Chapter 28
Severin
THE MOON IS FULL TONIGHT, and there aren’t any clouds overhead to impede the starlight. I’ve been moving through the cold air for an hour, flowing through my drills and stances, preparing myself for Maeve’s arrival, trying to center my thoughts before she undoubtedly sends them all spiraling.
I have my tunic off and am barefoot, wearing only a loose pair of trousers. Sweat clings to my skin, and a crisp breeze cools me as I swipe my blade, listening to the clean, sharp whistle it makes as it slices the through the air.
The song of the blade.
That’s what my good friend used to call it; he’d close his eyes and listen as his blade cut through the air, and when I once asked what he was smiling at, he’d say he was listening to its song.
I curl my fingers tighter around the hilt, the emeralds and rubies adorning it winking in the starlight.
I’ve just finished a flow when the door to the Skyreach Spire whispers open behind me, and within moments, I smell her.
My fangs ache, my throat suddenly too dry.
For a second, I close my eyes, calling on the calm I’ve cultivated since I’ve been up here.
And once I find it, once I have it firmly in my grasp, I turn to face her.
She has her dark purple hair twisted back into two long braids, and around her throat is a glossy black snake.
One look at her and I’m already in awe.
She’s both a storm goddess and a serpent goddess wrapped into one sharp-eyed package.
“You started without me,” she says, already reaching to pull her boots off so her toes can kiss the stone. Once she tucks her boots under the bench beside mine, she flicks a glance at me. “Feeling impatient, Professor?”
“I’m three centuries old,” I remind her. “Impatience gets you nowhere.”
She makes a little sound like a scoff and a laugh, and I know she doesn’t believe me. “So,” she says, grabbing the sword she’s been using for our practices from where it was lying on the stone bench and sliding it smoothly from its sheath, “what are we learning tonight?”
“Tonight,” I say, “we focus on movement.”
One of her brows arches as she comes to join me in the center of the tower. The serpent wrapped around her neck lifts its head and flicks its tongue, and I wonder if it can taste my hunger in the air.
“We always focus on movement,” she says, tipping her head left and right, then grabbing one foot to stretch out her thigh before switching to the other.
“No,” I say, “we’ve focused on foundation: how to hold yourself, how to breathe, basic stances. Tonight, you take what you’ve learned and turn it into movement.”
She studies me for a moment, her dark purple eyes catching the starlight as if they’re polished amethyst. Her fingers flex subtly around the hilt of her sword, and she gives me a single nod. “All right. I’m ready.”
“Start with your opening sequence.”
Maeve moves herself into position. She plants her bare feet on the cold stone and draws a slow breath. The snake around her throat coils tighter, its head resting in the divot between her collarbones.
Then Maeve moves.
Her stances aren’t perfect, and they need more fluidity, but I can see how she’s making an effort to soften her muscles, to let go of the tension and rigidity. The first sweep of her sword is cautious, the second a bit more focused. By the third, she’s beginning to find her center.
“Do you know why I’m teaching you swordsmanship?” I ask, circling her as she continues to practice the movements I’ve taught her.
She thrusts forward with the blade, a huff of breath accompanying the movement. Then she says, “To learn how to control myself.”
I arch a brow. “Not quite.” As I come to stand in front of Maeve again, I lift my sword, inviting her to dance in the way we’ve been practicing.
“I’m teaching you swordsmanship,” I say as her blade meets mine, “because it’s a balance of control and movement.
Restraint and freedom.” I step to the side, and Maeve mirrors my movement, crossing one foot over the other, lighter on her feet than she was when we first began our training.
We flow through a series of movements, and though Maeve is already starting to breathe hard, she keeps pace with me.
“I can’t teach you storm magic,” I continue. “I have no magic in my veins. What I can teach you”—I strike her blade with sudden force, sending it clattering onto the stone—“is freedom of movement.”
Maeve narrows her eyes at me, a look of irritation flashing across her face.
I give her a small taunting smile; I know her well enough at this point to know what a powerful motivator challenge is for her.
She retrieves her blade, then recenters herself before lifting her sword to meet mine.
We begin to move again, circling each other, our bare toes pressing against the stone underfoot.
“In class that first day, you told me that storm energy doesn’t want to be static. That it wants to move.” I strike her sword, but this time, she retains her hold on it. “So, if you already know this, why are you trying so hard to make your energy sphere static?”
“Because,” she grunts out, striking my sword this time, “I don’t know how else to control it. When I let it move, I lose my control over it.”
“Then your control is an illusion.” I quote her own words back to her again. “Storms need guidance, not dominance.”
Maeve falters, and I use the gap in her focus to once again send the sword flying from her hands. She grits her teeth as it clatters and slides away from her, clanging across the stone. Then her angry storm-purple eyes meet mine.
“You know these concepts,” I tell her as I lower my blade to my side.
“But you don’t yet know how to put them into practice.
It’s the difference between learning something in a book and learning it in your bones.
It already exists here.” I take a slow step forward, reaching out my fingers to touch Maeve between her eyes.
“But not here.” I lower my fingers to her heart, being mindful of the way the serpent around her throat watches me.
And immediately, I sense the shift in her pulse, the sudden burst of blood through her veins as my fingers skim her sternum. My instincts react as her scent overwhelms my senses. The taste of venom is bitter on my tongue.
The snake hisses.
I force myself to take a step back. After a moment of collecting myself, I say, “Do you understand?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. Her chest rises and falls with her heaving breathing. The wind and movement have tugged a few strands of hair free from her braids, and they dance around her flushed face.
“I understand the theory,” she finally says. “But I don’t know how to let go without losing my control.”
“Perhaps you don’t need to control. Perhaps you only need to guide.”
Her gaze searches my face. I can see she’s frustrated, but this is exactly my point. Without magic of my own, I can’t teach her the steps to harnessing her power successfully. What I can teach her is how to find that power within herself.
I take another step back, giving her space. “Pick up your blade.”
At first, she doesn’t move, and I wonder if she’s going to tell me no, give up on these lessons altogether. But finally, she crosses the spire and retrieves her blade. But she doesn’t yet return to me.
With her back to me, she asks quietly, “If I were to ask you to feed on me . . . would you?”
The question is so startling that I take a step back. My focus narrows to her: the wind toying with the escaped strands of hair, the way her shoulders still rise and falls as she catches her breath, the tight grip on the hilt of her sword.
And her scent. It’s stronger now, like just asking the question aloud sent a burst of adrenaline flowing through her veins.
I clench my jaw, my fangs and gums aching. “That’s not a question to ask lightly.”
“I’m not asking it lightly.” She turns to face me, and the seriousness in her eyes would likely send a smarter man fleeing, jumping right off this tower to escape her.
But I’m not a smart man. Not around her.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking,” I say as she takes a step closer to me.
“Then explain it to me.”
How can I explain such a thing? How can I put into words the raging instinct inside me, the battle I fight every day to restrain myself around her? The rapture I’d feel if my fangs were to puncture her skin?
And the consequences of doing such a thing.
“If I fed from you,” I say slowly, my heart racing at the very thought of it, “I would want more.”
“More blood?” She takes another step forward.
Yes. But that wasn’t what I meant.
“More you.”
She stands in front of me now, her scent so overpowering that it almost takes me to my knees. “And would that be such a bad thing?”
I tell her the truth, the first thing that comes to mind. “I don’t know.”
She tips her head, studying me. “Are you afraid of finding out?”
There’s no point in pretending otherwise, in lying to myself or to her.
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
She seems to contemplate this. “But if I asked you to, not because I’m being impulsive, but because I’m being intentional, would you do it?”
My fangs are producing even more venom now. I swallow down the sharp, bitter flavor. It burns my dry throat.
There’s only one answer I can give her, at least for now.
“I would consider it.”
I can hardly believe the words that leave my mouth. But Maeve is a force of nature, a type of magic I have no defenses against.
She continues to stare at me, likely trying to find the truth behind my eyes. But this is the truth. There’s nothing left to lay bare.
“All right,” she says, giving me a resolute nod. She takes a step back and centers herself, preparing her fighting stance. “Then keep teaching me how to move.”
This time, her body looks looser, softer. But still coiled with power. And when she lifts her blade, a thin thread of lightning dances along it from hilt to tip, crackling against the stillness of the starlit night.
And I feel a tiny spark of pride, of fear, of absolute devotion to this wild woman.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Maeve whispers as I lift my sword to kiss hers.
“I know,” I say.
That’s precisely the problem.
BACK IN MY STAFF APARTMENT, long after Maeve left me on the spire, I’m still thinking of her, of that question she whispered into the autumn air.
If I were to ask you to feed on me . . . would you?
I lift my flask to my lips, taking a deep swig of the blood I got last time I was at the blood bank. I’ll need to go back again soon.
Without meaning to, I start to imagine Maeve’s smooth pale skin beneath my mouth. How my fangs would slip through that skin, injecting venom into her veins. And that first taste.
A small tremble goes down my spine, lifting the hair on my neck and making me tighten my fingers around my flask.
I’ve fed from live veins hundreds upon hundreds of times. It used to be the only way I’d feed. But it’s been years since my fangs tasted fresh lifeblood. And it’s been many decades since I last wanted someone this desperately.
If ever.
With Maeve, everything feels different, new, like I haven’t lived three centuries and am running through the same monotony day in and day out.
And though I thirst for her with every fiber of my being, there’s something deeper running beneath that animal instinct.
There’s a curiosity I feel toward her, an excitement that had long since dulled in my chest before I met her.
I get anxious to see her, and when she’s near me, I feel . . .
Alive.
Like she’s my spring after an endless winter spent in the underworld.
I lift my flask to my lips again and drain it into my mouth, then set it on the side table and push up from my armchair.
Stalking to the window, I pull the heavy drape aside and let the moonlight in.
The sky is still clear, still starlit, and I recall the way the light illuminated Maeve’s stormy eyes.
Another tingle goes down my spine. My whole body reacts to her, to even the thought of her.
If I were to ask you to feed on me . . . would you?
I sigh and press my forehead against the cold windowpane, letting the glass cool my skin.
Would I? Could I?
I want to. Fuck. I want it more than anything.
But I don’t want to ruin this. And I don’t want to hurt her.
I’m not a youngling, and I’ve not worried about controlling myself during a feed in centuries. But with Maeve, I’d want to be extra cautious. I can’t stomach the thought of hurting her. I’d drive a sword through my own ancient heart if that happened.
Yet . . . hurting her isn’t what scares me most.
What scares me most is becoming irreparably connected to her.
I pace away from the window and across my sitting room, bare feet silent against the cold stone. I’ve honed my control through centuries of practice, temptation, and the need for survival. I pride myself on no longer being lost to the lure of hunger.
But this wouldn’t be hunger alone. It’d be so much more than that.
It’d be . . .
Maeve. Her storm. The current that buzzes across her skin.
My fangs and gums ache, as if trying to convince me that I need her blood as desperately as I want it.
In the light coming through the window, I cross to my desk and brace my palms against it, bowing my head.
If I did this—if I drank Maeve’s blood—I’d have to be controlled. I’d have to find the restraint I’ve cultivated and cling to it like a lifeline.
My gaze flicks to the empty flask standing on the side table.
Blood from the bank sustains me, but it doesn’t feed me. It doesn’t chase away the scratch of thirst, the desire for more. Not anymore.
Only Maeve’s blood can do that.
I curl my fingers into fists, nails pinching into my palms.
Somehow, this feels inevitable. Like no matter how hard I fight, I’m going to lose.
I know if she asks again . . .
Gods help me.
I won’t be able to refuse her.