Chapter 22
The library lay along the corridor leading back toward the eastern guest suite, and Dax paused beside its heavy wooden door before they passed it.
“You wanted to understand the house,” he said. “This is one of the few rooms worth understanding.”
Veya glanced at him.
“Are the others not worth understanding?”
“Most of them contain weapons, arguments, or Rhen.”
“That sounds like the same category three times.”
Dax’s smile appeared quickly and vanished as he pushed open the door.
The hinges complained with a slow, arthritic creak that suggested they had carried centuries of secrets and disapproved of surrendering any more.
Warmth and the scent of age moved into the corridor together, carrying paper dust, smoke, wax, and something darker beneath them, like ink that had bled permanently into stone.
Veya followed Dax inside, drawn after him like tidewater answering moonlight, although the ease of that choice unsettled her.
The library seemed to close around her as soon as she crossed the threshold.
It rose two stories high, with shadowed balconies wrapping each wall in a continuous ring of books and wrought iron.
Ladders followed rails along the shelves like veins crossing an ancient body, while velvet curtains hung half drawn across tall windows, their weight muffling the world beyond the glass.
The shelves appeared almost black in the firelight, as though they had been carved, polished, and fed by time rather than merely stained.
Thousands of leather-bound volumes watched from above, their titles pressed in gold, with some secured beneath iron clasps as though the words inside might become dangerous if released without care.
The fireplace held Veya’s attention longest.
It occupied most of the far wall and burned with unapologetic force, wide enough to consume entire logs without effort.
Flames climbed around iron andirons shaped like the paws of wolves, their talons planted in the ash as though the hearth itself possessed predatory intent.
Heat rolled across the stone floor and enclosed the cavernous room, transforming it from a library into something closer to a den.
Dax crossed to the wall and used a flint to light two sconces. The first spark caught, flared, and settled into steady flame, painting bronze along the planes of his face as he turned toward her.
Veya had become far too aware of him during the walk back from the garden. She remembered the steadiness of his hand when he helped her stand, the ease with which he made her laugh, and the fact that he had released her the moment she no longer needed his support.
She disliked how readily her attention found him again.
“Leena used to sit here most evenings,” Dax said, indicating the chaise angled toward the hearth. “She would read whatever terrible paperback she had found and ignore the rest of us.”
A faint smile touched Veya’s mouth.
“You say that as though the rest of you were easy to ignore.”
“She was exceptionally talented.”
Veya lowered herself onto the chaise. The heat wrapped around her shoulders and seeped into the persistent ache in her newly transformed limbs. Although she no longer needed air, the warmth gave her the illusion that she could breathe more freely.
Dax remained near the hearth, watching the fire rather than her, but his awareness never entirely left the chaise. He had told himself that bringing her to the library was merely another way to stop the walls from closing around her.
He no longer entirely believed that explanation.
Veya’s hand moved suddenly to her abdomen.
At first, the sensation resembled a muscle tightening too deeply beneath the skin, but it rapidly became something sharper, coiling through her body where no ordinary pain belonged.
“Dax?”
The change in her voice pulled him around immediately.
Veya pressed her palm harder against her stomach as sweat gathered across her brow. Heat moved beneath her skin in invasive pulses, traveling through her veins as though her blood had become fire.
Dax reached the chaise before she folded forward. He dropped beside her and placed one steadying hand against her shoulder without forcing her upright.
“Veya, look at me.”
“I don’t know what—”
Pain severed the sentence.
Her abdomen locked, and a broken sound escaped as she doubled over. Dax caught her before she slid from the chaise, his hand moving from her shoulder to the back of her upper arm.
Her skin burned beneath his fingers.
The stored blood had fed her. Dax had watched the hunger recede and her control return, which meant this was something different.
The fresh maker tether was pulling.
Veya twisted as another wave moved through her. Her fingers dug into the upholstery, and her spine arched beneath a force she could neither understand nor resist. Her fangs descended without warning, pressing against her lower lip as her eyes lost focus.
Dax withdrew his phone and called Rhen.
“Answer,” he muttered while the line rang.
The connection opened.
“Get to the library now.”
Rhen responded with something brief and irritated.
Dax’s expression hardened.
“No, not later. She is burning from the inside, and stored blood is doing nothing. You know what this is.”
The silence on the other end lasted too long.
Dax’s voice became dangerously calm.
“I do not care how you feel about her. She is tethered to you, and your blood created the connection. If she tears herself apart on Leena’s antique rug while you stand somewhere pretending this is not your responsibility, that will be on you.”
Rhen answered sharply.
Dax ended the call before the argument could continue.
Veya’s trembling had become violent enough to shake the chaise. Sweat dampened her hair and ran along her throat, while her eyes remained unfocused beneath the hunger she could no longer conceal.
Dax crouched beside her again, staying close enough to catch her without closing the limited space around her.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Rhen is coming.”
She barely heard him.
Her body no longer seemed to belong to her. Everything inside it reached toward Rhen’s blood and the violent gravity of the tether, even while her mind recoiled from the demand.
She did not want Rhen.
She did not want anything inside her to need him.
The tether remained indifferent to both truths.
The library door opened hard enough to strike the wall.
Rhen entered with his coat moving behind him and his expression stripped of anything Veya could read. His silver eyes absorbed the room in one sweep, taking in the fire, the chaise, and the way she had folded around the pain.
Dax rose.
“Now.”
Rhen crossed the library in three strides and lowered himself beside the chaise. His face displayed neither sympathy nor warmth, only the brutal focus he brought to anything he had decided must be controlled.
“Look at me.”
Veya tried, but another spasm tore through her before she could obey.
Rhen caught the back of her neck only when the movement threatened to throw her from the chaise. He steadied her without drawing her closer.
Then he pushed back his sleeve and sank his fangs into his own wrist.
The skin opened immediately.
The scent of his blood moved through the library, rich and dark enough to cut through smoke, wax, and old paper.
Veya recoiled.
Rhen held his wrist near her mouth without forcing it against her.
“Drink.”
Tears gathered in her eyes.
“No.”
“You can refuse me when your body stops destroying itself.”
“I don’t want—”
“I know.”
The answer was quiet and entirely without comfort.
Rhen’s blood touched her lower lip when another tremor forced her forward.
Her body reacted before her mind could intervene.
Both hands closed around his wrist, and she drank with a desperation that humiliated her even as relief began moving through her. The fire inside her veins changed shape, gradually losing its violent edge as Rhen’s blood steadied whatever the tether had torn open.
Dax remained close, watching Veya rather than Rhen.
He saw the pain recede from her face and the convulsions diminish, but he also saw the fury in her tears.
She was surviving again because her body had made another choice without her permission.
That knowledge would matter when the immediate danger passed.