I dropped the woman only because I didn’t trust myself not to crush her to death in front of Yonah. “This woman,” I said through gritted teeth, “is not whoever she claims to be.”
“Ereshki is our guest of honor. This ball is in celebration of her being our newest member here.” Yonah’s tone sliced the air like a killing blow. For an instant, black wings spread out behind him, so large they touched the ceiling and pressed against each side of the hallway before they vanished.
The sight would’ve awed me, but it was nothing compared to hearing her name spoken aloud by someone else for the first time since I’d been human. For a moment, the past swallowed me so completely that I wasn’t Veritas, Law Guardian for the vampire council, any longer. I wasn’t even Ariel, beloved adopted daughter of Tenoch and secret biological daughter of the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld.
I had no name. I wasn’t worthy of one. I wasn’t even worthy to suffer and die for my god, Dagon, but he permitted it so others could see his magnificence when he raised me from the dead. After that, it was their turn to die for Dagon. If they truly believed in him, Dagon would raise them back to life, too. He’d proved that by raising Ereshki, and he’d gifted me with her presence so I was no longer alone in my cage. If Dagon didn’t raise his other sacrifices back to life, then they hadn’t truly believed in him. Perhaps the people in the next town would . . .
“Ereshki?” The harshness in Ian’s tone snapped me back to reality. “The bitch who conned you into continuing to believe in Dagon so he could keep torturing and murdering you?”
“What?” Yonah said.
At the same time, Ereshki screeched, “I did not do any of that! I don’t know you! Why would you say such things?”
Rage and regret over all the lives Dagon had brainwashed me to help him take made my voice hoarse. “If you’re not the same person who helped Dagon murder thousands by pretending to be his victim while all the time you were his ally, then you won’t have a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on your left hip.”
I should have been satisfied to see her face pale when I ripped her purple ball gown to expose her hip so Yonah could see that the mark was there. But I didn’t. I still felt so choked by her betrayal when I’d been at my most helpless that my throat felt as if it had been suddenly stuffed full of razors.
“I never got the chance to ask you why,” I rasped. “Why did you bother to befriend me first? You could have convinced me of Dagon’s deity without pretending to love me as a sister. It’s that cruelty I can’t forgive, let alone understand.”
She’d backed as far as she could into the corner of the room, her heartbeat sounding like a drummer banging away on steel lids.
“I don’t know you.” An anguished whisper as she frantically glanced between me and Yonah. “I have never seen you before now. I have no idea who Dagon is, either. You know I don’t!” she wailed, directing that, oddly, at Yonah. “I remember almost nothing before waking up in that ditch five weeks ago!”
I felt the color drain from my face while my stomach dropped as if I’d come to a sudden stop after a long fall. She had almost no memory beyond the past five weeks? No. No. She couldn’t be one of the newly resurrected souls . . . could she?
She could. Ereshki had bargained her soul away to Dagon before we met. I’d overheard that when I learned of her betrayal on the same day that Tenoch rescued me. Of course Dagon would’ve collected on Ereshki’s debt a long time ago, and how like him to bottle her soul as his own personal resurrection fuel instead of delivering it to its intended destination.
That meant she was probably telling the truth. She didn’t know me because my time with Ereshki had been tied to Dagon, and my father had yanked all Dagon-related memories out of her when he brought her, Ian, and the other souls back to life. She wouldn’t have had cause for those memories to linger the way they had for Ian, either. She’d cared nothing for me.