4. Cyan
Chapter 4
Cyan
T avi’s eyes widened at the long, silver dagger I drew out of my boot sheath. She backed up until she hit the arm of the couch. I didn’t even notice she had begun inching closer to me until she backed away.
Her once calm heartbeat ratcheted up to a rapid thrumming that made my mouth water. I swallowed the groan of hunger that yearned to escape my throat, stabbing my fangs down into my lower lip. It was annoying really, how much the movement of her blood affected me. I had never craved someone’s blood this much without tasting it first. It was fucking distracting, especially when I was trying to make her believe that I would never feed from her.
“Relax,” I said, twirling the dagger’s handle between my fingers, careful to not touch the blade. “This is for me, not you.”
Her eyes didn’t move from my weapon. “I don’t understand.”
“Look.” I ran my hand over the raised characters carved into the right side of my chest. “Silver is the only thing that can scar us, you see. When we make a vow, oath, any kind of promise, we write it into our skin with a silver blade. This makes it permanent and unbreakable. If a vampire isn’t willing to bear his word in silver, he’s not someone you can trust.”
Tavi’s shoulders and breathing relaxed slightly. Her heartbeat slowed from a frantic rhythm to a sensual one, still elevated but without the spark of fear kicking it into overdrive.
“So what does that mean?” She lifted her chin to indicate the scars I already had.
“This is the oath I made to my clan, Blood ‘til Dawn, when I came of age. They’re my family, and when I reached adulthood, I vowed that my life and loyalty would always remain in service to them.”
“And that?” Tavi’s eyes drifted lower, her cheeks flushing red. Her dark gray eyes dilated and she was enjoying looking at me.
I wanted to tease her, to flirt and make a joke about how closely she was inspecting my body. But the lower markings on my ribs brought no sense of joy or pride. The vow attached to them was simple—to remember who I had lost.
“That’s a vow I will never speak of, out of respect to the person I made it to.” I kept my voice light, grinning as I said it despite memories creating a knot of dread in my stomach.
“Oh.” Tavi pulled back again, a frown of embarrassment crossing her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t know.”
She rubbed her face, giving a sheepish little laugh. “When humans want an oath made in writing, we usually just use pen and paper.”
“My kind tends to live longer than those materials,” I said. “Which is why we use our bodies. We also find significance in carrying our vows everywhere we go, and being able to see them in a mirror. A vow is not something to be shut away in a drawer and forgotten about.”
Tavi leaned forward slightly, her fingers lacing together. She was inspecting me again and I liked her gaze roaming over my skin. I liked any attractive female appreciating how I looked, but this wasn’t just lust in her eyes. Her eyes lowered to the markings on my ribcage again. She seemed curious. Had she ever seen a vampire up close before?
“So this is what you’re preparing to do for me, someone you hardly know?” Her brows knitted together. “Cut yourself with silver to prove you won’t feed on me and will allow me to see my friend?”
“Yes.” It truly was that simple. “We barely know each other at this moment, but whether you’re my blood pet or someone else’s, you’re part of Blood ‘til Dawn now. I want you to know I’m someone who keeps my word. Someone you can depend on if shit goes sideways.” I flipped the dagger with a smile. “As a friend, of course. Nothing more.”
Tavi let out a breath that sounded like she’d been holding it a while, and a small smile played on her lips as well. “I think I can handle being friends.”
“Good, me too.” I flipped the dagger once more, the blade’s sharp tip pointing directly at my sternum. “Shall I begin?”
She stiffened. “You don’t have to, Cyan. I appreciate your willingness, but I believe you’ll keep your vow.”
“I do have to. I said I would.” My grin widened, probably looking a little unhinged with a sharp edge pointed at myself. “I’m not going back on my word now.”
For some reason I couldn’t explain, it felt important to do this. The ritual needed to be carried out, and not just to follow through on what I said. Carving our vows with silver was a sign of integrity and honor, partially because it was a painful, uncomfortable process.
No amount of pain would make me honorable, not even if I was covered in head to toe in vows to keep. Maybe it was punishment I craved, the burn and hiss of the silver cutting apart my flesh like no other weapon could. Some days I wondered why I didn’t drive the silver dagger straight through my heart.
And then I remembered that I simply didn’t deserve such an easy exit. If Kalix had to suffer, so did I.
But he was gone, and right then I had to think of how to write out my promise to Tavia. Not dwell in the past.
The vampire written language was made up of characters and pictographs based on phonetic sounds as well as concepts. There was no direct translation of her name, so I’d have to combine characters to make a single depiction that symbolized her. It came to me quickly with a rightness that could only be attributed to inspiration.
“Do you want to see your name in our language?” I smirked and pressed the silver point to my skin before she could react.
The pain of the first cut had me hissing in a breath. It had been fifteen years since I made my vow to the clan, and I’d forgotten how much it burned. The surrounding skin turned bright red, but no blood fell. Silver cauterized surface wounds like these, and I would heal in minutes, but it always left scars behind.
And it hurt like a bitch, but no more complaints would slip past my lips. I continued drawing the character for Octavia , a combination of the symbols for brave and human female into the left side of my chest.
When I finished her name, I held the knife aside so she could see. Tavi looked pale and not as impressed as I’d hoped.
“My name?” She swallowed and met my gaze. “You have my name as a permanent mark on your body forever?”
“Well, yes. You are the subject of my vow,” I explained. “It wouldn’t hold much weight if I didn’t name who I was making the vow to.”
She blinked. “Right. It just seems…significant.”
“It is.”
“I know, but not in the sense that you’re making a vow, but…” She brought a hand to her mouth, gaze drifting to the side like she was thinking. “Do vampires get married?”
The sudden change in subject threw me for a loop and I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not exactly the same as a human marriage, but many of us do have long-term romantic partners, yes.”
“And do you make vows to each other? When you find that person and decide to become partners for life?”
I laughed. “No, it doesn’t really happen like that.”
“No?” Tavi cocked her head.
“Long-term is not the same as a lifetime for us. We live for eight hundred, a thousand years at best. Nobody expects to stay together for that long because any multitude of things can happen in that time.”
“Oh.” Tavi looked thoughtful, and from what I could tell, a bit disappointed. “I guess that makes sense.”
“When vampires get together as a couple, they just…do that, get together. There isn’t really any pomp and ceremony over it. They’ll stay together for fifty, a hundred, maybe two-hundred years. If they can conceive, maybe they’ll raise a child or two to adulthood. And then eventually they get bored, drift apart, and see other people.”
My chest had finally stopped burning and I looked down to see her name rising from my skin in delicate, new scar tissue. The cuts had already closed up and it looked damn good, if I did say so myself.
“The only exception to that is blood mates, which is a lifelong thing and subject to pomp and ceremony.” I scoffed. “It’s incredibly rare, and thank Temkra for that. Being shackled to one person for the rest of your life sounds like a fucking prison to me.” I rubbed gingerly over the fresh scar tissue, which itched slightly. “Sorry, how did we get on this topic?”
“Oh, no reason. I was just curious.” Tavi let out a long breath and raked a hand back through the long waves of her hair. “You may, uh, continue with the vow, I guess. Unless all you need is my name?”
“Oh, no. The whole thing needs to be spelled out.” Bracing myself with a breath, I pointed the blade to my skin again. “Here we go.”
I started above her name to ensure I gave myself enough room. With each symbol I carved into my flesh, I spoke my vow out loud.
“I will protect and honor Octavia, but shall never take her blood.” The last half of that statement was especially too painful to carve out, like my body was protesting the notion of never tasting her.
My words were tight, voiced through a clenched jaw as I refused to make any sounds of pain. My skin was on fire, redness covering my entire left side, and yet I had to push through.
“As long as she is my blood pet, I will ensure she maintains contact with her kin in whatever manner she wishes.” Finally, I held the knife away from my chest, breathing hard. “May Temkra hear my vow and hold me to its bond for as long as blood sustains me.”
With a weary smile, I returned the dagger to its sheath inside my boot. “There you have it.”
“That looks…really painful.” Tavi leaned forward, the closest she had gotten to me yet. A sudden mental image of her touching her name on my chest sent my blood surging.
“What?” I asked, realizing she’d said something.
“Can I get you ice or a cool towel maybe?”
She wanted to ease the pain of my vow? It was such a strange thing to offer, but she didn’t understand it was important to bear the pain. Vows in silver were so ingrained in vampire culture, no one else I knew would ever offer pain relief.
And yet, I was touched that she asked.
“No, thank you. I’ll be all healed up in a few minutes.”
She leaned even closer, and another image invaded my brain. This time it was of her mouth on my scars instead of her hands.
Fuck, I couldn’t think like that. Sexual attraction and blood feeding were so closely intertwined, and I just swore that I wouldn’t do the latter. Better to not have any suggestive thoughts, no matter how attractive she was for a human.
“Wow.” She squinted a few inches away from my chest and it was pretty fucking adorable. “Your skin is closing up right in front of my eyes.”
“We heal fast. Even from silver if it’s just surface wounds.” I grabbed my T-shirt that I’d thrown over the back of the couch but was in no hurry to put it on. Not while she was looking at me like that.
“Satisfied?” I asked, unable to suppress my smirk as she watched my skin heal. Wait until she finds out our saliva closes wounds too. The thought almost tumbled out of my mouth then, but I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be flirting.
Tavi leaned away and straightened, her curiosity giving way to a neutral mask. “When can I see Amy?”
You just got here, I wanted to say. I just made a silver vow to you. I had to remind myself that she wasn’t here by choice. She didn’t understand the significance of the vow, so I had no right to be annoyed. But for some reason, I was.
“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to clear it with Thorne to take you on one of my nights off.”
“Who’s Thorne?”
“Clan leader. The one with the cigarettes and neck tattoos.” I pulled my shirt on, feeling the need to clear my head and get outside. “I’ll get you a phone to call your friend in the meantime.”
“My own phone?” Tavi blinked up at me. “Like what you have?” She pointed at the device I had taken from my jacket pocket to put on a side table.
“Yeah. You’ve never had one?”
She shook her head. “No one in Sapien has personal phones. There’s a closed landline system for all of the buildings to communicate, but the council says personal phones are a distraction from work.”
What kind of backwards-ass world did these humans live in?
“I’ll get you two phones, then. One for you and one for her.” I stood from the couch, straightening my shirt. “You’re not nocturnal yet and probably exhausted, so feel free to rest, relax and make yourself at home. I’ll send someone over later who can get you situated with all your human needs.”
“Oh.” She seemed taken aback, like the fact that she was living among vampires for the rest of her life had just hit her. “Okay. Thank you, Cyan.”
I gave her a quick nod, retrieved my jacket and was out the door in seconds. Now that the scent and rhythm of her blood wasn’t all in my senses, I took a moment to pause in the corridor.
A deep sigh left my chest as I rested the back of my head on my door. For the time being, Tavi was my responsibility and I had to keep my shit together.
But responsibility was not my strong suite. The care and protection of a naive human was the last thing that should have been placed in my hands. The best I could hope for was someone else in the clan wanting to claim Tavi as a blood pet before I could fuck this up too badly. The fact that her blood called to me like siren’s song was just the fucked up cherry on top. But surely that temptation would fall alway when someone else fed from her.
Right?
I pushed off the door and headed for the stairs, not looking back at the portrait of me and Kalix on the wall. I could feel his heavy gaze on me as if he were actually here, judging my new lot in life.
But because of me, he wasn’t.