A Slave to Broken Hearts (A Slave to Love Sequel)

Chapter 5: Admiring the View

Blade and I walked around for a while in silence. I stayed a half step behind him, letting him lead. He had come to my room for a reason, but he must have changed his mind because he wasn't saying a thing. 

"So...are you okay? With us telling Mick about you, I mean," I said, trying to break through the awkward silence. I just wanted him to talk to me again, even if it was about something stupid. Ever since he got that invite from Ace things had been tense and uncomfortable and I hated it. I was too tired of all the drama from the months before to deal with more now. I wanted to see him smiling again.

He shrugged. "Why wouldn't I be? He's your friend and Aidan's boyfriend. I think we can trust him to keep it a secret."

"Alright. Just making sure," I replied. We lapsed into silence again. I took to looking at my feet, counting my strides as we walked along. Blade suddenly stopped and I bumped into his shoulder. He was holding a door open, gesturing for me to go through it first to go outside. I arched an eyebrow but didn't say anything. He followed slightly behind me, hands stuffed in his pockets as we walked through the backyard under the blazing sun. I slowed to let him catch up, trying to figure out where we were going and why. He wouldn't go outside when the sun was like this for no reason. And he wasn't usually this quiet for this long either.

I tried to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the smell of mowed grass, trying to put Blade's weird mood aside for the moment until he decided to let me in on what he was thinking. Before I knew it, we had come upon the green house. Once again, he opened the door for me, and soon we were in the rose room. He finally stopped walking so I sat on the stone bench surrounding the center tree and the black roses. They were wide and waxy, and such a deep velvety black and so full of petals that it was unreal. They were perfect roses. I reached a finger out to trace the petal rim of one of them as Blade finally spoke up.

"Kiana?"

Turning my head, I studied him. He looked awkward and nervous, hands still stuffed deep into the pockets of his shorts, shoulders slightly hunched. He hardly ever looked like that and it was a little worrying. Had he found out about Eliza somehow? My stomach somersaulted uncomfortably as he kicked at a loose pebble.

"Yeah?" I asked tentatively. 

"Are you sure you want to go to the ball?" he asked quietly.

I smiled a little in relief. I was being ridiculous. No way would he know about her. "Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"Things are different now. With Ace I mean. The ball will be at Aros' place and I don't know how Ace is going to be after everything. Plus the only ball you ever went too ended pretty badly..."

"Blade, come on," I reached out and tugged his hands out of his pockets, pulling him down on the bench next to me. "Yeah my first ball sucked royally and being at Aros' place again will probably wig me out. But Ace will still be Ace. Deep down he'll always be the same guy. You two have been through a lot together and this is just one more thing to add to the list. Even if he is kind of different, it won't be a big deal. I'll be there and so will your family. You're not going to be alone out there, okay?"

"I guess..." he didn't look at all convinced. "But what if its weird? What if people start asking us about what happened?"

He had a point there. We hadn't been to some big party since before Aros. The only people from the vamp world we'd seen had been Blade's family and occasionally Alek's. Lexi had told us that everyone had been buzzing with gossip, trying to figure out what exactly Aros had tried to do and had done. Since Ace had killed him and there had been plenty of witnesses to Aros' craziness, there hadn't been a trial and the council had tried to keep the details on lockdown. People were still talking about it though, since it was obviously major news and because no one knew for sure what had happened except those involved.