Chapter 5 #2
“No. Sun’s up soon. We’ll be all right for a while, at least. Gregor has a body to play with, plus he’s distracted now that Harald is breathing down his neck about Carlotta.”
David’s eyes round. “Harald’s here?”
“No. Still in France, but he’s pissed and sending emissaries.”
“Who’s Harald?” I ask.
“House Tantun’s leader.” David strides to the door. “I’ll get you more blood.”
“No. I’m good for now.” Valen shakes his head.
“You sure?” David asks.
“Yeah. Just need some rest.”
“You know where to find me.” David leaves, closing the door behind him.
The moment he’s gone, Valen’s head droops again, his hands on the bed beside him, his muscled back strained and healing. “It’s all right, Georgia.” His voice is almost reedy, shot through with exhaustion. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll know if anyone comes. You’re safe.”
I stare at him. “You could’ve died.”
“I didn’t.”
“He could still kill you, couldn’t he?” There’s a knot in my stomach. “Anytime. Just if he feels like it.”
“Yes,” he agrees quietly.
“We have to stop him.”
“We can’t.”
“I can.” I scoot off the bed and move to stand in front of him. “I did it to Theo. I can do it to him.”
He rises quickly, his hand over my mouth, his eyes burning into mine. “Don’t say that out loud. Never, Georgia.”
I pull his hand away. “I can make it again. The compound,” I whisper. “I just need the right supplies.”
“No.” He glances at my lips.
“It’s the way to stop the killing. To stop everything. I can recreate the—”
“No.” He grips my shoulders. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s not.” I try to shrug him off, but his grip tightens. “I can make the poison. Then we’d just need to get close enough to deliver it.”
“You don’t understand the depth of the Dragonis bonds.” He sighs.
“I’ve seen the books, tried to decipher your notes. From what I can tell, Gregor and Theo must’ve been verem?”
His eyes round slightly.
“Their trees were connected in the book, right? So closely linked that if one dies, the other eventually dies, too?”
He nods.
“That’s why Gregor is fading. He’d formed that bond—the verem thing—with his own son.” I’d exhausted what translations I could when I figured out those notes. It would take a lot more time in the library for me to make sense of the rest of the tree diagrams.
“Yes, they were Blooded.”
“Blooded? What does that mean, really? And how?” I couldn’t figure this out from the text. “What makes their link so special? Your connection to Gregor isn’t the same, right?”
“No. He would never want me for his Blood. He forced the bond with Theo, feeding off him for centuries until they became inexorably linked.”
“Why would he do that, though? Doesn’t it make him vulnerable?”
“He thought it would make him stronger.” He slides his hands down my arms, his touch warm. “Like a parasite on a strong host. He thought Theo’s youth would give him even more power, keeping him at the head of the Dragonis line for time everlasting.” He sways a little on his feet.
I grab his waist. “You should rest.”
“Not yet.” He glances down. “I need to get rid of all this.”
Blood. He’s still covered in it.
“Fair, but I don’t know if you have the strength to get through a shower, and you might drown in the bath.”
He gives me a weak smirk. “Volunteering to shower with me?”
“Get over yourself.” I wrap my arm around his waist and walk him into his bathroom and over to the shower. Reaching in, I flip the water on, testing it for warmth. “All right, you can—”
He strides past me, and I realize he’s naked. In the few moments it took for me to get the shower going, he’d stripped everything away.
Leaning against the white marble wall, he lets the water pour over him, a red river forming beneath him.
I step back and look at the wall, my cheeks heating.
“I’ve been inside you, Georgia.” I hear the smile in his voice. “You can look all you like.”
“Didn’t I just tell you to get over yourself?
” I glance at him, the blood washing away and revealing smooth, intact skin.
Now I do stare. “I thought there’d be at least some sort of—if not scarring, then at least some evidence of trauma.
But—” I think back to the blood samples I worked on in the lab “—the lack of white blood cells, maybe that’s what prevents scar tissue from forming? But there was plenty of fibrin.”
“Didn’t I tell you there’s more to our blood than whatever you can see under a microscope?” He turns to me and scrubs his chest with a bar of soap, the familiar scent wafting through the humid air. More blood runs down the drain, an impossible amount that would spell death for a human.
His muscled frame, lithe and strong, sends an unwanted shiver through me. I look away again and clear my throat. “Anyway, I guess I should go. You seem to be doing bett—”
“Fuck. Is this…”
I peer at where his hand has stopped at his side, then step closer. “Your wound is still open. Shit! You have to get out of the shower. You can’t let it get wet like this.” A million things run through my mind, not the least of which is sepsis.
“It’s all right.” He swipes at it with the soap.
“Don’t!” I grab his wrist, the water soaking my shirt.
“Really, Georgia.” He reaches behind him and turns off the water. “It will heal.”
“It’s where he took your liver, isn’t it?” I step back and grab a towel from the counter for him. The freakout about bacteria and wound care that I would normally have in this situation slowly fades. Valen won’t die. He won’t even get sick.
“Yes.” He wraps the towel around his waist. “It will heal. Just takes time for something like that.”
“You’re in pain.” I look up at him, his wet hair dripping, one of his battered eyes still bloodshot.
“Yes.” He shrugs and walks slowly past me to his bed.
Sitting heavily, he yanks the towel from his waist and rubs it roughly across his hair before tossing it on the floor.
“I’ll have to sleep for a while, but you’ll be safe. I’ll wake if anyone—”
“Stop worrying about me.” I yank the blankets down, then press my hand to his chest. “Lie down.”
“Always so forward.” He smirks but lies back as I settle the blanket over him.
When I try to pull my hand away, he holds it in place. His heart thumps steadily beneath my palm, his heavy-lidded gaze holding mine.
“I need you close.” He strokes my wrist with his thumb.
“I am.” My voice goes slightly breathless.
“I need you in my bed.”
“You need to rest.”
“I will as long as you’re close, kedves verem.”
“You wrote that in your notes, in the book with the trees. You wrote that about us?” I’m on the precipice, about to fall into a deep, deep well if I keep asking questions. I can feel it, the terrified breath before the plunge.
He doesn’t respond, just stares at me with his ocean blue eyes.
“Valen, what does that mean exactly?”
“Sleep here with me, and I’ll tell you.”
“I don’t make deals. Not anymore.” I try to pull my hand away, but he doesn’t let go.
“Then do it as a mercy. You’re a healer. Your presence will help me recover.”
I sit down beside him and give him a wary look. “That’s not how any of this works.”
“But it is.” He pats the bed beside him. “Here. Just stay here with me, that’s all.”
I want to. A big part of me wants to curl up beside him and sleep some of the terrors of the past few months away. But another part of me yells that Valen is one those terrors, that I should get as far away from him as possible.
“Don’t be afraid, kedves verem. Your blood trusts mine.
Just listen to it.” His eyes close. “Listen to the song in our veins. Your blood heard it when your mind couldn’t.
Your heart knew. You knew me. My soul. You knew …
” His grip on my wrist loosens, his body going lax.
He’s out in only moments, his body finally giving in, forcing him to rest. The sharp angles of his face are softer now, younger.
The slant of his dark brows less severe, the line of his jaw stark but not haughty.
He’s beautiful. A slumbering reaper. I wonder if any of the multitudes he’s killed haunt his dreams.
I gently pull the blanket down and check the wound on his side. It’s still open, the muscle layer only now knitting back together. There’s no more blood, as if his organs have absorbed what remained of it. Healthy tissue, all of it healing.
He sleeps deeply, his breathing even.
Glancing at the door, I rise and ease toward it.
He groans.
I turn back to him.
His fingers twitch slightly.
I take a few more steps.
“Georgia.”
This time when I turn, he’s still, but his forehead is furrowed. Asleep but calling my name.
I hesitate for long moments, torn between the two worlds Valen created for me. One where he’s my lover, another where he’s my tormentor.
“Kedves verem, please. Please,” he whispers. ‘Please’ lingers on his lips as he mouths the word but makes no sound.
I take a deep, steadying breath, then pad back to the bed. Crawling in beside him, I settle with a good bit of distance between us.
His forehead smooths, his breathing going even and deep.
I watch him until my eyelids become heavy.
My body warm beneath his covers, everything here steeped in his scent of soap and him.
I should’ve left. I should’ve severed my ties to the Valen from before, the one I let into my body, into my heart.
Instead, I chose him.
Then and now.
Again and again.