Chapter 20 It Starts with Blood
IT STARTS WITH BLOOD
To say that his words had made an impact was an understatement. Even long after they were spoken, they continued to echo through my mind, a slow reverberation that refused to fade. I could still hear his voice, low and rough, wrapping around every confession like velvet over steel.
Even when he rolled to his side and tucked me against him, my thoughts refused to be quiet.
I lay there in the circle of his arms, tracing faint lines over his chest where shadows claimed his skin, feeling them hum softly beneath my touch.
It fascinated me, the way his darkness seemed to react to me, like a living pulse answering my call.
Yet even as the calm settled over us, questions still churned in my mind.
The story behind his vengeance.
The truth behind the woman in his bed.
The secrets that still lived in the walls of this house.
But I couldn’t ruin this fragile peace between us, not yet. So instead, I whispered,
“So… what happens now?”
His hand, which had been lazily drawing circles over my hip, stilled. His voice was careful when he replied,
“What do you mean?”
I smiled faintly, unable to help myself.
“Well, I could give you a list, but it might be a bit much after what we just did.” He made a sound deep in his throat, a quiet rumble of amusement that sent a pleasant shiver through me.
“You and your questions,” he murmured, quiet amusement coating his words.
Propping myself up on his chest, I looked down at him, my hair falling forward like a curtain.
We were still sprawled across the rug, bare and tangled in the afterglow of something I hadn’t expected to happen between us.
I could see all of his face now those dark veins that had once marred one side of it were gone, leaving behind the devastatingly beautiful man beneath.
“Can you really blame me? I didn’t exactly expect this to happen.” I teased.
He arched a brow, dark and unreadable.
“You didn’t?” I tilted my head at that and asked,
“Did you?”
“I knew you were mine the moment I scented your blood,” he confessed, and my breath caught.
“And yet you still told me I was a means to an end. You resisted this for so long, and I want to know why.” I demanded, giving him cause to exhale, the sound heavy with regret.
“Because for the longest time, revenge was all I ever wanted.”
“And now?” I asked softly, prompting his arm to tighten around me, pulling me closer until I could feel the steady thrum of his heart beneath my palm.
“And now, you are all I see,” he said, making me suck back a shuddered breath.
Those words melted something deep within me.
I leaned down and kissed him, unable to stop myself.
His hand came up to cradle the back of my head, holding me to him as his lips claimed mine in a kiss that promised both ruin and redemption.
When we finally broke apart, my voice came out as little more than a whisper,
“Okay… but I still need to know why, how, and when.” He groaned, though his eyes still glinted with amusement.
“That’s quite a list.”
“It’s going to be a long conversation,” I countered.
This time, when he sighed, it carried the weight of a man resigned to a truth he could no longer escape.
He shifted from beneath me, and I instantly missed his warmth as he rose to retrieve his discarded pants.
The sound of fabric brushing against his skin filled the quiet, and I reached for the fallen throw, wrapping it tightly around myself.
I also decided that if we were to have this conversation, I wasn’t going to do it sitting on the floor. So, I picked myself up and curled up on the chair. Thankfully, I was in no danger of leaving any marks on the leather, as he had already used his T-shirt to ‘clean up’ the mess he had made.
As for the man being questioned, the shadows danced across the sharp lines of his regal features.
He braced one hand against the mantel, his head bowed, staring into the flames as though they held an answer he couldn’t yet speak aloud.
The firelight sculpted him into something that was part man, part myth.
A God forged in shadow and flame. Every movement made his muscles tighten and shift beneath his skin, each flex a reminder of the power restrained within that sinful, devastating body.
I wanted to worship him almost as much as I feared to.
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, the faint crackle of the hearth the only sound between us.
“You wanted to bargain me for the dagger,” I reminded him softly, my throat tight as I asked,
“So, what now, Vas?” He didn’t answer immediately.
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, and though the storm outside had quieted to a distant murmur, it felt as though the tempest had found its new home here, between us.
Then finally, his voice broke through, low and rough, like gravel dragged over stone.
“Things have… naturally changed.” The words were quiet, yet they struck something deep within me. My heart skipped, my pulse stuttering as I stared at him, unsure if I even wanted to hear the rest.
“Do you mind elaborating on that?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.
He lifted his head then, his eyes catching the light of the fire, those dark blue storm-lit depths reflecting something raw and fierce, something I didn’t yet understand.
His jaw tightened, and for a moment, he looked as though he was fighting himself, wrestling with the war that lived behind his eyes.
When he finally spoke again, the words came out rough and frayed,
“I’m not giving you up.” The room seemed to tilt. My breath caught.
“What?” He turned fully toward me, the firelight striking his bare chest and sculpted arms, every inch of him carved from defiance and restraint.
“I can’t.” The air shifted around us, hot and charged.
The fire snapped sharply, and for a moment I could do nothing but stare at him.
He wasn’t just speaking out of impulse; I could feel it in his voice.
He meant every word. Whatever this was between us, it had changed everything.
And there would be no going back from it.
The frightening part was…I didn’t want to.
His words hung in the air like smoke, curling and clinging to the space between us…I’m not giving you up.
They echoed inside me, twisting everything I thought I knew into something dangerous and uncertain. I forced my voice through the tightness in my chest.
“Okay, but you can’t actually intend to keep me here.” He didn’t flinch. Not even an inch. Instead, his eyes, dark and unwavering, held mine.
“I can, and I will,” he declared without shame, and my breath caught at the admission. Because he wasn’t threatening me.
He was confessing.
And somehow, that was worse.
“But you said it yourself, I belong to all three of you. You can’t expect to keep me from them.
” I pressed, my heart hammering at the thought.
Ever since I had learned there was no curse, I knew my feelings for Victor and Tal weren’t as one-sided as I was led to believe.
Their love for me had been real all along, which meant there was now nothing in our way from being together.
Well…other than their brother, who I had also fallen in love with and seemed intent on keeping me for himself.
His eyes flashed, the words striking some buried nerve deep within him.
“You cannot expect me to share you with them, the traitorous bastards who tried to kill me, just so they could take my place as heir to our line!” His voice cracked through the air like thunder, rattling the fragile peace between us.
The flames in the hearth surged higher as if feeding from his fury, and before I could even breathe, the shadows began to move.
They unfurled from him in slow, sinuous waves, tendrils of living darkness that curled outward from his skin.
They started rippling across the floor like smoke searching for something to consume.
The temperature in the room dropped, the air thick with the pulse of his power.
For a heartbeat, I couldn’t move, caught between terror and awe as the shadows reached for me, responding to his anger, to his pain.
“Vas, please…” I whispered, the tremor in my voice enough to break whatever spell had taken hold.
He blinked, as if waking from a trance, and the darkness recoiled instantly, snapping back into him like the drag of an unseen tide.
The fire dimmed to its normal glow, leaving only the heavy sound of his breathing.
The moment he saw my fear and saw me pressed back against the chair, heart pounding, his expression faltered. The rage drained him as quickly as it had come, replaced by something that looked far too much like regret.
“I apologize…I don’t wish to frighten you,” he said softly, and I exhaled shakily, tension uncoiling from my shoulders.
“Look, I get that there’s bad blood between you, but if this is ever going to work, it’s something we have to talk about.”
“You don’t understand,” he murmured, voice thick with something I couldn’t name.
“Then help me understand,” I urged, pulling the throw tighter around me before getting to my feet and moving toward him.
I took it as a good sign when he didn’t back away as I reached up, my fingers brushing his cheek, guiding his face toward the light of the fire.
His skin was warm beneath my touch, his jaw tight.
“You’re right, I don’t know what this cost you, and I won’t…not unless you trust me with the truth,” I whispered gently, and his eyes closed for a brief moment as he leaned into my hand.
“Very well,” he said finally, his voice quieter now, resigned.
“But be warned, Nessa, for it is not a happy story.”
“Family tragedy never is,” I murmured, letting my hand fall away.
However, prior to my eyes tracking the movement, he caught it before I could retreat. His fingers wrapped around mine, solid and grounding.
“You’d best sit for this,” he said, his tone more formal now.
I followed his lead, returning to the armchair. I drew the throw tighter around my shoulders as he crossed the room and sat opposite me, the flames casting long shadows that seemed to dance over his haunted face.
“My life wasn’t always like this,” he began at last, voice distant, almost reflective.
“Once, we were what you might have called a happy family, hard as that may seem for vampires.” I caught the flicker of conflicting emotions moving over his face and felt my chest tighten.
“I’ve seen the care and compassion you’re capable of, Vas. No matter how much you try to hide it from me, I know it’s there. So, no, I don’t find that hard to believe.” He bowed his head slightly at that, a quiet acknowledgement, before he released a deep sigh, and his story truly began.
He reclined in his chair, shadows gathering around him like old regrets. His voice, when it broke the silence, was calm but heavy with remembrance, each word shaped by the weight of what he’d lost.
“Before the title, before the curse of immortality, we were nothing. Just another vampire family struggling to survive the ruins of war.” He paused, as if remembering the scent of smoke and blood from centuries ago.
“It was during the Italian Wars, 1494 to 1559. Europe was tearing itself apart. Kingdoms shifting hands, empires devouring one another. The French, the Spanish, the Holy Roman Empire, each side hungry for more. And in the middle of it, men like my father saw opportunity where others saw only chaos, and Vampires only saw blood to feed their hunger.”
I frowned softly, leaning forward.
“The Italian Wars?” I asked and he nodded, his gaze distant, fixed on the fire.
“A series of conflicts fought across Italy. Power, greed, and faith all tangled into one long, bloody struggle. The mortals called it politics. We, those who lived longer and watched it unfold, called it the inevitable.”
“So, your family was caught in the middle of it?” I asked quietly, to which he gave a humorless smile.
“Caught, yes. And starved by it. We were poor then, hidden among mortals, our strength fading because my father refused to feed as often as he should. He claimed restraint, kept us civilized. But it also made us weak. We lived in the shadows of other Houses, too proud to beg, too noble to steal.” He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his eyes glinting with the painful memories.
“When my mother grew too hungry, it was desperation that changed everything. My father found his solution not in mercy, but in blood. He began trading it. Bottled, refined, and sold to the highest bidder. The war had created an empire of soldiers and kings who wanted the strength of vampires without the curse. He gave it to them… for a price of course.” I swallowed, my stomach twisting before voicing the horror…
“He sold your blood?”