Chapter 6 | Sephania
Sephania
I swing the flap of the large tent back.
Cordea, the lithe, ridiculously attractive vampiress and deputy forewoman when Vallan isn’t around, is the only one inside. She’s leaning over a table, looking at a map in the same way Vallan typically does when he’s in this four-polled circus tent.
Her head snaps over her shoulder, a look of offense on her smooth face. Recognizing me doesn’t change her affect one iota. “It’s you.”
“I’m back.”
“Vallan said nothing about it.”
Is that supposed to offend me? She’s always seen me as a nuisance, just like Vallan Stellos initially did when I showed up. I had to persuade Vall to accept me with every bit of my feminine wiles and tactics, if they can be called that.
For a moment, I wonder if Cordea doesn’t harbor resentments and jealousies toward me like Sister Lyroan does. It would be comical, since she’s a full-fledged vampire, clearly experienced in the ways of the world and, judging by her beauty, wouldn’t struggle to land any man she wanted.
Still, the idea of it makes me smile.
“Wipe that haughty grin off your face, girl,” Cordea snarls. “The workers might get the idea they’re supposed to be having fun here.”
I’m tempted to roll my eyes. “Where is he?”
She juts her chin past one of the tarp walls, east. “Burying bodies, last I checked.”
My brow jumps. “What?”
“Explosion inside the mines. Faulty tooling of the fuse. Went off early. Killed two.”
My stomach twists into knots when I think of the same fate befalling Palacia. She shouldn’t be here, dammit. It’s too dangerous. Then again, she’s not my child. She’s made her choice, evidently.
I give Cordea a curt nod and make to move out of the tent. Before I’m completely outside, I lean my head back in. “Make sure the worker named Palacia is treated right, Cordea. Please.”
“I have no idea who that is.”
I flash her a quick grin, knowing it enrages her.
“You knew Ethera’s exact circumstance, blood illness, and her lover Zefyra’s whereabouts and situation.
You can feign indifference to the world with your faultless beauty and rigid expectations, taskmistress, but no need to pretend with me. I know you care more than you let on.”
I leave her seething, hearing a curse as I quickly duck out of the tent before she can respond. It makes my smile widen as I head east toward a rocky hillside sloping away from the mines.
When I approach, familiar grunts echo from a large body, making my heart slam against my ribs. The sounds of the camp drown away behind me as I round a face of piled rocks and find the man I’m looking for.
Vallan works a shovel like it’s a thin fishing rod, slamming it into the hard dirt and tossing piles.
He’s in a three-foot hole, broad back to me when I stop walking.
My boots crunch on the gravel. He doesn’t stop his torrid digging.
Beside him, two bodies wrapped in white cloth are unrecognizable in their mummified state.
Probably for the best, if their deaths came from an explosion.
I clear my throat. Vallan continues digging.
Annoyingly, he keeps his back to me, bending over to toss another pile of dirt over his shoulder. “Don’t you have better places to be than this gleaming cesspool, silverblood?”
Sounds like we’re back to square one. My rescue was last evening and he’s already sounding like the Vallan of old—the one who acts perturbed by my presence.
I take a step forward, grinning. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be. Where else can I watch you dig holes for dead people, muscles flexing and sweating all for me, you big brute?”
He grunts. “It’s not for you. It’s for my workers. Damned fools.” He stands straight, cracking his neck from side to side. “This is what happens when I neglect my duties due to distraction.”
I’ll show you distraction, you hulking bastard.
My thumb moves. The sword on my right hip rasps a few inches out of its sheath. Vallan freezes, hearing the noise. He slowly turns to regard me—
And I’m already charging at him.
If it was shock and surprise I hoped to see on his handsome mug, I’m sorely disappointed. He keeps his expression flat and uninterested, eyebrows hardly rising as I run at him with a wicked smile on my face and my swords flashing out of their scabbards.
At least I get a small twitch from his long dark beard, hinting a smile behind it.
I swing at his face with my right arm. He holds his shovel two-handed, crossways. My blade bites a deep notch into the haft as he pushes with force.
I slide back and riposte, lunging with both legs. The clang of metal rings out. The wide tip of the shovel smacks away my shortsword and he brings it round to parry my longer steel inches from his shoulder.
For once, with him standing in a three-foot hole, I’m actually taller than the huge barbarian. He hasn’t moved out of the hole because I haven’t let him, and it’s nice to have the high ground against him for once.
The vampire’s giant war-axe sits diagonally across his back, the double-headed blade shimmering in the moonlight above us. Piled rocks and hills surround us, leaving us alone in this far-off expanse from the main camp, this burial ground.
I know he’s itching to swing the axe out and make it an extension of his massive frame. I give him no opportunity, swinging wildly to make him parry my strikes.
The entire time, a devious smile splits my face.
“Why are you doing this?” he grunts with another parry.
Clang—
His shovel swings wide and connects with my longsword, nearly spinning me around.
“I’m angry,” I say in a cheery note.
Charging and trying to kill him didn’t surprise the vampire soldier, but now his brows rise. With darkening eyes, his beard twitches with a much more obvious smirk. “You’re more than angry, silverblood. I can smell it.”
Snarling, I redouble my efforts, my blades blurring, calling up my training from the Firehold.
Vallan is a stone wall. I’m sweating in the night chill and he’s hardly moved from—
His body flashes, I blink, and he’s abruptly out of the hole he’s dug.
The wooden end of the shovel barrels into my chest, stealing the air from my lungs. With a windless gasp I stumble back, quickly regaining my wits—
As his axe flies from his back.
“Fuck the True,” I curse, earning another rare smirk from the huge man.
He comes at me methodically, swinging the axe wide. With his long legs and far reach, he could cut a man in half standing ten fucking feet away with that thing.
I duck and roll under his arc, coming up shielding against another attack. I’ve seen him at his worst—fighting assassins, fighting an ambush to try and save us in the Tanmount tower. He’s hardly using a fraction of his speed and ability, which angers me and makes me attack recklessly.
“So much aggression to get out,” he murmurs behind his axe.
“I’ve been gone three fucking months! What do you expect?”
Clang!
His strike jars my forearms when I parry in an X, wheel around, and push him away. I try to dance to his side—
His knee comes up and catches me in the stomach.
More burning lungs, less air.
Gritting my teeth, I close the gap and launch at him before I can double over from the pain, fighting it off like I’ve been trained. My swords drop as I go feral, waist-level with the huge vampire, and try to knock him off balance.
He doesn’t expect me to come at him this time. He takes a step back, sending a plume of dirt and grime into the air. The cloud envelops us.
I spin and knock him in the spine with my elbow.
Vallan grunts, stumbles forward, reaches back—
I’m already gone in the haze of brown.
My fist flies up to uppercut his jaw.
He catches my wrist inches from his face, twists my arm behind me. I growl as pain sings down my forearm and shoulder.
Vallan spins me around.
I feel something hard pressing into my back. Even through the pain my smile returns.
My boot finds purchase behind his heel, unbeknownst to him. I throw myself back, reeling into him with all my substantial weight, using the leverage of my leg behind his to topple him to the ground.
My back lands on his chest. Before I can blink up at the sky I roll to my side so he can’t get me in a hold—
Too late, his larger body rolls with me. Now he’s on top. His breath is hot and fervent on my face.
Vallan pins my arms above my head as I continue to squirm and struggle fruitlessly under him.
I debate kneeing him in the balls but figure that would be counterproductive. He barks a dark laugh when my eyes move to the throbbing mound between his legs, noticing my scheme. “Bad idea,” he says.
“I know.”
I move to do it anyway, knee rising—
He catches me with the inside of his thigh, turning away, and I push up from my backside. My arm wraps around his neck, momentum spins me across his body, and then we’re both on our knees with me behind him.
My hand moves fast, roving down his front. He doesn’t move, remaining in the position and pretending he’s getting choked by my single arm-bar across his throat. He’s giving me the dominant position and loving it.
I yank his pants down to his knees, hear his cock swing free, and then my hand wraps around the thick length, so fucking warm to the touch.
Vallan grunts as my hand glides from base to tip, my arm working fast as I blindly stroke him to an egregious size. My front grinds into his naked, flexed ass, wetness growing between my thighs.
His arousal smears on my palm. With my arm squeezing his neck, I turn his face with my hand. I rise further to lock our lips together in a searing kiss. My eyes close and I lose myself in the moment, the sounds of my hand on his stiff pillar filling my ears.
Vallan abruptly spins, no longer willing to play the victim. His huge cock slaps against my hip. I gasp when I look down at how hard he is. My momentary lapse in sanity gives him all the time he needs to switch positions and swing behind me on his knees.
Now it’s my pants being lowered. Unlike him, I put up a languid struggle, trying to keep the giggle of excitement from passing through my lips.