They'd needed only three months.
"You know, I'd heard of you when you were a human. Weren't you called the Overlord?"
This surprised him. "On kinder tongues. How could you have heard of me? Your accent isn't from the northlands."
She sighed. "Not anymore. I'd heard of you because I'm interested in all things martial. You were quite the vicious leader."
He felt his expression grow cold. "We were defending. I was anything I needed to be to see it done." He could tell by her reaction that she liked his answer. Her lips parted as she tilted her head at him. Then she sidled closer to him on the bed as if she couldn't help herself.
Her voice more gentle, she said, "But in the end you lost."
He stared past her. "Everything." The battle had only been like the final blow on a dying man. Prior to that, the enemy had scorched and salted their lands. Famine followed and there'd been no defending when plague erupted.
"Wroth," she said softly. He turned his gaze to her. Her eyes were so captivating in her elven-like face, so clear and lucid at this moment. "Let's make a pact, you and I." She eased open his legs to kneel between them. "Let's vow that we won't harm the other in this room." She pressed him back until he lay fully on the rolled pillow. What would she do next?
When he gave her one quick nod, she flashed him a warm smile that made him feel praised in some way. Her damp hair was spilling down over his legs, and with the back of her hand, she swung it to one side, baring her tantalizing neck. A rush of the innate scent of her hair swept him up, like a drug. Sweet and subtle, just like her skin. If she smelled like this, he couldn't imagine what she would taste like. He wished she'd bared her flesh in offer to him.
"Wroth, this is embarrassing," she murmured in a sensual voice, "but I think I've caught you staring at my neck."
"You did," he admitted, oddly feeling no shame to be contemplating his order's most reviled crime.
She brushed her fingertips over her skin. "Are you tempted to take a drink from me?"
In the worst way.
He wondered how many times Ivo had taken her and felt a spike of some unfamiliar feeling claw in his gut. "We don't drink from living beings. It's how we got our name." It was this order's pledge, their pact. Wroth had never tasted flesh as he drank. But then he'd never felt the smallest stir of temptation to before her.
"Why?"
"So we are never tempted to kill," he said, giving her the official line, which was true, but the whole truth was more complicated, and they kept the details they'd managed to learn secret. Living blood, blood not separated from its source, brought side effects with it. A vampire would suffer torments from it, such as his victim's memories. Kristoff believed these memories were what drove natural born vampires insane and made their eyes turn permanently red. As far as they could determine, the only way not to harvest them was to drink blood that had died, avoiding the evils - and the benefits.
"What if you drank from an immortal that couldn't be killed from that?" she asked, her words lulling again. He couldn't seem to take his eyes from hers.
A tricky question to answer without saying that the immortal would have far too many plaguing memories, multiple in number to a mortal. He answered her question with one of his own. "Do you want me to take your flesh, creature?" The mere idea of it made his words rough, his fangs ache.
At her titillated look, he feared she'd say yes, calling his bluff. What would he do then?
"Rain check," she answered brightly. Then, to his shock, she curled up between his legs, face nuzzling against his uncovered torso, and wrapped her pale, delicate arms and hands around his thigh.
"I never asked my questions," he said, staring at the ceiling, trying to sound casual about what was occurring. He'd seen a great many things in his life, but this female was throwing him.
"We have all the time in the world for that, do we not?"
He thought she kissed the scar on his lower stomach with her lips - and a slow little lick. He lay tensed, rasping, "At least tell me your name, creature."
"Myst," she whispered, then she fell asleep.
Myst. How fitting that she was named after something intangible and capricious.
Long after, he was still roiling. In sleep, his little pagan clutched his leg with her pink claws. And they were claws, sharp and curling, though somehow elegant. He ignored the pain, for it was little compared to the odd satisfaction of thinking that she clutched him for comfort.
He savored simply resting with her, doing nothing but watching as her hair dried into big, glossy red curls that spread out over his chest. For centuries their army had been constantly on the move, hiding in the shadows of the northlands in often grueling conditions, keeping their growing numbers secret. Everything had been about the war, all adding up to this attack, to furthering their cause.
He brought a curl up to his face to brush it over his lips. So soft, like her flawless skin. Tomorrow night, if she hadn't given him information - and he somehow knew she wouldn't voluntarily - could he lash her skin to get at her secrets? After Myst had cleaved to him so trustingly? Could he break any of her delicate bones and have her gaze at him with pain in those green eyes? If she'd been his Bride he wouldn't have to hurt her, would be forbidden from ever harming her - his life given over to protecting her.
He ran the backs of his fingers down her silken cheek, feeling her light, quick breaths warm on his stomach. He'd never truly felt the sting of envy in his life, had never envied other men except those who enjoyed peace in their land. He'd been born affluent, his family aristocratic, and fortune had followed him until the latter years of his mortality. To envy was to lack.