Chapter Twenty-Two
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Heartless“All those times you thought me heartless, you couldn't have been more right.”
“Where?” I mustered.
“They gave it to the Marquis for safe keeping.”
“Who did?”
“Come on, old man, who'd you think?”
“My parents.”
“Da-dah! Now you know why I've had to tread so carefully. One slip of a talon and I'm a goner. If there wasn't the uncertainty over whether I'd be needed at the end, I'd already be dead.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because, dear Jean, as I've prayed you might have realised by now, I was and always have been, the first.”
“First what?”
“Us, you i***t!”
“You! You are the original?” Aurora looked wide-eyed and disbelieving.
“Yes, dear girl, although I was not the actual first, but the first bitten to not die. Not in the true sense of the w
