Death's Mistress

by Karen Chance

  “It was not quite as simple as that. When I first noticed her, I admit I did try to steal a kiss.”

  “And?”

  He blew out a thin stream of smoke, which drifted slowly skyward. “And she slapped me. Hard.”

  I blinked. “You could have had her beaten for that. Or worse.”

  Romanian women of the time had had few rights over the males of the species. A woman could not join her husband at the dining table, but had to stay behind his chair, waiting to serve him. She ate what was left—which in peasant homes wasn’t much—when he was finished. She walked behind him when they went out, and if she went alone and a male walked in front of her in the street, she had to wait to continue on until he passed. Even if she was wealthy and he was a beggar.

  Women’s lib hadn’t been big in old Romania.

  Mircea had been tapping his ashes into a crystal tray, but at my comment he stopped and looked up, his face blanking. “Sometimes, Dorina, I wonder what it is you think of me.”

  I didn’t answer that, since half the time I didn’t know myself.

  And the other half would only get us in another argument.

  After a moment, he continued. “She informed me that she was not there to be a gentleman’s amusement, but to save money toward a respectable marriage. And that she did not intend to lose her virginity price over me.”

  I’d almost forgotten the old custom of rewarding virgins the Monday after the marriage for their chastity. They received jewels, clothes, and sometimes money, which they were allowed to keep even if the marriage ended in divorce. It had been a lot more effective than the modern virginity pacts for ensuring abstinence.

  Well, that and fearsome Romanian fathers.

  “And what did you say to that?”

  He shrugged. “I was young and foolish, and had yet to realize that my vaunted success with women was due at least as much to my name and position as to my person. I informed her that I would gladly reimburse her for any losses she might incur.”

  “I take it she agreed.”

  He arched an expressive brow. “No. She slapped me again.”

  “And you found that attractive?”

  “Oddly, yes. Most of the women I had encountered were docile to the point of boredom. It was a chore to get them to so much as look at me when we were speaking. I had been intimate with women whom I do not believe could have described my face in any detail had their lives depended on it. That was especially true of noblewomen, who were taught from childhood that good breeding meant utter passivity.”

  “So she was a challenge.”

  “She was alive, Dorina, in a way none of the other women, and damn few of the men, I knew were. She fascinated me. She infuriated me. . . . Eventually, she enchanted me.”

  “I guess she got over the slapping part.”

  “Never entirely.” He smiled again. A soft, odd expression on a face that so seldom wore any at all.

  I stared at him. I had never considered that he might have felt anything for her; I had always just assumed that she’d been one in a long line of conquests, easily made and easily forgotten. And maybe she had been. Maybe I just wanted to believe that his expression meant something else. Wanted to think that at least one of their kind was capable of something like real affection.

  God, I must be drunker than I thought.

  “After we finally began a relationship,” he said, “I bought her a house in her village and visited her there rather than keeping her in the castle.”

  “Because you were ashamed to have a servant girl for a mistress.”

  “No, Dorina!” He regarded me through a cloud of smoke, his countenance impatient. “I was never ashamed of your mother. I was fearful for her. And my fears were eventually realized.”

  “You couldn’t have known Vlad was going to do what he did.” I blamed Mircea for a lot of things, but not that.

  “No. But I knew she would be a target, should anyone realize that she was important to me. Some would have used her to attempt to influence me; others would have harmed her to hurt me. It was a cutthroat time, and one’s family was never safe. I would not let circumstances pro-scribe my life to the extent of choosing my lover for me, but I was careful. I was cautious. I was discreet.”

  “Ah. Light dawns.”

  “Louis-Cesare must occupy one of those empty Senate seats,” Mircea said, dropping the analogy. “I need someone I can trust, and I need his vote to help sway others during the war. Anything likely to prevent that is unacceptable.”

  “I thought you’d already decided to scrap that plan.”

  “The incident with Elyas is unfortunate, but I am owed a number of favors by members of the European Senate, and the consul is owed more.”

  “You think you can convince them to let him compete?”

  “It is possible. It helps that he has refused to join any faction, preferring to vote his conscience on matters as they arise. That has made him a dangerous loose cannon for years, and left many of the power brokers on his Senate tearing their hair out on a regular basis. I think some might prefer to see him gone. Unfortunately those same people would just as soon see him destroyed. And if he cannot have him, Anthony will do his best to ensure that no one does, lest his abilities be used against him one day.”

  “And this has what to do with me?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew.

  “A liaison with a dhampir could destroy Louis-Cesare’s credibility at the worst possible time,” Mircea told me bluntly.

  “In case you missed it, Louis-Cesare has a mistress,” I reminded him.

  “No, I did not miss it. I also did not miss how he looked at you, or that outburst.”

  “Or the fact that he left without a word?”

  “As well he might, after that! This could ruin him, Dorina. It has already damaged our case considerably.”

  “Anthony didn’t hear that much—”

  “He heard enough to ensure that I cannot introduce your evidence about the way in which Elyas was killed!”

  I frowned. “But Louis-Cesare wouldn’t have killed him that way! He couldn’t have, even if he wanted to. He didn’t know how until I—” I broke off, feeling a little queasy suddenly.

  “Exactly,” Mircea said grimly. “If I introduce our strongest defense, Anthony will make the case that Louis-Cesare received instruction in creative vampire-killing from his dhampir lover. His political opponents would jump at the chance to smear the character of one who has been, until now, unimpeachable. And even his friends on the Senate might begin to waver. If he could do that, some will think, he is capable of anything.”

  “Including murdering a fellow senator.”

  “Exactly so.” Mircea sat back, the end of his cigarette drawing patterns in the air around him. “Louis-Cesare is powerful, which makes him a good weapon, but also a dangerous enemy. He and Elyas had a long-standing animosity that stretched back more than a century. But he had never before moved against him. Now, some will believe, he has done so, and those with whom he has had other disputes may start to wonder if they are next.”

  “Senators must have been killed before,” I protested.

  “In coups, yes. In carefully planned political bloodfests for understandable objectives. But they are not assassinated for personal reasons while sitting in their own homes! This is something that has rarely been seen before, and it allows Anthony to paint a picture of a dangerous loose cannon run amok. And if the Senate vote goes against Louis-Cesare, as judge, Anthony can impose whatever sentence he wishes.”

  “You said he won’t kill him.”

  “He won’t—if Louis-Cesare is willing to knuckle under and bind himself to Anthony in perpetuity.”

  “Giving him a powerful first- level master at his beck and call without any power expenditure on his part whatsoever,” I finished. It would be the Tomas situation all over again, only I didn’t see Louis-Cesare agreeing to what was essentially slavery. And if he didn’t . . .

  “I hate politics,” I said ferven
tly.

  “At the moment, I am not in love with them, either,” Mircea said cynically. “But the situation is what it is, and we must deal with it.”

  “How?” It sounded to me like Anthony had a lock on this.

  “I can still bring up the rune, and show the Senate the empty carrier. That, at least, is a motive they can understand for someone else to have killed Elyas. Louis-Cesare, whatever he may lack in political acumen, needs no such crutch in a duel.”

  “And if Anthony mentions me?”

  Mircea regarded me soberly. “Louis-Cesare tricked you. He wanted the vampire Raymond, but did not wish to fight a family member. He therefore let you believe that he cared for you, in order to steal it away.”

  “That will cover my outburst,” I agreed. And might even be the truth. “What about his?”

  “That is why you need to stay away from him! Louis-Cesare is a warrior, first and foremost. And like most such men, he is blunt, straightforward and uncompromising. He has developed a tenderness for you; that much is clear. How far it extends, I do not know. But he will not succeed in hiding it; he will not so much as understand the reason he should do so!”

  No, I didn’t suppose so. I could see him standing in front of the Senate, arrogantly informing them that his personal life was none of their concern. It would read like some torrid affair with a creature many of them viewed as only slightly better than Satan. Not too helpful.

  “You begin to see,” Mircea murmured.

  “Maybe. But what about Anthony and Jérôme? They already heard him be . . . indiscreet.”

  “Fortunately they are also the ones who have the most reason to interpret anything badly. I will point out that you and Louis-Cesare battledsubrand together recently, and that he was concerned that the creature might be among us once again. He wanted your information, nothing more.”

  “You know, sometimes you’re a little scary,” I told him frankly. “I was there, and that still sounds strangely believable.”

  “Let us hope the Senate thinks so. But no matter what persuasive skills you believe me to possess, you must see that I cannot continue to come up with plausible explanations for other such incidents. This must—”

  Someone tapped on the door, and a second later Marlowe’s curly head poked in. The timing made me narrow my eyes suspiciously, but the look on his face was not slyly knowing, but maddened and frustrated. “Unless you want to let Louis-Cesare handle his own defense, we have to go, Mircea!”

  “That I do not want,” Mircea said, getting up. “Dorina—”

  I stood up, too. “It was business,” I told him. “He stole from me; I returned the favor. That’s all.”

  Mircea didn’t look as pleased by that sentiment as I’d have liked. “This isn’t—” He stopped, and again seemed to be trying to marshal his thoughts. I didn’t know why he was bothering; I’d already agreed to what he wanted. Not that it was much. Louis-Cesare had Christine back; I wasn’t likely to be seeing much more of him anyway.

  “I want you to be happy, Dorina,” he said suddenly—and strangely. I searched his face, wondering what this new game was, what the hell he wanted from me now. Like always, it was the perfect, beautiful mask, and told me nothing.

  His hand rose hesitantly toward my face, and I unconsciously flinched. Mircea had never hurt me, but a lifetime of fighting and killing his kind provides a person with certain instincts. A flash of some emotion crossed his eyes, but it was gone before I could name it, and his hand dropped again.

  And something lanced through me, brief and sharp, like a needle’s bite.

  Sunlight streamed in a small, glassless window, painting a watercolor wash over a wooden table. A woman stood beside it, her arms moving in a circular motion, kneading a pile of dough with an unbroken rhythm. Every few moments she looked out the window, over a crenellated ridge of mountains, their sheer faces lined with snow and backlit by the sun.

  It was a rising sun, I concluded as I watched it swell, gleaming and red as it broke free of the landscape and drifted into the liquid blue sky. The cottage stood on the edge of the small village, near a road that ran through the trees. But the road was empty, the dust undisturbed except for a slight wind.

  The air that flowed in from the mountains outside was crisp, ruffling her hair as she worked to braid the dough into a long ribbon and then form it into a loaf. She set it aside and started the process over again, while the wind died and the flour hung in the air like mist. It clung to her dark lashes and brows, to the soft down of hair on her arms, and gloved her hands in a dusting of gold.

  Two arms went around her from behind, pulling her back against a warm, familiar body. “Stop that,” she admonished, her voice liquid with laughter. “No baking, no bread for your morning meal.”

  “But I am hungry now,” he said, smiling as he lifted her gilded hand to his lips, tracing the calluses there with his tongue.

  Her hand came up, smearing flour against his cheek, gritty and warm from the motion of her hands. “Husband,” she breathed against his neck. “My Mircea.” And the love and loss that welled up inside him was so sweet and so painful, it was literally staggering.

  “Mircea!” Marlowe’s voice was starting to sound a little panic-stricken. “They are beginning now!”

  The memory shattered and broke with his voice, and I stumbled back into the seat. I bent low, hands on my knees, and gulped air, my eyes stinging with tears. Loneliness, vast, echoing and cold, opened up around me, but it was the resignation that made a hole in me, that hollowed me out. And I wasn’t even sure if it was my emotion or his.

  Oh, Mircea, I thought. Oh, my God.

  A hand slipped onto my shoulder, pale and cool. I looked up at him, blank disbelief in my mind. I don’t know what was on my face, but he frowned and squatted down beside the chair. “Dorina, what—”

  “You married her?”

  He stopped, his face registering blank shock. He said nothing, but he didn’t deny it. And that was just—

  “I have to go,” I told him, jumping up and stumbling away, my hand somehow finding the doorknob to the office. I pulled it open and slipped through, and put my back against the door. Thankfully he didn’t try follow me.

  I stood there, staring into space, seeing nothing. Other than the face of a woman I’d never known, a peasant girl with no family, no money, nothing—except a prince for a husband.

  It felt like the room lurched sideways. It wasn’t so much a physical movement as a sheering of the mind as my brain tried to wrap itself around an impossible idea. I’d assumed he never spoke of her out of indifference. But he’d been his father’s firstborn, heir to a disputed throne. He was the last person on earth who could afford to take chances with his choice of wife. And yet he’d married a girl who could do nothing to help him politically, who could seal no treaties, gain him no armies, never be anything other than a liability.

  Because he had loved her.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Can we get out of here already?” someone said crossly.

  I looked up, feeling more than a little dazed, to see my duffel sitting on the desk. Not-a-butler must have been busy, because the area had been cleared of dead vampire parts. Except for one.

  Ray was still on the desk, perched beside the duffel like a grotesque paperweight. For a moment, I ignored him. The past was tugging at me, a thousand questions suddenly shuffling through my very rattled brain.

  It could be a lie, a fabrication to achieve some hidden objective. Mircea was certainly capable of mental manipulation, as I knew better than anyone. He’d used it on me before, even admitted to it. Why should I believe this to be any different?

  But that had been erasing memories, not planting them. And while some vamps could create illusions almost as well as a mage could, tricking the mind into thinking all kinds of things, I’d never heard of Mircea having that ability. Not that vampires were in the habit of revealing all their secrets. He probably had all sorts of skills I didn’t know about. But i
f he could do that, why hadn’t he years ago? Why leave me with blank spaces in my memory he had to know I’d be curious about, when he could have merely spackled over them?

  I’d been the victim of illusions a time or two before, and some could be damn real. But that hadn’t been real; it had been perfect, down to the tiniest details: the smell of the yeast, the buzzing of insects outside the window, the grittiness of the stone-ground flour. If it was an illusion, it was the best damned one I’d ever seen.

  All of a sudden, nothing made sense anymore. If I was being played, I couldn’t see how, and that made it dangerous. And if I wasn’t . . .

  But I had to be. People don’t change. Not that much, not that fast. And that was even more true for vamps. They were what they were, and letting myself believe anything else just because I wanted it so damn badly was a fool’s errand.

  I’d spent a lifetime fighting vampires; I knew them, understood them as well as anyone could who wasn’t one of them. They were selfish, self-centered, power obsessed, false. They’d say anything, do anything, to get what they wanted, and Mircea was no exception to that rule. If anything, he pretty much epitomized the vamp ideal: a cold, calculating head of a powerful house who destroyed his enemies, rewarded his allies and never let something as useless as sentiment get in his way.

  Of course, he hadn’t been a vamp then. That scene had taken place in broad daylight, with the sun filtering in the window like a haze. It would have been like standing in a rain of fire for a baby vamp. He should have incinerated immediately, yet he hadn’t even flinched. So he’d been human. It was the Mircea I’d never known—the man he had been before the curse took effect, before it warped him, changed him.

  But those emotions hadn’t been part of the memory, had they? That had been a happy time, a stolen morning away from responsibilities. No reason for pain, for loss. Not when he had no way of knowing what was coming. And by the time he did know, he was vampire. But they didn’t, couldn’t feel that kind of—