To Hell and Back by L.B. Gilbert

Chapter Twenty-Three

Thomas had growled at them when he’d seen them bringing the little one back. Snatching his child away with his characteristic impatience, he’d been just about to slam the door in their faces—something Sanaa had warned him not to do to Rhys particularly—when something remarkable happened.

Lanaa had looked up at her father and shifted in a shower of sparks, gaining her humanoid form several months ahead of schedule.

Taken by surprise, Thomas clutched the little girl to him, his stern face crumpling.

“Baby girl,” he whispered, gazing at his daughter’s human face for the first time. “You’re so beautiful.”

It was true. Plump and pink-cheeked with skin a deep gold that was only a few shades darker than his, but lighter than Sanaa’s, the little one gave him a gummy grin.

Thomas’ head whipped up. “Did you do this?” he asked Valeria.

His witch had her hands over her mouth, her eyes shining.

“No. At least, I don’t think so,” she said, inching closer to Rhys in case the bear’s amazement turned to anger.

“I don’t think it was her,” Rhys said, returning the babe’s smile when she turned it on him. “Lanaa is simply confident in the people around her. If she feels secure enough to leave the house on her own, then she’d be comfortable enough to be in her more vulnerable form.”

“Well done, little one,” he added, tapping the girl’s small nose. The child responded by kicking her feet and drooling all over Thomas’ shirtfront.

“Oh, yeah,” Thomas said, cradling her. A look of resigned frustration settled on his face. “I didn’t expect she’d be able to get out on her own.”

“Did she fly out?” Valeria asked, glancing at the sky apprehensively. “Will you have to put a GPS tracker on her, so she doesn’t get lost?”

“Her wings will be too weak to fly for a while yet, but she can glide. That’s something she should start practicing now. Is Sanaa napping?”

“Yes, Galen kept her up most of the night. How did you know she fell asleep?” Thomas asked.

Despite the amount of time he’d lived in their community, he still treated Rhys with suspicion. It would have been insulting if Rhys hadn’t come so close to being mated himself once upon a time.

He knew the drive to protect was a fierce one.

“Because, otherwise, she would have noticed the babe got loose.” Rhys tapped his chest. “It’s a tug here. As clan leader, I feel it, too. Don’t worry that she’ll get too far should she escape again. Her instinct will drive her back to someone familiar. In this case, it was Valeria, the first person she saw, but that should fade soon, as we discussed. For the time being, I’d advise closing the windows when Sanaa is sleeping.”

Sighing with his whole body, Thomas agreed. Rhys jerked his head at Valeria, indicating they should leave.

They walked up the hill slowly, talking about books he’d noticed her reading in the library and about the places she’d lived and if she’d ever gotten the chance to develop any hobbies other than her drawings and painting.

It didn’t feel like an interrogation, but Valeria ended up telling him things she had never told a living soul, about her mother and having to cultivate small pleasures for the sake of her sanity.

“What sort of pleasures?” he asked, his face carefully blank.

“Little treats I could afford, like finding immigrant bakeries—there was always something new to try,” she said. “I liked finding Asian ones that made those little eggs tarts. Many big cities have a Chinatown or Little Koreatown.”

Rhys made a mental note to introduce egg tarts to their menu.

“Have you made any progress on the mirror?” Her apprehension left a tang of metal in the air.

“My people have traced a few more names of the previous owners, but I’m afraid we don’t know much more on the provenance than where we started. It doesn’t seem to have a very notable history.”

Except for the fact that the additional names belonged to men who had been known among their families as having exceptionally long marriages. But he didn’t tell her that.

“Then maybe you’ve had some time to think about finding work for me?” she asked, the air around her continuing to be colored with her wariness and concern.

After what she’d done to save Sanaa, how could she continue to doubt her place here? If Thomas had any gold, he would have given it all to her already.

It was time.Rhys had been hoping to avoid this for a bit longer, but she was too smart to hide this secret from her anymore. Thanks to the little hints dropped by his people, she suspected it anyway.

No, it was better to tell her the whole truth now. She’d either be angry or… He shuddered, his need so sharp it physically hurt.

“Are you all right?” Rhys turned to find her watching him with wide eyes.

“I’d like you to come with me,” he said, reaching out.

She studied him for a second but took his hand. When he led her upstairs, she began to turn to his office out of habit.

“This way,” he corrected, guiding her to the other door on the third floor with a hand to the shoulder.

“Isn’t this your room?” she asked, hesitating at the threshold.

“It’s where I keep it.”

She dug her heels into the thick carpet. “I’ve seen the mirror.”

“I’m not talking about the mirror.”

Valeria made a little hmm sound in her throat. He walked into the room, wondering if she would follow.

She joined him a minute later.

“That’s a big bed.”

He bit his lip to keep from grinning at her wide-eyed expression. It was earned. The bed was double the size of a California king. It had been custom made, with big wooden posts hung with draperies woven with intricate Draconian designs.

“That is also not what I wanted to show you.”

Sucking a deep breath, he put his hands on her shoulders and nudged until she was facing the wall across from the bed, the one he would watch while falling asleep.

She stared at the painting of his lost love, completely motionless.

The frame was aged gold gilt, the canvas painted by a Venetian master who had been commissioned to paint Gabrielle’s portrait by her family on the occasion of her marriage to Archduke Simion Ludwig Rudolf, a nobleman from Bavaria.

Gabrielle glowed like one of Rembrandt’s subjects, her hair half-pinned up with the rest of her black tresses spilling over her shoulder against a wine-red dress. A magnificent ruby necklace was around her neck. With her pale skin and lips a deep mauve pink he’d found no match for in nature, she could have been Valeria in costume dress.

The blank spot in the corner of the canvas was when the artist stopped because Gabrielle had died, a mere three months after her wedding. The man had been uncertain the family still wanted it.

Rhys had stolen it before he got a chance to ask them.

Valeria walked up to the frame, touching it with tentative hands. “That’s not me, is it?”

“No,” he said softly, studying her instead of the painting. He knew every line of it by memory anyway.

“Who is she?”

“Her name was Gabrielle Rauch-Kastner. She lived and died nearly two hundred years ago.”

There was a long silence. “What was she to you?”

“My mate.”

Valeria turned away from the painting, sitting heavily on the velvet-covered bench at the foot of his bed.

“I met her in Vienna, but lost her far too soon.”

Valeria’s gaze jerked toward him. “What happened? How did you meet her? Who was she?”

The questions were tinged with panic, her voice unnaturally high.

“I saw her at the opera I attended by chance, then spent the next few days tracking her down,” he said, putting his hands on his pockets to keep from reaching for her. “She was the only daughter of an old Viennese family.”

He leaned against one of the bedposts. “Gabrielle’s people were of noble blood but financially strained. They were counting on her beauty to attract a wealthy suitor to replenish the family coffers. Since my traveling persona of a student of the natural and engineering sciences would not impress them, I changed it, becoming a wealthy prince traveling incognito overnight.”

She snickered. “You pulled out all the stops.”

Rhys raised his brow. “I was not about to let their petty perception of my lack of wealth and breeding stop me from claiming her,” he said with a nod at the portrait.

“Then what happened?”

“I began to court her,” he said, sorting through his memories. “It was a slow process, too slow for a creature used to flying off with his mate right after meeting her.”

Valeria’s nose wrinkled, realizing that was what he’d done with her.

“Nevertheless, I stayed within the strictures of Gabrielle’s society. It was the first time I had courted anyone, so I studied what needed to be done. I took her on carriage drives and walks in public gardens. I drank coffee from tiny porcelain cups in her family’s parlor, all the while making sure to shower her with expensive gifts to prove my wealth and suitability as a mate.”

Clasping her hands together in her lap, she shrugged. “If you wanted their approval, that was probably necessary.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

Valeria’s brow puckered. “I don’t understand.”

This next part was difficult to say. “My courtship was too new for them, only a month, but they allowed her to accept my suit. However, when I was unexpectedly called home, they balked at letting her come with me.”

Valeria’s lips parted. “The treasure from Vienna, the one you lost because of what happened here—what Markus did.”

“Yes. I was speaking of Gabrielle.”

Talking about these events had always hurt, but that was before he met Valeria. It was as if meeting her had turned down the volume on the pain, the one that never dulled because it was the agony of missed opportunities. Rhys had spent years living without his heart in his own chest…and then one day, it had just walked back in.

“After it was over, I broke the clan rules, flying back to Vienna non-stop, even during the day when there was a possibility of being seen. But over three months had passed. When I arrived, I found out she had married someone else.”

Her mouth dropped open. “She didn’t wait for you?”

“No,” he sighed, before rolling his shoulders in a hapless gesture. “I was very angry with her for a long time for breaking her promise.”

Valeria winced. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s not your fault.” And it wasn’t. Blaming Valeria for what Gabrielle had done was the height of insanity. “As for Gabrielle, she was a product of her times. She wouldn’t have been able to stand firm against the wishes of her family for long. It wasn’t her fault, any more than it is yours.”

She gestured helplessly to the painting. “Are you sure?” she asked.

He laughed. “You aren’t her.”

Valeria pursed her lips. “Obviously, some people here think I am.”

“The resemblance is uncanny, I’ll grant you. But Gabrielle wasn’t a witch.”

Her lashes fluttered. “She wasn’t?”

“Not a drop of magic,” he assured her. “I’ve grown fairly proficient at sniffing them out. Most witches have a distinct scent.”

A spark of anger made it past the shock. “I smell?”

“Not bad. Bad witches are malodorous.”

She appeared mollified. “I’ve heard shifters say that sort of thing before.”

“It’s the herbs they use, and the death they surround themselves with. It seeps into their pores so deep they can’t wash it away.”

“And yet, the shifter hunters always tried to capture me anyway.”

“The bounty on your head must be very high.”

She was silent for a time. “What happened after? You don’t strike me as the kind of man who would just give up after you found your mate married to someone else. Why didn’t you do the dragon thing? Why didn’t you kidnap her back?”

It was strange. She knew him better than Gabrielle ever had. “I was going to, once I was able to think a little more clearly. Except, she did not want to be kidnapped…”

“How could she possibly have said no to you?”

The incredulity in her tone warmed his heart. “It was her brother who told me what happened, that she’d married a nobleman. But she did come to me one last time to tell me that she chose him, her new husband, willingly.”

“Ouch.”

He chuckled aloud. “I wish I could say I was magnanimous in defeat, and I let her go without a fight.”

A corner of her mouth turned up. “So, you were going to kidnap her?”

He shrugged. “I was desperate. I needed to know if she’d say the same thing once she was alone with me, away from the influence of her family and new husband. But she died before I could go through with it.”

Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected that. Valeria squinted at the painting. “How old was she?”

“In human years? Twenty-three.”

Valeria’s eyelid twitched. “That’s how old I am.”

“Oh.”

The line of her shoulders crumpled. “I’ve often wondered if I would make it to twenty-four. I hope it’s not an omen.”

His face darkened. “No harm will come to you,” he growled. “I will not allow it.”

She gave him a sad smile. “Because you think I’m her.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t. You smell nothing like her.”

That made her laugh.

“Come…” He held out his hand. “I want to show you something.”

Her reluctance was palpable. “Is it as dramatic as this?” she asked, gesturing to the portrait.

“I’ll leave that to you to judge.”