In the Hall of Golden Fortunes [3/5, ShoYou]
Title: In the Hall of Golden Fortunes
Pairing: Jinnai Sho/Omi Youichirou
Rating/Warnings: Probably like PG-13 I DUNNO/Blood and violence and romance, RPS.
Genre: Heian Court Vampire AU. sobs.
Word Count: 3003
Summary: A simple love affair between a princess and a mid-ranking courtier grows increasingly complicated.
--
Chapter 3: The Blessings of the Gilded Moon
She frightened him. Even though she knew what he was, she wanted him, and even though he wanted her, he was too afraid of her and her standing to take her. But he couldn't let time claim her without seeing her face, without learning why she knew and why knowing didn't scare her.
He set a goal for himself that he would do everything in his power to rise to the second rank and obtain a major position. He reasoned that a man in such a high position would have nothing to fear from any woman, no matter how beautiful, high-ranking, or mysterious she might be, and hoped that it would be true of him as well. Once he started pursuing promotion in earnest, it was amazing how easy it was. The first time he'd arrived at court, he'd been eager to advance, but without the backing of a strong family, he had great difficulties improving his position even slightly, and had been constantly passed up for promotion in favor of less worthy but better-connected sons of powerful clans. Ever since he'd realized that he'd never make it to the top, he'd more or less given up on the whole process, and generally only sought positions that would send him from the eyes of the court to the provinces when it came time to “die” or “conceive a new heir,” and otherwise just waited for promotions to come naturally. What he hadn't realized was that over hundreds of years, the Jinnai name, though certainly not on par with the Fujiwaras, had nevertheless become well-known and respected. This combined with a pair of sudden deaths allowed him to achieve his goal in the space of two and a half years, where he'd feared it might take ten.
It was early in the new year and the plum blossoms were beginning to fade. Struck by an odd sense of nostalgia as he always was in this season, he selected a sheet of paper in an antiquated style, hoping it would seem refined rather than merely old-fashioned. He started with the poem about the nightingale, old even when he'd been young, and ended with “If you find yourself in the area of my humble home, I hope you'll have cause to visit.” Though he was still nervous, he gave it to a messenger immediately before the sun rose, so that he could not change his mind and have it recalled.
When he woke, there was no response, and he fretted, wondering if she had forgotten him or if he had been too forward. Her carriage arrived scarcely an hour later, and he had to scramble to prepare the curtains and cushions that a lady of her position required. He arranged for a servant to bring some light refreshments to his room, smoothed back his hair and straightened his cap, and reminded himself that he had nothing to fear from her before formally inviting her inside.
Save for the servants driving the carriage, she had come alone, and he dismissed his usual attendants. He knelt before the curtain and wondered how long it would be before he was on the other side of it, with her. Her soft footsteps entered the room and he waited for her silks to settle before speaking. “I apologize for the wait. I am afraid I wasn't expecting you this soon.”
“I thought it best to come as soon as I could, lest you fear I'd changed my mind, or worse - that you change yours.” He imagined the lips he had briefly possessed curving upwards, and for the first time he thought he could tell her expression. He allowed himself to smile as well.
“Such cruel words do not suit such an elegant woman,” he chided. “I'm shocked that you'd believe my feelings for you would ever change.” It was all part of the act, one of the standard vows made from one lover to the other after a long separation, but he understood that he meant it, and immediately continued, “I may not have been as direct as you may have liked, but in my own way and at my own pace I have reached this point, and I refuse to turn back.”
She laughed, and he could sense movement behind the curtain, as if she were playing with a fan while deciding whether or not to continue teasing him. “And this point is...?”
“The point at which I am willing to risk everything because I cannot bear the thought of another night without you.” He got to his feet and heard her fan snap shut as she did the same. He moved the curtain aside and looked up at her for the first time. She was taller than him, he noticed first, but then he was falling into her soft dark eyes and melting under the warmth of her smile. He couldn't control the grin that spread across his face and he kept shaking his head, as if in disbelief. “You're beautiful!” he said eventually, and the sound of his own voice startled him into laughter. The lady's smile became even more radiant, revealing her perfectly-blackened teeth and heating his blood to a boil. “I can't believe it,” he whispered, eyes dropping momentarily to the ground, and when they met hers again he knew that she understood exactly what he meant, because she couldn't believe they were finally seeing each other face to face either.
He offered her his hand and she took it. He had intended to help her off the raised platform and escort her from the sitting room to his bedroom, but the heat of her skin drove that from his mind. Though it was not the first time they had touched, seeing her hand resting lightly on his filled him with a strange wonder and he turned her hand over and back, studying it from every angle. He brought it to his lips and kissed the pulse in her wrist, synchronizing his breathing with her heartbeat until he was dangerously close to losing himself. He lowered her hand with difficulty. “You do understand. You know what I am.” It was phrased as a statement, not a question, but he badly needed the answer. It came immediately:
“You are a vampire.”
It was said plainly, dispassionately. Before he could read more into it, he asked, “And that doesn't scare you? You aren't afraid of me?”
This time it took longer for her to respond. As she had before, she folded his hand between hers and set it on her breast. He could feel her heartbeat quicken. “I am afraid of you,” she said at last, “not because of what you are, but who you are. I am certain that if I surrender myself to you, I will be permanently changed, unable to return to who I once was. I fear that without the rock of your presence to support me, my already overflowing feelings for you would drown me. If I allow myself to fall as passionately in love with you as my heart wishes me to, I know I will never love another, though I know not when we two may be forced to part. And yet you are all I desire.”
“If you expect me to save you from drowning, I fear it is more likely that we will drown together. But I can imagine worse ways to die than to slip beneath the waves, your body tangled with mine.”
She let out the breath she had been holding. “Then may I suggest we try it in bedclothes rather than the ocean?”
He laughed and thought about scooping her into his arms and carrying her to his bedroom. Instead he took her hand again. “This way, my lady.” Her many-layered kimono made it hard for her to walk quickly, and he belatedly realized that her top layer was the scarlet robe he'd brought on the night of the lecture. “Slightly out of season, is it not?”
“It is surely the season of love. Is it not appropriate?”
“Only if one wants to be reminded of the chill of death that autumn brings,” he replied somewhat sharply before pausing. “As it happens, that is exactly what I want to be reminded of. You chose well.”
When they entered the room, she shed the scarlet layer and cast it aside like a discarded cicada shell. He pushed some of the articles lying around the room into a corner and carefully folded the scarlet robe. She cast off another two, three layers and fell into the thick clothes he used for blankets, rolling around gleefully. “Here I am!”
He didn't know what to say to that besides “So you are,” and he abandoned the robe he was folding to join her.
They pulled each other back and forth, tugging at clothes and hair and skin until she pushed him off, harder than he would have expected. “You aren't... interested in the usual affairs of man and woman, are you? As a vampire.”
Her long, black hair was tangled and her face was flushed and he said, “I could be, for you,” but she was already shaking her head. She blinked, so slowly he got lost in the curl of her eyelashes and the thin veins that ran through her eyelids, and turned her head so that the moonlight streaming in through the eaves caught the arc of her long, pale neck.
“What I want is for you to taste me.”
“And I shall,” he said, running his tongue over his fangs. “But first I will claim a kiss.” She struggled ever so slightly, but gave in as soon as their lips met. The shock of her lips moving against his gave him pause and in that instant her tongue slipped between the passage of their lips and probed one of his fangs ever so gently. He pulled away from her. “Be careful,” he said with a smirk, and her smile in response was that of the Buddha himself. This time she came to him, and spent so long testing her tongue against his that he nearly bit her then, his control overpowered by the intoxicating scent of her perfumed skin. At last she seemed to have found what she was searching for and drew back, pulling her remaining layers away so that her neck and shoulders - but no farther - were exposed.
He stroked her skin and she closed her eyes. “You are mine now,” he whispered, and ran his tongue over an enticing artery. He smoothed his tongue over it again and bit down.
Her blood was like none he'd ever tasted before, hot and sweet and stimulating but somehow more, something richer, deeper. Though the holes in her skin were small, the blood kept pouring out, and he lapped it up eagerly, pressing her tightly against him. She was limp, but not unresponsive, and the soft moans she released into his shoulder only served to excite him more. He abandoned the holes he had made and recklessly stabbed new ones into the base of her throat, letting her heart pump blood directly into his mouth as she arched back with a scream, tearing at his clothes. He worried at the wounds, probing the skin with his tongue as she had done to his earlier, opening the holes wider and wider until they were long, deep gashes. Her throat jumped and vibrated with her moans and whimpers and his mouth pushed cruelly against it, crushing the sounds to mere whispers as he drank and drank and drank. Her breathing grew increasingly ragged and she caressed his cheek lightly with her fingertips before her hand fell away and she went completely still. Her blood turned bitter in his mouth and he swallowed convulsively once, twice more before he was able to pull himself away and lay her softly on the bed.
She had been pale to start with, but now she was white as death and beautiful for it, save for the ugly red gouges he'd ripped into her neck. Though her chest was rising and falling steadily, a choking gurgle accompanied the sound of her breath and he feared it was only a matter of time before it stopped altogether. Her blood blazed and churned in his stomach and he felt desperately, horribly sick. He got up and paced around the room, feeling sicker and sicker. He seized the untouched tray of refreshments and threw it over the balcony and into the yard. The crunch as it splintered against the ground only made him feel worse.
He looked again at her too-still body and knew it wasn't too late to save her even as he knew he would never do it. It simply wasn't his choice to make. He dropped to his knees and crawled back to her side. “I'm sorry,” he whispered, and stroked her hair.
Her hand twitched against his knee and he scooped it up, cradling it to his chest. “I'm so sorry,” he repeated, and a low, broken sound issued from the back of her throat. With a great effort she opened her mouth and spat out a dark clot of blood. It landed on the shoulder of her kimono and he wiped it away with his sleeve, fighting back the sudden resurgence of hunger with revulsion and self-loathing. She coughed raspingly and gasped out a single word, “Pen.” He tripped over his own feet in his hurry to prepare paper and inkstone. He dipped the brush in ink and curled her hand around it. With his assistance, the brush moved over the paper in messy, barely legible characters. The first thing she wrote was “Time?”
He ran into the hall and consulted an attendant, who informed him it was the third quarter of the watch of the Ox, and dawn would be breaking in less than an hour and a half. After he passed this along, he started babbling apologies. “I'm sorry. I should have restrained myself, I should have-” Her unsteady hand knocked over the inkstone, cutting him off. He started to mop up the spill, but abandoned it and let it soak into the floor when he realized she was trying to write more. “Good?” she wrote, and when he repeated it out loud, puzzled, she wrote “Taste” in clarification.
“What are you worried about that for?” he muttered, bloody tears welling up in his eyes. He blinked them away and clutched at her sleeve as if to steady himself. “When I was changed, you know, like in that story I told, it really was like being burned alive. Every bone, every scrap of skin, every drop of blood, everything was on fire. It was pain like I've never felt before, or since. Your blood reminded me of what it was like being consumed in that fire, only instead of pain, it was the purest, most divine pleasure.” The tears dripped freely from his eyes now, and he couldn't see to steady her hand or read her expression. She dribbled ink all over his hand and her sleeve in an attempt to write, but he was crying too hard to notice or care. “I don't want to lose you. I want you by my side, I want to hold you and talk with you and drink from you, but I drank too much. I killed you. I know. You're dying.”
“No.” She choked on the word, but she let go of the pen and found his sleeve, then moved up it, marking the cloth with inky fingerprints. She made it to the edge of his collar and tugged at it, and although he could barely feel the motion he was drawn down inexorably. Bloody teardrops rolled off his chin and onto her lips, and before he could wipe them away she had licked them off with a flash of pink tongue.
“You... you shouldn't,” he said weakly, but he couldn't think of a good reason why. It wouldn't change her. If anything, there was a chance it would help her, so when she stuck her tongue out again, he brought his face closer and let her wash it clean.
“Good,” she said when she was finished, and her voice didn't crack or break. The wounds in her neck seemed to have closed, and she looked strangely happy.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because. You stopped.”
“Because I forced a long, drawn-out death upon you rather than a quick, merciful one?”
“Oh, yes,” she said rapturously, and he frowned.
“I regret to inform you that while I have fallen totally and irreversibly in love with you, I do not understand you in the slightest.”
“Good,” she said again, and laughed. She dipped her palm in the puddle of ink and pressed it against his cheek. “I'm yours now. And you... are mine.”
Though he tried to stop her, she managed to sit up, through what he could only imagine was incredible willpower and her last remaining strength. She bid him take her to her carriage and after carefully redressing her and draping a long, plum-scented scarf around her neck to hide the bite marks, he did so. For all that her silks and pale face made her look ephemeral, she was heavy, and though his veins were singing with the effortless strength that came with having recently fed, he found himself having to make a much greater effort than he'd expected to. He did not even have to rouse her servants, who were waiting patiently by the carriage. They didn't seem overly upset at his wild appearance or finding their mistress in such a state of ill health, which made him wonder.
“When may I see you again?” she inquired.
“My lady, should you survive the night, I would welcome you at any time.”
She returned the next night.
Next Chapter→
Pairing: Jinnai Sho/Omi Youichirou
Rating/Warnings: Probably like PG-13 I DUNNO/Blood and violence and romance, RPS.
Genre: Heian Court Vampire AU. sobs.
Word Count: 3003
Summary: A simple love affair between a princess and a mid-ranking courtier grows increasingly complicated.
--
Chapter 3: The Blessings of the Gilded Moon
She frightened him. Even though she knew what he was, she wanted him, and even though he wanted her, he was too afraid of her and her standing to take her. But he couldn't let time claim her without seeing her face, without learning why she knew and why knowing didn't scare her.
He set a goal for himself that he would do everything in his power to rise to the second rank and obtain a major position. He reasoned that a man in such a high position would have nothing to fear from any woman, no matter how beautiful, high-ranking, or mysterious she might be, and hoped that it would be true of him as well. Once he started pursuing promotion in earnest, it was amazing how easy it was. The first time he'd arrived at court, he'd been eager to advance, but without the backing of a strong family, he had great difficulties improving his position even slightly, and had been constantly passed up for promotion in favor of less worthy but better-connected sons of powerful clans. Ever since he'd realized that he'd never make it to the top, he'd more or less given up on the whole process, and generally only sought positions that would send him from the eyes of the court to the provinces when it came time to “die” or “conceive a new heir,” and otherwise just waited for promotions to come naturally. What he hadn't realized was that over hundreds of years, the Jinnai name, though certainly not on par with the Fujiwaras, had nevertheless become well-known and respected. This combined with a pair of sudden deaths allowed him to achieve his goal in the space of two and a half years, where he'd feared it might take ten.
It was early in the new year and the plum blossoms were beginning to fade. Struck by an odd sense of nostalgia as he always was in this season, he selected a sheet of paper in an antiquated style, hoping it would seem refined rather than merely old-fashioned. He started with the poem about the nightingale, old even when he'd been young, and ended with “If you find yourself in the area of my humble home, I hope you'll have cause to visit.” Though he was still nervous, he gave it to a messenger immediately before the sun rose, so that he could not change his mind and have it recalled.
When he woke, there was no response, and he fretted, wondering if she had forgotten him or if he had been too forward. Her carriage arrived scarcely an hour later, and he had to scramble to prepare the curtains and cushions that a lady of her position required. He arranged for a servant to bring some light refreshments to his room, smoothed back his hair and straightened his cap, and reminded himself that he had nothing to fear from her before formally inviting her inside.
Save for the servants driving the carriage, she had come alone, and he dismissed his usual attendants. He knelt before the curtain and wondered how long it would be before he was on the other side of it, with her. Her soft footsteps entered the room and he waited for her silks to settle before speaking. “I apologize for the wait. I am afraid I wasn't expecting you this soon.”
“I thought it best to come as soon as I could, lest you fear I'd changed my mind, or worse - that you change yours.” He imagined the lips he had briefly possessed curving upwards, and for the first time he thought he could tell her expression. He allowed himself to smile as well.
“Such cruel words do not suit such an elegant woman,” he chided. “I'm shocked that you'd believe my feelings for you would ever change.” It was all part of the act, one of the standard vows made from one lover to the other after a long separation, but he understood that he meant it, and immediately continued, “I may not have been as direct as you may have liked, but in my own way and at my own pace I have reached this point, and I refuse to turn back.”
She laughed, and he could sense movement behind the curtain, as if she were playing with a fan while deciding whether or not to continue teasing him. “And this point is...?”
“The point at which I am willing to risk everything because I cannot bear the thought of another night without you.” He got to his feet and heard her fan snap shut as she did the same. He moved the curtain aside and looked up at her for the first time. She was taller than him, he noticed first, but then he was falling into her soft dark eyes and melting under the warmth of her smile. He couldn't control the grin that spread across his face and he kept shaking his head, as if in disbelief. “You're beautiful!” he said eventually, and the sound of his own voice startled him into laughter. The lady's smile became even more radiant, revealing her perfectly-blackened teeth and heating his blood to a boil. “I can't believe it,” he whispered, eyes dropping momentarily to the ground, and when they met hers again he knew that she understood exactly what he meant, because she couldn't believe they were finally seeing each other face to face either.
He offered her his hand and she took it. He had intended to help her off the raised platform and escort her from the sitting room to his bedroom, but the heat of her skin drove that from his mind. Though it was not the first time they had touched, seeing her hand resting lightly on his filled him with a strange wonder and he turned her hand over and back, studying it from every angle. He brought it to his lips and kissed the pulse in her wrist, synchronizing his breathing with her heartbeat until he was dangerously close to losing himself. He lowered her hand with difficulty. “You do understand. You know what I am.” It was phrased as a statement, not a question, but he badly needed the answer. It came immediately:
“You are a vampire.”
It was said plainly, dispassionately. Before he could read more into it, he asked, “And that doesn't scare you? You aren't afraid of me?”
This time it took longer for her to respond. As she had before, she folded his hand between hers and set it on her breast. He could feel her heartbeat quicken. “I am afraid of you,” she said at last, “not because of what you are, but who you are. I am certain that if I surrender myself to you, I will be permanently changed, unable to return to who I once was. I fear that without the rock of your presence to support me, my already overflowing feelings for you would drown me. If I allow myself to fall as passionately in love with you as my heart wishes me to, I know I will never love another, though I know not when we two may be forced to part. And yet you are all I desire.”
“If you expect me to save you from drowning, I fear it is more likely that we will drown together. But I can imagine worse ways to die than to slip beneath the waves, your body tangled with mine.”
She let out the breath she had been holding. “Then may I suggest we try it in bedclothes rather than the ocean?”
He laughed and thought about scooping her into his arms and carrying her to his bedroom. Instead he took her hand again. “This way, my lady.” Her many-layered kimono made it hard for her to walk quickly, and he belatedly realized that her top layer was the scarlet robe he'd brought on the night of the lecture. “Slightly out of season, is it not?”
“It is surely the season of love. Is it not appropriate?”
“Only if one wants to be reminded of the chill of death that autumn brings,” he replied somewhat sharply before pausing. “As it happens, that is exactly what I want to be reminded of. You chose well.”
When they entered the room, she shed the scarlet layer and cast it aside like a discarded cicada shell. He pushed some of the articles lying around the room into a corner and carefully folded the scarlet robe. She cast off another two, three layers and fell into the thick clothes he used for blankets, rolling around gleefully. “Here I am!”
He didn't know what to say to that besides “So you are,” and he abandoned the robe he was folding to join her.
They pulled each other back and forth, tugging at clothes and hair and skin until she pushed him off, harder than he would have expected. “You aren't... interested in the usual affairs of man and woman, are you? As a vampire.”
Her long, black hair was tangled and her face was flushed and he said, “I could be, for you,” but she was already shaking her head. She blinked, so slowly he got lost in the curl of her eyelashes and the thin veins that ran through her eyelids, and turned her head so that the moonlight streaming in through the eaves caught the arc of her long, pale neck.
“What I want is for you to taste me.”
“And I shall,” he said, running his tongue over his fangs. “But first I will claim a kiss.” She struggled ever so slightly, but gave in as soon as their lips met. The shock of her lips moving against his gave him pause and in that instant her tongue slipped between the passage of their lips and probed one of his fangs ever so gently. He pulled away from her. “Be careful,” he said with a smirk, and her smile in response was that of the Buddha himself. This time she came to him, and spent so long testing her tongue against his that he nearly bit her then, his control overpowered by the intoxicating scent of her perfumed skin. At last she seemed to have found what she was searching for and drew back, pulling her remaining layers away so that her neck and shoulders - but no farther - were exposed.
He stroked her skin and she closed her eyes. “You are mine now,” he whispered, and ran his tongue over an enticing artery. He smoothed his tongue over it again and bit down.
Her blood was like none he'd ever tasted before, hot and sweet and stimulating but somehow more, something richer, deeper. Though the holes in her skin were small, the blood kept pouring out, and he lapped it up eagerly, pressing her tightly against him. She was limp, but not unresponsive, and the soft moans she released into his shoulder only served to excite him more. He abandoned the holes he had made and recklessly stabbed new ones into the base of her throat, letting her heart pump blood directly into his mouth as she arched back with a scream, tearing at his clothes. He worried at the wounds, probing the skin with his tongue as she had done to his earlier, opening the holes wider and wider until they were long, deep gashes. Her throat jumped and vibrated with her moans and whimpers and his mouth pushed cruelly against it, crushing the sounds to mere whispers as he drank and drank and drank. Her breathing grew increasingly ragged and she caressed his cheek lightly with her fingertips before her hand fell away and she went completely still. Her blood turned bitter in his mouth and he swallowed convulsively once, twice more before he was able to pull himself away and lay her softly on the bed.
She had been pale to start with, but now she was white as death and beautiful for it, save for the ugly red gouges he'd ripped into her neck. Though her chest was rising and falling steadily, a choking gurgle accompanied the sound of her breath and he feared it was only a matter of time before it stopped altogether. Her blood blazed and churned in his stomach and he felt desperately, horribly sick. He got up and paced around the room, feeling sicker and sicker. He seized the untouched tray of refreshments and threw it over the balcony and into the yard. The crunch as it splintered against the ground only made him feel worse.
He looked again at her too-still body and knew it wasn't too late to save her even as he knew he would never do it. It simply wasn't his choice to make. He dropped to his knees and crawled back to her side. “I'm sorry,” he whispered, and stroked her hair.
Her hand twitched against his knee and he scooped it up, cradling it to his chest. “I'm so sorry,” he repeated, and a low, broken sound issued from the back of her throat. With a great effort she opened her mouth and spat out a dark clot of blood. It landed on the shoulder of her kimono and he wiped it away with his sleeve, fighting back the sudden resurgence of hunger with revulsion and self-loathing. She coughed raspingly and gasped out a single word, “Pen.” He tripped over his own feet in his hurry to prepare paper and inkstone. He dipped the brush in ink and curled her hand around it. With his assistance, the brush moved over the paper in messy, barely legible characters. The first thing she wrote was “Time?”
He ran into the hall and consulted an attendant, who informed him it was the third quarter of the watch of the Ox, and dawn would be breaking in less than an hour and a half. After he passed this along, he started babbling apologies. “I'm sorry. I should have restrained myself, I should have-” Her unsteady hand knocked over the inkstone, cutting him off. He started to mop up the spill, but abandoned it and let it soak into the floor when he realized she was trying to write more. “Good?” she wrote, and when he repeated it out loud, puzzled, she wrote “Taste” in clarification.
“What are you worried about that for?” he muttered, bloody tears welling up in his eyes. He blinked them away and clutched at her sleeve as if to steady himself. “When I was changed, you know, like in that story I told, it really was like being burned alive. Every bone, every scrap of skin, every drop of blood, everything was on fire. It was pain like I've never felt before, or since. Your blood reminded me of what it was like being consumed in that fire, only instead of pain, it was the purest, most divine pleasure.” The tears dripped freely from his eyes now, and he couldn't see to steady her hand or read her expression. She dribbled ink all over his hand and her sleeve in an attempt to write, but he was crying too hard to notice or care. “I don't want to lose you. I want you by my side, I want to hold you and talk with you and drink from you, but I drank too much. I killed you. I know. You're dying.”
“No.” She choked on the word, but she let go of the pen and found his sleeve, then moved up it, marking the cloth with inky fingerprints. She made it to the edge of his collar and tugged at it, and although he could barely feel the motion he was drawn down inexorably. Bloody teardrops rolled off his chin and onto her lips, and before he could wipe them away she had licked them off with a flash of pink tongue.
“You... you shouldn't,” he said weakly, but he couldn't think of a good reason why. It wouldn't change her. If anything, there was a chance it would help her, so when she stuck her tongue out again, he brought his face closer and let her wash it clean.
“Good,” she said when she was finished, and her voice didn't crack or break. The wounds in her neck seemed to have closed, and she looked strangely happy.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because. You stopped.”
“Because I forced a long, drawn-out death upon you rather than a quick, merciful one?”
“Oh, yes,” she said rapturously, and he frowned.
“I regret to inform you that while I have fallen totally and irreversibly in love with you, I do not understand you in the slightest.”
“Good,” she said again, and laughed. She dipped her palm in the puddle of ink and pressed it against his cheek. “I'm yours now. And you... are mine.”
Though he tried to stop her, she managed to sit up, through what he could only imagine was incredible willpower and her last remaining strength. She bid him take her to her carriage and after carefully redressing her and draping a long, plum-scented scarf around her neck to hide the bite marks, he did so. For all that her silks and pale face made her look ephemeral, she was heavy, and though his veins were singing with the effortless strength that came with having recently fed, he found himself having to make a much greater effort than he'd expected to. He did not even have to rouse her servants, who were waiting patiently by the carriage. They didn't seem overly upset at his wild appearance or finding their mistress in such a state of ill health, which made him wonder.
“When may I see you again?” she inquired.
“My lady, should you survive the night, I would welcome you at any time.”
She returned the next night.
Next Chapter→