Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
The Wild Rose Press www.thewildrosepress.com
Copyright © First published in 2010 NOTICE: This eBook is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email, floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This notice overrides the Adobe Reader permissions which are erroneous. This eBook cannot be legally lent or given to others. This eBook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.
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Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
CONTENTS Dedication A word about the author... Thank you for purchasing ****
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Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
I had heard that some half-breeds were capable of firstsight love, just as the werewolves are, but I always assumed that I was not one of them. For all the centuries of my life, I had fought to be more vampire than lycanthrope, struggling against the pull of the moon until only one night a month—the full disc—could force me into wolf form. I served the Dark Court as soldier, as troop leader, as assassin, until finally the Deathless King made me part of the most loyal legion of half-bloods: the Nameless Palace Guard. But that day, I knew I was no vampire, for I could do no other than love her from the moment I laid eyes on her. Though it cost me every crumb of hard-won recognition, though it cost me my life, though I had no hope of winning her—for she was Nightborn, the vampire royal line, who grow as mortals do until they choose a Heartkeeper and immortality. Already, she had dark curls of midnight hair, skin like white rose petals, and a delicate soul made to be protected, guarded, cherished. By some other vampire. I was unworthy to breathe on her, for I was the son of two worlds, belonging to neither, hated and feared by both.
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Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
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Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. Heartkeeper COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 by Christine M. Taylor All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Contact Information:
[email protected] Cover Art by Nicola Martinez The Wild Rose Press PO Box 706 Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706 Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com Publishing History First Black Rose Edition, 2010 **** Published in the United States of America
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Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
Dedication For Charlotte. [Back to Table of Contents]
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Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
When you die, my beautiful one, take me with you. Do not leave me in the burning light without you, not now. Now, when all that we loved is lost to us, let us face the end of our immortal days together. Have we not always known this day would come? Have we not braced ourselves for it, aware that every night we drank from each other, we warred against the coming dawn? The hour is on us now, so come, embrace the end without fear. I am with you; I am with you. As I have been with you from the beginning of your long life. No arms but mine will lift your withered corpse from the dark altar. No hands but mine will dress you for burial. And I alone shall guard the darkness of your tomb. I alone shall wait for you to waken. I am neither bard nor storyteller, but once, long ago, I poured out ink for you as I have poured out my blood. I never showed anyone what I wrote, and thought many times of burning the pages. I did not even show you, my own, for fear that you would laugh. But I will let you read what I have held secret until now, so you will know the words that I will whisper to you when you lie in dust and darkness, and so when the end comes, you will know that I remember for both of us. Love for both of us. As I have loved you from that first night, the night when your mother perished, and I first saw you. She was so tiny. So perfect, even then. 8
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She fit into the palm of my hand: a baby in miniature. Minute, stubby fingers clung reflexively to my pinky, her grip reaching less than halfway around the digit. Her needlefangs could not even pierce my skin, and she tried to cry with lungs not yet ready to breathe on their own. That was my firstsight. Red blood—her mother's and her own—streaming over her body as her little life slipped away in my hands. What could I do? Surely it was a greater crime to let her die than it was to act above my station. Indeed, I had already touched her, so the sin of healing her could not be much worse. Had I not adored her from the moment of her conception? Had I not felt her life spark into being, even though I was leagues upon leagues away when she began? Did I not infuriate her lord father, my king and commander, by hanging about his new bride, always ready to be of service? If he had not believed, as I did, that all half-breeds were naturally impotent, it would have gone very ill for me indeed. But I only attended to her because she grew inside the Deathless Queen. I could hear the butterfly footfalls of her heartbeat pulsing inside her mother's cold womb. So I licked her then, touching her tiny body with my werewolf's tongue. And, oh, how those few drops of her made me shudder. Even mingled with her mother's blood, the flavor of her was divine, as if she was made of all the bright things in the world, all the colors of the rainbow, all the sweet feelings my heart had forgotten or never known. 9
Heartkeeper by Christine M. Taylor
For a moment, I could not move. I felt dizzy, and my fangs had never been more fully extended. If I moved, I would bite, and that would kill her for certain, since she had lost far too much blood already. I stood there, shaking, while the healing agents from my tongue closed her wounds, leaving only a delicate white scar on her belly. I had heard that some half-breeds were capable of firstsight love, just as the werewolves are, but I always assumed that I was not one of them. For all the centuries of my life, I had fought to be more vampire than lycanthrope, struggling against the pull of the moon until only one night a month—the full disc—could force me into wolf form. I served the Dark Court as soldier, as troop leader, as assassin, until finally the Deathless King made me part of the most loyal legion of half-bloods: the Nameless Palace Guard. But that day, I knew I was no vampire, for I could do no other than love her from the moment I laid eyes on her. Though it cost me every crumb of hard-won recognition, though it cost me my life, though I had no hope of winning her—for she was Nightborn, the vampire royal line, who grow as mortals do until they choose a Heartkeeper and immortality. Already, she had dark curls of midnight hair, skin like white rose petals, and a delicate soul made to be protected, guarded, cherished. By some other vampire. I was unworthy to breathe on her, for I was the son of two worlds, belonging to neither, hated and feared by both. I lifted my free hand to my lips and bit down on my own wrist, making the blood come welling into my mouth. And she 10
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reached for me, lapping eagerly at my blood, suckling from me, tiny hands clutching at my wrist as she drank, and all my other thoughts ceased. Who could have time to think of dark tomorrows, when a jewel like this lay cupped in one hand? Only when she slept, settled in my palm, did I know how I had ached for the slight, cool weight of her, for the feel of her breath hitching as my motion disturbed her sleep. In that moment, I wanted nothing, nothing at all in all the ages of the world than to hold her that way forever, watching over her as she slept. But she was already stirring into wakefulness, and her thick-lashed eyes opened. They were vampire eyes—blood red sclera and vertical black pupils—but the dark centers hid a hint of violet. The deep purple of a gathering storm. I could have wept at the sight of her, for she was perfect in every way a creature can be perfect. When help finally came, I had already put her back into her mother's dead womb, where she could grow until she was ready to live. "The Queen is dead, but the princess survived the attack." "Long live Princess Ravienne," said the ladies who took her from me. That was how I learned her name. Ravienne. My heartlight. My doom. Though we lived beneath the same vaulted roof, and the same bats flew between my rooms and hers, the Hall of the 11
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Deathless is vast, and I might hardly have seen her at all, had she not been such a precocious, adventurous child. I loved the way she wormed out of the banquet hall, weaving between the legs of dancers and hiding in the shadows until the other door guard was distracted. I, myself, only feigned distraction. I always knew where she was, and wondered how her father could fail to notice her absences. I never tried to keep her from escaping. She despised garish feasts, even then, as did I. I have always hated the vast, jewel-encrusted tureens of blood, drawn from mortals whose lives mingled into complementary flavors of memory and emotion, spiced with the blood of infants, and hated still more the lavish, opulent fountain where the blood of minotaurs and sphinxes, unicorns and mermaids and fellow vampires, splash in an orgy of excess. All too often, a drunken reveler fell, laughing, into the fountain, and I could only watch as priceless immortal life, rich in centuries of memory, dried on the floor—squandered. The waste sickened me. It was no place for children, so I always let her go, even when it was entirely too close to dawn. I followed, of course, but at a respectful distance, keeping to my wolf form. I imagined that I was unseen, unheard, for I was a skilled hunter both as wolf and as vampire, but I was greatly mistaken in her case. Her nearness made me incautious, and her senses were far keener than I imagined, and one day, she spoke to me, for she thought I was only a wolf. All around me, the leaves were golden with death, and the air chill as ghost breath. She had climbed a little tree, 12
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skinning one of her bloodless knees in the process, and she was trying bravely but unsuccessfully not to cry at the pain. I must have stepped forward without knowing what I did, seeing her childish distress, because she stiffened suddenly. She did not turn toward me, but one little fist was still raised where she had been rubbing away her crimson tears, and now she seemed ready to strike with it. I held still. "I know you are there, wolf," she said in the Voice of the Nightborn, the voice which is not one voice, but many—all her ancestors speaking with her. "What is it you want of me?" She was not yet five years old, and that was how she spoke. A true Nightborn. Ravienne Unchanged, heir to her father's long memory, Princess of the Undead. I padded closer. The autumn breeze whipped the black lace of her gown, and her eyes blazed rose-red from amid the golden leaves. I told the truth, for I did not know what else to say. I sat back on my haunches and howled up toward her round, white face, as distant and hopelessly remote as the stars above. I howled because her tiny, flawless delicacy cut me, howled because, even if I had no passion to offer, my wolf blood made her my true love and lost her to me forever. In my voice was an unbounded eternity spent close enough to smell her, but never to touch her. "Stop that!" I looked, and saw she had clapped her hands over her ears. I stopped. 13
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"You have a lovely moonsong," she amended, almost apologetically. She was kinder then. "But I don't like the way it sounds. It's too sad." I whimpered. "Don't whine," she said, and I noticed her voice had changed to a single shrill, child-voice. "I can tell you're magic. Are you a vampire trapped in wolf form? Nanny says if I change into mist or a wolf, I could get stuck like that, but I think it's just to keep me from doing it. If you are trapped, though, I would save you." From the toss of her head, I could see she believed what she said. "Even if all you are is a human trapped in wolf form, I would save you." It was almost a question. I inclined my head at her, and she inspected me for a moment, trying to decide what I was, taking in my huge size and my unusually long canines. "Would you let me ride you?" My ears perked up immediately, and I bobbed my head and pranced with my forefeet in doglike assent, tail wagging fiercely. She leaned a pointy-toed shoe toward me, but hesitated. "You're not a werewolf, are you?" I stopped wagging my tail. "Werewolves are evil. They kill us whenever they can. They killed my mother while she was pregnant with me. She was out on a hunt, and if father hadn't saved her, I'd be dead." She lowered her voice. "Ulrich Everchild says they do bad things to vampiresses that make them give birth to monsters, like the ones that guard our castle." 14
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But...it was I who saved you, monster though I may be. I who loved you. Your father was cavorting with one of his other brides, and he left me as sentry outside his bedroom door. I risked execution to come to you, because I knew you were in danger. In pain. She laughed suddenly and landed heavily on my back. "Of course you're not one of those! Your fur's too white, and besides, I'd be able to tell if you were evil. I'm the heir of the Nightborn line!" And we were off: she digging her knees into my shoulders, me running as quickly and as carefully as I could. Out across the ridge we ran, while the gibbous moon rose huge beside us. We wove through forests and splashed through chilly creeks, gaining speed as we swept into a meadow where I could stretch my stride. She was laughing, laughing, gripping my ears to guide my head while we cut a dark swath through pale, late-blooming wildflowers. I had to whine several times, gazing significantly at the pinkening eastern sky, before she allowed me to turn my head for home, and I ran toward the Hall faster than was truly safe. Even so, I hesitated in the woods outside the keep, knowing we would both be in danger if the archers sighted a wolf running towards them. And I had been wearing the workaday livery of the guards, not lavish bloodsilk, so changing forms meant nakedness. I stopped before we reached the clearing, and butted my head against her little back, trying to push her toward the gate. 15
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"Never in all my memories have I ridden such a creature." She was panting and had a faint flush—too pale to be called pink—in her cheeks. "You will meet me in the same grove this Saturn-day next?" She was trying to sound imperious, but she ended in a question, eyes huge and pleading. I answered by leaping forward to lick her face, making her squeal and run away laughing, dark in the moonlit field, toward home and her scolding nanny and her Everchildren playmates. I never meant to deceive her. As soon as I was human again and dressed in livery, I went to find her, daring to hope that she would laugh her silver laugh and thank me. But I came upon her just as she tripped sleepily on one of the high stairs leading up to her chambers, and I put out a hand to stop her fall. It was the first time since the day of her birth that I touched her skin with my own hands. "What do you think you're doing?" she snapped, recoiling from my touch, eyes blazing like bloody fire. I knelt, and bowed my head, still panting from our run. "Your pardon, I pray you, Princess. I only meant to—" "See that it never happens again," she said. "Nanny! Draw me a bath! This thing has touched me, and with my new gown, too!" I kept my head bowed while her entourage filed past me. One of the Everchildren spat on the tiles beside me. I stayed where I was, long after she had gone. For an hour, like a fool, I let myself forget that she had already learned to despise me. I could not tell the truth, then, not even to her. Not after watching the water being drawn to wash away the contagion 16
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of my fingers, not after watching her new dress given over to the rubbish fire. And not the next Saturn-day, either, nor the next year. Always, the prospect of another midnight spent with her held me tighter than the wish to give her honesty. Only by lying to her with my wolf body and my silence, could I tell her the truth. I adored her. Like a worshipful younger brother, like a disciple, like a dog. I loved the sound of her light footsteps on leaf and water and stone. I loved her shadow on grass and snow, the weight of her on my back, the jaunty angle of her hats. It was I who made her squeal and clap when I flushed out rabbits for us to chase, and I who ate the desiccated flesh when she had finished with them. It was I who watched her measure her growth against her favorite tree, and did not snort derisively when she added inches to her height. It was I who lapped away the red tears of every childish hurt—healing little, hidden wounds, and I who let her blow her snotty nosebleeds into my ruff. It was I who ached with every dawning, watching her reach her keep and safety, still smelling her in my fur, and I who died with every new moon. Where before I had feared only the full moon, when I cannot change into my vampire form, now I feared only the new, the night when the moon turns its face away and my wolf form is lost to me. She had a name for me by our second meeting. Apparently, she had neglected to inform her parents and her 17
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nanny of my presence—sly child—but she told Christobel Everchild. I knew her. She had been changed as a seven-year-old ages ago, and was a gift from House Waking to Ravienne's moody grandmother, who had kept her a week and then ordered all her Everchildren burned. I had been charged with their destruction, but I could not bear the waste, nor the fear in the eyes of the ancient children, and I and my fellow servants hid them in the woods until Princess Shilerana changed her mind and wanted them all back. I was glad of my deceit, for Christobel had long been Ravienne's favorite Everchild. I soon saw why, for she kept the secret, even while informing the princess that wolves were very bad dogs, and that she would get in enormous trouble if anyone knew she had one. In my heart, I thanked Christobel, for nothing drew Ravienne like the forbidden, and from that day, I had a name. Baddog. I told no one, for half-breeds go unnamed to the grave. To have a name, and a name given by her was too precious to speak of, and I wanted this sound to come from no other lips. I was amazed by the way she grew, and more amazed by how she still seemed to be fond of me. The hand that rubbed my ears grew longer and more feminine. The shoe, on which I rested my head, huffing contentedly, grew more pointed and more ornate. She told me stories gleaned from her long memory: of Lady Duunay, who sent each of her suitors on an impossible task and so was nearly forty when she finally chose her Heartkeeper; of Ungrir Lighthand who slew the 18
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werewolf leader's mate and began the Endless Feud; and, most often, of Avvash Unchanged, whose Heartkeeper was mortal. In time, she began to talk moodily about the most famous military commanders, the most celebrated minstrel-bards. She put away her Everchildren friends. I feared that my time with her was coming to an end; that I, too, would be put aside—a discarded plaything—especially as our rides grew slower as she grew heavier on my back. But she wanted me for something else now. She distrusted her own kind, and perhaps rightly so. Because she was Nightborn, she was never young: the blood within her held the memories of her royal line, all the way back to the Dark Diamond, the founder of the Hall of the Deathless. When Ravienne ascended her throne, she would drain her father close to death, and so hold all the memories of House Nightborn. But sometimes, this knowledge made her afraid, and made her value, more than ever, the absolute, undemanding loyalty of a dog who worshipped her. I stayed with her until she was eleven years old, struggling into my wolf-self when the moon was nearly new, or falling into it when the moon was close to full, until the night her father found me with her. I was sent away that very dawn, chained and beaten, out to the frontlines of the war, with a message pinned to my flesh stating that I was not expected to survive for long. I would like to say that I defeated all who came against me, or that the power of my love protected me. I cannot say if this was so or not, for I did not always win. Sometimes I 19
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merely survived. And sometimes my survival was merest chance. Still, I slew the Rebel Knight, and I was among those who brought down the dragon at the Mill of Thorvall. I assassinated the Queen of the Gray Wolves, and rescued the ransomed lordling from the House of Dust. He reminded me something of Ravienne. What I remember most is the long lulls spent waiting, watching the stars turn overhead and wondering if she saw them, too, wondering if she ever thought of her wolf. My only hope lay with my commanding officer, General Valerian, an ambitious vampire of a poor but noble house, who planned on being one of her suitors when she chose a Heartkeeper. If he became Heartkeeper, the first of her consorts, he might bring me with him to the Hall of the Deathless as one of his guards. And then I could see her again. In his arms, perhaps, but still, I could see her, hear her skirts and feel her in the air and stone of the keep. Perhaps, one day, I could even tell her that I had been her dog, and, if she still wished for such a creature... I did not think of bedding her. In those days, most believed that dhampire werewolves were natural eunuchs— impotent as mules. Even though ordinary dhampires, the children of unfortunate unions between the living and the dead, could feel sexual urges and even produce children of their own, they were not quite so rare and unnatural as I. I, myself, believed I was inherently sexless, for I had never felt desire, had never bedded a woman, nor wished to. At least, 20
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not until she came—with a new body, shining in plate armor and pale splendor. She was no longer the girl I knew. She was a woman. Haughty and cruel and ruinously beautiful. And I saw that I was not the only one to know the despair of loving her. She had come toward the end of her Tour, to invite General Valerian to join her vast array of potential consorts. Most had left lands and lesser courts behind to follow her as she wound her way through the countryside. All had smooth, polished bodies and rapier-thin, patrician fangs. Wherever she went, a sea of whiteless eyes followed, glittering with avarice and power-hunger and lust. I thought I might be able to see her—if I came in wolf form, if I came just at dusk, when all her vanguard was still rising. She was always one to wake early. I found her sitting by a stream, a little apart from her carriage. She was combing out her hair—ribbons of silken black moving through silver teeth—and already she wore her armor. She was patterning herself after Lady Amarisk, Queen of Steel and Snow, her great-great-great-grandmother, and she was wrenchingly lovely with her filigreed plate mirroring the last purple of the dusk. I stayed in the shadows for a long while, terrified to show myself, terrified not to, terrified to move and break the spell of her fingers in her hair. I feared, also, what I saw in her face. Before me was a stranger with a harsh set to her fanged mouth, pitiless in her magnificence.
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But then she turned, scanning the underbrush as if she knew I was near, stirring her scent toward me, and shattering all the celibate centuries I had lived. I cannot call it desire, or craving, or anguish. It was all these things and more. In that moment, I knew nothing save that I needed her. Right there, on the stone where she sat, beneath the river motes still golden from the setting sun. Ready or no. Willing or no. Screaming or begging or weeping or moaning, I had to consume every particle of her flesh, to violate her body with mine. I had never before felt a man's hunger, had scoffed at the soldiers who wasted coin in the bawdy houses, but in that instant I had an urge between my thighs more blinding than bloodlust, more maddening than rage. I was sweating, shaking, panting as though I had sprinted, knowing that if I moved at all I would leap, and nothing, nothing could stop me from having her. Let werewolves descend on me; let her guards run me through a hundred times, still I could not stop. Let my honor be lost, let all my dhampire brethren be slain for my crime, still I could not stop. Even knowing it was the way my father took my mother, ruining her forever, still I could not stop. There was no tenderness to this new emotion, no thought for her. And it was this, more than anything, that made me run. I ran from her, but I fled from myself. I thought she called after me, but through the hazy pounding in my head, I could not be sure. 22
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Lycanthropes are made to know their mates from birth. Often they are cubs together. Even if one is physically older than the other, desire does not come until the younger one matures. Sexual awakening begins gradually between them: in a touch, a smile, a quick lowering of the lashes. Their courtships are unhurried and friendly, at least until they are both old enough to cause the woman to go into heat. It is never supposed to happen the way it happened with me. Ten years of separation, through which I felt every grain of sand in the hourglass scraping across my skin. Ten years of missing a little child-queen and playmate, only to have the sudden sight of her bring my sexuality on me like a blow to the pit of my stomach. And the timing for our reunion could not have been worse. She had not yet gone through the changing ceremony, and her Nightborn body still aged like a mortal. She still had her woman's courses, and I smelled the blood from across the clearing. In the silent wood where I finally stopped to rest, I wondered at the restraint of her entourage. How could they resist tearing her to pieces for that taste of paradise? Were they so blind that they truly did not know? Surely blood sings to any vampire, and for me, who wanted her both as werewolf and as undead, there was no fiber of my flesh which did not thirst for her. This new body, so unlike the one I had left behind, called to cravings I had not known I possessed. A werewolf's desire for his mate. A vampire's desire for mastery. 23
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To say that I was aroused would be a lie. The night air burned my skin. When I closed my eyes, all I could hear was her heartbeat, all I could smell was the proof of her womanhood. I shifted madly from man to beast, pacing and cursing, the knot in my loins turning into a pulsing ache. I drove my fist into a boulder and when it shattered, I was only surprised that it took a blow to break it—that it had not cracked from the force of my lust alone. I howled, too. Both as man and wolf. Howled because I finally knew what a fool I had been to hope. I howled because my own body betrayed my last chance of ever being near her. At last, I understood the agony that was to be mine on the night of her dark wedding. I howled because I did not know how to weep. In the end, I went to a bawdy house just beyond our camp, partly because I knew she would never go there and partly because I knew that was what other men did to relieve themselves. Even hours later, with my voice hoarse and my fists bleeding, I was still hard: dizzy and feverish with agony. I had to have her. All I could think of was the violet evening light on her hair, and her eyes—dark with the peace of the moment—echoing that hint of purple. I was still quivering, shaking like a leaf in the air she had stirred towards me. And I knew I could never have her. Never. Was that not why men came here? To purchase a few minutes of fury and shame and despair, that might, even for 24
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a moment, bring forgetfulness? There would be no pleasure in this act, and I wanted none. What I wanted was relief from the maddening fire, the itch in my soul, the throbbing in my temples and my groin. And relief was denied me. I was so blinded by the force within me that I did not notice the stench at first, but as soon as the innkeep opened the door, I smelled it. Over the stench of beer, and breath, and body, was a scent more revolting still. The stink of women who were not her. I could smell the cloying foulness of wetness that was not hers, of blood thick with memories of whoring. And I knew I would sooner cut my own member off than ram it into some putrid prostitute already slick with the seed of a half-human. I had never felt this way before, had even, after losing a bet, accepted a lap dance from a painted woman very much like these ones with neither revulsion nor interest. Now I knew that if I tried to bed one of them, I would hurt them, kill them perhaps, in an attempt to make them her. And for what? They would not be her. Their flesh would not part perfectly beneath me. Their sweat would not be balm to my burning skin. Their gasps would not give me breath. There was no water for my desert to be found here, only vomit. But even vomit was preferable to the agony I was in. I waved the innkeep away and staggered off to sit against the 25
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wall like a drunk who had run out of coin. From where I sat, I could still catch the reek of perfume and purchased pleasure. Toward dawn, the loathing took enough of the edge off my lust for me to consider gratifying myself. I tried to return to my life, but the feel of her—so near, always just out of sight—turned even my days into nightmares of frustration and despair. I needed no one to tell me where she was. I knew. Oh, how I knew. I could set my feet on every piece of ground she had stood on, linger in every place where she had paused, kiss every vessel she had sipped from. I stood for a long while at the stream where her maids washed her gowns. On the practice field, I took a considerable blow to the side of the head, because my focus had completely abandoned me. One of my fellow soldiers, a loud, jocular dhampire missing an ear from one of our suicide runs, asked me if I was well. I told him I was planning on deserting and he guffawed and clapped me on the shoulder, and went away grinning, shaking his head at my joke. But I was planning it. I saw the future spreading before me like a stain, and I knew that there was nothing for me anywhere now, not even here. Though her presence brought nothing but hopelessness and misery, I could not live without it. She was all to me. When her caravan moved on, I, too, slipped out of the camp and followed at a great distance, loping along behind or climbing the cliffs overlooking her procession. Sometimes, I could see who she was entertaining. 26
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Occasionally, it was General Valerian. In those days, suitors proved their devotion based on what they left behind when they joined a lady's entourage. Most nobles left lands and houses, and many offered a sizable part of their fortunes as bride-gifts. General Valerian left the war, and his gift was twelve heads of werewolf princelings, two of whom I had slain myself. Just as often, though, it was fat, disgusting Lord Leshan of House Sentinel, who brought a gift of sunwhips and a steel collar with diamond spikes that pierced the neck. He had two brides already but clearly wanted the princess as well, and was rumored to have offered all the gold of the Corvall Clan if he could have her. I traveled mostly during the day, spending the nights lying in the loneliness of the forest, half-dreaming. I dreamed of the spotless snow of her neck, the curl of her ear, the sharp grace of her fingertips. I never dreamed she loved me. Hers was a world utterly apart from mine, a world that hated me for what I was, as she had always hated me, ever since she was small. A curious side effect of all those days hazed by madness was that I found myself dangerously at risk of sympathizing with my father, whoever he was. Not forgiving him—no, never that—but understanding him. He had raped my vampire mother, which meant he must have been a mated werewolf. A mated werewolf who had lost his mate. I had seen such creatures during the war: miserable, halfmad things, pleading for death even in their berserker rages. 27
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But only such a creature could be capable both of the arousal necessary for rape and the determination necessary to sully himself on a woman not his beloved. Perhaps my father had been a decent man, once, with cubs of his own by a woman he worshipped as fervently as I worshipped her. Perhaps I had killed some of my own halfbrothers, who had been coddled and cooed over by the same man who left me with nothing but the crime of my life. I tried not to think of it. I liked believing I was different from him. But should anything happen to her, would I not avenge myself on anything that belonged to my enemies? Would I not do to them the most heinous, degrading thing it was in my power to do? Four months I traveled with her—a shadow ghosting along in the woods, in the tall grass, in the clear streams—before she turned toward home and her choice of a Heartkeeper. I learned the rhythms of her body, learned when I dared to come close enough to look on her and when I must absolutely keep away. Once, when her blood was on her, a pack of wild dogs found me where I lay trembling, biting my own hand to stave off the agony. They immediately set on each other—the bitches howling in sudden heats, the males tearing each other apart in their frenzy to mount them. I almost hoped one of her guards would come investigate, but no one did. It seemed her entourage grew every day as more and more princes came to pledge their troth, bringing their retainers and the servants of their retainers. Some were ancient lords, who had been kings before the Dark Diamond 28
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united the vampires beneath the Nightborn bloodline, and some were mere Daydreamers—still possessing all their human memories and human mores. Through the Mountains of Flame, down the Wide River to the Bay of Song, through the Vale of Screaming Mists, and past the ruins of Aneshcu where all the tombs stand open, we made the circuit of her realm. Prince Dav of the Onyx Crags offered her a mated pair of the golden lightning bats that flash and crackle through those hills. St. Aldebaran of the Shadows, wreathed in his cowl of black fog, delighted her with his collection of souls from unbaptized children. She was less pleased with The Hessian's gift of Parivac the Wondrous, King of the Mesmerists, who was The Hessian's personal entertainer, famed for using living humans as his marionettes. I think she suspected The Hessian of planning to use Parivac to seduce her. Audaciously, she liked to go into the human settlements we've encouraged throughout our lands, and once, I had to intercept a team of vampire hunters, who proved something of a boon since I had eaten only sparingly for some weeks. They were no threat, but they unnerved me enough that I began to follow her, at a distance, whenever she walked among the living. I came in her wake, watching as mothers clutched their children, and barrel-chested men crossed themselves, shivering in sudden cold. Pigs, cattle and horses fell silent at her approach, rolling their eyes, too terrified to scream, for even the animals of humans fear cold immortality. 29
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I watched her enter a tavern, and suck on strips of meat— fresh-killed and served without garlic—paid for with the gift of forgetfulness. She was beautiful then: a true Queen for whom no subject was unworthy of notice. Standing outside, watching through a grimy windowpane, I knew what I had to do, what was the only choice left to me. The Hall of the Deathless was draped in red and black, glittering in readiness for the coming celebration. I had never seen it so lively: swarming with nobles and servants, and the servants of servants who could work even during the day. I had run on ahead, and I wandered though the surrounding grounds waiting for her arrival, hiding in woods and meadows, which had once been made alive by her laughter. The warren we loved to terrorize was still there, bigger than ever. The trunk that she measured herself against was still notched, but a tree had fallen and dammed up part of her favorite stream. And then, without warning, she was there. In one of the meadows, where I had first run with her on my back. She was just changing back from her bat-form, her black, bloodsilk gown skirling around her in great billows, webbing still between her fingers. And she had seen me. And her voice, rich and cool, rang out above the wildflowers. "Baddog?" I thought about fleeing, but her courses had ceased. It was one of the times when I could dare to be near her. I faltered, paralyzed by indecision. 30
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"Baddog!" And the joy in that single word—the only name I possessed—drove every other thought from my mind. I ran toward her, yipping as I sprinted through the moonlit flowers. She came toward me, too, arms outstretched, and I reared up on hind legs into her embrace, and licked her face as her arms came around me. "Baddog! Oh, you bad, bad dog to make me worry so! Where have you been? Where have you been? Don't tell me you left me here worrying all these years because some shebitch took your fancy!" I dropped to all fours and barked, which meant nothing, which meant everything. I ran in circles around her, tossing my head, bobbing and weaving and woofing in joy, ready to shiver out of my skin in pure delight—from having this chance to look up at her with the pure adoration that only a dog can show. She dropped to her knees, heedless of her dress, and giggled and shrieked as I licked her face. She hugged me again, arms tight around me, burying her face in my ruff. "I knew you'd come," she whispered, "I knew you'd come. Now, when I need you." I stayed still, tongue still lolling out, but for a moment I shuddered with the desire to be a man, and offer her a man's comfort. "I don't know how I knew. My father said—There was a feast..." Her voice, muffled in my fur, was breaking. "The main course was a human who'd been ensorcelled into wolf form. It was the first feast for me, and I tried to act like a 31
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lady, but I didn't like it at all. I felt so sorry for him. And then they brought out the head...And I thought it couldn't be you, it couldn't be you. The eyes were yellow but they weren't right." Her voice had gone high, strained, like sobbing. "But I went down and you weren't there. You weren't anywhere. And I didn't know, because you always ran away when I tried to bite you. I used to think you were one of the things that can't survive any vampire bite, but this human, he'd killed a few of us, and I thought maybe that was what you didn't want me to know...I threw up all that night, and I looked for you everywhere. I even went to the town in the valley to see if some hunter had gotten you. Oh, Baddog, where have you been?" As she spoke, I went very still, a feral rage pounding in my skull. Sworn sword or not, if her father had been before me then, I would have killed him. I understood what he had done to me: I overstepped my bounds and my punishment had been earned. But her...she was his own daughter. And he broke her heart with a lie—when the truth would have sufficed nicely—simply to avoid letting the word get out that she had spent time in a dhampire werewolf's company. I did not need to be told that the guards who had beaten me, and the hunter who had brought in this unfortunate human, had all, long since, joined the red fountain in the feasting hall. Later, when we sat on a boulder overlooking the human town in the valley, she wrapped one arm around me and leaned her head on my shoulder, and told me her troubles— just as if I had never been away. 32
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"They're all so proud. And they don't love me. Not me, Baddog. They love their own houses, and the prestige I can bring to them. And that's if I'm lucky. What will really happen is this: he'll rape me until I give him a Nightborn and then have our child drain me dry in my sleep. Or he will wait until my mind and body are broken from passing on the line and then leave me in some tomb somewhere—a shriveled, witless zombie knowing nothing but thirst." Even then, she feared that most hideous of betrayals. "You remember Avvash and his mortal love, Elizabeth the Gray? I keep looking at his memories. He never went through the changing ceremony at all, because he loved his human lady, and he wanted to age with her." She sighed at something only she could see. "Everyone told him that what he was doing was no better than coupling with a cow, and they were right, of course, but sometimes I wish that one of them, just one, loved me half so well as he loved her. While I was on my tour, I saw some of the dhampires descended from Avvash among the Nameless Guard. One still had Elizabeth's smile." Was I wrong, then, in hoping? Especially after hearing her speak so? For I had come to present myself as a suitor for the role of Heartkeeper. In those days, succession was an elaborate process. Each and every suitor was presented with a Letter, on which was a poem or note explaining the Nightborn's feelings for the suitor. A select few, called Hopefuls, had their Letters signed with a single drop of Nightborn blood—the size, shape, and 33
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spatter of which were as carefully nuanced as the human language of flowers. Every Hopeful was given a private audience with the Nightborn heir, and once the audiences were completed, the reigning Nightborn and the heir withdrew to discuss the selection of a Heartkeeper, and any final advice. Then, during the Ceremony of Passing, which is still practiced today, the younger Nightborn drains the elder nearly to the point of death—absorbing the final memories of their house. Once the line is passed on, the new regent feasts all the suitors, and announces his or her choice of Heartkeeper. Only then is the Changing Ceremony performed, where the Nightborn is bathed in blood and made immortal, and the new Heartkeeper cuts the still-beating heart from the Nightborn's chest, to guard it until such time as it is needed. Through all the long centuries of the regent's rule, the Heartkeeper, First Consort to the Nightborn, keeps their lord or lady's heart hidden and safe, for as long as a vampire's heart is whole and strong, he cannot be completely destroyed. Even after the Ceremony of Passing, the Nightborn will live on, however weakly. The true test of a Heartkeeper's loyalty comes after the bloodline has passed on, for a former regent of the vampires is, indeed, terrible to behold. Their flesh is shriveled and mummified, their eyes huge and roving in wasted flesh. Bloodless, they are feeble, thirsty, and senile. When their spouse of many years lies in a coffin—broken in power and mind and body, then the Heartkeeper is free to choose the Nightborn's fate. Sometimes, they take the 34
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Nightborn into their own house, allow them to rest for the necessary five decades, and then have the servants pump blood through the long-guarded heart and spoon red life through desiccated lips until some spark returns. More often, the Nightborn are sealed in tombs and forgotten. If I only had a Letter, then I could find her wherever she was laid to rest. Once she was drained, even the dry blood on the Letter would pull toward the corpse and serve as compass for a seeker. I knew I had no hope of becoming Heartkeeper. She despised my very existence, and, even if she had not, how could I hope to compare against all the beautiful, wealthy demons of honored blood who courted her? No, my desire was to be one of her Hopefuls. Then I would have a private audience with her, where I could show her that I was her Baddog and beg to be made one of her guards. Once her body was changed, I would not need to fear her monthly courses, and I could be near her, could be, perhaps, her dog again—to hunt with her and follow at her heels. Then, when she birthed a Nightborn of her own and passed on the royal line, when she had done with her throne and when the eyes of all her people were turned elsewhere, I could be the one to care for her. I could clean her and feed her, bathe her and dress her hair and strengthen her with my own blood, just as I strengthened her before she was born. Then she would know how I had always felt for her, how long I had waited for her. Even if she was never again strong enough to mate, I would be beside her—her last and truest lover. 35
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I was the first of her suitors to enter the Great Hall when we came to present ourselves in a long receiving line, but the last to be noticed. I came in with the servants, and hid myself in the shadows—one of a row of Nameless Guards. I had stolen livery from House Nightrain, and, with the swarms of visitors, even the other servants did not notice the switch. General Valerian might have recognized me, but he did not look to where the menials stood. How well I remember the silence in the hall when she entered—reverence among the damned. Diamonds and garnets sparkled in her hair and on her gown, and her neck dripped a line of rubies, making it look as if her throat had been cut. The moon hid behind a blanket of clouds, so a thousand torches were lit, flame and shadow reflected in a hundred vampire eyes. It was not until the third of the suitors announced his name and house that I remembered to breathe. One by one, the ageless princes stepped forward and presented themselves. She nodded to each in turn, her smile thin and cold. She did not pause before any of them, and the only sound in the hall was each suitor announcing himself, and the music of her measured footfalls. I waited, sweating like an animal, as she drew slowly nearer. It was the closest I had been to her in man-form since the day she burned her new dress because I had touched her. Then her shadow fell on me, and I moved, stepping out from the shadow of the pillar and shouldering my way into 36
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the line. Bavin of the House Blackrose broke off midintroduction. "I have no name," I said, "And no house. But my heart and my life are yours, to do with as you will, Princess of the Undead—" As I spoke, I dropped to one knee, but hands gripped me by the shoulders and arms and hauled me upright, cutting off my words. I struggled against them, calling out, "My bride gift is all that I have ever done in service to your house, and all that I—" And then she turned her face to me, and my throat constricted. She had never truly looked at me before, not as a man. For one eternal moment, my eyes met hers. Yellow to vampire black. And her foot—raised to complete another slow stride— froze in midair, breaking the rhythm of her steps, and her lips parted, whether in shock or horror I could not be sure. She knew. Even though I was a different creature entirely, even though I was wearing borrowed garb, she knew at once. The other guards were dragging me back, and someone was saying, "We will remove him from your presence, lady, pray—" "No," she said, and for a breathless instant I thought she was going to address me, her silver voice falling on my human ears, but she said only, "Leave him." And she turned to continue down the line. 37
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For a moment, the other suitors seemed unsure of what to do, whether they should continue despite the interruption. But Parivac the Wondrous saved them by bursting out laughing. "Did I not tell you how lovely you were, Princess Ravienne?" he called, "Even the dogs howl after you." A few suitors tittered nervously, and a few more looked angry, but the line of names continued, and so did the sound of her footfalls, as if she was stepping from name to name, using each of them to cross a wide, dark sea. I, alone among all the deathless dead, had a heart that hammered in my chest and ragged breath that thundered in my ears. I knew my plan was insane. I knew that it would likely cost me my life and gain me nothing. But if there was even the remotest hope of meeting privately with her as a man—a chance to explain, to tell her I loved her and would serve her as long as I lived—what choice had I but to take it? It seemed word of what I had done spread through the hall before I so much as left the room. Nobles looked at me and glowered. Servants looked at me and giggled. She had gone into seclusion with her father and his ministers, writing out the notes that spelled hope or ruin. For half a day, I hid among the roosting bats, praying to whatever gods would hear a half-breed accident. I thought surely she would list me as a Hopeful—out of curiosity, if nothing else. She would give me a chance to speak. 38
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And then I thought of her little face twisted in revulsion as I put my hand out to steady her all those years ago. In the Hall, she told the guards to leave me—did I dare to hope it was because she still loved her dog? Or was it only because she wanted no further interruption of the presentation? Had she even accepted me as a suitor? Again and yet again, I turned the scene over in my mind, searching the memory for any sign of softness in her face. But there had been none, and I knew it. That evening, I joined the other suitors in the hall, where a dubious-looking sentry informed me that the Princess had deferred judgment for deserting my post, and that I was to await further instruction. I had returned my borrowed finery and now, even fresh-washed and fresh-groomed, I was very much the scarred foot soldier alone in a parade of royalty. Some eyed me, and lowered their voices at my approach, snickering at my expense, but most had other things on their minds. Those who were still waiting for a response were trying to hide their anxiety. Those who were already Hopefuls were showing their Letters to one another, comparing the size and quality of their drops of blood. General Valerian found me where I stood, apart from the rest, neither with the masters nor the slaves. He stood close to me for a long moment, watching me breathe. Then he struck me across the face. He struck with a closed fist, knocking my head back into the pillar behind me. I reacted without thinking, seizing him by the wrist and wrenching his arm around. He had a piece of 39
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paper balled in his hand and it fell free as I grappled with him. I released him as soon as I had time to think, but every vampire in the room was already on his feet. My general glared at me as he brushed himself off. "What game do you think you're playing, Guard?" he sneered. "You are nothing. A freak. A monstrosity. If you cared anything for the Princess, you would not disgrace her with your presence in these proceedings. You have no house, no name. You do not even have a people. Begone. As your General, I order you—out!" I answered him quietly. "As a contender for the role of Heartkeeper, I refuse." For a moment, I thought he would strike me again, and I braced for the impact of his fist, but instead he only sneered and walked away. When he was gone, and the bruise on my mouth had healed, I picked up the paper he dropped. It was a Letter, several pages long and written in her own fine hand, but there was no red drop as signature. I pitied him, then, and set the paper in the brazier without reading it, even though it smelled of her skin. Gradually, the crowd of suitors began to disperse and gradually more hours crawled by. I held my face still, and stood unmoving, but I felt the time pass like a pool of silver cooling in my belly. The last suitor received his answer—a no. And then I stood alone in the vast emptiness of the hall as the silence of daybreak rose over the keep. I had lost all of the little I had. My fellow guards. My honorable place among the forces guarding the realm. 40
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My life. I had waited until waiting was ridiculous, then waited yet more. But there was no letter for me. I was not even worthy of being rejected. Unsure of what to do with myself, I went out into the sunlight and wandered among the droning insects toward the stone where I sat with her for the last time. I thought of the way she scratched my ruff with long, pointed nails, her fingers sharp with jewels. I thought of how glad she had been to see me—her joy filling me to overflowing. I thought of the hall, empty as all my hopes. Now she knew the truth, and she hated all the memories I treasured most. Princess...What have I ever done to harm you? What have I ever asked you for, save one single meeting with you? Why would you not want to see me, not even to spit in my face? I knew why. I knew what I was, what she was. But when I came in sight of the stone where we sat together, and she told me all the troubles with her suitors—I froze. For there, weighted down by a little river stone, was a single sheet of parchment, folded into a neat square. It is a jest, I thought. A cruel jest, no more. But I could not keep from breaking into a run, and I could not keep my fingers from shaking as I picked it up. It smelled like ink and parchment and perfume. And her. 41
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I glanced around, absurdly expecting to be accosted by Parivac or one of those like him, despite the painful light. Then, carefully, as if I would break the words inside if I broke the seal too quickly, I pulled the paper open. On it, in a hand as fine as spider silk, was a single word: Baddog And beneath my name was a single, reddish drop. I do not know how long I stood there, gasping, with the paper pressed against my hairy chest, feeling as if I could finally breathe again. That day, I memorized each curve of each line, read a thousand meanings into that single word, learned every point where her skin had touched the paper. There was another scent on the parchment—the page who delivered it, most likely, and I learned every place where he had touched it, too. The blood drop was not large, and it indicated that I was not highly favored and was not likely to be chosen as Heartkeeper. I never cared. It was not her throne I wanted; it was her. Be she queen or scullery maid, she was the only one I could ever adore. I returned to the keep as the clouds of bats were billowing out of the windows into the bloody dusk. I was still out of place, belonging neither to the servants' world nor the masters', but now none of that mattered. I was already dreaming that I would be allowed to play with her own Nightborn, pretending that the child was mine, and that we would run through the same fields Ravienne and I had played in. I was already planning ways I could preserve her letter 42
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against the coming centuries, so that when the time came, I could prove that I, even I, was one of her Heartkeeper Hopefuls and no noble house need burden themselves with her care. All that night, I helped the kitchen servants: hauling water and peeling skins, chopping wood and spelling it to burn bright colors for the coming feast. A busty vampiress winked at me and told me I could keep more than her heart if I kept working like that. Yesterday, such a statement would have made me shrink back in disgust, but now I only laughed. The song in my heart was written on a sheet of parchment pressed against my breast. Mad thoughts came to me, too. If I force myself on her when we are alone together...If I kill all the other Hopefuls... Every vampire of every house would fall on me and rend me to pieces, but for a moment, for an hour...nothing would be between us. I would never have to stand beneath her window burning with hatred and pain as another man took her. All this occurred to me that first night, while I was expecting to be summoned at any moment. I was sure I would be one of the first she called: one of the lesserHopefuls chosen out of curiosity or politeness, who needed to be attended to before the longer meetings with the real potential Heartkeepers.
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If she had chosen me out of curiosity, she would want that satisfied soon. If she had written me in anger, she would want to scorn me. But all that night, no summons came. Nor the next night. Nor the next. As the days turned into weeks, I began to lose sleep, pacing back and forth across the battlements all through the sunny hours. Could it be that she forgot? Could it be that it had been a jest, far more elaborate and cruel than I imagined possible? Every night, I ran in wolf form through all our favorite haunts, but she did not come. Once I saw her, through a window high above where I stood, face to face with one of the suitors. Her face glowed like pearl, and her hair was piled on her head in a mass of black silk curls. Eternal, impossible beauty embodied. And then, as I loped home one morning beneath a graying sky, I knew—with a sudden, sick certainty—why she delayed. I had been watching the waxing moon with growing dread, and now only three nights remained before I was trapped in my wolf-body. With a feeling akin to terror, I realized she meant to choose that time to meet with me, when I was unable to change back, unable to speak. She would mock me before all the court: See the audacious guard who would wed a princess! How fine he looks, how noble with his whimpering and his drooping tail. What a handsome couple we would make! 44
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A fitting punishment for one who so completely forgot his station. I would probably be executed afterward, and it would be a mercy. Forgive me, lady. I never meant to love you. But when I returned to the castle, a summons waited for me. I was to appear before her the following evenfall. Early the next night, I followed the light steps of a page up the spiraling stone stairway that led to her chambers. My heart pounded hard in my chest, and my knees were water and needles. Her door stood open, and I saw her foot first, and the corner of her dress. It was blue that night. The blue of ice, of the winter sky in daylight. She sat at an ebony writing desk, carved with ruby-eyed bats and inlaid with skulls. For a moment, the slope of her back was to me, but she turned as she heard us approach and the flustered page announced me as "a Guard." And once again her eyes met mine, red and black kissed with smoky amethyst. Behind me, the page bowed and drew the door closed behind him. And we were alone together. Her, and I, and the thunder in my chest that I knew she heard. Her scent was everywhere, dizzying and strong. It was all I could do not to run to her, clamp her against my chest, and break her skin gently, letting her red soul flow into my mouth and spatter on the pale blue silk. I was a vampire, too, and I 45
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wanted to know her as a vampire, with a vampire's perfect intimacy. Her dress rustled as she rose and took a step toward me, and then another, her face unreadable, remote. Only the faintest tilt of her head showed any sign of interest at all. If I had not known her so well for all her childhood years, I would have missed it entirely. She made a circuit around me—inspecting, appraising— then turned so that we were face-to-face. I broke the silence, my own voice hoarse and faltering in my ears as I spoke to her for the first time ever—alone. "Lady, I—" Her jeweled hand flashed out and struck me across the face, one ring gouging a long line across my cheek. She was no sheltered midnight flower, and the cut went deep. I held my tongue, and stood erect, palms up, with my eyes fixed on the floor, in the pose my kind are taught to adopt in the presence of noble blood. But I felt what she did next, and the knowledge jerked my head upright. Slowly, almost absently, with a delicate, catlike gesture, she licked her ring. In all our time together, I never let her feed from me, knowing she would see at once who I was. Now a single drop of my body entered hers, and she worked it over her tongue, considering. "You would love me." It was almost a question, but she did not seem to be speaking to me at all, and in a moment, she answered herself. "Yes. You would love me. You will do nicely." 46
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"You judge rightly, lady," I said, not sure what I was volunteering for, not daring to hope she meant the treasured role of Heartkeeper. "You are not very good at court talk, sir. You are supposed to say 'you are as just as you are fair,' or something to that effect." As she spoke, she stepped away, turning her straight back to me as she glided into the moonlight streaming through her high, Gothic window. Then she looked at me again as she added, "I have two commands to give you, Guard. The first is a punishment, the second a—reward." Her face curved into a bitter smile on the last word, a smile that detracted from her beauty rather than added to it. "You have been much debated these past weeks. My father wanted you executed, and indeed you would have been a year ago, when my influence was less, and his greater." She turned to look out at the dusting of stars, and her face was moonlight in moonlight. "But I noticed that you told no one I made you a Hopeful. This I like, and I wish to let you live." "I had no reason to tell anyone, Great Lady." She turned deep, shadowy eyes back to me. "And you have kept my childhood secrets as well, it seems. With all that you know, you could have made things very difficult for me at court." This had honestly never occurred to me, so I was not sure what to say. "Tell me, why did you wish to be a Hopeful at all? Your fellow dhampires will not thank you for drawing the eyes of the nobles to them, I will not thank you for deceiving me for so long, and surely you know you will never be Heartkeeper." 47
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Only when I heard the hard words, felt them enter my chest like silver arrows, did I realize that some part of me had dared, despite all my better judgment, to think I might be chosen. With the secret letter to me, and the long wait, all my attempts to keep hope at bay had failed. But now I knew, from her own lips, that I had nothing to wait for. I would not be Heartkeeper. She thought of me only as the Nameless Guard who had lied to her. "Princess," I took a step forward. "I swear I never meant to trick you. At first, I was sure you would tire of me in a week, a month at most, and I knew I would lose those moments with you if I told the truth. Then, when I saw how you favored me, I could not tell you. I loved you too well to tell you. Lady, I have always—loved you." How many years had I ached to tell her this—in human speech, in a man's body—but now I faltered when I spoke, voice dry and cracking, because her face was still and remote as stone, showing neither forgiveness nor scorn. "Of course you do," she replied. "But that does not answer my question." For a moment, I could not speak because the pain so seared my throat and chest, but finally, speaking to the floor, I said, "I wished to be a Hopeful so that I could speak with you. To request that I be brought back from the frontlines and serve you again as your dog." The silence stretched between us. She did not laugh, but what she did was almost crueler than laughter. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, 48
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reasonable, faintly pitying, faintly amused. "Are you truly so naive as this? Do you not understand the charges against you? Deserting your post. Disobeying your superior. Interrupting a sacred rite. For any one of these crimes you should be tortured and killed, and you will be, if you stay here...Which is why I have been merciful to you, my bad, Baddog. As of this night, you are banished. You are to flee our lands and be gone by evenfall tomorrow. Never to return. This is your punishment." Banished. The word rang in my head. How foolish I was to think she would be satisfied with ending my long life. How foolish I was to fret over how long I had to wait before her summons came—those were my last hours with her. "No..." The word was an involuntary whisper on my tongue. It was a death sentence and worse than a death sentence. I could not be sure what would happen to me if I was forced away from her again, denied even death, but I knew that way held agony, unthinkable agony and finally madness. I died ten thousand times on the nights spent away from her, and now I was to be forced away again, this time forever, without even the hope of touching her shadow after ages upon ages of waiting. "No, please...You cannot...Not this..." I was begging, though I knew how she hated beggars, how begging invited her to be cruel. But I could not keep the words back. 49
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"I understand the risks," she said, "that you may fight against us. Wolves care nothing for bloodlines, only strength, and you have proven yourself a worthy fighter. But I trust that you will remember your infatuation with me fondly, and if you do well among your own people, you will be peaceably disposed toward us." "They are not my people!" I screamed, fangs lengthening, sharpening. I took a step toward her, into the pale light streaming through her window, and my fingers curved into claws. "I have no people!" What possible use could I have for a pack of wolves, except it be to storm this castle and rip her out of it? Then to rape her, and rape her and rape her again until her hatred of me ripped the heart from my chest. I fell to my knees, tearing the frost-colored gown as I clutched at the fabric with claws that refused to change back into hands. "Please, lady, I beg of you. Let me work in the kitchens; let me work in the stables. I will keep away from you. You will never know I am here; you will never have to see me—only do not send me away!" "Unhand me! Do you think I want you mooning after me like some spellbound human? I have given you your life— which is far more than you deserve and against every considered opinion of my advisors—and you still demand more?" Her eyes had gone red with rage. "Insolent, treasonous wretch! Leave me now, before I change my mind and have you tortured to death!" "I am a mated wolf! You are my life, my soul, my only hope! What care I for physical pain?" 50
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I wished I were a wolf. I could tell her then. With the anguish in my eyes and the droop of my tail, she could see what she was to me. She could not be so cruel to her Baddog. "Princess, I have loved you. What have I ever done to harm you? What have I ever done to des—?" "What have you done? What have you done? You have violated me! You have robbed me of my only friend!" She stood above me as I knelt before her, shaking with cold anger. "What were you thinking when I poured out my childish heart to you? When I whispered in your ear? Were you thinking how to bed me, even then? Or were you planning to sell my secrets to the wolves?" "What? Never!" I cried. I was almost screaming. I opened my mouth, trying to say so many things: that I could guard her heart more fiercely than any pure-blooded vampire, that I could love her as Avvash had loved Lady Elizabeth, that she could appoint someone else Regent for all I cared, if only I could breathe her, touch her, kiss the ground where she walked. That I did not ask for my life, I asked only to be near her, to feel her existing. But all the words died on my tongue. "You are to depart before sunrise tomorrow. Depart and be grateful. You are never to be seen in our lands again. If you are, yours will be a slow death of silver and sunlight. You will die undrained, cut off even from the Red Fountain—for I have no desire to show the whole Court how you made a fool of me." Trembling with tears I could not shed, I stood to my feet and bowed. 51
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"You—you are as wise as you are fair, lady," I said. You know not to add me to the fountain. For if you do, all who drink from it will taste despair and nameless loss, and will weep for mortal loves forgotten or devoured. But when I turned, shakily, to leave, she called after me. "Wait," she said, "You have greatly angered me, but still, I have use for you, and for your love for me. I have one more thing I would ask of you." "At once, lady." The black marble of the floor was polished to such a high sheen that I could see the quivering in my own lips. "It concerns the reward I spoke of. I would still give it to you, despite your impudence." She paused, then spoke in a low rush, as if fearing to be overheard: "Meet me by the waterfall where we used to play at midnight. See that you are not followed." "Yes, Princess." "And bring your sword." I had a great deal of practice slipping away from the keep, and the guards' routines were not greatly different from when I had left. I said farewell to no one, for I had no one to say farewell to. I took my sword because she wished it, some bloodsilk livery so I could shift without troubling about clothes, and a pack to carry food and provisions, for I had a long journey ahead of me. For a while, I tried to keep to man-form, since I knew it would be difficult to transform with the moon so bright in the 52
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cloudless sky, but I had a great deal to ponder without trying to hold onto my skin. A second audience with you, even more private than the first. I am already driven from your presence for all time, what worse torment could you possibly have in store for me? Never, in all my endless imaginings, had I planned on something like this, on the quiet urgency in her voice, just as I had never considered the unthinkable horror of banishment. I hoped this command had nothing to do with me, that she wished only to impart some final secret to her Baddog. Someone she wanted killed, most likely, hence the need for a blade. I wondered if it would be her father—if she suspected, as I did, that it was he who had tried to murder her before she was born, and so keep his throne. But more likely one of the suitors displeased her, but she feared a direct confrontation with his house. I did not truly care who it was. What mattered was that I had another chance to beg her to relent, to show her how completely this separation would destroy me. Again and again, I rehearsed in my mind things I could say, but each plea was essentially the same as my first: No...No, please, Princess...Not this. Anything but this...Mercy, I beg you... I gave up trying to find a way to persuade her, but discovered that the pointless exercise was the only thread holding me above an abyss of despair. I howled, then. Howled at wounds that even running and hunting as a wolf could not dampen; howled until I was vaguely surprised that I did not bring the whole keep down on me. 53
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Banished. Pieces of glass shattered inside my chest. Only then did I realize how I had hoped, what foolish, foolish dreams had been buried too deep in my heart for me to foil. I had wanted to share the dawn with her, to feel her sigh beneath me in the close darkness of her coffin, her scent so thick it changed my every breath into her and me together. I wanted her slim fangs to sharpen on my neck, her pale hands not to shudder when they touched me. I had wanted my warped and hopeless worship to—matter. But why should she care for a dhampire werewolf's life, much less his sanity, or his heart? I was nothing to her. Nothing but a pawn to shift. And she had already chosen the place I would be most useful. A place far, far away. I wished it were daylight so I could lie in the sun, listening to my skin hiss as it blistered, screaming in the sunlight. I arrived at the low little waterfall more than an hour early, thinking I would have time to think of a better supplication, time to make myself presentable. But she was already there. Alone. Pacing in the starlight, encircled by royal hope butterflies. She had changed her clothes to a washer woman's simple shift, bound at the waist with a sash. Her hair was tied back in a loose braid, a waving line of midnight, and the inky butterflies kept alighting on her, their black wings opening and closing to reveal two spots like red eyes blinking in the darkness. 54
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For a moment, I only stood in the shadows, wanting her. Unbidden, the thought came to me: Now no one would hear her scream. I tried to back away. I needed time. Time to spend my seed on the forest floor, and calm the raw wound in my chest. But I could not look away. The smell of her was fainter, with woods and water all around, but it was there, spicing the scent of wild earth and raw night. The moon had already set, and I could see her more clearly than ever—each proud feature smooth and regal. My knuckles were white on the branch and it cracked suddenly under pressure I had not known I was exerting. "Baddog," she said when she saw me, stirring the air with dark butterflies as she swirled towards me. Then, with sudden, haughty sharpness: "You've kept me waiting." "Forgive me, Princess," I said, bowing and keeping my eyes on the ground between us. At least I had thought to change forms first, so I could bring the sword she asked for. It would have shamed me to have her watch me struggle into my man-body, because that night I had had to try twice to complete the shift. "You think it an easy thing for me to slip out of the castle? I have had to miss dinner to meet you here." Her arms were folded across her chest; her lips turned down in a pouty little moue—and for just that moment, I saw my Ravienne inside the Queen of Steel and Snow. Proud, brash little Ravienne Nightborn who had once loved me.
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There was something in her face—something like stifled gladness. She seemed happy to have me here so she could be discontent with me, as if relief made her waspish. I noted all this even as I was reaching into my pack, hastily bringing out the hares I caught for my own supper. "I apologize, my lady. If I had known, I would have brought you something finer—" A boar at least, or a human. "Rabbits!" she said, and all the world reduced to the white straightness of her sharp smile, to the sparkle in her eyes and the familiar dimple in her cheek. She was smiling at me. She knew what I was, and she was walking towards me, smiling. Hastily, I broke the gaze and knelt to leave the hares on the ground in the proper way, so she would not have to touch me. But even as I bent down, her hand closed around the brown fur, and as she took the two rabbits from me her finger grazed the side of my hand. It meant nothing; of course, it meant nothing. An accidental brush of half a finger that she had not even noticed. It meant everything. She had touched me. Her cool skin on mine. Many of her other suitors would never know so much. Her back was already turned to me, as she walked away, saying, "Oh, it's been an age since I've had good, simple fare, and they are best this season. The sweet taste of clover. The smell of does in heat. The clean flash of fear. Rabbits are— what are you doing?" 56
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She had seated herself back on the rock and I, without thinking, had followed. I had had some half-formed intention of resting at her feet, the way I had done as a wolf. "I—I—" "Go and bathe," she said imperiously, biting into the rabbit's flesh. "You stink of wolf sweat and mud." I blinked, waiting for the order to make sense, but she added nothing. "I—shall return quickly, lady." "No, here," she replied, waving at the waterfall and the fluttering butterflies. She reached into a pocket to produce a bar of washer's soap, which I caught when she flung it toward me. For a moment, I only stood where I was, holding the tallow lump in my hand. I was certain I somehow misunderstood. My bewilderment must have shown in my face because she paused in draining the rabbit to laugh at me, her straight teeth showing red. "Are you shy, Guard?" she asked in the thousand voices of the Nightborn. "You are! Do you think I have never seen a man naked before? How can you forget that I have seen ages and ages of naked men? Now do as you are told." One white finger tipped with a sharp, curving nail pointed to the water. Blood from the rabbit stained her hands and red bulged on the ball of her finger, but she put it to her mouth before the drop could fall. Slowly, deliberately, she ran the bead over her bloodless lower lip, staining it crimson. It was a taunt. I could not breathe. I could not swallow. Heat washed through me, flushing my face, my chest, the pit of my belly. 57
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She knew what she was saying. She wanted me to undress in front of her. She wanted there to be nothing but air and a loose shift between my flesh and hers, here in the seclusion of the forest. What vicious game was this? I had no hope of hiding the effect she had on me. She had probably already seen what she was doing, even through heavy breeches. Was this only to mock me? Were there others hidden here as well? All these months, I had fought my craving in every way I knew how, but I felt it then like a blade being pushed slowly into my groin. Familiarity with this fire did not make it lessen in the least. If anything, a slow hysteria was building with every night of unfulfilled passion. She could burn me with her acid tongue, confuse me, confound me, murder me with her indifference. And all I could do was want her. Now. Do it now. The dark thoughts came despite my best intentions. She is the woman who took everything from you. Now you have nothing left to lose... I knew she would not scream; she would not beg. Not her. She was too proud for that. But I would feel her revulsion as if it were my own. And yet...I could have her. All her sweetness could be mine. For five frantic minutes. For ten. And how else could I persuade her to kill me? Better that, surely, than immortal separation. I could pull her braid apart and see my fingers rise up through the waves of midnight. I could take her in the way of 58
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vampires, pushing her down on her stomach and trapping her with my weight. In that pose, she would not have to see the stubble on my chin, or the hair on my chest. I could be as much a vampire as any: biting down on her neck as I pushed up with my hips. And I could love her then, love her the way my body was made to love her. "My princess," I said. "I cannot...I cannot do this." Lightning flashed in eyes the color of midnight. "I have told you what I expect of you, Nameless Guard! You will do as I say, and do it now!" I opened my mouth to refuse again, to try to explain that I would gladly bathe—but not here, not like this. But I saw something in her face which made me hesitate. She was frightened. Perhaps she had been frightened since she arrived here tonight, but now the red of her eyes was—ever so faintly— pinkening with tears. "As you wish, my lady," I said. I turned away, even though it is the height of impropriety for a Nameless Guard to turn his back on royalty. I did not want her seeing my helplessness. Not when it would mean less than nothing to her. I unfastened my bloodsilk tunic—which was more like leather armor mingled with silk to make it malleable enough for a shapeshifter—and shrugged out of it. I stepped out of my boots; shed the heavy weight of my sword belt. I paused, breathing, listening, before unfastening my trousers, but 59
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there was no sound except her biting into the second rabbit with more force than was really necessary. And then I was naked, with nothing on my skin save starlight and a few locks of somewhat unkempt hair falling past my shoulders. I dislike baths. I swim, and I fish, but I dislike baths. Still, I straightened my back and even remembered to take the soap with me when I went in. I burned under her gaze and kept my head turned away to hide from the detached curiosity in her eyes. I was holding myself waist-deep in cold, almost finished with rinsing wet soap off the hair on my arms when her silver voice cut through the night. "One thing I cannot understand," she said. "Why are you so ungrateful? I went to some trouble to see that you were freed, and now you can roam in the wild the way your kind prefers. I had thought you would thank me." "Princess...I am not a werewolf. I am part of neither world. My heart may beat as a wolf's, love as a wolf's, but the blood within me is a vampire's and I have a vampire's thirsts. Please. I must ask you for—" "No. You are in no position to ask me anything. Have you not angered me enough by throwing my gift back in my face—a gift not easily gotten?" But I could not let the matter rest so easily. I risked turning my face to her and saw her sitting on her stone, the dry rabbits discarded, with one bare foot trailing in the water. My sword lay in her lap. 60
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"Princess, let the torturers have me—I would prefer it. At least with them I will know what to expect. This—I do not know what will happen. All the years I was away from you, I lived to see you again. If I know I must be separate from you forever, I beg you—end this. Help me, Princess. I regenerate too quickly for me to kill myself, but you can ensure my death." Silence fell between us. I waited for her to make a move to free me. "This thing that you feel for me..." she asked. "Is it the same as the love that mortals feel?" It was the first real question she was directing at me, the first with any note of genuine curiosity, and I did not know the answer. "I—cannot be sure, Princess. I have never been mortal, nor do I understand their ways." "But you are my dog, are you not? Body and soul?" "Yes." That was far easier question. "I am glad of that. I mean—it is very useful to me." I bowed my dripping head toward the water. "I suppose you wish to know who my Heartkeeper will be." I did not wish to know. I hated them all. I did not wish to learn which one's sweet words and finely-fanged smiles had won her over, or think of the arms she would lie in while I went away from her forever. "Who, Princess?" "Lord Leshan of House Sentinel." 61
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"No!" I was out of the water in an instant, floundering up the bank toward her, heedless of my nakedness. "No, Princess! You must not! Not him! Any but him!" She pulled back when I drew near, one hand clutching the sword hilt, the other flung across her face. "He does not love you! He does not love anyone! Have you not seen what he has done to his other brides?" "Stay back!" The sword was still in its sheath, but it was pointed at my chest, steady and sure. Still, I could not keep silent. Fat Lord Leshan enjoyed hurting and humiliating. For him, a Nightborn's noble mien would be nothing more than a special challenge, and keeping her heart would mean nothing more than power—a constant threat to hold over her. "Princess...any but him. Choose The Hessian. Choose St. Aldebaran. Choose General Valerian! I know him! I've served with him! He is a good man, and he will treat you well!" "But he will not bring me an alliance with House Sentinel, nor the gold of the Corvall Clan." The words were calm, even and accompanied by a little nudge in the ribs from the sheathed sword. I searched her eyes, dumbstruck. She was walking into an eternal hell with her eyes open. "My Tour was a sham," she went on. "House Nightborn and House Sentinel had already agreed on my Heartkeeper. That is why Leshan could afford to be so—unseemly—in his choice of bride gift."
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I remembered, with a pang of anger, the whip with the long cord of ensorcelled sunlight, the leash and collar that would make her neck bleed. I gritted my teeth, and closed my hand over the sheathed sword, pulling it out of her grip. I stepped closer, and put my face closer to hers than I had ever dared before, and I saw she knew full-well that I was stronger than she. "I will kill him if he lays a hand on you," I snarled. She leaned away from me, ready to change into a mist if I got too close, but when I spoke, the left side of her mouth bent upward in a half-smile that showed her dimple, and a light appeared in the smoky amethyst of her slit-pupiled eyes. "Ah, yes," she said, "I have chosen well." "Princess?" "You are naked and alone with the Princess you have desired for more than two decades, and you cannot tell what it is that she would have of you?" She leaned toward me in a way that was either flirtatious, or trying to be. I took a step backwards. "My future Heartkeeper means to make me immortal while I am yet untouched—so that every sunrise I will regenerate into a virgin, ready to be broken-in anew. I have no wish to allow this, but I am bound by blood oath to my House, and I can do no deliberate harm to my own body, not even to break my own maidenhead, for it belongs to the Crown of Teeth...This leaves me quite ill-prepared for a life with Lord Leshan—which he knows, you may be sure." "What—what are you asking of me?" 63
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"Must you drink it from me? I do not wish to be a virgin when I go to him." The butterflies were blotches of darkness flitting above the cold ink of the stream. She got to her feet, and spoke now to the fall behind me, sneering at the babbling water. She did not look at me, but I felt something cracking in her, and in that moment, she was not talking to a Nameless Palace Guard, but to her Baddog. "This body may belong to the Royal Nightborn line, but it also belongs to me, and this he will not have. This prize they are all rutting over like dogs in heat—this is mine. And I will not have it used to cow me. Men like my Heartkeeper are violent, and coupling for them is all intimidation and pain. I know what they do to women—oh, how well I know. But I need to feel this thing in my own flesh first. Then, then I can endure anything. I will not have my inexperience used against me. I will not have it!" My first instinct was incredulity so complete I almost did not hear what she was saying. But then I saw it: this was why she was afraid. She had turned slightly, so I was looking at her profile, and she finished speaking with a little toss of her head, raising her chin as if daring me to refuse. But despite all her bravery, I saw her fear. All her vast centuries of memory now served only to make her more frightened. And so, in dread and in contempt for all of them, she lashed out at her own body's treasure, throwing her virgin's blood at the dirtiest thing she could find. She seemed to misunderstand my silence. 64
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"If you fear reprisals, you have no need to worry. The pain I can feign, and blood is easy to come by. With you gone, no one need ever discover what happened here." She came towards me, but stopped a few paces away, searching my face with eyes the color of dusk. "I know you are a dhampire werewolf, and so you cannot rise for me, but this sword hilt will serve as well as anything." Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and she was speaking rapidly, afraid to plead, but desperate all the same. "And you would never hurt me. That much I saw in your blood. Of all of them, only you care about me. Only you know me or care to know me. Baddog, you—" "Princess, I am and ever have been yours to do with whatever you will." I finally broke through the fog of disbelief enough to speak and bow my head, keeping my arms spread and both palms toward her in the obsequious gesture every servant knows. But I was bowing to hide my face. "Yes," she said, curling her fingers on the cloth above her breastbone and breathing deep and heavily. "Yes. It will be a great service to me." It is a dream, I thought. It is a trick. It cannot be real. She cannot truly be saying this night—her first night—is mine. But she had spoken of a reward, and I saw that this was what she meant. This was the final secret given to her Baddog. Perhaps...with a gift like this to shield me, I could bear the long centuries of exile. And when she had passed on the line, I could fight my way back into the realm to claim her broken body. 65
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I did not know how to thank her, could not even truly believe the offering being pressed into my hands. One hour. One hour with her willing beneath me. With such an hour, I could never fear anything again. The effect was almost immediate. The frigid water and the news about Lord Leshan had tempered the fire in my groin, but now it returned to me—as sudden and fierce as that first night beside that other stream. With water still dripping from my hair and body, I moved toward her, fangs lengthening, claws sharpening. She had never been more lovely than she was in that moment, with her wide eyes catching the starlight, the rough cloth begging to be torn from her body, the sound of her quickening heartbeat rushing louder than the water. She backed away, suddenly wary, her washerwoman's shift swishing above bare feet and bare ankles. Twice now, I had feasted on the knowledge that we were alone together, and now our isolation was spiced with the knowledge that she was mine. And she was mine. If this were a ruse, it was a ruse I could not endure. I could not be teased this way, not when I had craved this day after hopeless day. I wanted to do everything I had ever dreamed of to her. I wanted to put myself in her mouth and clutch her hair with clawed fingers. I wanted her on her back like a mortal woman, on her hands and knees like a wolf, on her belly like a vampire—with her mouth covered by my wrist so I could feed her my desire. 66
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For centuries, the dhampire soldiers had bored me with stories of bawdy exploits. Dimly, I thought I should be nervous, the way fresh recruits were when they were first dragged to the whore houses, for I was about to be compared against countless centuries of lovers. But there was no room in my mind for even that slight hesitation. She had said this was acceptable to her, and I needed no further invitation. She was my passion embodied, and every time her heart beat, I felt the pulse in my groin. Perhaps she saw as much, because her voice shook when she said, "I thought—your kind were eunuchs. I thought you felt no desire for women." So she had not noticed her effect on me until that moment. She had thought to entrust herself to a gelding. "Only for one woman—Princess," I replied through sharpened fangs. Now she saw the vulnerability of her position. She was fast, but I was faster. If she were a fog, I would breathe her; a flurry of bats, I would catch her. Even the sword was near my feet. "For me, that woman is you." She saw her mistake, then. I was the worst choice she could have made. I was the last creature on earth who could giggle and pet her: I who felt nothing but raw need locking in my loins whenever I drew too near. For a long moment, I held myself still, watching her breathe and watching the flutter of her eyelashes. It was a stillness that built with violent thrusts and feral shrieks. Then I lunged. For so many months, I had followed her, feeling every movement of her body like an amputee's phantom limb. Now she was against me, and to call it 67
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exquisite would be blasphemy. A thin piece of rough fabric was the only thing between us, and the friction from it only heightened the pleasure of her squirming. She was speaking, crying, but I could not hear her, and my fangs broke the white column of her neck. Loneliness. Beneath her skin was loneliness. But there was something else, too, something that only I, who had known her so long, could see. A deep, deep fear of men which stemmed—not from her own memories, but from the memories of Lady Amarisk, whose father had violated her, from the ladies Venish and Elusine who had been raped to death, even from Lady Elisabeth, who had been saved from a gang of brutes by Avvash Nightborn. Some of the Nightborn ancestors forced themselves to forget, but the memories lived on, lurking in the royal bloodline until they flowered in her. In my little Ravienne who had loved nothing better than perfect moments shared between true loves. If her Baddog, too, turned against her, how could she ever trust again? She wanted someone to be gentle with her, patient with her. She wanted to be in control. She wanted to have a man yield to her, submitting his urges to her own longings. I saw now, what she had so wanted from me. Not the act itself, not the loss of her virginity. It was one night where she was not the Nightborn heir, where she was only Ravienne. She wanted to know what it felt like to be loved. All this, I saw in a spoonful of her blood. The hardest thing I ever did was let her go. I withdrew my fangs first, kissed the wound to make it close. I felt it then— 68
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the rigidity in her body, heard the little, frightened whimpers which she could not quite suppress. "This isn't the way you want it, is it?" I said to her ear. A tight shake of the head. "Don't leave me like this," I whispered. Then, after a moment's pause: "For you." And joint by joint I released my hold on her, and with my grip I offered up all my violent daydreams of absolute dominance. This one, precious hour was hers as well. She was putting in my hands a far more sacred charge: to cherish her this night, to move with her gently and, somehow, not to frighten her. And my reward was that she would dream of me, as I dreamed of her. Mine would be the body she thought of through all the endless years she endured a vicious Heartkeeper. I would possess her more intimately than he, for if he took her body tomorrow, I would take her mind tonight, entering all her secret fantasies and giving them life. She stepped away quickly, and I had to bite my lip with my sharpened teeth and dig my claws into my hands to keep from leaping after. For a long moment, there was no sound between us but our ragged breathing, the pounding of our hearts. "I knew..." she murmured, relief palpable in her voice, "I knew..." She did not finish, or need to. She knew she could trust me. Knew that I was different, that I would never hurt her, though it cost me more than life to do so. 69
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Then she straightened her back and face, and said archly: "You're warm." Even with the freezing water and the cool night breeze, my flesh was not as cool as hers. "I apologize, lady," I murmured, but I did not feel very apologetic, and this must have showed, because she frowned peevishly. "You will do whatever I say? Even if it shames you?" I was trying to keep my gaze on the ground between us, but my eyes kept drawing upward to her face, and at this question, I looked directly into the depths of her eyes. Standing by the cool water, mesmerized by her scent, I felt my tongue loosen, as if I could finally put the bond I felt between us into words. I answered slowly, carefully. "My lady has seen: I have no pride. My pride is your happiness. My honor, your name. My religion, your will. I love nothing in myself but the love I have for you." This, at last, seemed to satisfy her, and I saw her face soften. She approached slowly, one hand clutching the shift closed, the other hand outstretched. "Hold still." It was hard to hold still when the light pressure of her fingertips touched my chest; I jerked slightly at the contact, and she snatched her hand back. I had to wait, palms bleeding from my claws, for her to be ready again. I kept waiting for her to grow impatient or self-conscious and begin treating me as just another of a Nightborn's many inconsequential lovers. 70
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But she stayed Ravienne, a woman-child of less than twenty-five summers. And she was using my body to explore. She did not hurry. Her fingers moved through the hair on my chest in lines of cold fire, moved up and over the muscles in my arms. Her other hand joined the first, and ten lines of silver thread moved over my skin. It was hell. It was heaven. I closed my eyes, but that only made the torture worse. She took the opportunity of my blindness to put her mouth against mine in a mortal's kiss—such a strangely innocent sensation, tasting her without blood. She pulled back, licking her lips, trying to decide if she liked this, then kissed me again. This time I closed my eyes to savor the sensation of her fondling me, tasting me. Bolder, her hands moved lower, palms running over my contours. I knew what she was going to do a moment before she did it, while her hand was still on my belly. "Princess." My voice was a croaking gasp. And then: "Ravienne." And then she touched me. A single finger running from base to tip, slow as a sunrise. Even after she took her hand away, I could not breathe. "Would you like to look at me, Nameless Guard?" It was just as well that she did not wait for an answer, because I could not yet speak. Her hands fumbled with the sash's knot, but I held my place. And then it was loose, and curving nails pulled at the 71
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neck of the shift, making it open like a robe. The V of the neckline stretched longer and longer, revealing white flesh like a line of slow lightning. And then she slipped the garment off her shoulders, and she was naked. Never had the dark gods created such beauty. How can I describe it? She was the essence of what artists try to capture. Even the shadow cast by her breasts could make a man kneel and beg. Her fingers were in her hair, undoing the braid so that her tresses spilled over her in flowing curls, soft waves echoed in a triangle of darkness between her thighs. Her nipples, too, were black and hard like two tight, dark berries. And there was the thin scar on her belly, a questing line which drew the eye from the dip of her belly to the secrets below. The leaves stirred, and the wings of the black butterflies fluttered. The soft light spilled over her curves—the dip of her back, the slope of her waist. She giggled at me. "Are you a virgin, Nameless Guard?" I had to close my mouth to wet my tongue before speaking. "I can want no woman but you, Lady Ravienne." She came so close, so close her coolness pressed into my skin, and her dark eyes seemed darker now—the Nightborn Princess fully enjoying her command over me. "Then let me show you." I felt my inexperience then, half-wished I had practiced on some other before her, so that I would not be fumbling at her with such clumsy, inexpert fingers. But she did not seem to 72
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mind, seemed rather to enjoy that it was new to me as well. Newer than it was to her, for only her body was virginal. She took my hand and guided it down, and down. She seemed to know that, in my eyes, her scar was part of her perfection, because she let my fingers trace the whiter mark on white flesh, down to the luxuriant shadows beneath. She let me touch her there. I knew, in that moment, that I was going to fail her. Though I was expending every shred of my will to hold myself in check, I knew I could not give her the safe, gentle night she wanted. But how could I tell her that, when I could hardly think, let alone speak? My fingers were moving in tight little circular motions, almost of their own accord. I could not even find the will to want to warn her, not with the face I adored inches in front of me, eyes closed, brow furrowed, sharing my own quick, panting breaths. "Yes." The word was a breathy murmur. "Like that." I felt her body flowering in my hands, felt her woman's wetness, more secret and more intimate than blood. She sprang without warning, quick as only a vampire can be. Suddenly, her hands were in my hair, her arms around my neck, her legs around my waist. Her face was above mine and her slick center dripped passion onto my sex. Dazed by lust, I could only react instinctively, catching her as she sprang, but she paused to let me realize that my hands were, indeed, cupping the softness of her bottom before bringing us together. Her dark, glittering eyes watched my face as I gasped for breath. And then she showed her needle-fine, 73
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elegant fangs and flung herself forward—sliding onto me and biting into my neck in one sharp, strong movement—breaking over my body just as she broke my skin. I think I screamed. My mind blanked, and I had no command over my body. Once, ages before she was born, when the werewolves were so numerous we feared the end of all vampires, I was nearly killed in a border skirmish—torn open to the spine. The wolves found me and tortured me all through a day and most of a night. They began with my manhood, laughing at the speed with which I regenerated. That torment was akin to this ecstasy. It was a thousand deaths, and a thousand dawns, and a mockery of all that was softest in me. She was more than everything I had dreamed: the soul of my desire, merciless in her beauty. And she wanted me for nothing more than a night's idyll. But we were together, together at long last. I felt her tightness yielding to me, felt her shudder with the sensual pain of lost maidenhood. We were not two bodies, but one— sharing a point of pain below and a point of pain above— where we joined as man and woman, and where we joined as vampire and prey. Two mouths fed on me at once and I was holding the dream that was her flesh—white roses in snow— delirious with the knowledge that she was mine, that this was truly happening, for no fantasy could be so relentlessly divine. The next thing I remember, I had pinned her against a boulder. She struggled, fighting, but my hand held her head against my neck, and I was crooning to her: "No, no, Princess. Drink. Drink." 74
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She had to see, had to feel what she was doing to me, even if it meant she saw my every secret. I knew how potent the flavor must be for her—a woman who lived in memories from lives she had not lived—now she was drinking a vampire's blood and a werewolf's, thick with lust for her so strong it consumed my immortality, changing me into a single burning ache. My helpless body was moving without thought or direction, writhing against my demon goddess, and every thrust felt like prayer, felt like begging. Through my fevered senses, I knew only that I could not stop. She, too, was past the shock now, and she drank freely, deeply, her curving fingernails digging deep furrows into my back. The light-headedness only intensified the pleasure until, impossibly, the pleasure grew stronger yet. There was a heat in the deepest part of me, more intense than anything I had ever known, as my hips moved faster still. "Kill me," I begged. I was still holding her head against my neck. "Kill me, Princess." Kill me so this doesn't have to end. For a moment, I thought she had. The climax came on me in a wave of white fire shooting through my body—sunlight from fingertips to fangs. My entire being splintered into thoughtless ecstasy, and I felt the force of it surge through my blood and send an answering culminating convulsion through her flesh. She shrieked. I wept.
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And the passion that drowned all thought receded into a stupefied haze and gentle, honeyed throbbing. Cruelly, so cruelly, she refused to bite down again and finish me. My legs shook, and I was dizzy from loss of blood. Panting, trembling, I still kept her against me as I let us slide to the ground, staggering so I took the brunt of the fall. She lay gasping on the ground with her shadowed eyes glazed, hair spread out like a dark halo, red drops leaking from her lips and from the corner of each eye. It couldn't be over. Not so soon. Not with the precious scent of mingled passion still drowning out the scent of water, of forest, of crushed grass. If I refused to let her go, I could keep the sun from rising. I could make this night last forever. But she was already stirring, blinking, sighing as her breathing slowed. And, suddenly, I dreaded the sight of cool contentment in her gaze. It had been so easy, with her skin on mine, to pretend this was a gift meant for me. The sight of her, pleased and finished with me, was more than I could bear. I meant only to duck my head low so I could brace myself with the scent of our pleasure, the proof of our mingled essences. But I caught the perfume of her blood as well. She was wounded, bleeding. Without thinking, I bent low over her, spread her knees apart, and lapped at the injury inside her with my healing tongue. Her voice was unsteady when she demanded to know what I was doing, but I couldn't very well answer. I wasn't entirely sure myself, and in that moment I knew only two things: I 76
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could cleanse away her soreness, and that I was lapping at the nectar of paradise. The taste of her virginity was unlike anything in the world. Her woman's blood was innocence distilled, pure femininity. It was blood that tasted not of Nightborn, but only of Ravienne—and it was mingled with the flavor of her passion and mine. I moaned into her womanhood, unable to tear myself away from this flavor, this flavor that existed only tonight. She started to squirm, and she was telling me to stop, her breath hitching in her throat. But I could not stop. I was healing her. Healing her and savoring the magic between her tensing thighs. I loved what I was doing to her, almost more than I loved pushing my passion into her. Before, she had climaxed as an echo of my own shattering ecstasy—a vampire borrowing emotions through blood. This, this was only hers. It seemed only a moment since I started my ministrations, but she was already digging her nails into my scalp, and suddenly my mouth filled with the flavor of her secret joy. When she cried out, it was only Ravienne who screamed. A woman newly flowered, with a thin, high voice. It was Ravienne, my love. After that, I could not believe that I was alone in my feelings for her. It was written in shadow and stone, water and grass and butterflies. But the truth is, hardly anything changed, then. While her scream still rang through the woods, her foot caught me squarely in the chest and shoved me backward, and she spoke no word to me as she snatched up her things. 77
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I followed her around the clearing, unable to believe that such a moment could mean so little: "Princess, are you well?"; "Did I offend you, lady?"; "Are you cold? You are shaking;" "Princess, I did not—I could not have—Tell me I did not hurt you!" But she spoke no word to me, burst into a flurry of bats instead. I did not try to catch her, but I screamed her name— Ravienne—as she disappeared. The only answer she gave was to fly harder, black beating in the darkness. I sat in the clearing, naked and alone, cradling my head in my hands. The taste of her was still on my lips; her wetness still dried on my body. Somehow, in the heat of the moment, I had forgotten that I was banished. I had not been able to fathom, in that one eternal moment, that she would use the love and throw the man away. I had thought she would relent and allow me to remain, but even I could see it was impossible now. How could she add a half-breed to the line of palace guards, knowing he would look at her with the knowledge of this night in his eyes? The sun came creeping above the trees, and I became aware of how hungry I was, how weak. The butterflies were long since vanished, and my skin smoked where dappled rays came through the trees. I had given her what she wanted—I was sure of that, or nearly sure. I told myself that she was not angry with me, only finished. And now it was mine to begin the long wait, the centuries apart from her. 78
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But I knew I was only fooling myself. I was alone in a vale that still taunted me with sacred scents, and I clutched at patience because 'never' would break me. But never was the truth. The dream had ended; I would never see her again. There was a pounding in my head, in my groin, in all that remained of my blood. It beat against my skull, hammer blows on hot steel, honing an appetite that had not been in me yesterday. The pulsing was made of a single word, repeated again and again. More. She had dropped her sash as she flew away, and I held it, wanting only to lie there, throbbing in sunlight and in thirst. It would be easier, surely, not to fight. But nights like ours are the dreams which brave men fight and die for, and braver men live for. So I got to my feet, hoping that perhaps it was what she wanted. I took my clothes, her sash, my Letter. I left the sword where she might find it if she looked. Perhaps someday she, too, would want to hold something that had been mine, or would need something useful if Leshan proved unbearable. I paused at the stone where I had loved her, touched the rough surface as lightly as if it were her face, kissed it. And then, still weak-kneed and shaking, I began to walk: out, out into the sunlight. I came to a dingy inn at a crossroads, and found the innkeeper to be a round, red-faced creature, warm and bulbous as a drop of blood. He bit the coin I gave him with his two horrible yellow teeth, and then grinned at me. As he 79
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sloshed a mug of frothy liquid in front of me, he said, "Let me guess: she doesn't love you." In that human dwelling, surrounded by mortal filth and squalor, I found rest, if not peace. Though I was still in the foothills of the mountains that hid the Hall of the Deathless, I did not try to escape the realm. Harpies were plentiful in the area, and one or two must have interbred with the townsfolk, because their blood was tainted just enough to make them unpalatable to most pure vampires. I hunted during the night, sometimes traded game for another day spent on a dusty tic, and slept—rather poorly— through the thumps and clatters of daylight-dwellers. I found I liked their drink. It was cool and earthy, but it warmed me, and enough of it offered forgetfulness. For a few hours, I could forget my gnawing hatred of my poisoned flesh, forget that she did not, in fact, love me. I could even forget my worst fear—that I had done something wrong during that beautiful hour, and that she fled from me, shaking, because I had hurt her. I could not, however, forget the ache in my arms that was her absence, could not keep myself from—suddenly and without warning—falling to my knees, clutching my chest to keep it from splintering. I could not keep from suffocating under the weight of a future without her, nor keep myself from wondering if she ever thought of me. She would be wed by now, immortal and enthroned, the Crown of Teeth resting on her brow. I was sorry I had not seen that. She always looked so beautiful in white. 80
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I had been steadily drinking myself into oblivion one night, when the door blew open, bringing with it a sharp, strong scent. I knew it at once. It was the page who had delivered my Letter to the clearing outside the keep. I stiffened, my head clearing of drink at once. But for some reason, when the innkeeper looked toward the doorway, his face brightened into a grin, and he called: "Oh, hello, little sweetheart! Are you doing some country traveling with your mummy and daddy?" It was Christobel Everchild. For a moment, I thought I truly had drunk too much, but the innkeeper clearly saw her, too. She ignored the sourblooded mortal and walked straight to me, one plucked and painted eyebrow arched in grandmotherly disapproval. "It was you," I said. Out of all the palace, my Ravienne had only trusted her doll to deliver a secret Letter. Then, seizing the opportunity, I said, "Everchild—you still see her, don't you? Tell her—tell her—" I hesitated, unsure of how much I could risk saying. "Tell her I didn't mean to. It was an accident." The eyebrow arched even further, almost disappearing into her hairline. "Contrary to whatever you may think, Guard, I do not make it my business to carry lovesick messages. If you have something to say to her, tell her yourself." "Everchild, please—" I stood, somewhat unsteadily, and genuflected in the way of our people. 81
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"You may call me Christobel. I have always liked you. You seem...earnest. And you always kept the other dogs from chewing on us. You even saved my life, once." It took me a moment for my fogged brain to realize what she was talking about, but I remembered that Christobel had been among the Everchildren I saved from the adolescent fury of Shilerana Nightborn. "Now I shall save yours." I looked up. "You are dying. Didn't you notice?" It was a flat question, meant to make me acknowledge my weakness, not because she did not know the answer. I did not reply, staring at a knot in the wooden floor. I knew I was going mad. I knew it was only a matter of time before I did something reckless. I hoped I was dying. To my surprise, Christobel laid a tiny hand on my arm. "Baddog," she said my name softly. "Come with me. She has refused to name her Heartkeeper unless you are present." "She is still mortal?" I searched the ancient child's face, horrified that her advisors allowed her to remain so vulnerable. Seeming to read my thoughts, the Everchild replied, "It was on my advice that she refused. She waits for you, even now." I blinked, certain I was still stupid with drink. Behind me, the innkeeper was polishing a mug and pretending not to listen. I tried to think what she could need me for. Surely not another meeting in private. I had seen what I would need to 82
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touch her again—an ancient, pure bloodline and all the gold of the Corvall Clan. I had neither, had nothing, in fact, save a life I had no desire to keep. Of course, I thought. A second blessing from my goddess, as absolute as the first. The gift of death. She might fear—wrongly—that I would speak, or fear— perhaps rightly—that Leshan would notice her lack of virginity despite all her precautions. To resolve that problem, she would need someone to blame, someone whom no one would believe if he denied having raped her, someone already hated and feared, someone perfectly expendable. And, if she were merciful, someone who had already begged her for death. Oh, my love. What more could I ask than to be saved from separation from you? "She means to have me executed?" I asked, unable to keep the hopeful smile from my lips. But the Everchild's response startled me. She drew herself up to her full, diminutive height, folded her arms across her chest, and snapped, "You really are a thundering fool, aren't you?" "Everchild?" "Are you being deliberately thick with me?" Her eyebrow pointed sharply toward her hairline again. "Is she hurt?" I had always assumed that the bond I shared with her, a bond achingly strong now, would alert me in a moment if she were in danger, the way it had when she was nothing but a drop of cool flesh in my palm. Had I been 83
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so self-absorbed, so inebriated that I could not hear her? "Has something happened? Everchild, tell me!" "I would, but you're clearly too much a dunderhead to understand." A small, wicked smile played in the corners of her eyes as she turned back toward the door. "Come. The blood in here reeks." I followed her out into a cabbage field outside the town, where she pulled off her miniature bloodsilk glove and offered me her tiny wrist. When I bit down—carefully—I heard footsteps ringing down a marble hall, and the swish of silk skirts. A creak of a door, and a sharp rap on the top of a casket and then a sweet, pale face appeared. Her face. Two lines of red were running freely from her eyes, and she was sobbing as she flopped down on the floor, hugging Christobel to her chest. "There, there," the Everchild said, the nanny this time, the older woman. "Tell Little Belly what happened." But she only sobbed louder, rocking back and forth, and then burst into a wail. "What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Christobel, I can't—not now—I can't..." "That's enough!" The Everchild's voice cut through the vision. "What do you think I am, a bull elk?" "When was this? What's happened?" I demanded. "It was right after your little fiasco in the glen, Baddog. You've shaken her worse than anything that's happened to her in her short life, and far worse than anything she's remembered. You've ruined all her plans, and destroyed every hope her House had for her." "I—" I began, "It can't be." 84
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I was almost begging her to tell me she was lying. Fiasco, she had called it—the night I loved my Ravienne. And the worst of it was: she knew what I didn't, was a confidant where I was only a slave. It was true, then. My worst nightmare. I wondered if I would ever know what I had done wrong, would ever have a chance to tell her that my sorrow and my shame could not be measured. "Luckily for you," Christobel went on as if I had not spoken, "her plans weren't anything I approved of. So here I am." She studied me in the light of the sickle moon. "I cannot claim to comprehend what you have done to her, or what she plans to do to you in return. I am a pure vampire—all of my memories come from after my death—and so the strength of mortal urges are unfathomable to me. Also, I have never grown, and I find the way of men and women repugnant. You could always understand her fascination with those things better than I. I understand only this: she needs you now, even more than she knows." I blinked at her, but in her eyes, I found only sincerity. "We must go," she said, "and quickly. The suitors grow weary of being feasted, and the coffers grow weary of bearing their expense. And Leshan grows weariest of all. If she is not careful, House Sentinel will rebel, taking as many other Houses with it as possible." Something inside me shifted when I heard the words 'she needs you.' I could not tell if it was only because I so wanted to believe her, but I knew that I did believe. I knew that I would run to my princess now, even if only my death and her displeasure lay at the end of the journey. The little hell doll 85
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had slipped a silver blade into my heart, the torture I dreaded more than any other. Hope. Our journey was marked primarily by silence and speed. I could not quite pretend I was holding a younger version of Ravienne, because I had never been a man when I carried her in those days that seemed centuries past. And besides, I knew with every shred of my being that my lady was ahead of me, not in my arms. I used my last coins to buy a tightly-sealing trunk so I could carry Christobel even during the day. I ran in darkness and in broad daylight, gasping for every breath, every heartbeat fit to burst my chest. But when my fingers and gums blistered and bled, I could taste the cry in my own blood: More. Give me more of her. I made a journey of seven days in less than three, all while carrying a petulant traveling companion. We arrived at the Hall of the Deathless just before dawn. The moon had set, and it was dark now, the vampire's hour. In the cities, those of our kind were killing the mortals they had seduced during the night. Even so, waves of bats were washing in and out of every window and door, trilling their song into the starlight. "So many..." I breathed. "What were you expecting?" the Everchild demanded, tired and cross from a rough journey. "The king is dead; long live Queen Ravienne—who has drained her father, but still refuses to name a Heartkeeper." 86
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I glanced up at the Hall, knowing that even now, silver arrows were pointing at me, and that if Christobel did not stand beside me, I would be shot down where I stood. I did not pause to wash or change, to salve my blistered skin, nor to drink from any of the fountains. I knew she had walked here, and I could catch her scent—elusive among a thousand others—but unmistakable. I broke into a run, not caring who saw me or tried to stop me. The only thing that mattered was that I see her again, just once more, with my own eyes. Nameless Guards saw me coming and threw open the ironbolted door to the feasting hall. As I entered, the tumult of voices and song wavered into silence. Dimly, I knew that if I had been mismatched with the royal suitors before, I was a mockery of them now. I was filthy—a stinking mass of sweat and mud with bloodshot eyes and rags for clothes. But all I could see was her face. She was lounging on the throne, a goblet dangling from her fingers, head resting on her fist, although she straightened when she saw me. Her shining dark hair was plaited with white rosebuds, and on her brow was the Crown of Teeth, made from the fangs of those who opposed the Nightborn. She wore white interlaced with silver, a gown that caught the moonlight and glowed. I could see now what she meant when she told the Everchild that she "couldn't." The plan she told me of by the waterfall would not work, would never work. It was plain that she was no longer virginal: written in her scent, her skin, her eyes. Beautiful, yes. More heartbreakingly beautiful than 87
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ever, but surely no one could miss the change. Of course, she would need a scapegoat. And I looked the part now, madlooking beast that I was. Her eyes met mine and this time I did not look away. I saw the relief flash across her features and felt a rush of tenderness toward her, and toward the folly we had shared. Just as quickly, though, her relief was replaced by irritation. I reached the dais and knelt before her, saw my miserable, mangy countenance reflected in her silver shoe. The Everchild spoke truly. I was dying. "Good of you to join us, Nameless Guard," said the Voice of the Nightborn, her ancestors speaking with her and calling out in echoing song from the high rafters, from the pillars, from the stone walls where the rows of Nameless Guards stood. I thought I could hear her father's voice among them. A few of the suitors laughed, and I used the noise of their brief laughter to whisper, "My Princess—my Queen. I know my coming here means my death. Could you not—would you not consider the request I made of you: that I be allowed to die by your own fangs? Have I not done all you asked?" "Too well," came the answer, far louder than I expected and still in the Nightborn's Voice. She sounded more angry than grateful, and my heart sank. I did not dare look up, not even when something large moved in the corner of my eye, and I knew that Leshan was shifting his weight beside me. "Surely we have not been waiting all this time for a Nameless Guard to arrive?" he asked. The smile she turned on him was poisonous. "You would not have me violate custom, would you, m'lord? All Hopefuls 88
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must be present when I name my Heartkeeper. If I have a task for my Hopefuls, all must complete it before I decide, it being such a difficult decision. You have your Letter, Guard?" Her words were answered by muttering from the nobles behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder at them. Why had she announced that I was a Hopeful? I had hoped to take that secret with me to the grave. Something as private and beautiful as her face when I licked her, as the truth of our night together. Reluctantly, I reached into the pocket near my heart where I kept my Letter sealed in an oilskin envelope. When she broke the envelope's seal with her sharp nail and held the Letter up for all to see, I felt it was my heart she put on display. The Hall rumbled with mutters: questions, a few chuckles, anger. "As a Hopeful, Nameless Guard," she said, raising her Voice above the noise, "you have the right to attempt to complete the task I have set before my suitors. Answer my three questions, and prove your sincerity with your blood." I nodded, thoroughly confused. "If I were in danger, would you be willing to die in my place?" "Of course, lady," I answered. It was not until someone behind me said, "As is fitting for a Nameless Guard," that I realized the test had begun, and I had answered the first question correctly. And with the knowledge of my success, my courage failed me. Cold sweat pricked my brow and my chest, already heaving from days of 89
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running, now went leaden with nausea. At first, I could not even be certain what afflicted me. Ever since the Everchild called me, I had hoped only for this—a moment on my knees before her, being pierced with the beauty of her presence one final time. Instead, for the first time in all my long existence, I was being treated not as the misbegotten get of a vile union, but as an equal of princes. I searched her face for some sign of mockery or cunning, of a trap laid for the amusement or edification of her realm, but I found nothing there: only the terrible miracle of her loveliness. I told myself, surely, surely she only wished me to prove my sincerity by dying, but I could not keep myself from knowing that I was competing for her hand, for a blessing so far above anything I had ever dared hope for that it dizzied me. And with that knowledge came a fear of failing so palpable it made my ears ring and my empty stomach rebel. She ignored the murmurs in the hall below, and went on. "And what is it you desire above all things living and dead?" "Your favor, Excellence." My voice, already weak and whispery, cracked on the truth, but the Hall had fallen silent to hear me. "Your smile." "Then I will ask you my third question," she said, and waited for me to look up at her before continuing. "Do you love me?" The question rang clear and sure across the vast hall. "As mortals love and more, do you love me?" For a moment, I could not answer. She had drunk from me, surely she knew. Did not my blood cry out the answer in her belly, my seed scream it in her womb? 90
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Her eyes were twin lines of darkness now—tinged with a violet hue which was only her own. In them, I found my strength. I felt again that connection between us that had freed my tongue when we were alone together beside our little waterfall, and when I finally spoke, I was calling to her out of the depths of our bond. "Always," I said. "Always and always have I loved you. I have no air but what I breathe for you. No heartbeat, save the sound of your footsteps. No life, save the knowledge that you exist. I am, have ever been, and ever shall be, your own. To do with whatever you choose." And then she held out her slim hand to me and said, "Then it is you I choose. You shall be my Heartkeeper." Behind me, I heard a gasp and a clatter as a tureen hit the floor. But I could not look away from the face of Ravienne Nightborn, Princess of the Undead, Dark Goddess Queen. I opened my mouth; shut it. Leshan, gray-faced and furious, stood up at the table and gave words to what I had been trying to say. "My Lady-elect, surely you are forgetting yourself? You cannot mean to make this thing your consort," he said. Again, I tried to speak, knowing that the fat lord spoke the truth. What noble house would accept me as ruler? I had only recently discovered passion; I had no idea if I were capable of producing children. Your kingdom...the Nightborn line...if I loved you, how could I... But Christobel Everchild chose this moment to materialize at my side, and tread very sharply on my foot. 91
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"Idiot!" she hissed. "What are you waiting for?" Trying to still the trembling, I put my hand in the princess' outstretched one, and her fingers closed around the hairy back of my hand. I was touching her, as I had thought I would never touch her again. "Princess," I managed, "you know I will kill any you make Second Consort; you know I could never share—" One graceful finger pressed against my mouth into silence, the curving nail sharp on my upper lip. And she smiled a small, fanged smile. "I know," she said, and then stepped closer, and pulled my hands to her waist, drawing me close before all the lords of midnight. Her arms came around my neck, and her breasts were soft against my pounding chest, and when she spoke into my ear it was with a single voice. It was only Ravienne who whispered: "Save me." And so I saved you. I could say so much of what followed, but all that really matters is that I ripped Lord Leshan to shreds, right there in the Hall of the Deathless; I silenced the dissenting nobles with flattery or with force; I made peace with the lycanthropes, ending the Endless Feud. Still, most of the great houses preferred not to think of me at all, choosing to believe that you made me Heartkeeper so that you could reign alone. It never mattered. I, myself, could hardly believe I was your First Consort— not even when I cut the heart from your chest. Sometimes, without warning, the wonder of it still strikes me. Perhaps, a gift like the one you have given me can never truly be 92
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believed, not even when I hold the proof of our union in my arms. Our children were and are beautiful, and they have grown strong and wise and unnaturally patient. You ruled longer than any other, and still our heir only reluctantly accepts the throne. For centuries, I thought you did not step aside because you dreaded the loss of your power or your memory, but now I find, again from your advisor Christobel, that you think my love for you will dry up with your beauty and your blood. Oh, my love, how can you fear this? Is this my own doing, since I have spent centuries upon centuries praising every particle of your flesh? How can you think this when I have sworn to love you more than ever in the years when you are mine alone, away from the eyes of all the night dwellers? How can you think this, when we have been together for so many ages? In the time we spent together, mountains crumbled and seas were born. Gods rose, and were forgotten. And mortals have lived and loved and died, and thrown their jagged cities to the skies, and I have loved you. Beyond time, and death— and hope, have I loved you. So when you are no longer the Queen of Steel and Snow, and when you do not know my face, know this: I have loved you in every body you have worn. Always and always have I loved you. No arms but mine will lift your dry bones from your coffin, no blood but mine shall strengthen you. I cradled you when your body was barely born, and I shall hold you 93
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again when you are withered and broken, knowing only fear and thirst. My heart has been yours from the moment your life began, and so shall it ever be, Ravienne—my heartlight, my soul. [Back to Table of Contents]
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A word about the author... "In 2004, Christine Taylor graduated college with a B.A. in Writing and Literature, but it was not until she discovered an online community of readers and writers that she began writing regularly. She has a supportive husband, one new baby and one old cat." [Back to Table of Contents]
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Thank you for purchasing this Wild Rose Press publication. For other wonderful stories of romance, please visit our on-line bookstore at www.thewildrosepress.com For questions or more information, contact us at
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