for a long moment. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. If they found out that she had just been with Braith, that she intended to see him again, they would go crazy. They would think she had lost her mind, that her time as a blood slave had twisted her. They would not stop to think that she was with him because she truly did love him; they would assume that she had lost her mind, and they would lock her away. She would never see Braith again, and they would all run off half cocked, determined to avenge her for absolutely no reason other than bullheaded male stubbornness.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Jack said softly.
Aria couldn’t look at him anymore. She felt ashamed, she felt lost, and she felt completely awful. She was running around behind her family’s back, and yet she was sitting through this horrendous meeting discussing how to invade the palace. Something that could get Braith seriously hurt, if not killed. Something that could get members of her family killed.
She had spent her entire life fighting against the vampires, wanting to destroy them, and now she found herself frantic to do anything to stop this.
“Well isn’t the future king special,” Max drawled.
“He is,” Aria said softly.
Max’s lip curled in disgust, her family stared at her as if she had sprouted another head. “Ok William can’t go in then, but I can.”
“Daniel,” Aria moaned, dropping her head into her hands as her mind spun. She needed to think of something, anything that would stop this. She turned back to Jack, but he was leaning against the wall again, his arms folded back over his chest. “You don’t know what you are doing.”
“Yes, I do.”
Aria could barely breathe through the lump in her throat, could barely see through the tears burning her eyes. She had to stop this, she didn’t know how, didn’t know what to do, but she knew that she had to stop this. She didn’t know when Braith would be back, she didn’t know if she should even tell him what they intended. She’d be betraying her own family if she did. She’d be betraying her own kind.
But if she remained silent and something happened to Braith, or someone in her family…
She shut the thought down. She couldn’t live with herself if something happened and she could have stopped it. Her legs gave out; she slid limply to the ground, her mind spinning as they continued with their plans. Plans that she could barely comprehend anymore. Plans that were slowly tearing her in two.
***
Aria knew that she shouldn’t do it, but she couldn’t stop herself from slipping through the woods, back to the lake. It had become her favorite place over the past couple of months, and now that she needed it the most, she was not supposed to go near it. But after the events of the past few hours she didn’t give a damn what she was, and was not, supposed to do. Not anymore.