Cold As Ice

Chapter 19

Allie's eyes opened slowly, drinking in the foreign sights and sounds around her with a momentary panic before she remembered where she was.

Aro's chambers were spacious, with a dizzying collection of tall, slender stained glass windows lining three of the four walls of the room. The sun was shining outside, and the inside of his chamber was a dazzling kaleidoscope of brilliant jewel-tone hues from the glass: ruby, emerald, sapphire, onyx, and amethyst. The beauty of it snatched the breath from Allie's chest, and she let herself drink it in before she began to stretch.

She was ensconced in the biggest bed she'd ever seen. Four posters held up thick, ornate curtains of subdued burgundy brocade. The sheets she found tangled around her were pristine, white, and absurdly soft. At least a half dozen pillows were strewn about around her head. With her arms and legs outstretched like a starfish, Allie couldn't force herself to take up even half of the mattress, which was firm but molded to her shape.

As she sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, memories of the last few days drifted back to her like foam on the top of a wave.

She remembered Aro arriving. The sound of his voice, the way his eyes seemed to call to her, to make her very blood sing as if only he knew the exact cadence and pitch of her heartbeat.

She remembered traveling. Fast and through darkness. Aro's arms around her, holding her, caressing her...

She remembered Volterra. A quiet, sun-drenched town on the Italian coast. And the Volturi's compound, built into the very foundations of the town itself.

Aro's chambers. Aro's bed. Aro's eyes, his voice, the feel of his hands and his arms and his lips. Aro, Aro, AroAroAroARO.

Allie found herself almost gasping for air, like she was about to drown under memories of Aro. Fighting for clarity, Allie pushed back against the intoxicating blanket of lust she felt descending over her. Something felt wrong, something was missing. A nagging feeling deep in the pit of Allie's stomach took hold and burned at her, an itch she couldn't scratch.

Throwing the blankets off her, Allie looked down and noticed with a deep flush to her cheeks that she was naked in the bed. Naked.

Tentatively, Allie tried to sift through her memories - although they didn't feel like hers. Had she slept with Aro? There were holes in her recollection, stretches of time where she could only remember certain sensations, but no images. The taste of red wine. The sound of Aro's voice as he told her the stories rendered in the brightly colored glass in his chamber. The feel of his warm fingers trailing over her arms, tracing her collarbone, her throat-

"Don't worry, child. If he'd consummated the mating union, you would know."

Allie yelped and leapt off the bed at the sound of a vaguely bored, drawling male voice interrupted her thoughts. Clutching the top sheet to her exposed body, Allie whirled around to face Marcus, the oldest Volturi. He was dressed in the same dark robes that Allie remembered meeting him in outside Carlisle's house.

Carlisle.

Allie felt herself disintegrate against her memories of Carlisle as if she'd been dropped on concrete from the clouds. It left her breathless, gasping for air, a searing wound ripped open in her chest. She crumbled to her knees, half disoriented, half grief-stricken as she realized that she'd left him. A faint image of him calling her name, begging her to come back floated behind her eyes like mist. Allie had to bite on her lip to keep from crying out.

"That will pass," Marcus commented, regarding her with an unmoving expression.

She looked up at him, tears blurring her vision. Her mouth tasted like acid and her chest felt a hair away from caving in on itself, yet Marcus appeared to be utterly unimpressed and bored by what he was witnessing.