42. Vampyr
Chapter forty-two
Vampyr
T he sight of Wren’s blood spilling down his chest slapped me back to reality, and my muscles loosened up enough to pry my thighs apart from where they were pressed together. I almost fell over, but a hand caught my wrist.
“ Vampyr ,” Morgoya whispered in my ear.
Blood-sucking creatures that could only be killed by a wooden stake, depending on the version of mythology being read. I was familiar enough with the different records to understand that Wren was not in danger; he was enjoying the experience of being fed from—and most likely fucked at the same time—and the simmering heat started to blaze through my veins again.
The High Lady began to guide me across the room, back the way I’d come.
I fumbled for my voice, furiously tearing through memories to bring up the name of my mate. “Lucais—”
“He’ll be preoccupied tonight,” she murmured, linking her elbow with mine for support as my steps became clumsy and leaden over the slick floor. “They both will. This is probably not the best event to have you sitting in his lap.”
With Morgoya leading the way, we slipped through the crowd twice as fast as I did by myself, and she steered me towards a couch opposite the dais on the other side of the room. I sank into it, feeling my muscles tense against the soft pillows as if they’d been longing for something else.
“Preoccupied with what?” I dared to ask.
The High Lady adjusted the transparent lace skirts of her black gown before she sat down in a nearby armchair, and I could’ve sworn her eyes darkened with chagrin as she glanced towards the High King. “Business, I suppose,” she muttered. “For the record,” she went on, turning her steely gaze on me, “I told them that this was a terrible idea.”
“Didn’t you arrange it?” I questioned, but as soon as the words were out, I realised that I’d misunderstood her meaning. “Oh. The…girls.”
There were, in fact, multiple of them. I assumed they were all Vampyrs, based on their colourless skin and shadowy hair, and the way they pawed at Wren’s body like seductive predators while two drank from either side of his neck, and the third licked his chest and stomach clean from the spill.
His head was tilted all the way back, giving them complete access, and his arms were loosely draped around their shoulders. I knew the third was licking the spilled blood from his chest, but the way her head was bobbing up and down as she knelt between his legs…
The High Lady slapped her hands down on her thighs, abruptly drawing my attention back to her. “Well, never mind all that. We show Enyd and her Court a good time, and we’ll be better off for it. Can I get you something to drink?”
My mouth was dry and papery. I nodded on instinct, but my hand came out to grab hers as she rose from her seat and turned towards the refreshments table. “Uh, faerie wine?”
Half of my focus was snared on Wren, like a second sight that always found its way to him. My head felt cloudy, but I had a distinct memory of humans losing more than their wits after consuming faerie wine.
I didn’t feel like I had much left to lose, so it seemed important to hold on to whatever was left.
Her mouth pulled up on one side. “I’m assuming you’d like to avoid it?”
“Please.”
The High Lady’s tinkering laughter lingered behind her as she made her way towards the curtained windows, and I resisted the urge to fold my legs beneath myself as I shrank into the couch and fought the desire to look back at Wren with every ounce of strength left in my body.
“It’s quite a crowd,” someone remarked, the piercing voice causing me to jump in my seat.
I looked up to find a tall, wide, large faerie standing in front of me with a warm smile curving the corners of her mouth. The action provoked a set of dimples, and though I knew the High Fae woman had to be decades older than me, I was struck by how adorable and sweet her facial features were.
The rest of her body was the complete opposite. Her figure was bold and proud, with rolls and curves emphasised beneath the silky green garment she wore, exposing freckled skin that appeared to be turquoise beneath the strange lighting.
“My name is Batre,” she said kindly, lowering herself to sit beside me. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I didn’t want to tell Batre that I hadn’t heard a single thing about her, so I offered her an uneasy smile and bowed my head. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She draped her long twin braids over one shoulder and inclined her head towards mine. “Full disclosure. I’m incredibly nosy. Have you felt it yet?”
Rolling my lips between my teeth, I followed her gaze across the room to where Lucais and Wren were lounging upon the dais. The three Vampyrs had disappeared, but the trace of their saliva and Wren’s blood still lingered on his bare chest and open white shirt in uneven lines of smudged darkness. His pants were still around his hips, but I couldn’t tell if his zipper was undone or not. I clenched my jaw, then relaxed it and clenched my fists instead.
“The pull?” Batre prompted. “That creeping, crawling feeling under your skin. Like an extra layer of flesh you can’t shake off.”
“Wren?”
She choked on a gasp of breath. “No, Lucais .” There was a quiet and disbelieving laugh before she whispered, “The mating bond?”
“Oh.” A breath whooshed out of me. My head swam with mortification. Of course she wasn’t talking about Wren. “Is that what it feels like?”
“For most people, I think so.”
I felt her looking at me, so I kept my gaze locked on the man sitting across the room. Sensing my attention, his golden eyes flared as he gazed back.
“No.” I shook my head too hard, too fast, and had to throw a hand out to brace myself against the arm of the couch. “I mean yes. I don’t know.”
Heart beating wildly, I willed the blood in my veins to cool. Wren’s eyes felt like knives pricking against my skin, slicing me to ribbons without drawing a single drop of blood. I glanced towards Lucais, his conversation with the winged faerie concluded, and found that he was studying his glass of wine intently.
He didn’t return my gaze.
Why won’t he return my gaze?
“Batre!” Morgoya exclaimed, picking up her pace as she crossed the room. “Oh, my love. I told you to leave the poor thing alone tonight.”
The stunning woman at my side blushed, visible only because her freckles momentarily vanished, and gave me an apologetic sideways glance. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”
Morgoya grimaced, affection clear in her eyes, but there was something else, too. Almost like guilt. She handed me a glass of clear liquid.
“Water?” I checked, sniffing it.
The High Lady gave me a withering look. “Of course.”
As I sipped the cool, plain liquid and willed it to calm the fire still smouldering in my core, the High Lady settled into Batre’s lap.
“This was not how I envisioned this introduction, but I’d like you to meet my girlfriend,” she told me, nudging Batre’s softly rounded nose with her own.
Batre’s cheeks flushed again, and she nuzzled her head against Morgoya’s chest before turning towards me. “Apologies, I skipped an important part of the getting-to-know-you process.”
“What were you hassling her about?” the High Lady enquired. Her tone was soft, but there was a strain to it that didn’t quite make sense to me.
Batre eyed the dais across the room suggestively, and Morgoya’s throat tightened in response. When she fixed her gaze on me again, there was a question in her eyes.
I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t decipher it.
“Was it like that for you?” I asked instead, shifting in my seat so that my body was facing the couple. “The feeling under your skin?”
To be honest, I didn’t know why I posed the question to them or what I hoped the answer would be. Thin wisps of smoke were beginning to cloud the ceiling, giving the effect of a starry night above us as they danced around the faelight orbs, and I was beginning to worry about the potential effects of secondhand exposure to faerie drugs.
“She gets under my skin,” Batre murmured, linking her fingers with the High Lady. “But…no. We aren’t mates.”
Hurt flashed across Morgoya’s eyes, and I wished that I could take it back. She said they didn’t experience the horrors of humankind. I assumed…
“I’m so sorry—”
Morgoya raised her free hand to stop me. “It’s fine. We’ve made our peace with it. We’re in love, and that’s all that matters.”
Wren made a comment that Morgoya was jealous. He hadn’t meant jealousy of the throne or even of me, but rather that the High King had met his fated mate and Morgoya’s love interest hadn’t triggered the bond.
Absentmindedly, I wondered if Wren had ever met his mate. Or thought about it. For her sake, I hoped he never did.
“Dance with me?” Batre murmured, her sultry voice barely loud enough for me to hear.
Morgoya shot me a glance.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured her. I gestured to the dance floor. “Please.”
Her mouth twisted as if she was considering staying, but she heaved a sigh and climbed off her girlfriend’s lap, leading her by hand towards an empty space left by the portion of the crowd who had gone off to utilise the pipes presently filling the room with smoke.
It was stupid of me to ask her about the mating bond. I knew it was a sensitive subject for High Fae, and though this encounter only prompted more questions, I made a mental note never to pry like that again.
Curled up with my hand cushioning my head as I rested it on the side of the couch, I watched the two beautiful women dancing together until the moment became too private for me to witness.
Looking away from them only made me search for Lucais again, and the slimy pit of melting ice in my stomach hardened when I found that he still hadn’t noticed me.
The creeping, crawling feeling.
Like a second layer of flesh you can’t shake.
Evidently, it was not like that for Lucais. If I was truthful, I didn’t feel that way about him, either. But I didn’t want to be truthful because that opened up far too many questions, and each one of them left the gaping wound in my chest a little bigger.
When he and I were together, I felt like I was home, but when we were apart, I felt…perfectly fine.
Morgoya and Batre had a natural, easy sort of affection for one another. It was obvious to anyone who saw them together. Somehow, the absence of the mating bond only made it seem all the more raw and genuine. Like Micael and Livia.
My eyes, High Mother take them from me, drifted back towards Wren.
He was still sitting on the dais with Lucais, and a dark-haired High Fae woman was perched between them. There was nothing suggestive about the position of his arm resting on the couch behind her, or the way she inclined her head towards him to allow him to speak into her ear over the noise.
Still, I felt the flutter of rage building up. Hot enough to melt the ice, and wild enough to make me wonder where the hell it had come from.
Wren was under my skin.
He was the feeling I couldn’t shake. The smell of home, the sense of familiarity that ran so deep that I couldn’t even begin to explain where it had started.
“No.” I said the word out loud to force myself to acknowledge it.
Wren was nothing. He was nothing.
He was arrogant and rude, and above all else, he was cruel. His apologies were worthless, and he undid every kindness he ever displayed by following it with something unforgivable. He hated me and wished that I had never been born and he…
And he was looking right at me again.
I cursed myself under my breath and glanced away. In the heat of the moment, and under the influence of whatever was coming from those pipes, I had no idea what feelings my face betrayed. But he saw something, and now it was too late.
Hastily ending his conversation with the dark-haired woman and the High King, Wren rose to his feet and descended the few steps of the dais. My heart thudded in my chest, forcing the blood to rush through my veins three times faster than normal, and I began to feel a little lightheaded as the crowd of dancers parted for him like they found his presence repugnant.
There was no repulsion on their faces as they bowed their heads to him, though.
There was only respect—and maybe a twinge of admiration, too.
For their High King’s closest friend and most trusted advisor.
For the High Fae brute who had come into my life like a wrecking ball, and who was prowling towards me with a dangerous look in his golden eyes.
I sat up straight, steadying myself with my hands flat against the couch.
Wren was a figure of nightmares and dreams bleeding into one another as he approached me, his broad shoulders blocking out most of the room as he came to a stop with the toes of his shoes touching mine. A smirk twisted his mouth, his eyes foggy from indulging in the pleasure of Vampyrs, and no doubt a few glasses of faerie wine.
“Are you bored, my love?” he drawled.
Words. Words escaped me.
I had nothing to offer back as he bent down until his face was directly in front of mine. No sound came out of my mouth. Not even a squeak when his breath caressed my face, a heady sweetness that reeked of magic and madness.
Words.
Aura, say something.
I couldn’t.
So, I stood up instead. It was one form of language that I could master, at least. Moving my body. Taking back some of the personal space that his enormous figure and devastatingly handsome face was crowding.
Wren moved with me, keeping the same painstaking distance between us as I straightened my spine and looked directly up at him and into those eyes of wildfire and pure gold.
Say something.
“I am so sick of seeing your face,” I whispered.
The fire in his eyes flashed without a trace of anger. He spoke to me through his perfect, razor-sharp teeth. “So why don’t you ever stop looking at it?”
Saliva pooled in my mouth, thickening in the back of my throat, but I refused to swallow it down in one gulp. I held his gaze as I lifted a hand and stroked my fingertips along his jaw, ignoring the shudder that prickled along my spine at the sensation of his bare skin, and pressed my thumb and forefinger down on either side of his mouth.
And then I pointedly turned his face away from mine.
There was little resistance. His head twisted to the side, his gaze bouncing between the ceiling and the floor as he swiped his tongue along his bottom lip and a breathless chuckle rumbled through him.
Wren tilted his head, giving me a sidelong look, and shook his head. “Spiteful little beast.”
My pulse jumped. “ Bite me.”
He pulled his lips back, flashing his flesh-shredding canines at me before he bent his head to my ear. I stiffened at his proximity, heart racing a hundred miles a minute, and had to clamp my teeth down on my lower lip to keep in the sound that threatened to escape as one of those canines grazed the edge of my ear.
“Don’t tempt me,” he purred, the faint whisper of his breath threatening to knock me over. “I can hear your heartbeat like it’s legato, and I’d love to make it staccato.”
Oh, fuck. High Mother, spare me .
He was drunk, and I was…
I didn’t know what I was, except for being grateful that my long sleeves concealed the way my skin prickled and the light dimmed the fire warming the skin from my hairline to my chest.
Wren leaned away with perfect balance and made a point of averting his eyes from my face. With a theatrical bow, he turned on his heels and strode back through the path of faeries who were watching the exchange with enlarged eyes and open mouths.
The dread sank in, like a leaden weight crashing to the bottom of my stomach, as some of those eyes remained glued to my face as Wren made his way back to the dais.
My vision went slightly blurry.
They were staring at me.
They had been staring at us.
The whole time.
An entire room filled with faeries had witnessed the exchange, and it would have appeared far too intimate for the High King’s Hand and his mate. The way I stood up and aligned my body with his, and the way he bent his head to mine and nipped at my ear…
Morgoya’s green, catlike eyes were filled with fear when I found her standing to the side of the dance floor. Batre had a hand over her mouth.
Wren was oblivious. He didn’t care.
He fell back into his seat and made a gesture for the room to continue as it had been, prompting most of the faeries to start moving again. I stood there and took their glances like arrows to the chest for a moment longer before I looked up at the High King.
Lucais was staring into his empty glass, his knuckles as white as death as he gripped it.
It was the dark-haired woman between them who caught my attention, though. Her head was angled to the side, a strip of grey fabric tied around her forehead, and her dark eyes were deep and full of contemplation as she examined me.
Enyd. High Lady of the Court of Wind. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
The words came into my head like a thought, but in a voice that was not my own.
Don’t panic, Aura. There’s no time to explain, but as you seem to be the only person from your Court with whom I can communicate like this, I need you to share this message with your mate.
I blinked at the woman across the room, then flicked my gaze to Lucais. He was studiously ignoring me, and it made me want to scream at him.
Your mate, Enyd repeated in my mind.
Glancing at Wren, I pressed the back of my knees into the couch to steady myself and swallowed the hard lump in my throat before my eyes fell back on the High Lady of the Court of Wind. He was watching me out of the corner of his eyes, fist curled around the edge of his seat, and it brought me the strangest sense of comfort to know that at least I wasn’t being totally ignored by both of them at the same time.
Two of my sentries are dead. They were stationed on the outskirts of Lucais’s ward as a precaution—
The voice in my head became choked, then abruptly broke off. My eyes widened, my body swaying back towards the couch as I tried to capture Enyd’s gaze once more. Pain flared in her eyes, visible even at a distance.
Three are dead, she corrected with a wince. Two are on their way to the House right now.
The next thought was my own. Caenim.
A small army, she agreed. Led by a Malum General.
The breath disappeared from my lungs. I didn’t exhale; it just vanished. Looking towards Lucais again, I tried to let the fear curling in my gut show in my eyes. I couldn’t communicate via thoughts, even if I wanted to. I was very good at reading body language, but that was useless when he refused to look at me.
By the time I gave up and returned Wren’s piercing stare instead, it was too late.
The warning rang out in my head, in the voice that Enyd had used to infiltrate my mind somehow—
Get down!
I ducked against the couch as the double doors behind me burst open, and shards of wood splintered across the room.
Light flared around me, white-gold and glowing ferociously, enveloping me in a bubble like a shield.
Lucais .
The shards of wood and pieces of metal missed me entirely, but one of them speared straight into the heart of the first Vampyr girl, and it was Wren’s blood that poured out of her as she collapsed on the ground.