Free Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence by A.M Hudson Page A

from the dark-wood hallstands and the tiny crevices on the knight’s boots, were pristinely clean. I could actually imagine myself staying here—even after we killed Drake and gave this castle back to Arthur. If we ever saw Arthur again, that is.
    “Something the matter?” Drake asked.
    I rearranged my facial muscles. “No. I’m fine.”
    Drake just laughed to himself, planting his hands behind his back. “I am a man of many centuries, my young queen, and if there is one thing I have mastered in all that time it is the ability to recognise an ailed woman.”
    His blue eyes shone so magnificently in this broad pale light, the thick black lashes framing them like eyeliner, and all I saw beneath them as I stared back at him, trying to find the monster, was kindness and genuine concern.
    “I’m worried about Arthur,” I confessed. “Do you think David will ever forgive him?”
    As we passed through an oak-framed archway into a long, slightly darker corridor, Drake stayed silent, but clearly in thought.
    “I know what you want me to say,” he said, “but unfortunately I cannot say that I know what David will do either way. He has changed since he lived here and, in my opinion, he is… unpredictable.”
    I made a face at that, screwing my nose up. “That’s not very helpful.”
    Drake laughed aloud, tipping his head back slightly. He did have a gloriously charming laugh. I expected he used that when hunting or luring his prey. “Perhaps you could, in time, sway David back to the bosom of his uncle. One thing I know for sure is that he values your counsel.”
    That raised my brow. “I completely disagree with you.”
    “Only because you do not know the old David—and you were not privy to the complexities of his relationships with girls before you.” He slowed his steps slightly to walk beside me rather than leading me. “I can say with intense certainty that he didn’t give Pepper quite so much regard… or freedom.”
    My mind instantly thought about David’s journals back at the manor—the fact that none of them predated the two years before we met. Those older journals were most likely here somewhere in this castle, and if they were I would sniff them out and feel not an ounce of guilt for reading them. Hearing Drake reference David’s past relationships made me want to know everything about who he was before he met me—all the stuff he would never tell me.
    “If Arthur and David were still Set leaders, how do you think David would’ve reacted to what Arthur and I did?”
    “Ooh, in a very different manner than he did, I must admit.” Drake shook his head a few times. “He would never have struck a High Councillor. In fact, I expect he would have carried the hatred in his heart for the rest of his days—never spoken a word of it.”
    “Seriously?” My shoulders rounded. “Now I feel worse. I mean, I’m the one that got Arthur into this.”
    “Arthur is a very wise and very noble man. He is not easily led and therefore does not commit to anything without solid consideration. You must not blame yourself.”
    “But David hates Arthur now. After all those decades together—he hates him. And that is because of me. No matter what anyone believes, I wasn’t manipulated or molested. I was willing. And Arthur was just trying to save David.”
    We walked in silence then, taking turns and moving slowly along wide, long corridors, and after a while Drake looked across at me. “Arthur was my first council member, did you know?”
    I looked up from the brushed red rug. “I know a little about it all—but not much.”
    He nodded. “A decade or so before the Black Plague, I was approached by a man claiming to be my father—”
    “Vampirie?”
    “Yes. You see, I’d been searching for him for thousands of years, but never found him. He came to me only to warn me that if I continued on this path of human destruction—creating vampires and allowing them to feed without restriction—the Lord above