Chapter Three
Samara
My eyes snapped open as I woke with a start.
It’s bright.
I squinted. The ceiling above me was ornate, with gold engraved into it. I was in a soft, plush bed.
And from the layered cedar scent that was etched on the pillows—and next to me—I knew exactly whose bed I was in.
I pushed myself up. I didn’t feel tired, didn’t feel the echoes of sleep that usually clung to me when I woke in the morning.
It was as though one minute I had been standing in the cell, and in my next breath I was here.
The anger that had sustained me for all that time was mysteriously gone, like a memory I had to work to remember.
Raphael sat in the chair at my side, one hand curled under his head, arm rested on the armrest, while he slowly flipped through the pages of a book. Not looking at me but obviously aware I was awake.
Waiting to see if I was still feral?
I’d felt like an animal in the cell, rabid and starving. Now I was like a pet deposited in unfamiliar surroundings.
I’d been in Raphael’s chambers for shielding training, but I hadn’t actually been in his bedroom before. The lush fabrics that blanketed me were no surprise: rich bolts of red and gold covering the four-poster bed.
I tried to get my bearings. After so many days of endless thirst and exhaustion, it was odd to have my mind returned to me.
The room was sparse, but what furniture existed was suitably ornate.
A carved bookcase was molded into the wall at the other end.
The door was off to the left of the bed and currently shut.
I couldn’t hear any noise from the hallways.
I flexed my fingers in the sheets. My bruised knuckles had mended.
My body felt, to my horror, good. Strong.
I looked down at my arms and frowned. Last time I’d been conscious, I’d still been in my tattered gown from the tri-lunar eclipse.
“Did you change me?” I accused, looking at the vampire next to me.
Raphael shut the book with a quiet thud. “Your gown was soaked with your blood. I wasn’t going to put you in bed like that.”
I rolled my eyes and fiddled with the soft sleeves of the dress. It wasn’t one that had been in my closet before. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to ruin your sheets. But why did it need to be you?” I huffed, flushing at the thought of him undressing me while I was unconscious.
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared. This was the least of all offenses committed, yet it came the closest to stirring the fury that had coated me in the cell. Why was it so hard to be angry right now? Why did I feel . . . relief?
“Would you have preferred Amalthea, who you might have attacked in your sleep from hunger? My general? Or a stranger?” he asked with an arched brow.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t lie, and I didn’t feel like admitting I’d lost this petty battle.
But Raphael knew the truth. “It’s not like I haven’t tended to your body before.”
Right. After the Monastery. He’d undressed me, bandaged me. But that was before. Before I’d kissed him. Before I’d truly craved him. Before I’d betrayed him, and he’d betrayed me. I could scent lingering presses of him on me, close to the skin. Not untoward, but . . . it was on me.
Too intimate. His blood was in me. I didn’t feel cold, but I shivered all the same.
“Now what?” I meant for the words to be demanding, to give me some semblance of control, but they came out all too uncertain.
Would he order me to tell him how I’d colluded with Titus?
I needed to explain, but he might kill me for it.
If he learned I was the necromancer he hunted every two hundred years, he would definitely kill me. He’d be furious he’d saved the same scourge he’d been tasked with hunting down.
Raphael set the book on a table to his left. “Now you need to drink.”
I recoiled. “I just drank yesterday.” Had ripped his throat apart. The memory of his flesh, the brutal remains of my feeding, hit me with equal pangs of disgust . . . and worse, hunger.
I looked at the spot. Even with my enhanced vision, the skin looked unbroken, healed as if nothing had ever happened.
“You must drink every day,” Raphael said. His tone left no room for argument, but of course I argued anyway.
“I thought vampires didn’t have to drink that often.
” The book I’d read on vampires when I’d come to Damerel said vampires didn’t need to drink daily, often closer to weekly.
They could feed at any time, but they would be no worse without.
I struggled to recall all the details—it had seemed like only minutes since I’d been sitting in the cell, bracing for the true death.
“You must drink every day,” he repeated. “Fledglings need to drink more regularly, as they’re still weak from the transition.”
“I thought since you turned me, I’d be stronger,” I said, anxiously throwing his words back at him. Surely there was some way to postpone this. In truth, drinking blood was the least of my concerns, but with Raphael scrutinizing me, I didn’t dare let my thoughts betray me any further.
“It means your thirst will be even greater.” He rose and sat at the edge of the bed, level with me. “You have two choices. You can have my blood, or I can bring you donor blood from a bottle.”
I almost wilted with relief. “I don’t need to drink from a living person?”
Raphael’s expression gentled. “Eventually, you will. But no, not now. It’s dangerous for fledglings to drink from the vein.”
I remembered the way I’d taken deep pulls from Raphael, with no regard for him or anything in the world but my need to quench the thirst. Gods, if that had been Thea . . .
But it hadn’t been. It had been Raphael, who was strong enough to survive the hunger he’d cursed me with.
“Fine. Give me the donor blood,” I said, defeated.
Raphael rose from the bed, left the bedroom, and returned seconds later with a goblet.
The solid gold rim didn’t hide the scent that wafted over.
The thirst clawed at me, summoned by the coppery tang in the air.
It wasn’t like hunger or thirst I’d had as a human—it was some in-between sensation that had me tensing my muscles to stop from springing up and snatching it from him.
Raphael sat by me on the bed again, closer this time. His thigh pressed against mine, only the blanket between us. He offered the goblet to me.
I stared at it for a long moment.
“Drink,” he ordered.
In an instant, the stem was between my fingers. The rim was almost to my lips when I regained my senses and pulled my arm away, shaking my head.
“You can thrall me? Even though I’m a vampire?” I growled. I’d felt the same compulsion in the cell.
Raphael didn’t look away, not ashamed in the slightest. “I cannot thrall you as a vampire, nor have I ever been able to. But as your sire, I can give you a light . . . nudge,” he settled on.
“At least toward actions meant to aid in your survival. Like drinking blood before it congeals. Believe me when I say that’s not a texture you’ll enjoy.
My duty as your sire is to look out for your best interests. Now, drink.”
The repeated command didn’t have the mystical compulsion, but the threat of blood somehow becoming more disgusting was enough for me to press the blood to my lips. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a sip.
Yuck. I spat out the blood the moment it grazed my tongue.
The blood splattered over Raphael’s clean, crisp white shirt. He didn’t so much as flinch.
“I can’t drink this,” I said, hating how speaking made me taste it anew. It was slimy, unpleasant, almost like a concentrated vinegar and ammonia mix. “This is foul. It must be bad already.”
Raphael’s lips twisted. “It’s fresh.”
I thrust the goblet at him. “You try it, then.”
He accepted and took a swallow. I watched the knot on his throat bob with far too much interest, my eyes dancing over the pulse point in his neck. He handed it back to me and was kind enough to pretend he hadn’t seen me studying him. “There’s nothing wrong with the blood.”
I dipped my tongue in the blood. It was as foul as it had been a moment ago. “Is it always this bad?” I asked. “I know you said heating it doesn’t make a difference, but . . . surely it’s not meant to be this awful?”
Raphael gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. “It’s this or my vein.”
Memories of drinking from his neck in a frenzy assailed me. My fangs ached. Would he taste like this now? Had he only tasted good because of the bloodlust? Or did blood straight from the vein taste better than this? This tasted like a punishment from the third hell.
I didn’t plan to find out.
I was a vampire, yes. In time, I could accept that I had to drink blood. But I wouldn’t take it straight from the source like they all did.
“I’ll manage,” I said, looking into the goblet. There were four, maybe five swallows.
I tilted the goblet to my lips and drank deeply. It burned my throat, foul as anything I’d ever had—which included Nelson’s spit—but I drank deeply.
It was an effort not to gag. I forced myself to swallow over and over again. If I paused, I wouldn’t manage.
It’s better if it tastes bad. It means I won’t do it more than necessary, I rationalized. Or maybe it was a good sign that I struggled to stomach it. Proof I retained some humanity.
You weren’t human when you gorged yourself on the vampire king, another voice whispered.
I slammed the goblet down. “There.” The acid still coated the inside of my mouth. What I wouldn’t have given for some fresh mint to chew to drown the taste. Not that I was sure I could even eat normally anymore.
Raphael set the goblet aside, but he didn’t leave the bed. There were only inches between us now.
“You missed a little.” He pressed his thumb to my chin and wiped away a stray drop of blood.
Once again, that little touch ignited me. It chased away thoughts of humanity and anger and frustration. The world was compressed to that small moment where his skin touched mine, tender, caring, in a way I’d always craved—and now would never know.
This must be another part of being a fledgling, I thought as his finger dropped away.
“Is it being my sire that makes me crave your touch?”
I slammed my mouth shut. I hadn’t meant to ask it like that.
To Raphael’s credit, he didn’t laugh, but his gaze lightened, just slightly.
“It takes time to get used to the truth compulsion,” he said, not yet answering my question.
“You’ll develop a skill for twisting words, but for now your body will try to be as direct as possible to avoid incurring the consequences of attempting untruths. ”
My cheeks burned, and I resolved that, after the bloodlust, this would be the first thing I mastered. “Well?”
He shook his head. “No. This has nothing to do with me being your sire.”
My shoulders slumped. “It must be something. You said my emotions would be more intense. Maybe because I drank from you?”
“Your emotions are more intense,” Raphael agreed. “The craving for connection, for touch, will be felt all the more deeply.”
Then it wasn’t because of Raphael. I’d feel like this with anyone. Naturally, since I’d spent the last several days in a cell. “So it’ll go away when I’m no longer a fledgling. It’s just part of the transition.”
Raphael leaned closer. “I didn’t say that.”
I swallowed. “Then what?”
“Don’t you see? As a human, you bottled up your emotions.
Your desires, your wants, your needs. Being a vampire tears all those walls down.
Yes, it’s more intense during the transition.
Your mood will swing like a pendulum between extremes.
But those extremes were always there. You just hid from them.
” He drew closer, his breath caressing the shell of my ear.
“Little viper, everything you feel when I touch you, you’ve always felt.
You just can’t lie to yourself anymore.”