Even though he was so powerful and his blood made her so much stronger, she hadn’t stopped to take the time to realize she wasn’t hungry. Not even a bit. For the first time since she’d turned into a vampire, Lilith was full.
The sheets fell out of her arms onto the floor with a soft hush. She pressed a hand against her throat and the other against her belly.
It had been so long since she’d actually felt full. Before this moment, she hadn’t remembered what it even felt like. To not be hungry all the time, to not feel her stomach trying to crawl out of her body and into her mouth...
Tears welled in her eyes. They dripped down her cheeks and she didn’t know what to do with them. How to thank Drake when his blood had been the only thing capable of giving her this gift.
She didn’t know how long this feeling would last, but she hoped it was for a few hours more at least. She’d do anything for more of this peace.
Lilith leaned down to pick up the clothing she’d dropped. The sheets had landed in a muddy footprint. She should wash them again.
Sighing, she straightened and put her hands on her hips. Since when had she been the type of woman to worry about things like this? She hadn’t even been a maid when she was a human! And now she worried about the state of sheets?
A thought crossed her mind. A deviant one, yes, but she was feeling good for the first time in years. Maybe, just maybe, she could walk away from the work and inspect the main hall of the fortress. Where all the nobles walked through when they had their dinners.
Just a peek wouldn’t hurt, would it?
She glanced around to make sure all the faeries were still sleeping and time hadn’t flown past her a little too quickly as it had yesterday. When she didn’t hear anyone in the rafters or shuffling through the halls, she slipped out of the laundry room to the Great Hall.
A spiral staircase took up one entire corner of the room. It led up toward the faerie king’s private quarters, so she could only assume he came down the stairs when people arrived. The black floor was polished into a dusky obsidian and the walls were filled with paintings in golden ornate frames.
These were what captured her attention the first time she’d walked by the hall. Flint had shuffled her along, insisting they were not for servants to stare at.
But she wanted to. Of all the things in this entire realm that were different and interesting, these paintings were the first things she’d seen that were familiar.
She stepped closer to them and realized they were actually what she’d thought they were. Paintings from the sixteenth century by an unknown artist who should have been famous in his day. Unfortunately, vampires weren’t all that fond of having their names remembered throughout the centuries.
Her sire had been dear friends with Renaldo, the vampire who had painted all the landscapes and portraits decorating the Great Hall. She’d met him multiple times and had always been so impressed with the work he produced. It hurt her heart to think no one would ever see the strokes of paint clearly made with more feeling than most humans could muster in their entire lives.
Now, she knew why no human had ever unearthed his paintings. They were all here, in this realm between places where neither faerie nor human would see them.
She lifted a hand and touched the edge of a frame with her fingertip. “Hello, old friend. At least your work is with someone who appreciates the finer things in life.”
Renaldo would have liked to see his work in a room like this. The hall of a king! Who would have thought?
Her favorite memory of the painter was back in the heyday of vampiric legends. He’d feasted from so many of his subjects in his paintings that he’d been an incredibly powerful vampire. All he had to do was think of being in another part of the room and he’d teleport there.
Vampires couldn’t do magic like that anymore. They just didn’t have enough opportunity to feed. In the Dark Ages, no one noticed when a mass amount of humans went missing. They noticed things like that these days.
She sighed and looked across the room to another picture he’d done, this one vaguely familiar. She narrowed her eyes and then suddenly... she was there.
Right in front of the picture where she shouldn’t have been. Lilith hadn’t lifted a leg, even with the speed she could race through a room at. She would have remembered trying to move, even unconsciously, which could only mean...
She lifted her hands and stared down at them. Power surged in her body and pressed against her skin like it wanted to get out. So much power she was overwhelmed.
She looked at the top of the stairs and imagined herself there. In the blink of an eye, she was. Standing at the peak of the spiral staircase and looking down at the glistening black room.
A surprised burst of laughter bubbled and popped out of her mouth. Had she just teleported? Really teleported?
No vampire had done that in centuries.
She swallowed hard. The faerie king’s blood was strong. Much stronger than any she’d ever tasted before. And yes, she could feel his magic inside her as though he had shared some of it with her. Which could only mean he had somehow strengthened her.
His blood wasn’t just the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. It was also more powerful.
What else could she do?
Lilith listened intently to make sure no one was approaching the Great Hall. No footsteps. No rustling of fabric. Not even a heartbeat other than those who were still in their quarters waiting for the next day to arrive.
The greatest trick any vampire used to have under their sleeve had last been performed by the most renowned of their kind. Vlad Dracula. The first Primus of all vampires, not just individual broods.
Legend had it, he could return to a vampire’s true form. And in a swarm of bats he could attack all those who turned against him.
Lilith settled her mind. She cleared all worries, thoughts, or concerns from her head and simply...
Let go.
All the magic in her body surged forward at once and burst from her skin. She broke free from the confines of her body and became something else. A hundred eyes. A hundred wings.
Lilith darted through the room all the way to the other side where she brought everything back together. It was like dragging pieces of herself into a whole.
Not easy, but not difficult either.
And once all the pieces were back in place, she tilted her head back and burst into laughter. Had she really done that? Had she actually done what no vampire had in five hundred years?
She’d always wanted to be something more than just a vampiress hoping her transgressions weren’t discovered by the Primus or any of the other broods. With just a single feeding off a faerie king, she’d become so much more.
What the actual hell was in his blood?
Maybe she should ask him. He might know more about this magic than she did, although somehow she doubted that. He didn’t even know vampires had venom that made their prey feel good. Or at least, if he knew that, he had pretended he didn’t just to enjoy the high.
Lilith looked down at her hands, still hands although they had just been bats a moment ago, and laughed again. She hadn’t been this happy in... Longer than she could remember. And she had a very long memory.
Not hungry. Full of magic and power that no vampire had wielded for a very long time. She was finally, wonderfully, herself again.
The happiness lasted for all of a few moments before clapping echoed through the room.
“Bravo, vampiress! What else can you do?”
17
It was the collar that first alerted him of her mischievous adventure. The vibration had rocked through him like a sucker punch to the groin. He’d even bent over in shock, she’d used so much magic all at once.
What was she trying to do? The collar wanted to zap her, to remind her why she wasn’t allowed to be doing whatever spells she was performing. A rune ritual? No. She wasn’t stupid enough to open a portal.
He’d waffled even going to see her. He
knew his presence could start a fight. And he quite liked where they were at, even though it might be a little different from the start of most courtships. He didn’t know many women who ate the arm of the man they were interested in. But he was certain she was interested.
Vampires couldn’t cast spells. At least, that’s what the rumors were. So she was doing something else he didn’t know about her kind. Considering she’d used some kind of magic to make him fall asleep, he thought she owed him an explanation.
Drake stood up from his meeting with Flint and a few other important staff members. “I’ll return in a few moments.”
Flint paused, his jaw hanging open in shock. “Did you just interrupt me mid-sentence, Your Majesty?”
“I did.” Drake grinned and walked out of the room.
Perhaps his head of staff wasn’t used to being shut down, but Drake could get used to it. He’d given Flint a little more leeway in this palace than he should have, anyway. The staff were here to serve him and no one else.
He strode through the halls and used his own magic to figure out where the hell she was. It was late. Even his staff members had wanted to go to sleep a long time ago, but he’d been keeping them up. They had a lot to go over before he brought all the nobles back to the Black Fortress.
The halls were eerily quiet, sometimes too quiet in the middle of the night. He could hear nothing but the hum of the collar drawing him to the Great Hall. Which made little sense, considering no servants were supposed to be in that corner of the fortress.
But she was a rule breaker.
The last thing he expected when he walked into the Great Hall was to not find her at all. A wall of bats shot from the stairs to the end of the hall. He almost yelled for Flint to get rid of the pests until they coalesced into a very familiar form.
Lilith.
She stood at the back of the Great Hall, staring at her hands, before she tilted her head back and laughed like he’d never heard before. Mirth. Joy. Pure, unadulterated happiness bubbled out of her chest and filled his ears with the most lovely of sounds.
She was happy. For the first time since meeting her, he got to see what that looked like.
And how it made his heart race.
He couldn’t interrupt her glee, but also he needed to make a point here. Magic like that, magic he hadn’t even known she possessed, needed to be curbed. The collar would eventually do what it was designed to do.
The image of his first bride flashed in his mind again. Her burned husk of a body laying on the ground, still trying to get away from him even though she knew there was no further she could crawl.
He had to stop Lilith before she burned to a crisp. Unlike his first bride, he actually cared if she expired.
So he clapped at her antics. Like the asshole he was.
“Bravo, vampiress! What else can you do?” he called out, knowing it would only make her angry.
When she turned to face him, it wasn’t anger on her face. Just pure bliss, stuck there from moments ago. “Did you see?”
She wanted him to share in her joy. Lilith was reaching out an olive branch between them and it nearly broke him. He didn’t know if he could be that person. The kindness required didn’t exist in his heart.
And if that didn’t tear him apart.
His heart swelled in his chest and thudded hard as Drake took a step closer to her. “I saw.”
“No vampire has done that in centuries.” She was out of breath, every word like she had just run a marathon. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks were flushed, and she vibrated with excitement. “I can’t believe I did any of that. I can... I can teleport!”
Well, he hadn’t seen that part. “You can teleport?”
“I can teleport!” She laughed again and the sound of her happiness became a bird that stole his soul and taught him how to fly.
By all the faerie realms, she was beautiful. Every part of her from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. And he was just the fool trying to catch her light, hoping like hell she would love him back.
Love?
Drake shook himself out of such fanciful thoughts. He couldn’t love her.
As she spun in a circle, he hardened his heart to such thoughts. A faerie king loved no one, especially the King of the Flame.
The elemental stirred to life. “You do not love her, Drake. Thinking such things will only hurt you in the end.”
He wanted to ask why. The creature already knew the question in his mind long before he attempted to verbalize it. He wanted to know why love was so dangerous for someone like him. Why he couldn’t love when all he wanted was to have someone in his life who was there just for him. And only him.
“She couldn’t love someone like you. She’s a vampire. You’re a faerie. Those two don’t match. You’ll just get your heart broken.” A similar emotion to heartbreak, dulled and quiet, slid through his mind and made his heart squeeze in pain.
The elemental had felt the emotion before. It knew what heartbreak felt like.
A low hum echoed in his mind. “You know my plan. You know what I asked of you, and you promised to be prepared when we were ready. Trust me, Drake. Humans don’t know how to love, not really. They’ll only break your heart. And a vampire came from a human.”
He wanted nothing more than to love her, and she deserved that. But the elemental was right. A woman like Lilith could never love a man like him.
When she calmed down, breathless and overjoyed, she stared at him with those wide eyes and he told himself he felt nothing. “Drake, isn’t it marvelous? A vampire with power like this exists once again. Everyone thought it was impossible!”
Anger bubbled in his chest. Anger at himself for thinking this could go somewhere. Rage that she didn’t notice he’d changed, paused, didn’t want to look at her. But worse than anything else, he was hurt by the future he’d never had but already lost.
All that emotion fueled him, funneled into something dark and twisted in his chest. The fire magic in his heart heated, burning through his body, flowing through his veins until even he could see the glow.
He took an ominous step toward her, hands curled into fists at his sides. “So vampires are more powerful than you let on. Is that what you’re telling me?”
She frowned. “No. No one else is, that’s what I’m saying. Vampires haven’t been powerful like this in decades. Centuries.”
He let the power coil in his breast until he couldn’t tell what was him and what was the raw magic fueling his anger. He took another step closer to her and let the elemental control his motions.
The elemental reached through his body, lifted Drake’s hand, and cupped her cheek. His hand glowed red against her velvet soft skin. “Is it my magic that gave you so much power then? Is it me running through your veins?”
Some part of his mind recognized he was being an asshole. Just as he always did when things hit too close to home. She didn’t want to admit those words, and he shouldn’t force her to feel like this power wasn’t hers. It was.
He hadn’t given her a gift by allowing her to feed on him. All he’d done was given her the ability to use her own magic.
And yet, he still couldn’t stop the words from coming out of his damn mouth.
Lilith leaned into his touch at first, then tried to recoil when she heard what he said. He tightened his hand on her jaw, forcing her to stay in place. “Is it?” he asked again.
She took a deep breath and blew it out her nose. The happiness in her gaze was fading and it hurt him, even though it shouldn’t. He could feel his own hope draining with every second as the light dimmed from her eyes.
Lilith shrugged. “I guess you could say that. There’s something about your blood that’s different.”
He leaned closer, drawing her scent into his lungs. “Is that why you tried to steal my knife?”
Every muscle in her body locked and she stopped breathing. Lilith stared up into his eyes, her gaze flicking back and forth as though she were searching for something.
Anything in his gaze that might help her. “Yes,” she finally admitted. “That’s why I was trying to steal your knife.”
He hadn’t realized the vampires knew faerie kings had more powerful blood. He shot a quick question to the elemental in his mind.
“Yes,” it confirmed. “With me inside you, your blood is far stronger than that of a normal fae. I did not know the vampires could use it for power such as this.”
One more question burned in his mind. Was she draining their power? Could she take from them what only the elemental had?
“No, she cannot absorb that much magic. You think so little of me to assume a single vampire can drain me?”
The elemental disappeared from his mind. Drake had apparently upset the ancient being.
He sighed and brought himself back to the present, staring down into Lilith’s wide eyes. “What am I going to do with you?” He asked himself rather than her, but Lilith chuckled.
“I can think of a few things, King of the Flame. But I’ve been known to be a selfish woman.”
Here he was, trying to be upset with her for daring to come into his life and change everything. For her to threaten his well-being with her very presence, and she made a joke like that?
He didn’t want to see her as an equal or a woman who could calm his rage. He wanted to hate her, let the anger fuel him and push him too far. Then he’d be an utter fool and send her racing away from him. As she should, because he really was an asshole. At the very core, he knew himself to be a complete and utter cad.
But she made him want to be more than that.
Drake pulled her close and touched his forehead to hers. “I keep trying to push you away. You’re a vampire. I’m a faerie. This cannot be.”
“I know it can’t,” she whispered. “We both know that.”
But he wanted it more than anything else. With the elemental sulking in his head, he might as well try something. The one thing he’d never done with her and wanted to since the day he met her.
Drake slid his hand around the back of her neck and tilted her head up. He kissed her as he’d never dared kiss another woman. With lips and tongue, he tried to devour her whole. He wanted to take whatever magic it was that made her so precious to him and draw it deep inside himself so he’d never be without her again.
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