Free Broken by Erica Stevens Page B

then?"
    "Often."
    The idea of her leaving was even more unpleasant than the thought of her residing within the villages, but then he most likely wouldn't be staying in England either. His father hadn't said what he intended to do next, or where he planned to go, but though he and Nyles had been born in this country, they also preferred Italy to England. His father wouldn't want to stay here, and normally Atticus would be eager to leave too, but he found he wanted to spend time with her.
    While he'd been gone his desire to see her again hadn't lessened in even the smallest measure, it had only intensified. It had been a miserable twelve days of separation from her, and when he'd found her here, half dressed in her white chemise and sitting on a log, he'd briefly thought that perhaps he'd stumbled across his own angel.
    Or perhaps she was the devil; no one else had ever made him feel this tormented before. All he wanted was to touch her, all he craved was to feel her skin, and yet sitting beside her on this log and holding her hand was just as magnificent as kissing her again had been.
    "Where would you go?" he asked.
    She frowned as she seemed to debate what she would tell him. "France," she finally said.
    "And what is in France?"
    "Not my mother," she said with a wan smile. "And she'll never return to it."
    "I see." A fish jumped from the water, drawing his attention back to the stream. "And what will you do there?"
    "I don't know but I suppose that's the point of starting over, isn't it?"
    He got the feeling there was more to it than that but she wouldn't meet his gaze anymore as her eyes had become focused on her feet. But then, what did he know, he'd never had the chance to start over nor had he ever thought about doing so. "I suppose it is," he agreed.
    She looked up at him from under her inky black lashes and gave him a half smile. "Don't worry I'll make sure that The Council knows we've moved."
    He knew that the village vampires were allowed to move about freely but they had to report their destination before they left, and they had to check into their new location as soon as they arrived so that the King, and now The Council, could keep track of them in order to collect taxes and enforce the laws. There were always some vampires that tried to slip through the cracks and went missing every year, but if a vampire turned up where there weren't supposed to be, or was unregistered in their area, they were put to death with no questions asked.
    Their world was governed with an iron fist; it had to be in order to keep chaos from ruling. If they slipped, even a little, their existence could be revealed to the human masses. Humans were already far too superstitious, the last thing the vampire community needed was for them to realize they weren't at the top of the food chain. Panic would descend upon the world if that ever happened; there was no telling how many deaths would result, human and vampire alike. They may be vastly superior in strength and speed than a human but they were also outnumbered by them by at least ten to one.
    "That's good to know." His fingers slid from her hand and over the sleeves of her chemise. He froze when he spotted the faded bruise marring the skin at her wrist; he pushed the sleeve further up to reveal the purplish mark that spread all the way to her elbow. She grabbed hold of the sleeve and pulled it down before he could go any higher. "What happened?" he demanded.
    "Just clumsy," she told him as she held the sleeve in place against her wrist.
    His eyes narrowed as he searched her face. "I've never found you so."
    "I almost fell off a boulder in front of you," she replied flippantly.
    "I thought that was because of my overwhelming presence."
    She laughed but it sounded strained to him or perhaps he was reading too much into it. "My fingers may be fast but my feet sometimes don't know where to go." She gestured to the log beneath them. "This isn't the only log in the forest and I'm not always so