Bonnie just watched her speechlessly.
"Well, whatever she wants," Meredith concluded, rather shaken, "she wants Stefan to be a part of it. And she doesn't want any of us to have to stay here - in this...this hellhole."
In another litter just beside them things were very quiet. Bonnie and Meredith were so used by now to traveling in closed litters that they hadn't even realized that another palanquin had drawn abreast of them and that their voices carried clearly in the hot, still afternoon air.
In the second litter, Damon and Elena both looked very hard at the silken curtains fluttering open.
Now, Elena, with an almost mad air of needing something to do, hurriedly unwound a cord and the curtains dropped into place.
It was a mistake. It closed Elena and Damon into a surreal glowing red oblong, in which only the words that they had just heard seemed to have validity.
Elena felt her breath coming too quickly. Her aura was slipping. Everything was slipping sideways.
They don't believe that I only want to be with Stefan!
"Steady on," Damon said. "This is the last night. By tomorrow - "
Elena held up a hand to keep him from saying it.
"By tomorrow we'll have found the key and gotten Stefan and we'll be out of here," Damon said anyway.
Jinx, thought Elena. And sent up a prayer after it.
They rode in silence up toward Bloddeuwedd's grand mansion. For a surprisingly long time Elena didn't realize that Damon was trembling. It was a quick, involuntary shaken breath that alerted her.
"Damon! Dear - dear heaven!" Elena was stricken, at a loss, not for words, but for the right words. "Damon, look at me! Why?"
Why? Damon replied in the only voice he could trust not to tremble or crack or break. Because - do you ever think of what's happening to Stefan while you're going to a party wearing splendid clothes, being carried along, to drink the finest wine and to dance - while he - while he - The thought remained unfinished.
This is just what I needed right before being seen in public, Elena thought, as they reached the long driveway to Bloddeuwedd's home. She tried to call on all of her resources before the curtains were drawn and they were free to step out at the location of the second half of the key.
Chapter 34
I don't think about those things, Elena answered in the same way Damon had spoken and for the same reason. I don't think because if I do I'll go insane. But if I go insane, what good will I be to Stefan? I couldn't help him. Instead I block it all out with walls of iron and I keep it away at any cost.
"And you can manage that?" Damon asked, his voice shaking slightly.
"I can - because I have to. Remember in the beginning when we were arguing about the ropes around our wrists? Meredith and Bonnie had doubts. But they knew that I would wear handcuffs and crawl after you if that was what it took." Elena turned to look at Damon in the crimson darkness and added, "And you've given yourself away, time after time, you know." She slipped arms around him to touch his healed back, so that he would have no doubt about what she meant.
"That was for you," Damon said harshly.
"Not really," Elena replied. "Think about it. If you hadn't agreed to the Discipline, we might have run out of town, but we could never have helped Stefan after that. When you get down to it, everything, all you've done, you've done for Stefan."
"When you get down to it, I was the one who put Stefan here in the first place," Damon said tiredly. "I figure we're just about even now."
"How many times, Damon? You were possessed when you let Shinichi talk you into it," Elena said, feeling exhausted herself. "Maybe you need to be possessed again - just a little - so you remember how it feels."
Every cell in Damon's body seemed to flinch away from this idea. But aloud he just said, "There's something that everyone has missed, you know. About the archetypal story of how two brothers killed each other simultaneously, and became vampires because they'd dallied with the same girl."
"What?" Elena said sharply, shocked out of her tiredness. "Damon, what do you mean?"
"What I said. There's something you've all missed. Ha. Maybe even Stefan has missed it. The story gets told and retold, but nobody catches it."
Damon had turned his face away. Elena moved closer to him, just a bit, so he could smell her perfume, which was attar of roses that night. "Damon, tell me. Tell me, please!"
Damon started to turn toward her -
And it was at that moment that the liftmen stopped. Elena had only a second to wipe her face, and the curtains were being drawn.
Meredith had told them all the myth about Bloddeuwedd, which she'd got from a story-telling globe. All about how Bloddeuwedd had been made out of flowers and brought to life by the gods, and how she had betrayed her husband to his death, and how, in punishment, she had been doomed to spend each night from midnight to dawn as an owl.
And, apparently, there was something the myths didn't mention. The fact that she had been doomed to live here, banished from the Celestial Court into the deep red twilight of the Dark Dimension.
All things considered, it was logical that her parties started at six in the evening.
Elena found that her mind was jumping from subject to subject. She accepted a goblet of Black Magic from a slave as her eyes wandered.
Every woman and most of the men at the party were wearing clever attire that changed color in the sun. Elena felt quite modest - after all, everything out of doors seemed to be pink or scarlet or wine-colored. Downing her goblet of Magic, Elena was slightly surprised to find herself going into automatic party-mode behavior, greeting people she'd met earlier in the week with cheek kisses and hugs as if she'd known them for years. Meanwhile she and Damon worked their way toward the mansion, sometimes with, sometimes against the tide of constantly moving people.