Chapter 13 Iris
Iris
Three days until the feast.
Three days until solstice.
Three days until everything changes.
I'm trying not to think about it as I sink into the copper tub, letting the hot water ease muscles I didn't realize were tense.
The bathroom is one of the few rooms Grandmother never modernized, outside of the toilet.
No electric lights here, just candles flickering on every surface, casting dancing shadows on the stone walls.
It makes going to the bathroom in the middle of the night super interesting.
The rest of the world has smartphones and cars and central heating, but this room belongs to another century.
I used to find it frustrating. Now I'm grateful for the excuse to slow down.
The water is almost too hot, the way I like it, infused with lavender and chamomile from the stores I’ve carefully cultivated since I arrived. Steam rises around me, and I let my eyes drift closed, letting the heat seep into my bones.
I feel him before I hear him.
The bond pulses, warm and golden now, so different from the gossamer thread it was when I first arrived. I don't startle when the door opens. Don't feel the need to cover myself.
We're past that now.
"I felt you," Cadeon says from the doorway. His voice is low, rough. "Through the bond. I thought you called for me."
"Maybe I did." I open my eyes, find him watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle despite the heat. "Unconsciously."
"Perhaps." He doesn't move from the doorway. Doesn't look away, either. His gaze traces over what he can see above the water, my bare shoulders, my throat, the wet hair clinging to my skin. "I should go."
"Should you?"
"I need to feed." The admission comes out strained. "Soon. The hunger is... distracting."
"How distracting?"
"I can hear your heartbeat from here. Can smell your blood under your skin." His hands curl into fists at his sides. "It's been over a week now. I should have asked sooner, but with everything else going on..."
"Come here."
He hesitates. "Iris."
"Cadeon." I sit up slightly, water streaming down my shoulders. "Come here."
He moves like a man fighting himself with every step. When he reaches the edge of the tub, he stops, looking down at me with eyes that have gone dark with hunger. Not just for blood, for everything. For me.
"Sit," I tell him, gesturing to the floor beside the tub. "Talk to me first."
"Talk." He says it like a foreign concept.
"Yes. You've been carrying something for days. I can feel it through the bond, this weight. Something you want to tell me but don't know how."
He sinks down to sit on the cold stone floor, his back against the tub, close enough that I could reach out and touch him. But I don’t.
For a long moment, he's silent.
"I wasn't always like this."
"I know. You told me about being a knight, about your sister—"
"No. I mean the bond. It wasn't always..." He struggles for words. "I chose this, Iris. The bond. I sought it out."
I go still, water lapping gently against the sides of the tub. "What do you mean?"
"I was born a vampire. We're born, not made—did you know that?
Our powers stay dormant until we bond. Locked away.
We're just... humans with fangs, essentially.
Incomplete." He tilts his head back against the copper rim, staring at the candlelit ceiling.
"When I came of age, about twenty-something, for vampires, I felt the call.
This pull toward a specific bloodline. The Ashwoods. "
"The call," I repeat softly.
"It's instinctive. Biological and magical both. Like recognizing your other half." His voice is distant, remembering. "I traveled for months to find the Ashwood estate. I was eager. Desperate, even. I wanted to feel complete. Wanted my powers unlocked. Wanted to become what I was meant to be."
"And you found us."
"I found your great-great-grandmother. Mariana Ashwood.
" Something shifts in his tone. Warmth, nostalgia.
"She was... remarkable. Fierce and kind and nothing like what came after.
When we bonded, it was a partnership. I gave her my protection, my strength, my loyalty.
She gave me her blood, her magic, her friendship. "
Friendship. The word catches in my throat.
"It was good," he continues quietly. "For decades, it was good. I had purpose. I had connection. The bond was everything it was supposed to be."
"What happened?"
"Mariana grew old. Died. The bond passed to her daughter." He's quiet for a moment. "It was still good, mostly. Different—every mage has their own style—but still partnership. Still mutual. Then her daughter inherited me. Then her daughter."
"Grandmother."
"Elspeth." He says the name like ash in his mouth.
"She was young when she inherited the bond.
Barely twenty. But she had ideas. She'd read the old texts, the ones that talked about domination and control.
She believed that was the 'proper' way. The traditional way.
That the partnership model was soft, modern weakness. "
"Gods," I breathe.
"She didn't change everything at once. It was gradual.
A command here. An expectation there. More pressure on the bond, less room for me to choose.
And the wars didn't help. She fought in three of them.
Each one made her harder. Colder. More convinced that strength meant control and kindness was liability. "
I reach out, my wet hand finding his shoulder.. He leans into the touch like he's starving for it.
"By the time she was your great-grandmother's age, seventy, eighty, I barely remembered what the bond used to be.
I'd forgotten I ever had choices. Forgotten I was ever anything but a weapon.
" His voice drops to a whisper. "She didn't make me hollow overnight, Iris. It took decades. But she was thorough."
"I'm so sorry." The words feel inadequate. Pathetically small against two hundred years of systematic dehumanization.
"Don't be. You're undoing it." He turns his head, and suddenly his face is very close to mine. Our eyes level, his breath cool against my water-warmed cheek. "You're giving me back what she took. I didn't know it was possible until you."
"Cadeon..."
"I need you to understand." His hand comes up to cup my face, and I can feel the fine tremor in his fingers.
"When I choose to stay, when the bond transforms, it won't be because I'm conditioned.
It won't be because I don't know any better.
It will be because I remember now. What the bond can be.
What I can be. And I want that. I want you.
More than I've wanted anything in two centuries. "
I turn my head and press a kiss to his palm. "Then take what you need."
His eyes darken. "Iris... "
"I mean it. Not emotionally... physically too." I shift in the tub, turning to face him more fully. "You're hungry. I can feel it through the bond—this ache. Let me feed you."
"You're in the bath."
"I noticed."
"Your throat." His gaze drops to my neck, and I watch his control fracture slightly. "You're offering your throat."
"Yes."
The word hangs between us, weighted with significance. The wrist is tradition. Clinical. Safe.
The throat is trust. Intimacy. Surrender.
"I could hurt you." His voice is barely a rasp.
"You won't."
"You can't know..."
"I know you." I reach up and pull him down toward me, not caring that I'm dripping water onto his shirt, onto his perfect formal clothes. "I trust you. Now stop arguing and get in the tub."
"I—what?"
"You heard me."
He stares at me like I've lost my mind.
"Are you going to make me ask again?"
Something shifts in his expression. The hunger is still there, but now it's tangled with something else—wonder, maybe. Or disbelief that this is his life now. That someone wants him like this, clothes and all, complications and all.
He stands. Removes his boots, sets them aside. Then, holding my gaze, he steps into the tub.
The water surges around us as he sinks down, his clothes immediately soaked, clinging to every line of his body. He settles against the opposite end, his legs tangling with mine, and the intimacy of it, the absurdity and the tenderness, makes something bloom in my chest.
"This is ridiculous," he says, but he's almost smiling.
"This is perfect." I move toward him through the water, climbing into his lap, straddling his thighs. His hands find my waist under the water, steadying me. "Now stop being proper and feed."
"You're very demanding."
"You like it."
"I do." He pulls me closer, until I'm flush against him, the wet fabric of his shirt rough against my bare skin. "Gods help me, I do."
He brushes my wet hair away from my neck, fingers trailing over my pulse point. I feel his breath there, cool against my water-warmed skin, and then his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to my throat.
"Tell me if it's too much," he murmurs against my skin.
"It won't be."
"Tell me anyway."
"I will. I promise."
He kisses my throat again, and I feel his tongue trace over my pulse. Then his teeth—just the tips, testing, waiting.
"Please," I whisper.
He bites.
The pain is sharp and bright, just for a second. Then it transforms, Heat floods through me, pleasure blooming from the bite and spreading outward like ripples in water. I gasp, my hands fisting in his wet shirt, my body arching into his.
Through the bond, I feel what he feels. The rush of my blood on his tongue, hot and alive and rich with magic. The relief as the hunger finally eases. The overwhelming rightness of this, of us, of being so intimately connected.
He drinks deeply, one hand cradling my head, the other pressed flat against my lower back, holding me close. I can feel his pleasure as clearly as my own, the taste of me, the heat of the water, the press of my naked body against his clothed one.