Chapter 20
Twenty
“Stay sharp, princess,” Silt told the vampire as they followed the scent trail toward what might be their salvation. His balls still ached so badly they pained him with each step.
“I don’t detect any threats so far,” she said in an absent tone. After their cataclysmic kiss, the vampire wouldn’t meet his eyes, her gaze bouncing everywhere but in his direction.
At least the earlier flicker of despair in her expression had vanished. The dauntless princess was back, and he sensed here to stay.
The area around the waterfall ascended to another range they would have to cross. They pushed on, ever upward through a rocky corridor. Though immortals like them could scale heights with ease, seamless marble made up the rock face on either side of this passage, too slick for climbing. Dense fog obscured even the vampire’s vision.
Their damp clothes were in tatters, they’d lost their weapons, and their surroundings were grim. Still, Silt’s injuries had almost healed, and food beckoned them.
Also on the plus side: they were alive.
As she’d pointed out, he’d kept his head and saved their lives. Maybe he was starting to get an idea of who he was. Based on his performance against that basilisk and the water, this drugged-out sorcerer might be a godsdamned death defier.
Now if only he could stop replaying the vampire’s kiss. He’d almost come while clothesfucking her on the ground! The pleasure he’d felt with her had been like distilling into one act all the sex he’d ever had.
Then magnifying it.
A volcano on the sun produced less heat.
This hedonist wanted more. Now that drugs no longer sandbagged him, he coveted her as much as opium. Did she feel the same about him? He thought he could’ve made her orgasm beneath him.
“This might be a dead end.” She squinted against the fog.
He had to clear his throat to say, “We’ll just have to follow it and see.”
“You promised me information. What do you know about the plague?”
A promise was a promise. Except when it isn’t. “You’re infected with a sickness that wiped out female vampires—if the Horde didn’t destroy them first.”
This didn’t seem to surprise her. “Why would they murder their own?”
“Rumors were legion, but I saw some cases firsthand. Once the plague takes hold, you’ll want only to kill, gorging on blood, worse than any red-eyed male. The Horde couldn’t control those rabid females, so they were eliminated. If a female got loose among humans, the Gaolers would capture her to be quarantined here.”
“You’ve told me nothing I didn’t already know or suspect. Have you heard of a cure?”
“I haven’t. Not in all my years.” Silt had planned to demoralize the princess; so why did the stoic acceptance in her eyes make him need to smash something? “Doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Besides, if you’re bent on using Dorada’s wishgiver, I wager that would work on the plague.”
“You made logical points about the ring. Perhaps I wouldn’t sign over my life to her.”
Then perhaps you’re going to lose that clever mind of yours. And all of this was a moot point anyway if they couldn’t escape.
Staring straight ahead, she said, “I thought you would have more information about my situation.”
“Maybe I do. How did you get clawed?”
“I lost focus and my concealment for only a few moments, yet it was enough for a Horde vampire to seize my arm. We fought, and he sliced my skin.”
“How much time passed between that wound and the Gaolers coming for you?”
“I roamed New Orleans for mere hours before they appeared.”
“Hours, was it?” He had a suspicion.
She finally faced him. “Yes, so?”
“I’ll tell you more if you answer some questions.”
“Pose them, and we’ll see.”
“What’s Dacia like?” He’d never met someone who hailed from a “mythical” kingdom.
She hesitated, and he could all but see her calculating the risks versus benefits of answering him. At length she said, “Our realm is located in a hollowed-out mountain range with a breathtaking black-stone castle in the center. At the top of the highest mountain is a diamond as big as a cottage that allows in filtered sunlight, so we have days of a sort.” She slid him an unreadable look as she added, “Sometimes we even see a hint of moonlight.” Then her gaze went distant. “Mist is constant, blanketing the cobblestone streets. Blood fountains bubble, feeding the populace. The kingdom is known as the Realm of Blood and Mist for a reason. My brother and I are all that’s left of the House of Castellan, the castle guard. We’re considered the heart of Dacia, tasked with caring for all those within its walls.”
“What was your life as a princess like?”
He didn’t expect her to answer that question, but she surprised him: “I appreciated what I had, but I often felt smothered. Mirceo and my uncles don’t see eye to eye over much, but they all agreed I should be protected. Which meant sheltered.”
Not sheltered enough. You’re in hell—with me , forgodsakes. Silt the Befouler.
“Sometimes . . . it was as if I moldered in a grave, slowly dying. Though I understood the risks to me away from the kingdom, I burned to dig my way out to freedom. To never look back.”
You dug straight into a plague-ridden prison sentence. “And here you are.” Fucked as fucked can be.
She nodded. “Yes. On an adventure like no other.”
Heh. “You said your parents died. What happened to them?”
“They were murdered—my father before I arrived, and my mother when I was three. Mirceo was just fifteen.”
Silt cast his mind back to when he’d been the same age. He’d already been pledged to revenge for years by that time. “Who did it?”
“My uncle Stelian’s father. He was then secretly murdered by another family member, most likely one of my other uncles. We might never know by whom. It’s all a snarl of royal intrigues and backbiting,” she said with a dismissive wave, again as if Silt couldn’t keep up with such lofty matters. “The generations who came before mine nearly destroyed an entire family through grudges, and we were expected to inherit our line’s vendetta, to punish Stelian and more. But Mirceo and I reject that. We’ve declined that inheritance forever.”
Silt stared at her in bafflement. She was breaking the chain of pain? Ignoring vendettas? “You don’t want to avenge your parents?”
“Mirceo told me that while they were loving to us, they were just as eager as the rest of the royals to deal death for power. Which meant other relatives might have inherited their own vendettas—against us. When Mirceo took over as my guardian, he was also my protector, always looking over his shoulder for danger. I’m more a daughter than a sister to him.”
Then pain was heading Mirceo’s way, regardless of Silt’s moves. “I can’t square the idea of your brother as some selfless protector.” The vampire had seemed apologetic during Silt’s handoff to the Gaolers, as if he’d had found a kindred spirit whom he’d been forced to screw over. No hard feelings. “He struck me as more of a hedonist.”
“Once the danger lessened and he was assured of my safety, he partook of all the delights denied a young man.”
“So you don’t mind dissolution in general. Just when I do it.”
“I believe there’s a difference between indulging because of desire or because of necessity. The trick is knowing which is which.”
And not indulging in something that would readily own you body and soul. As the thought occurred, he met this female’s gaze. She peered up at him with her blond brows drawn, and a charge passed between them, like lightning.
Silt was reminded of when bolts struck sand and birthed glass. He felt equally electrified and brittle.
Breaking the moment, she said, “I’ve answered your questions. Now tell me what you were going to say earlier. Why did you find it interesting that only hours passed before I was captured?”
“Because the Gaolers don’t work that fast. Someone informed on you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have an enemy with both foresight and the ear of the Gaolers. Do you know any oracles?”
“Yes, I’m close friends with one. But Balery is steadfastly loyal.”
“Might want to rethink that.”
She frowned. “My uncle Lothaire entertains a friendship of sorts with N?x the Ever-Knowing.”
“The most powerful soothsayer in all the worlds? You’re caught up in her web, and you don’t even know it.”
“Then my brother is too—if not my entire kingdom.” With a firm nod, Kosmina said, “I have much work to do and must return as soon as possible.”
Moments later, Silt caught her gaze trailing over a loose rock beside their path. “Sand almighty, how many times have you tried to off me?”
She shrugged. “One too few. Logic dictates that I take you down before Mirceo arrives or before I succumb to another of Nightside’s threats.”
“True. If he somehow breaches this realm, his odds of survival would make even yours look good.”
“Now, if only something could make your control of sand look good.”
“I’ll get it back, princess, then show you control as you’ve never seen.”
She feigned a yawn. “If I use Dorada’s ring, my second wish should be for you to enjoy all the cruelty you’ve ever delivered.”
He enjoyed verbally sparring with her, found it a refreshing change from her braining him. “Why not wish for what you really want? More of my kiss. Of course, you don’t need the ring for that. I can grant all your fantasies. I’ll do it right now.”
“How can you desire someone you want to hurt?” Judging by her expression, she wrestled with this question herself. “And someone who regrets kissing you in the first place?”
Her disdain rankled, reminding him of when highborn Sorceri females had shared his bed then refused to acknowledge him, an Inferi, in public. And they’d been better than the ones who’d simply demanded his presence in their bedchambers. Those females hadn’t even treated him like a man, more like an animal.
Memories harshened his tone. “Desire you? I just need to get off. Before you flatter yourself, know that I’ll sleep with anything, and you’re the only quarry in this realm for all I know. You’re not preferred , princess; you’re just available .” Giving a laugh, he said, “But you , ah, you delighted in my kiss.”
“I’m going crazy from plague, remember? And I just died. Let’s just say I’m not at my most discerning.”
His lips thinned. She wouldn’t have surrendered to him otherwise, and they both knew it. “That was your first kiss, wasn’t it?”
Her cheeks reddened, burning through the blood he’d given her. “I don’t want to discuss this.”
“Come on, princess, are we not to talk about how you took my lips like a vampire starved?”
“Madman! You kissed me .”
“Hard to remember, when you met me with such enthusiasm. You were so close to coming for me, aching for me to fill you.”
Blushing to the tips of those ears, she said, “I desire more than an exchange of . . . culminations. I want a communion.”
“Huh?”
She exhaled an impatient breath, as if he wasn’t worth her upcoming explanation: “I won’t make love until I’m in love. It’s that simple.”
“Don’t knock an exchange of culminations until you’ve tried it, sweet.”
“And I suppose you’ve tried lovemaking? If not, don’t knock it.”
“What do you know of it, then?” he countered. “Explain to me, young and impressionable female, what the difference is between sex and lovemaking. Be sure to include examples since you’ve experienced neither.”
“I saw both during my mission to observe the New Orleans nymphs.”
“Your mission was to observe the goings-on at the Tree of Delight?” Even Sorceri raised their brows at that notorious covey.
She nodded. “On my last night there, I came across a couple who were in love, and what they shared was unlike everyone else.”
His curiosity demanded to know more, but his instinct cautioned him that this territory was best left unexplored. Don’t even dip a toe in this nonsense. “How was it different?” The hell, Silt?
“Before, each act I’d witnessed had been about one aim—pleasure for pleasure’s sake. With this couple, the aim was to demonstrate love, with ecstasy to follow. Two people in love made love . I knew I was in the presence of something transcendent, and it humbled me so utterly that I . . . I lost track of myself. Sorcerer, I beheld divinity, and I was forever changed. There’s no going back for me.”
Silt stared down at her as if she’d uttered an unknown language. For some reason, when he turned her words over in his mind, apprehension hit him.
Did she know something that he wasn’t able to grasp, a mystery withheld from him? Did this romantic love she spoke of—an emotion he had ridiculed—hold power?
Mysteries usually did.
And she was privy to it. Right now she seemed like some preternatural, alien being—a creature so far removed from a man like him that they would never connect.
The princess and the befouler.
And he resented her for that.
The ground rumbled as if in league with his ire.