The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [19]
I am focused inward, on Tora, and hear no one approach me. However, I feel a brush of air against my hair, the aura of some visitor. My head snaps up, but I see no one. Whoever was there is gone, leaving nothing save a slip of paper next to my hand.
I pick up the paper, my eyes caught on the name that is scrawled across the top in black ink: Rachel. I cannot read the words below, which have run together where water has fallen onto the ink. Not water, I think, realizing how strongly the aura is mixed in with them — tears.
I stare at the name for a moment, then crush the note in my hand, a fine tremor of rage going through me at this creature who dares to taunt me so. I do not recognize the aura on the paper; I do not know who sent it.
“Rachel is dead,” I say aloud. “I am not Rachel — she died three hundred years ago.”
The tearstains on the paper — whose are they? What human learned of Rachel and was so pained by her story that he sent me this? Or is this note a sick joke of Aubrey’s, another way to scar my heart?
“I don’t want your games!” I shout. If the one who left this reminder is still near, let him confront me.
No one answers.
CHAPTER 14
NOW
MY PAST AND MY PRESENT have combined to taunt me. Shaking with grief and anger, I return to Ambrosia. I glance around the room, checking for Aubrey. I do not see him.
I come to this place seeking a diversion. The ghost of Rachel cannot follow me here.
I see my image reflected in a crystal glass someone has left on a counter. My reflection is a misty apparition, but I can see Tora’s markings in my hair and I laugh. This is something Aubrey will never take from me.
In this moment I feel like exactly what I am: a wild child of the darkness. A dangerous shadow in a mood to make trouble.
I look around the room again. Smiling, I toss my tiger-striped hair back from my face and perch on the counter. The girl behind it, a younger fledgling, opens her mouth as if to tell me to get down but then thinks better of it.
“What do you see, Tiger?” someone asks me, and I turn toward him. “You look around this room as if you saw it differently from all of us. What do you see?”
I recognize him, and I know he recognizes me. He is Ather’s blood brother, Jager. People say he treats all life as a game that must be played — a cruel and deadly game in which whoever is winning makes the rules.
Jager appears eighteen, with dark skin and deep brown hair. His eyes are emerald green, and they reflect the dim light like a cat’s. I know it is the same illusion as my hair. All vampires have black eyes, and Jager had dark eyes even when he was alive — he was born nearly five thousand years ago, in Egypt, and watched the great pyramids rise.
“I see someone who does not show his true eyes,” I observe. “What do you see?”
“I see that my warnings to Ather and Aubrey were justified,” he answers.
“Was it you who warned Ather I would be strong?”
“It was I who warned her that you would be stronger than she.”
He sits on the counter beside me, and the girl behind it gives up, moving to a table on the other side of the room.
“Ather is weak,” I comment. “It is one of her flaws. She changes those who will be stronger than her, because it makes others think she has more power than she does.”
“She isn’t the only one you are stronger than, Risika,” he answers. “Aubrey isn’t often challenged, because people know he is powerful, and they are afraid of him. He has you afraid of him, although he is not much stronger than you are, if at all.”
“Oh, really?” I ask, not believing him. “Then we must be speaking of different Aubreys, because I lost the last time I fought the Aubrey I know.”
“You could hide that scar with a thought. You have the power to do that,” Jager says, changing the subject.
“I could,” I answer. “But I don’t.”
“You wear it like a warning — a sign that you will avenge it.”
“I will avenge