Chapter 165

He turned, and I was stunned that he just flat-out refused. Raven didn’t even look back at me as they walked away. Messiah and Shiloh were laughing loud enough to be heard even as they reached the end of the road. I moved to go after them.

“Come on, we—”

Candido’s hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back. His face was flushed. He was still fuming.

“Werewolves don’t get involved in vampire business,” Candido said.

“It could be important!” I tugged on my arm. “He was going to invite me!”

“But not me,” Candido said. “And I think you’ve done enough for one day.”

He pulled me along. I pulled back.

“Let me go! You can’t just drag me around like a child.”

“Then stop acting like one,” Candido said. “You’ve been running head first into danger and acting recklessly. I don’t know what this is all about, but you’ve done enough.”

“I saved their lives,” I growled, stumbling after him. “You’re hurting me.”

“Doubtful,” he growled.

I pulled back, trying to fight to get free. “You can’t treat me like this! You’re supposed to be nicer to me. We’re supposed to be celebrating my birthday!”

He let me go as I yanked back and I fell in a puddle of mud. My eyes burned with tears as I felt it seeping into the fabric of the dress. He turned back briefly as I started to cry.

“How could you treat me like this?” His eyes narrowed down at me. I looked up at him through my tears. “You don’t even look like you care about me at all!”

“Are you done?” He asked stiffly. “Or are you going to sit there and cry about a bit of mud in a situation like this?”

I gasped. “How could you say that? I’m all dirty. I’m crying and you’re just—Hey!”

He turned away and stomped back towards the building. I got to my feet and hurried after him. I caught up with him quickly and cut him off. He stopped, looking down at me.

“Why are you so upset? You should be happy!” I yelled at him. “I made sure that everyone would survive. You can’t say that you’d rather everyone be dead. You’re acting like I betrayed you! You’re acting like I didn’t do something great for everyone.”

Candido averted his gaze for a moment. I thought the look on his face was a bit of shame. I lifted my head, waiting for him to apologize to me. Moments passed as the tension in his jaw seemed to grow.

“Fine,” he said softly. “Let’s talk about your… great deed.”

I flinched at his tone. He lifted his eyes and looked at me. I had never seen his eyes so cold, not even when thought I was a spy years ago.

“You’re saying if he asked you to sleep with him in exchange for this, you would be okay with that?”

I licked my lips. “I’d… take it as a sacrifice.”

“If he made you marry him?”

“I wouldn’t—”

“If he told you to kill everyone?”

I went still. “That’s not—”

“If he told you to kill me.”

“I wouldn’t!”

“You wouldn’t have a choice!” Candido snarled. “You made a contract with a vampire, granting him anything he wanted. Did you even put a limit of any kind on it? Time? A number of favors? Severity? Anything?”

I swallowed, thinking about it. I hadn’t. He hadn’t even mentioned that being an option. He hadn’t seemed to want anything in particular. I hadn’t even been sure that he would ask for sex, but it seemed the most likely… Marrying someone that wasn’t Candido just didn’t feel right, even if it meant that they would all be safe. Candido would have warned me before making the deal, but… would Cillian have even accepted any limitations?

“No,” Candido said. “You didn’t even think about it. You didn’t even ask.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had a choice!” Candido said. “You knew I was against it before the wall went up. You should have said no.”

“So, you’re saying my only choice was to obey you?” I asked. “How is that supposed to help me grow up?”

“Children defy out of spite,” Candido said. “Children refuse council: headstrong and foolish.”

“Don’t call me foolish!” I yelled. “Besides, if we get out of here before he—"

“You are really naïve if you think for a moment that it would be that simple.”

“Don’t call me naïve.”

He bared his teeth. “You made a magical contract with a vampire. You don’t even know how it works, if it could be used to track you, compel you to do things even at a distance.”

I set my jaw, unable to say anything. “What if he orders you to stay in Lunae?”

“I’d figure out a way out.”

He scoffed. “What else am I supposed to think, Hedy? Other than you are naïve. Magical contract, Hedy. What part of that isn’t getting through to you?”

“You’re strong enough to kill him,” I said. “If he asks for something like that, you could just kill him.”

Candido stared at me for a moment, blinking at me as if he didn’t have the words. Then, he turned and rubbed at the spot between his eyebrows.

“You’ve made yourself an even bigger liability than before.”

My eyes pricked with tears. “What?”

Candido narrowed his eyes at me. “A liability. Being related to vampires was one thing. I don’t know what sort of hold they might have had on you. No one does, but based on the way Ian talks to you, I can tell that he has no bond to you.”

Those words hurt, but I knew they were true. I thought back to the gentle tone Ian used with Raven and the way he kissed her forehead before he left. Ian didn’t care about me.

“And now, you have a willing, limitless contract with a vampire who all but promised to kill us all if we resisted interrogation? An open-ended contract you can’t even negotiate. What else can you be but a liability?” He shook his head and stumbled. “I need rest. We’ll talk about this more after I’m sure everyone is actually okay.”

He walked away from me, and I glared after him. I stomped after him.

“At least I did something!” I yelled after him. “At least I had the power to do something!”

Candido didn’t even look back at me and it made me feel even more frustrated than before.

I stomped back to my room and slammed the door. I wasn’t wrong. Candido didn’t have any power right now. He was in shackles just like me and injured. When he recovered, we would all get out, but that was then. Maybe I hadn’t thought about Candido as a way out of the deal, but I wasn’t wrong. Candido was a gold wolf, he could control the elements. He was the Alpha King. A vampire duke would be nothing to him. He’d kill him and Ian and everyone else that got in the way as soon as he’d recovered.

Then, he’d see how much of a sacrifice I’d been willing to make for the sake of Moon Shadow. Wasn’t that was leaders were supposed to do for the sake of their subordinates?

I sank onto the edge of the bed and pouted. He’d see that I had been in the right.

He’d see that I was only doing what was best for us.

I know he would.

A knock sounded on the door. I stood and fixed my clothes, thinking it was Candido, and ready for his apology. I opened the door and blinked to see Raven on the other side. She looked at me and offered me another bundle of clothes: a few pairs of jeans and some t-shirts.

“I—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t want to hear it, and I don’t care.”

“You’re not really acting like a sister.”

Her eyes flashed. “You’re not one of us, remember?”

I set my jaw. “I’m not.”

“Then, I don’t need to treat you like a sister,” she walked away and took off into the air through the window.

I tossed the clothes in the room and looked up and down the hallway. I waited a few minutes before I went to go look for Candido. If he thought I was going to let this all go. He was wrong. He should have been apologizing to me already. We’d missed celebrating my birthday because of all this. We should have still been out on a date, not arguing because I made a good decision.

I knocked on three different doors before my phone chimed in my pocket.

I pulled it out and frowned, reading the message. I narrowed my eyes, considering it before I smiled and replied. I tucked my phone in my pocket and walked back to my room to change.

Fine. He didn’t want to apologize. He was hiding somewhere. I guess he just didn’t get enough from when I went to visit Francium in New Moon.