“I don’t like this,” he murmured. “You’re so strong. A fuckin’ warrior, at that. You don’t know it, and you’ll never admit it, but you’re a rose. Beautiful and precious. See, it’s your job to be the warrior you’re born to be, but it’s mine to protect that rose. That’s why I’m not planning on leaving your side until we can get this curse lifted. Likely not after that, either.”
His soft yet hard voice, plus the words, should’ve sent warmth shooting up my spine. Instead it brought forth the chill already lingering.
His rose.
I yanked myself from his touch with a ferocity that surprised even me. “No, it’s not your job to protect a vampire, Thorne. Your job is to kill them, remember? A witch has already done half the job for you,” I hissed. “Instead of promising vengeance on her, why don’t you thank her?”
And I left.
Or more precisely, I ran. Me. Ran. I never ran from a fight. Never.
Ghosts, on the other hand, I ran from. Especially when they brought forth the reminder of who the truly delicate one in this arrangement was.
He found me not two hours later. Just as the sun was setting, its farewell peeking through the glistening skyscrapers. I leaned against the balcony, sipping my fourth whiskey and reveling in the slight buzz that came with it. There might have been a lot of downsides to this little curse, but at least I could get drunk easier.
Silver linings, people.
So maybe the slight inebriation was what had me spilling the bloodbath that was my history and my birth into immortality.
“My earliest memory is of screaming,” I whispered. “Of a woman’s scream. It wasn’t exactly loud, or at least not how I remember. It was something worse than that. Raw and so full of desperation, like her very soul was clawing out her throat, searching for escape from her body.” I glanced out at the horizon. “I’m curious, so I went looking. I knew it was a bad sound but I wasn’t old enough to understand everything about it. When I saw her, I discovered how much blood the human body had. What the body could survive.” I paused. “What doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger. The human who coined that ridiculous phrase obviously hadn’t met a member of the Rominskitoff family. What doesn’t kill you damages your soul beyond repair, so to this day I question whether there was anything left inside that woman to die when her heart stopped beating. She’d died—her truest soul, at least. It’d been ripped, torn, cut, brutalized and murdered long before her lungs took her last breath.”
I traced Thorne’s still jaw with my eyes. “I was four,” I told him. “And despite what you might think, I wasn’t born with the ability to stomach that kind of cruelty. Just like any other creature in the universe, I was born with a purity of ignorance, naivety. Nature versus nurture is a true concept. We may have been designed with the ability to be the cruelest of them all, but I think that one doesn’t need fangs or immortality for that. No, cruelty is learned, nurtured. And I witnessed the evil that had blossomed in my brothers. That my family would try to water with screams like that one. Something pivotal in me rebelled, revolted against it. In my naïve and pure mind, I urged those empty eyes to give me whatever soul was left, for me to take care of.” I met his eyes. “That’s what kept me from truly becoming… whatever I was destined to become. I won’t say I didn’t become ‘evil’ because I don’t think anyone in the world is pure enough to say that, least of all me. But I didn’t cause such irreparable damage to any living creature… until….”
Thorne stepped forward as if he sensed the way the words lodged in my throat, that they were scraping at my insides. I held my hand up to stop him. He did so, folding his arms so the muscles in his forearms flexed, his face hard.
“I was a rebellious child, but not in the contemporary understanding of the word. I’m under the impression ‘rebellious children’ cause mischief and general misdeeds. I revolted against that. I made friends with the humans in the village I grew up in. It was hard, considering their parents’ fear of my family.” I took a sip. “They knew what we were, you see. In the old days, when everything was simpler and there were no power switches or ages of reason to chase away the monsters, people accepted it. Feared us, surely. The village had a taste to it, that fear. No plants would grow, though the unyielding Russian landscapes could explain that, I think it was the toxic emotion.”
He stepped closer to me yet seemed to sense that distance was pivotal.
“Children don’t accommodate fear like adults do,” I continued. “They feel it, sure, but it doesn’t take root the same. It can be chased away until age makes it an immovable force. So I made friends. I grew up with cruelty and yet I kept it at bay by nurturing that little piece of that nameless woman’s soul. I let hatred for them, my wretched family, fester until I was in my early twenties. Most likely years away from my change, which meant my parents assumed humanity was temporary. I didn’t know whether they expected me to run, or if they even cared, but I did. I didn’t go as far as I’d planned. Everything was new to me, you see? I was sequestered in that castle for years, too vulnerable in my human state to be around my family’s enemies, of which we had many. Well, apart from Mortimeus, but I didn’t think that really counted. I was the freak there too, though my classmates were never bold enough to openly comment on that. Not when I was of the ancient Vein Lines.” I met Thorne’s eyes. “I planned to lose myself in the throngs of humans who were so very foreign to me. It was like an alien planet, but I liked it. Loved it.”
“He was the first one I’d recognized a soul in.” I laughed coldly. “Or I thought perhaps he recognized one in me.”
The memories that came with speaking of such times were replaced by fresher ones, though unlike their dated counterparts, they were murky, frayed around the edges. In my experience, time didn’t dim memories; no, it made them starker. I could describe the last rose on the bodice of my dress, and the curl to Jonathan’s mustache, along with the canapés served at the party where we met.
“He called me a rose,” I choked out. “His white rose. “What he didn’t see was that I couldn’t be something so pure. Or maybe I could. If only so you could see the blood that much better when it spilled. And it spilled all over that stark and simple life I’d created in a dream of stupidity and fantasy. Under the haze of that deadly mix of chemicals you humans call love. It’s ironic, really, that that’s what you all live for, strive for. When, more often than not, that’s what you die for.” I paused. “Well, it’s what I died for, at least. One week into a marriage that had me convinced the first twenty years of my life were merely a dream. Can you imagine the stupidity of youth? The horrors tattooed on my soul were easily forgotten under the blindness of love. Or what I thought was love,” I corrected. “I forgot that vampires existed, or that I was one of them. Hang around monsters for long enough, you can convince yourself you are one. Hang around humans, you forget that monsters exist, which is dangerous in itself because they never stopped existing, just stared back at you in the mirror, hiding in plain sight.”
I laughed again. “I remembered, though. When my pretty dress and my pretty life were stained with the blood of almost everyone I’d ever met. The floor was scattered with them. A child I’d played with at a party. His baby brother whose cheek I’d pinched with an empty womb and a fool’s hope.” I flinched. “And him. Jonathan. My husband.” I glanced up at Thorne. “You can die of a broken heart, you know. Because when a vampire grows into itself, the human part of us, it has to die. It’s nature. Our genetic makeup. I died that day. Of a broken heart. And unlike all other wounds, even immortality couldn’t fix that.”
We were silent for a long time after that. To be fair, I’d hit him with an emotional freight train.
I was captured by his gaze
He slowly unfolded his arms. “You didn’t tell me.”
Not a question. Just a statement.
I searched those eyes, feeling an overwhelming urge to escape the conversation, to escape my own head. Problem was, I could run from real-life de
mons, but I couldn’t outrun the ones residing in my soul, hiding in the shadows.
His eyes offered a promise that I wouldn’t face them alone. And for once, I didn’t want to.
“I didn’t tell you because, if you haven’t noticed, this—us—hasn’t really accommodated time for us to talk about things other than otherworldly wars and the general bad idea of us being together. I bet you don’t even know what star sign I am.”
He quirked his brow.
“Scorpio, by the way,” I muttered.
He didn’t say anything, just waited. Funny, I was the one with eternity but he had more patience than me, acting as if every second wasn’t sand in the hourglass of his death.
Or mine, as the case may be.
Then he surged forward, every inch of his body swallowing mine.
“I couldn’t do it,” I whispered. “See you taken away from me as a result of what I am. I can’t have you fighting my battles, Thorne, because if you fail it’s because of me. I’m at peace with the fact that I may die myself, I can live with my every increasingly mortality. But I can’t live with that. I won’t survive that.”
He cupped my face. “I already go to battle for you,” he growled. “Every day is a battle against these vampires who want your head, the rest of the supernatural community who are either scorned lovers or murderous rebels, my own kind who’ll kill you the second they learn about us.” He yanked me to him, squeezing my ass and sending ripples of pleasure up my spine. “And you,” he murmured. “You’re the greatest battle of all, and I’m counting myself as the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet to be able to fight for you. Which I will. Every day. Always. And I’ll be right by your side when we wipe your family off the face of this earth. I’ll fuckin’ bathe in their blood for what they did to you,” he seethed.
I searched his face and smiled at his ferocity. “We’re so meant to be together,” I said.
His eyes silenced my smile. “Yes, baby, we are. And I’m gonna make sure we stay that way. Forever.”
He meant it. That promise.
The problem was—to humans, at least—forever was drenched in ambiguity.
Forever was sixty years, maybe six hundred. Or maybe six hours.
SPENDING YET ANOTHER EVENING AT the king’s compound, which had been newly fireproofed, was not how I wanted to round off this day. I’d been at the office doing my day job since six and had been up all night with Thorne. After laying my bloody history down at my feet, I had two options to stave off the grave: battle or sex. It wasn’t a choice when I was around Thorne, though it did tire my ever-weakening body.
Not that I was complaining.
And not that I’d told him. He even toyed with the idea of following me to work, as if I’d accidently slit my wrists on a paper cutter or something.
Luckily he had other things to do, since we were hitting Extermius later to follow a lead Dante had given us.
But Rick had called to say he was back from Europe and I’d been summoned.
I didn’t know why. Two months had passed with zilch. No new info and no leads, much to my chagrin. And I doubted he wanted to see me to give me a snow globe he’d picked up in Prague.
Nor hear about how two months with Thorne had attached him to every part of my being.
Whatever.
Thorne would not have been happy about me doing anything remotely dangerous in my newly fragile condition. Which was precisely why I didn’t tell him. That and I hadn’t heard from him all day.
I was fine. A death spell making me as weak as a mortal was not going to stop me from living my life.
And hopefully not my death.
Sophie was scouring through every text she could on those witch bitches to find a loophole that didn’t include me drinking the blood of a slayer. Not a cure when the blood of a slayer was fatal.
Rock, hard place.
After going through the new and slightly invasive security procedures I would’ve enjoyed had it been my slayer boyfriend doing it and not an angular-faced mute vampire, I waltzed through the hallways.
Ice prickled up my skin at the pure stillness of it all. The silence. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to turn on my red-soled heel and run.
But I didn’t run.
So I continued, ignoring the ice until something replaced it. Something that made dread a knife in my heart.
I knew what was behind the ornate doors a human servant opened before my hand had grasped the knob.
The roar permeated my ears and his presence whipped through me like liquid electricity.
Seeing him trussed up in front of a room full of vampires, one eye swollen shut and what I immediately deduced was a fatal wound in his torso, cut me open. Drawn and quartered with that single image, without a blade, without blood, the pain rivaled anything a weapon could cause. Every single fiber of my being screamed with agony as the vision of him tore through me. As his pain-filled eyes flared at the sight of me.
At what was in them.
Love was what brought the pain.
Fear was what almost brought me to my knees. Because even from that single glance, I knew. That fear wasn’t for his death, coming quick and fast like a thunderstorm in a Texan summer.
No, it was for me.
And that utter selfless devotion for the creature he loved, the creature that brought about his destruction, made every measured step I made towards the king standing in front of my slayer the most pain I’d ever experienced in half a millennium.
One look was more excruciating than four hundred years of pain. It even swallowed that afternoon in Paris when I was young and naïve.
Because I wasn’t young or naïve anymore. And I was deeper than I had been then, despite my intentions to act shallow. He’d filled me up, every crevice, to the brim. And now there he was, full of holes draining the only thing in my deathless existence that mattered to me.
His life.
“Rick, I like what you’ve done with the place,” I remarked casually, glancing around. “Is it new carpet?” I clicked my fingers as if in realization. “No, the trussed-up slayer. Adds to the ambience of the room. Bravo to your new decorator.”
It took every ounce of my self-control to keep my tone light and sarcastic, eyes glued to the king’s and not rip his throat out.
I walked slowly through the room, scanning the people there for the face of my betrayer.
My mother’s satisfied glint met mine. I grinned at her through the knives in my belly. I would not give her the gift of seeing my heartbreak.
I straightened my shoulders and met Rick’s eyes before zeroing in on a small rosebud of blood on his stark white cuff.
Try as I might, I couldn’t tear myself away from the small stain. Thorne’s blood.
The icy monarch who I’d grown deceptively fond of was now above dear old Ma on my kill list.
It had been seconds, too long to be staring at a cuff, but not long enough to pull myself together. I did, though. And somehow didn’t look in the direction of the vibrating pound. I met emerald eyes that glittered with their sheer coldness. Lack of emotion. Of any form of humanity.
“Not that I don’t love a good slayer execution, but don’t we have bigger fish to fry?” I glanced to the small crowd. “And I’m sure these fine families have much better things to do than this.”
He stayed silent as he measured my words. I knew at that moment that he knew.
That our presence was not a happy accident.
It was a sentence. For both of us.
I had nothing to lose.
Without hesitation, I darted past the king, one destination in mind.
Two guards slowed me down but I snapped their necks, my eyes on Thorne’s.
His steely gaze no doubt only followed a blur, but there was no mistaking his roar when my right femur snapped, bringing me painfully to my knees where a burning copper blade rested against my neck.
I struggled, which only sent steaming blood trickling down my chest.
Th
orne’s roar intensified as his struggles mirrored my own, even without his injuries healing like mine. Though my own process was slow. Maybe nonexistent. I couldn’t feel the pain amidst the agony of knowing Thorne was right there, dying, and I could do nothing.
“Not in my years as king have I been as surprised and disappointed as I am now,” Rick purred in my ear, his voice liquid death.
The knife pressed deeper into my neck, sinking through my flesh like butter. I failed to grant him the satisfaction of the scream I yearned to release.
“You would do well not to struggle unless you want your slayer to watch me slice off your head.” He glanced up at the man whose shouts turned into unintelligible grunts as his exertion drained the life from him.
“My plans for tonight did not include killing, Isla,” Rick continued, addressing Thorne. “If you stop that incessant struggling, maybe we’ll keep to those plans.”
Thorne stopped immediately.
The silence and the depth of that simple gesture temporarily sucked the air out of the cavernous room.
Then Rick yanked me up. I let out a hiss through my teeth as the bone rebroke that was in the process of healing. Cool blood mingled with white-hot pain when the bone tore through the skin of my leg. It radiated continually with every step.
We were on a makeshift stage, Thorne trussed up on a T-shaped structure, his arms chained on either side of him at shoulder height. I wondered how long Rick had been torturing him, drawing his blood in front of the bloodthirsty crowd.
Thorne’s fury choked me. His fear filtered through my veins like acid, his love shredding my insides.
Rick paid no notice, keeping the blade to my throat as he yanked me towards a set of restraints similar to Thorne’s. Though these were copper and significantly more reinforced.
I continued my struggle the moment realization hit. Letting myself be put in those meant my death. And, more importantly, Thorne’s.
No way was I giving up that easily.
I wasn’t a quitter.
Gritting my teeth against the pain in my leg, I whipped my head back, cracking it on Rick’s, which made him relax his grasp enough for me to dart away. I came close enough to Thorne to smell the bitterness of his death combined with the sweetness of his blood. Small cuts peppered his muscled body, the veins flexing with the exertion from fighting.