“That is the risk, of course,” Damon said, studying her intently as if he had heard her highly inappropriate thoughts. “But I believe there is a way to obtain entrance to the colony without dying to achieve it.”
Alexia braced herself. “What is it?” she asked.
“I know the man who founded it.”
Damon experienced Alexia’s shock as if they were attached by thousands of tiny cables that conveyed every emotion directly into every nerve in his body. He had felt that shock time after time in the past few hours: Alexia’s grief, her suspicion, her hurt and sense of betrayal. Each one had destroyed a piece of his heart...the treacherous heart that could reduce a rational being to extremes of violence and tenderness all in the course of a moment.
He gazed at Alexia’s calm face, amazed all over again at her resilience. He had asked—
demanded—so much of her, and not once had she broken. She was capable of setting aside her intense feelings when indulging them became an obstacle to her mission; she could speak with complete poise and rationality even after he had repeatedly provoked and betrayed her.
In many ways she was so much stronger than he was. She could leave him without a second glance if it was necessary. But he...
Damon remembered the horror that had curdled in his belly when he’d seen Alexia with Lysander and realized his old enemy was loose in the Zone, claiming to be working for the Council. He remembered realizing that Lysander was trying to deceive both him and Alexia, an attempt ruined by the Opir’s mocking words about Eirene, and Alexia’s worth as a dhampir in Erebus.
What he didn’t remember was what had happened afterward. He had attacked Lysander, and they had tried to kill each other. But the details were like a hole in his mind filled only with blood, rage and pain.
He thought it had happened before. It seemed as if he’d woken from a bizarre nightmare—the kind only humans were supposed to have—and quickly found the details burning away in the light of the sun, as if his mind refused to accept that he had somehow lost his ability to control his every thought.
But until Alexia, with such worry in her eyes, had asked him what he remembered of the fight, he hadn’t really understood that something dark inside him had claimed his mind, a darkness he couldn’t see when he was normal. If he had ever been “normal” at all.
What the Lamia had done, interfering in the fight and killing Lysander, was far from normal. Nor was what Damon had sensed when the creature had looked into his eyes with an intelligence and purpose none of its kind had ever revealed before.
Protect, it had said in his mind. Save. And an image of Alexia had filled his head, shaded with emotion no Lamia should have been capable of feeling.
That was when he had known what the creature was. Who it was. And knew, too, that Alexia had recognized the truth before the creature had killed Lysander, and kept it from him.
He had told Alexia truths he had never meant to share, revealed his original mission, exposed inner thoughts and feelings he had once rejected with all his will. He had wounded her, turned her against him, flinched at the agony in her eyes.
Irrational impulses. Lysander had recognized that weakness in Damon far too well.
But Damon hadn’t known the Council had chosen him to work with the Aegis operatives because of that weakness. Or how well it would blunt his intellect and competence.
Lysander had taunted him about that, too.
Since Eirene died. But it wasn’t just Eirene. It was Alexia. He would have given his life gladly to spare her one more moment of pain.
But he had no right to spare her any truth that might keep her alive. Thank the First Sires that his suspicions of Michael’s involvement in the theft of the patch were no longer relevant to that purpose.
If only—
“Theron?” Alexia said, breaking his silence. “You know him?”
Damon shook himself out of his dark thoughts. “From Erebus,” he said. “He was a Bloodmaster, and one of the few Opiri who treated Darketans as equals and believed they should have full representation in the government.”
Alexia remained very still, barely breathing. “A Bloodmaster,” she said. “Are you saying he was your friend? ”
Damon remembered the long, philosophical discussions with Theron in his tower apartments, the only span of time in which Damon was free to speak, feel as he chose without consequences. It had all been so much illusion in the end.
“Friendship is not a concept easily understood in Erebus,” he explained. “Darketans cannot advance in Opir society, and any relationships not based on alliances for power are considered deviant.”
“Like your relationship with Eirene,” she said.
There was no malice in her question, but Damon still felt the blow. “Yes,” he said, “but Theron had sufficient influence to circumvent the restrictions placed on Darketans in Erebus. He had many unpopular ideas, including the concept of establishing what you would call more democratic methods of government. He did what he could to further the rights of Darketans and vassals, even though his stance put him in some danger from more conservative Opiri.”
“The Expansionists,” Alexia murmured. “Did Theron believe in human equality, too?”
Damon had known the question was coming. He had considered Theron far more than a friend; the Bloodmaster had been like a benevolent Sire as far back as Damon’s memory reached, when he had discovered that Damon was one of the few Darketans unable to suppress his emotions with the rigid discipline imposed on all his kind.
But Theron had still been a Bloodmaster. He would never have considered that humans could be equal to Opiri of any rank. That would require setting them free, and losing access to the blood every citizen of Erebus must have to survive. Such a radical concept would shake the very foundations of Opir belief and society. It could destroy Erebus, and every Citadel like it.
“No,” Damon said softly. “He did not.”
Alexia was quiet for a while, but when she spoke again her voice held no trace of anger. “Is that why he decided to establish outside Erebus?” she asked. “To implement his philosophy?”
“So it appears. I was not privy to his plans to do so. The Council would have prevented it if they had known, so he must have worked subtly to evade their notice.”
“So subtly you didn’t know anything about what your ‘friend’ was doing?”
Damon smiled grimly. It was so much like Alexia to cut straight to the heart of the matter, like a surgeon with a scalpel.
“Theron disappeared from Erebus a year ago,” he said. “I had no idea what had happened to him. Apparently neither did the Council.”
“So you were led to believe.”
He inclined his head to acknowledge her scathing comment. “Yes.”
“But if the Expansionists knew about the colony early on and supported it, at least secretly, didn’t they know that Theron’s ideas went against everything they believed in?”
“Either they were unaware Theron himself was in charge,” Damon said, “or they believed they could manipulate or force him into furthering their cause. Knowing what I do of him, I doubt Theron would have hesitated to deceive them as to his purpose if it would further his goals.”
Alexia sighed sharply. “All right,” she said. “But you’re sure that your past connection will get us into the colony now, even though your ‘friend’ didn’t bother to tell you what he was doing or invite you to join his experiment?”
“As sure as I can be.”
She pushed her bangs away from her forehead as if she were brushing away her doubts. “Doesn’t he know you’re working for the Council?”