Promises to Keep - By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Page 0,9

didn’t say much, but he held her tightly, in a way no one had in a long time. The gentle rhythm of his heartbeat and breath formed a lullaby that soothed her panic. At some point, she had turned to hold him back. Now she never wanted to move. If she could just stay right here, like this, she might not fracture into a million pieces.

But … where is here? she wondered at last.

She couldn’t well recall the moments—perhaps hours—since she’d made the decision to kill herself.

As she lifted her eyes and focused on his face, the stranger said, “I’m Jay.”

No, that’s all wrong. “You’re more of a sparrow, or lark,” she said. He had a thick mane of deep auburn-brown hair, smooth skin of a color somewhere between caramel and burnt sienna, and lovely eyes specked and swirled with green, gray, gold, and brown. “Blue jays are cold colors. But you can be a songbird if you want. That’s fine.”

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

Kendra’s manor. The Heathen Holiday. Several pairs of eyes were fixed on her with varying amounts of concern or annoyance. One of the most concerned was also one of her favorites.

“Exequías,” she greeted the Italian vampire. He had first come to work for her as a model, many years ago, when he was still human. Daryl had tried to convince him to stay longer, after his contract had expired, but he had disappeared.

Brina had always regretted that she hadn’t been the one who’d changed him.

“I need to borrow Jay for a bit,” Exequías said, with the same charming but fake smile that he liked to use for fans and cameras.

Brina held on tighter to her knight, until he let out a grunt that reminded her that he needed to breathe. She let go of him reluctantly, and he pulled away to go with Exequías, saying, “My lady, if you’ll excuse me.”

She nodded. She wouldn’t embarrass herself by asking him to stay. He left with Exequías’s arm across his shoulders.

No help for it. He was mortal, and mortals at Kendra’s Heathen Holiday were there only by coveted invitation from one of her line. If this “Jay” came here with Exequías, then that was who he would stay with for the evening.

She was still watching where they had gone, when Kaleo knelt beside her. Brina glanced up to see Kendra standing in the opposite doorway, probably having sent Brina’s maker here to clean up the mess and avoid future drama.

“I’m fine now,” she snapped, rising to her feet.

Kaleo caught her shoulders and turned her to face him.

“I see,” he said, looking around at the carnage left by her wild fit.

“It’s my own work,” she pointed out when he crouched to examine the shattered frame of one of the paintings.

“The canvas on some of these is still sound,” he remarked. “We’ll see if Kendra’s staff can repair any of them.”

“Don’t bother.” Kaleo had dragged these pieces from her studio after she had tried to tell him she didn’t have anything to display this year.

Despite her protest, Kaleo started handing bits of wreckage to the slaves who materialized at his hands, anticipating his needs.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you alone earlier. I should have realized how much distress you were in.” He lifted her hand and examined her fingertips, which were smeared with the coppery dust that remained when vampiric blood dried. Somewhere in her frantic destruction of her own work, she must have torn fingernails and flesh. Those wounds had healed now.

“I would rather be alone.” She had embarrassed herself enough for one day.

“Nonsense.”

Three and a half centuries ago, his arrogance had drawn her like a magnet drew iron filings. She had fallen helplessly into the well of his charisma, and hopelessly in love. Daryl had warned her that Kaleo’s affections were as deep as paint on a canvas, but she hadn’t listened. Hadn’t cared.

Now he brought her back to her home, dragging her like dust in his wake as he blinked out of Kendra’s home and reappeared in Brina’s living room across town. He shook his head at the doors she had left wide open after she had ordered the slave who’d cut her down out of her sight.

“Do you have a lady’s maid?” he asked as he poked through her wardrobe, searching for something more acceptable to wear back to Kendra’s gala.

“No,” she lied, though of course she did. That servant had been a gift from her brother.