“So many questions,” he murmured. “It’s understandable. Your friend is fine, I didn’t harm her. I won’t harm you either. I only wish to help. That’s why your father called me—”
“My father?” She hardly dared hope he was telling her the truth, but it was all she had. “When did you talk to him? Did the Order let him go? I want to see him, right now. Please. You must take me to him.”
As her words spilled out of her, the golden man looked at her in sympathetic, gentle silence. “I wish there had been an easier way to explain all of this to you. There wasn’t time. If I hadn’t taken you out of Boston, they would’ve gotten to you first. They were already closing in on you, Jordana.”
“What are you talking about? Who was after me?”
“Your father’s enemies. The soldiers who once served under his command—as I did, a very long time ago. I was your father’s friend. My name is Ekizael.”
Jordana shook her head. This guy may look like a fallen angel, but he was obviously very disturbed. “Look, Eh-kee-zayel—”
“Zael,” he said, offering her a courtly bow of his head.
She stared at him. “Whoever you are, you don’t know my father. His name is Martin Gates. He’s a businessman. A Darkhaven leader. He was never a soldier and he doesn’t have any enemies.”
“No, Jordana,” he said quietly. “I’m not talking about the Breed male who raised you. Your true father was a royal guard. He was once the most decorated warrior in the queen’s legion.”
“The queen’s legion? Oh, right, of course.” She couldn’t bite back the small, nearly hysterical laugh that bubbled up from her throat. “And which one would that be—the Queen of England or the Queen of Sheba?” The golden man—Zael, she mentally amended—remained sober, utterly serious. “Her name is Selene. She’s been my people’s queen for many thousands of years. Your people, Jordana.”
She wanted to scoff at this insane statement too, but as her captor spoke, his hands began to emit the same soft light that hers had just a moment ago.
Even more unsettling, in the center of his broad palms glowed a symbol she recognized all too well: the teardrop-and-crescent-moon mark she bore on the underside of her left wrist.
“You have the Breedmate mark,” she murmured. “I don’t understand. How can you—”
“It is our symbol, Jordana. The symbol of the Atlantean race. The one on your wrist was put there as a decoy. Your father hoped the tattoo would help you fit in among the Breed and the halfling daughters of our kind born outside our realm.”
“I was born with this mark,” she argued. “The same as any other Breedmate.”
“No. You, Jordana, are something different from them.” Zael’s deep voice was unnervingly rational as he spoke. “You’re no halfling, not even close. You are full immortal. A pureblood Atlantean.”
She looked at her symbol with fresh eyes, realizing only now that it might not be a birthmark after all, but crimson ink embedded meticulously under her skin.
Confusion swirled inside her. She wanted to deny what she was seeing—she wanted to deny everything she was hearing—but the evidence was too compelling to dismiss.
She already lived in a world where vampires and humans coexisted. Why did it terrify her so deeply to think she might be something other too?
Because it would mean accepting the fact that her entire life had been a lie.
“Did he know all of this? Martin Gates, I mean. Does he know?”
Zael gave a mild nod. “He agreed to raise you and keep you safe as his child, as a Breedmate. For your protection, you were never to be told that you were different. Cass trusted him with that secret implicitly—”
“Cass,” Jordana whispered, her breath drying up in her lungs. “Cassian Gray.”
She closed her eyes as the realization sank in, a wave of shock washing over her. Then sorrow, when she recalled Cass’s strange visit to the museum.
The enjoyable, far-too-brief time she’d spent talking with him. And the unthinkable way he died, just a short while later.
“His true name was Cassianus,” Zael said. “He adopted a simpler one—an entirely new identity as well—to help him blend in with the mortal world after he left the Atlantean realm.”
“Is that where we are now?” Her new reality settling over her, she glanced out at the breathtaking coastal paradise beyond the open French doors and couldn’t help but wonder … “Is this Atlantis?”
“No.” Chuckling quietly, Zael lowered his head. “Atlantis was destroyed long ago by our oldest enemies, the Ancient fathers of the Breed. There are some similarities between this place and Atlantis, but this is Amalfi, on the coast of Italy. This villa was a private sanctuary of Cass’s for a long time, although it’s been many years since he was last here.”
Jordana could hardly speak. She glanced around at the sophisticated villa with its priceless antiques and masterpiece paintings. At least that part made sense now: Cass’s unexpected, uncanny knowledge of art. He had apparently loved it as much as she did.
Cassian Gray was her father.
The news staggered her, perhaps even more so than any of Zael’s other incredible revelations. To say nothing of the fact that she was hearing all of this not in the comfort of her home in Boston but evidently a continent away, and from the mouth of a man who’d brought her there through means she still hadn’t determined and was almost afraid to guess at.