He gave me a sidewise look. “I don’t recall saying any of those things. ”
“You’re giving me more nonanswers. ”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I’ve been more honest and more forthcoming than anyone. ”
Even though the wind had whipped his words from me, they reverberated in my head. Carden was right—he had been honest with me, from the moment I’d met him in that dungeon.
I had to ask another question and I feared the answer. “Will I become reckless?”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked in a musing tone. “There are two sorts of reckless, are there not? There is impulsive and there is brave—you must decide which you will be. ”
“Strong and brave,” I whispered into the wind. He’d told me I could be these things.
Then it hit me. I didn’t need some vampire to tell me—I knew in my heart already that I was these things. Strength and guts—it was how I’d survived my childhood.
I became aware again of his body next to mine. There was another sort of reckless, and the blood pounded beneath my skin to consider it. Could I be the sort of woman who was strong enough to stay bonded with a vampire and remain sane? To be brave enough to lean over and kiss her bonded vampire? “So I
can be whomever I want to be?”
“Are you so quick to think yourself incapable? Do you accept Vampire superiority so willingly?”
“No,” I answered at once.
He gave me a thoughtful look. “Then why are you quick to doubt yourself? Perhaps you are in control. Maybe you have only to realize this. ”
How much was in my control? The longer I stayed on this island, the more mysterious it became. “The vampires have told us why they want us here. But why might they need us?”
Carden smiled. “You ask a good question, pretty one. You are strong, and the vampires recognize this strength. Now you must recognize it, too. ” He put a fingertip beneath my chin, ensuring I wouldn’t turn away. “You must recognize your power. ”
Why was he telling me this? “You’re a vampire. Why help me? Why be honest?”
“I was once a man. As not all men are good, not all vampires are evil. ”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I was in control. I was powerful.
I was also very, very stupid. I was heading back to Crispin’s Cove. I’d need to do some climbing, and yet there remained just one tiny problem: I still didn’t know how.
But ideas had woken me in the night, implanting themselves and not letting go. What if Trinity hadn’t been attacked from behind? What if the killer had climbed up the rock face, surprising her from below? What if there was evidence lodged somewhere on the bluffs, waiting to be discovered? Or what if she’d wrested something from her attacker? A tuft of hair gripped in her hand, a bit of fabric torn free, someone’s dropped knife. She’d put up a fierce fight; maybe something had tumbled down with her.
It was a long shot, but one I had to take.
Unfortunately, I was taking that shot before I’d had a chance at more of Priti’s climbing instruction. But I had to act now—soon the infamous island wind would scour the rocks clean. And besides, I did have that one climbing class under my belt, and thanks to Acari Kate’s little exhibition, I’d learned two things:
I didn’t need ropes and carabiners to scale rocks. (Good, because I didn’t know the first thing about that kind of gear anyway. )
Ropes and carabiners helped you not die. (Bad, in that a plummet to my death wasn’t exactly on my bucket list. )
I assured myself that this’d be different from Acari Kate’s ascent. I’d be going down—surely that was easier, right? And besides, I wouldn’t really be rock climbing anyhow. More like bouldering. Hiking, even.
Really, really steep hiking.
I headed straight to the ledge—it’d do no good to chicken out now—and tightened the straps of my bag. The thing had been thump-thumping across my back as I’d jogged along the coast, but I decided to keep it just in case I found something I needed to tuck away. And hey, maybe it’d provide padding in the event of a freak accident.
I edged closer, and the height gave me a moment’s vertigo, sending a wiggly sensation crawling up the backs of my legs. “A puzzle,” I muttered, parroting Priti’s words. While Carden had been climbing the Needle, she’d lectured. I’d tuned her out but had tuned back in when she’d likened climbing to mathematics, speaking about angles, degrees, ratios. “Just a problem to be solved. ”
I squatted now, trying to decipher that puzzle and detect a possible path. It wasn’t a sheer drop here at the top. Instead, the upper ridge was graded, forming steep, mossy tiers.