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“So be it,” she bit out. “I’m through waiting. I challenge you. Do you accept?”
Niah couldn’t see the corner of Rath’s mouth kick up in dark amusement since the gul’s back was to her.
“Yes,” Sirus responded, not bothering to stand. She’d given him little choice with such a direct challenge in front of another. Rath, no less.
“An hour,” she clipped, then disappeared back down the hall as quickly as she’d come.
Sirus’s brows furrowed in confusion, and he looked to Rath expectantly.
“I’m surprised it took her this long,” the gul admitted after she was gone. “She won’t be satisfied until blood is drawn.”
“On what grounds does she call a challenge?” Sirus demanded, his blood growing hot with irritation.
“She believes you to be furious with her,” Rath clarified with an uncharacteristically soft expression that made Sirus uneasy. “The woman’s blood might have saved you, but you live only because it was Niah who wouldn’t let you die.”
A chill spread through him, squelching the heat of his frustration. Levian had told him Gwendolyn had been desperate to save him. He remembered the panic in her eyes as she’d tried helplessly to stifle the bleeding. All this time, he’d thought Rath had been swayed by her. The truth cut him to the bone. It had been Niah who’d pleaded for his life.
“And she challenges me to the death?” Sirus hissed, not following the logic.
Rath looked at him as if he were daft, and Sirus gritted his teeth as understanding dawned. She’d been expecting him to challenge her, and she’d gotten tired of waiting. Niah assumed Sirus would want revenge for robbing him of his clean death. A death they’d all known he’d wanted. A death he had wanted, until he felt Gwendolyn’s magick calling to him in the darkness. Sirus bit out a curse and ran his hand over his face, a rare raw display of his emotions. He’d not known, or he would have spoken to Niah already.
“You did not tell me,” he bit out. They’d not spoken much since that night of the mirrors, but it wasn’t as if Rath hadn’t had the opportunity to mention something this important.
“I did not,” Rath confirmed.
It was clear he’d known Niah was in a state far before she’d come storming in to issue her challenge. Rath had let this happen on purpose. Sirus glared at the gul. “Why?”
“Neither of you have ever done well with words,” Rath pointed out. “And it is time you talked.”
Sirus grimaced. He was not wrong there. “Does she think so poorly of me?” he spat. “Does she really think I would have challenged her?” Of course she did, he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He’d given her no reason not to. He’d done nothing but chastise her and express his disappointment for decades.
“She does not think poorly of you,” Rath replied with his usual calm. Sirus looked up to meet his cool red gaze. “Not truly. She merely believes she’s disappointed you once more. This is the only way she sees to make amends.”
Amends. Sirus’s jaw clenched as his teeth ground. It was still absurd. “I thought she hated me,” he confessed, still reeling from the shock of discovering Niah had been the one to sway Rath to attempt to save him.
Rath let out a deep breath and crossed one long leg over the other. “You are changed, Sirus. You are different since that night and what unfolded.”
Hearing it sent a jolt through him. Knowing Rath had sensed it made him fight the urge to squirm in his seat. He fisted his hands instead. “The clan is finished,” he told him. How could he not be changed?
Rath nodded softly. “In a sense, yes. The old ways are now in the past. Yet you still live. As does Niah. You have always been different creatures, but you are connected by bonds beyond tradition. You are her family.” Said as if it explained everything. “She is yours. Perhaps it’s time to make peace. Perhaps it is time you accepted her as she is.”
The statement struck true, like an arrow to the perfect middle of a target. Sirus had never understood her, but neither had he ever really tried. She’d been close to Kane and a few of the others, never him. He’d only ever spoken to Niah as if she were an arrogant child. It was a damning thing to realize. Even more damning was how false it was to how he truly felt.
Family. The word rolled in his mind. Rath was right. Sirus was changed in so many ways since that night in the mirror. The weight of traditions he’d held up on his own was now gone. Instead of feeling at sea, he felt strangely calm. Sirus knew what his future held, and that was keeping Gwendolyn protected. His chest tightened as he remembered the tenderness and care in her touch as she’d stood next to him in front of the den this morning. How she’d recognized how much he’d missed his clansmen. His family.
He supposed it was time he began to treat Niah as such. As long as she didn’t kill him before he got the chance.
Only among vampires would peace be forged with blood and blades.
Niah stood at the end of the training ring wearing the same outfit she had when she’d come to him before, a basic black T-shirt tucked into a pair of tight pants, which he assumed stretched, and thick high-heeled boots. A harness of knives was strapped over her chest, her fiery red hair spun into elaborate plaits and pinned at the top of her head. Her eyes hadn’t shifted from him since he’d entered the room, her expression severe and deadly. Sirus stood opposite her, his swords strapped and waiting at his back. He’d spent the hour before cleaning what remained of Aldor’s blood off of them until they glistened.
Gwendolyn rested on the other side of the castle, sleeping as a mortal should in the middle of the night, oblivious to what was unfolding. Levian and Barith sat on a bench off to the side. Both kept looking between Sirus and Niah, the mage’s expression filled with schoolgirl delight at the prospect of witnessing a real vampire challenge in person. The dragon was simply agitated.
“Yer both eejits!” Barith yelled out.
Levian elbowed him in the ribs. “Shh!”
“Ye too,” he growled, rubbing his side.
