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  Her eyes instantly cut to mine. “You! How long were you there, girl?” Her accent was unusual to any I’d heard in my time. It sounded like a mix of Eastern European and Patois. It was strange but not cringe inducing. Rather lyrical actually.

  I gasped, realizing I’d done a very piss poor job of hiding myself. Thinking quick, I adopted a frightened air, acting like a meek mouse.

  “I…I…I…,” I winced, hearing the stutter. Hating that I could have forgotten my affliction so easily. Being with Dracula made me feel like a different person, but I wasn’t. I was still me.

  She rolled her eyes. And scanned my body once more. “You’re a maid, aren’t you?”

  Knowing it was the best reason I could possibly have for scuttling about in the dark as I’d been, I nodded. Not having to feign the miserable look on my face. How was I to learn anything if I couldn’t speak to her?

  She stepped toward me and I could see her cheeks blazing with scarlet, but I didn’t sense it was embarrassment that’d placed it there. Her words were sharp and terse, a sure sign of irritation. But at me, or at the scene unfolding inside the stable?

  “Were you running away, girl?”

  I bit my bottom lip. Would that be the right answer to give?

  Not knowing what to do, I merely lifted my chin up and looked down my nose at her.

  A shrewd gleam entered her cold and calculating gaze. Her perusal of me was slow and deliberate. Finally she inhaled deeply and shook her head.

  “I will not tell, if that is your fear. I was once a lowly servant too. But we’ve the gift, girl. We’re far stronger than what those bastards think us to be. Word of advice, unsolicited though it might be, find your inner goddess and then none can ever hurt you again.”

  I was shocked not only by her advice, but by the obvious note of empathy in it. Aziria wasn’t turning out to be anything like what I’d expected.

  She had the sensibilities of a modern feminist but well before feminism had even become a word. I did not have to feign shock, I’m sure it was written all over my face.

  The low murmurings of Evanora and Dracula’s voice could be heard from within. Aziria turned and a look of murderous rage flashed before her face. She hid it almost instantly but not before I’d witnessed the dark look.

  She stood absolutely still, hugging her arms tightly to her body before slowly looking over at me.

  A gleam in her eyes that instantly chilled me to my marrow. I recognized the moment she’d set herself on her path of destruction. One that would forever alter not only my life and Dracula’s, but hers too. To an extent. A dark curse always left its stain on the practitioner.

  Who would she become once she’d set her feet upon this path?

  Her full lips curved up into a smirk. “You’re a clever, get. I’ll give you that. I can see that you’re bright mind has already worked out the machinations of my heart. Word of advice, dearie, keep your thoughts to yourself. You might know what I’m thinking, but I too know what you’ve done.”

  I frowned, not sure what she meant until it dawned on me that she really did think me a runaway. In a time when a woman’s value was numbered solely by what the Lord had paid to acquire her lifelong servitude, she was cautioning me that should I tell anyone of her plot she’d give me up. I wet my lips.

  No one missed me, because I belonged only to myself, but she didn’t know that. She grinned and I could sense the darkness gathering through the night, the malignant poison of terrible schemes that would soon begin to alter her not only inwardly, but outwardly as well.

  “Are you trained?” she asked, but the words sounded more like her own inward thoughts than an actual question. “I wonder.”

  And suddenly she was walking a slow circle around me. I didn’t have to pretend to tremble. I didn’t honestly think she would attack me right now. I hadn’t done anything to her, but it was strange mannerisms that made me shaky. She was like a wild cat that I couldn’t figure out if it wanted to merely watch me or pounce on me.

  When she’d walked a full circle around me, she stopped. “You will meet me here, tomorrow night. There’s something about you, girl,” again she muttered this as though mostly to herself, “you remind me of me.”

  Her knuckles caressed my cheek. And unlike how Dracula’s touch made me feel hot and alive, this one made my skin crawl. I had to clamp down on the inside of my cheek and fight not to flinch away from her hand.

  She laughed lightly, no doubt aware of my revulsion. Dropping her hand, she shrugged. “You are in this too, girl. Should you get any ideas. What is your name?” She asked me once more.

  I swallowed hard, still feeling the stutter banded thickly about my tongue. But then she lifted her hand and without a wand in it, murmured an incantation and the pressure of that stutter instantly vanished like smoke over deep waters.

  I gasped and clutched at my throat. She grinned. “Name?”

  Not my sisters, and not even me, had ever been able to heal me of my affliction. And yet I knew that Aziria just had. Holy crow she was powerful. She’d not needed potions or a spell to do it. Heart beating wildly in my throat as fear, hot and real, crawled through me I said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Beatrice,” I said, thinking of Generva’s pet familiar Bertie.

  “Tomorrow,” she said without even a smile. “When the moon rises we will work.”

  And then without another word she turned on her heel and made her way back into the stables.

  I stood there, hearing her angry shouts at them both. Less than a minute later she and Dracula were fading off into the night. And when I looked back at the doorway, I spied a tear-streaked Evanora leaning wearily against the wooden doorframe. Her gown was in tatters and there was a thick swath of blood sliding down her neck and staining her shredded bodice.

  She looked as though she’d seen the very devil tonight. Her hair was wild and full of dried hay. Her skin was abraded and she trembled like a newborn colt. But her eyes remained fixed on the spot where Dracula had disappeared.

  I thought maybe she might notice me, but she never did. Tonight I’d met Aziria and seen Evanora and I didn’t know what to think or how to feel.

  This had been the very birth of me. And yet, though Aziria’s power terrified me I felt more than mere fear of her. I felt pain and even a smidge of empathy.

  It was clear to me that she’d loved Dracula. Or at least believed herself to be in love. Evanora, though the great love of Dracula’s life was the other woman. But no one, not even the great Dracula himself, could control the yearnings of the heart.

  With a sad little sigh, I turned on my heel and blended into the darkness of the night, so confused and saddened by what I’d witnessed tonight.

  A few yards away from the scene I suddenly knew I wasn’t alone. My body yearned even as my troubled mind felt unsure and shamed by my need of him. His strong arms wrapped around my waist not a moment later and then I was being pulled into his dark embrace.

  I sighed just as a tear squeezed out the corner of my left eye.

  “Oh, my dragā, my love. Your pain is a blade to my soul,” he whispered hotly and then his lips were on mine and I moaned, sliding my hands into his hair, finding solace and comfort in his arms despite my misgivings.

  His kiss was a balm to my weary mind.

  I wasn’t sure when he’d swept me into his arms, but he held me as though I were as light as air. We walked as one back together to his cottage. My arms wrapped tightly around his neck, my head on his shoulder. My ear hearing no beat of his heart.

  We slipped inside the cottage, the night thick with unspoken thoughts and questions.

  But he merely looked at me with pain radiating through his dark, beautiful eyes. There was already a fire roaring in the hearth. He sat me down oh so gently before it. And then took a spot beside me.

  Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a bundle of something wrapped in a kerchief. I watched him meticulously unroll the corners to reveal a wealth of food and instantly
my stomach grumbled.

  There were grapes and cheeses and nuts, even some slices of now cold roast pig, which I assumed were for him.

  Neither of us spoke as he fed me. And though I could easily handle feeding myself, I didn’t ask him to stop because it seemed to give him pleasure to do it.

  The entire time I ate he never once spoke and the mood between us grew fraught with need and tension.

  The snap and crackle of the fire was the only sounds we heard.

  I wasn’t sure how long we sat there like that but before I knew it there was no more food, we’d eaten every bit of it. Again, no words were spoken, he simply stood and held his hand out to me.

  I took it, knowing intrinsically what he wished me to do. He led us back to our room. Ours.

  His and mine.

  It was right. It was absolutely right. And though I warred with feelings of guilt and pain over all that I’d seen and heard tonight, I also knew that given the chance to do it over again I would choose exactly as Evanora and he had.

  He undressed me slowly and I did the same for him. Neither of us wondered whether we should do as we were about to do. We simply understood that it was time. For us both.

  I hurt for Evanora and for Aziria both. Hurt that tonight two women were wounded, but this love I felt for Dracula it was so much more than love or even the plebian notion of what love was. This was absolute. Intense. And everything. He and I had no choice in the matter. It simply was.

  He laid me down and I opened my arms to him.

  He came to me and his touch, his kisses, and his whispered words of adoration stitched me back together. I’d never given this body to another, and yet he and I fit together as though we’d been created to be one whole.

  “I love you,” I whispered just as he and I rose to the pinnacle of passions together.

  “And I love you, my Rose. My beautiful rose.”

  Chapter 9

  Rose

  The next evening at twilight, Dracula and I held onto one another. Neither of us had moved from our bed, except for the call of nature now and then, or bothered to even dress. My stomach was empty and in desperate need of food, but I was more desperate to touch him and have him touch me.

  Now that I’d given myself to him I was loathe to leave his side.

  “You should do this, Rose. It’s how you’ll learn.”

  I shook my head. “I get around her and I feel such guilt. I stole you away from her.”

  He kissed my lips, quick and glancing, but it still made my toes curl. “Oh my, girl. Your capacity for kindness is only one of the thousands of reasons why I fell so deeply in love with you to begin with. And yes, I feel guilt over what happened too. I was with Aziria for near a hundred years, we’d created a bond she and I. And if I could undo the pain I caused her, I sometimes think I would.” He sighed deeply and sat up, leaning against the wall and tugging me back into the crook of his arms as his fingers idly played through the strands of my hair.

  I sighed, even as my body continued to crave and tingle and want more of his. Would this madness of lust never end?

  “A hundred years is a long time. I can see why she hated us,” I said softly even as I strummed my fingers upon his cool flesh. I was such a selfish creature though, and a terrible hypocrite. Because though I felt the pain of hurting Aziria, I was unwilling to ever give him up.

  “In life, sometimes you will meet a person who is the complete half of you. It is a wild magick all its own and never something, no matter how powerful a being you are, that you could ever contain or control. No matter how hard you try. I went to you that night out of a sense of protective duty as a man. But the moment I locked eyes with you, Rose, I knew I’d find my other half. And you and I, we could never be whole again. It is simply the way of true soul mates.”

  I sighed. “I know, my dark prince. All this I understand. But I heard her pain last night and I… I guess I just wasn’t prepared for that. I’d fashioned an idea of a monster in my head, but she wasn’t that. She was simply a woman. A woman, who I suspect, understood she’d lost you.”

  “It isn’t an excuse, Rose, but Aziria and I had problems long before you’d ever entered the picture. I did try with her, Rose, I vow to you. Even after I met you. I tried to make things work with her. Even to the point that I stopped meeting with Evanora, ignored the desperate yearnings of my heart and soul to be an honest male. But Aziria always had the capacity for pettiness that’d bothered me long before she’d cursed us. She was a beautiful, but very vain woman. She’d do things that would bother me, but I’d ignore them. Shove them away, aim to not dwell on it too long. I’d see her dark acts but would always make excuses for them. Oh, well she didn’t really mean to kill those creatures. She was merely practicing her magick and lost control of spells. Or, she hadn’t actually intended to curse that highway man and strip his flesh off his bones as he cried like a wailing banshee long into the night. To the point that I’d had to go back to him and kill him simply to end his suffering. What you saw last night was just a snippet of who she was. But that darkness it was always in there. Her ability to do heinous and awful things was always a part of her. I did love her, in my own way, and I believe that in her own way she loved me too. In truth, I do not wish for you to hate her. There was goodness in Aziria, but as adults we are also responsible for the choices and actions we ultimately choose to take. Maybe I shouldn’t have fallen in love with Evanora or she with me, but that was a sentiment—I fear—sadly out of both our control. You should know though that what Aziria and I had was a toxic and destructive relationship that was always doomed to failure in one way or another. We were already in the death throes and we both knew it.”

  I frowned, never having heard any of this. Sitting up, I turned around in his lap. His eyes were downcast and a look of true pain had settled upon his face. I finally reached up and cupped his cheek to get him to look at me.

  When he finally did, I leaned forward and kissed his mouth. He leaned into my touch like a man starved and I didn’t know how it was still so overwhelming and consuming with us, surely we’d sated some of the passions by now, but even after an entire day of lovemaking I felt the hunger and need rising up in me.

  With a hungry groan he slowly pulled away, but rested his forehead against my own.

  His hands were on my shoulders and he was digging his fingers into my back as though he meant to keep me with him forever.

  “Don’t leave me, Rose. Please don’t,” the whispered plea had me crying out and I shook my head. “I could not bear to exist in a world that you don’t want me in. Not again. I need you now more than ever.”

  “Never,” I said and knew with every fiber of my being that I meant it.

  Wishing I could stay in his arms forever, but sensing the ticking of the hands of time, I finally eased out from under him. But not before planting a hard and urgent kiss to his very kissable mouth.

  He looked up at me with a hint of confusion.

  “She’s asked me to met with her back at the stables. I suspect she sensed the flame core within me.”

  His brows rose. “Please be careful, Rose. I will guard you as best I can without revealing myself, but should the need arise I will not hesitate to protect you.”

  It would ruin any chances he and I had of ever fixing our curse, and yet I could not be angry at him for it. Stroking my fingers over his nude chest I smiled softly. “You always have, haven’t you.”

  His answer was a stoic clenching of his jaw and nod.

  He helped me to dress and kissed me one final time with all the passion in his soul. And before I knew it I was returned to the stables and standing out in the cool and eerily quiet night.

  Chewing on my bottom lip and wondering for the millionth time whether I did right by coming out here, wondering if she’d even bother to show. Wondering about my sisters and wishing to know how they fared. Thinking about how far my life had drifted off the course I’d charted for myself. I was an entirely different person today than I
’d been just a week ago.

  The sound of scuffling footsteps broke through my contemplations. When I glanced up it was to find Aziria standing there in a long elegant crimson colored cape and holding onto a lit lantern.

  “You came. I did not think you would.”

  I frowned, wondering if my ability to speak stutter free had merely been a mirage last night. “You thought I wouldn’t?”

  I almost smiled to hear the strong words come out of me. Aziria had given me a gift I could never adequately thank her for. And again a worm of unease slinked through me knowing that if she knew who I really was she might never have done so. I wanted to thank her. And yet I knew it would be ill-advised to do so.

  Her smirk was haughty and proud, but beneath it I noticed a shadowing of something else.

  I wasn’t sure what it was, but I could guess.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  We walked in tension fraught silence up a long and winding path toward the woods.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant to do with me, but I also knew that Dracula was somewhere out there, keeping an eye on me. More than that, I had my own magick. I could protect myself.

  I hoped.

  Flexing my fingers I swallowed hard and continued to step one foot in front of the other. Mind filling up with all manner of terrifying images. I knew who Aziria eventually became. She became possessed by the darkness. Turned into a new and different creature. What would she do to me if she ever learned who I was?

  My reasons for coming here had seemed noble and right at the time. And I knew I didn’t know everything. Aziria was the reason for my curse that I lived under. And yet I was not Evanora, I did not burn with hatred toward her or even feel threatened by her, not really. Because up until last night she’d only been a footnote in my life. A story. Nothing more.

  But I saw the woman before me and there was something about her that both scared me, but also made me want to help her. Reach out to her. Stop her from harming herself in the process of hurting Evanora and Dracula.