Chapter 24 #2
I step closer, slow enough not to startle her, though I feel the tension in her shoulders. That taut, vivid awareness she carries around me now, as if her body has accepted what her mind still refuses.
‘This relic is called Heartshard Glass.’
Her gaze flicks to me, then back to the dark, veined surface, suspicion and wonder warring in equal measure.
‘It was crafted for one purpose,’ I continue. ‘To reveal what common reflection cannot. True form. True presence. Bonds, in certain circumstances. It is less a mirror than an instrument. It abhors vanity. It does not flatter. It witnesses.’
As I speak, I begin unbuttoning my shirt with measured movements, perhaps delaying the inevitable.
The room alters with the movement, the air tightening as her attention splits. I see it happen in the Glass before I look at her directly. Her eyes follow my face as I speak, then drop, despite herself, to the hand easing each button free.
Her pulse ticks faster.
‘So… it’s like mirror, mirror on the wall, but with fewer riddles and more existential dread?’
‘An unflattering comparison,’ I say dryly. ‘But not wholly inaccurate. This one is older, rarer, and considerably less theatrical. It speaks no riddles. It simply shows truths people are rarely prepared to see.’
Her scent shifts as her throat moves. Not enough to overwhelm grief or stress, but enough that I catch the warm, dark edge of arousal threading through both.
I continue as if I do not notice.
‘The Heartshard Glass has passed through courts, vaults, sanctuaries and battlefields. Kings tried to hoard it. Priests tried to bury it. Men less disciplined than I killed for the privilege of standing before it. Most misunderstood what it was for.’
‘Which is?’ she asks, the question huskier than before.
I unfasten another button and let my shirt fall looser at my chest. ‘Discernment. Verification. Memory. It shows what power distorts and glamour conceals.’
Her tongue slips out to wet her bottom lip, and I nearly lose the thread.
I close the distance instead, lifting one hand to her jaw under the pretence of positioning her.
The warmth of her skin under my palm is immediate, distracting in the most primitive way.
My thumb drifts, deliberately or not, to the corner of her mouth, tracing the shape I have become too familiar with in too few days.
She squirms a little, breath catching. ‘Stop distracting me.’
I look down at her, at the stubbornness in her eyes and the flush in her face. ‘But you are so exquisite when distracted.’
Her glare should be withering but the effect is undermined by the way her pupils widen.
‘I mean it,’ she says, and there is a traitorous softness under the bite. ‘Keep going, please.’
My mouth twitches.
I accept the rebuke because she is correct, and because some part of me recognises what I was doing.
Delaying. Using her as a welcome interruption from truth.
‘You were right,’ I say, stepping back just enough to recover precision. ‘I felt something in the alley. Or rather, someone.’
Her frown returns instantly. ‘Who?’
‘My… brother.’
The word strikes her still. ‘You have a brother?’
‘We are blood brothers, not brothers by birth.’
‘What does that mean?’
I draw in a breath I do not need and continue unbuttoning my shirt, slower now as I choose the shape of this history.
‘There were five of us,’ I say. ‘Five men remade by the same hand. Bound by blood, origin and rites older than most standing empires. We were not born into one family or raised beneath one roof, but we were forged into brotherhood through transformation and sacred oath by our creator.’
‘Five,’ she says quietly.
‘Yes.’
‘And you all… what? Went your separate ways and built vampire kingdoms?’
Her phrasing is inelegant but her instinct is not wrong.
‘In time. At first there was survival, instruction, discipline, and the management of hunger before hunger managed us. We were not made to be feral, Eira. Our creator wanted a crown made of cities, so we were made to endure. To hold territory and govern what mortals imagine they understand about predators.’
Her brows draw together. ‘Made by who?’
I pause one fraction too long, examining the sensation moving through my gut before reluctantly naming it.
Dread.
‘Her name is irrelevant to this conversation and to very few who live to utter it.’
Eira catches everything. ‘Your creator,’ she says slowly. Then her eyes widen a fraction. ‘Your creator was a woman?’
The spike of jealousy that cuts through her scent is so sharp and immediate I almost smile.
It pleases me more than it should. ‘Yes.’
Her mouth tightens. She looks away, visibly disgruntled with herself for caring and with me for noticing. ‘Was she your… lover?’
I step in, cup her chin, and turn her face back towards the Heartshard Glass. ‘No. She was not. And pay attention, little hunter. I will reprise this story only once.’
She grimaces at the pet name, but her body focuses.
My shirt hangs open now, but she is standing directly before me and can see only hints of skin in the dark reflection. I place both hands on her shoulders and draw her back, fitting her against my chest so we stand aligned before the Glass.
The contact is immediate ruin.
The mark, hidden only by the loose fall of my shirt, brushes her through the thin layers between us and flares with throbbing heat. Almost sentient. As if it recognises her and strains towards her.
A low, dangerous ache ripples through me. Pain. Pleasure. Something older and more destabilising than either.
I lock my jaw to keep the sound from escaping.
Netheris.
For one beat, I close my eyes and endure the sensation. The drag of her body against mine. Her heat at every point of contact. The mark pulsing where it touches her as though awakened.
When I open my eyes, she is staring at me, trying to peer beneath the surface. I do not want to dwell on what she seeks, lest I make the grave mistake of offering it to her.
Then she makes the smallest whimper of sound and moves a few scant inches back, into my body.
I allow her.
Then go one better and pull her closer, until her soft curves press against my granite ones. Until her delicious ass cradles my desperate shaft with maddening perfection.
As if she was made for it.
For me.
With a wave of irritation directed entirely at myself, I realise I am once again letting truth veer towards hunger. Towards rampant thoughts of fucking Eira Cross when I brought her here for sacred, near-forbidden insight.