“Will you return to court?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” I said, walking in the direction of the carriages. He followed.
Viktor took my hand and drew me into an embrace. His hearts tympanic rhythm tapped steadily in my head as the moonlight caught his ebony eyes. They shimmered down at me as girls gathered on the steps to snicker. “Perhaps, I should find you?” he whispered.
“You will see me again at court,” I rushed. “I promise.”
I wiggled from his embrace and ran toward the hovel of carriages. The drunk and exhausted littered the congested carriage lines as the ball wore down, the morning hour creeping upon us. I slipped into an open carriage, escaping him and the waiting sun, watching as he held witness to my departure.
Three nights passed before I returned. Those were three nights of agony, spent pacing urine-caked streets. Each shadowy passage, noisy tavern, child’s boisterous laugh, echoed his heartbeat. There was not a safe place in Tver for me to escape its thunderclap song. It was constant and maddening and beautiful.
Nothing, not even the hustle of the night market could drown out its assuredness. So, I found myself seeking solace in familiarity, in custom.
The hay-strewn pews did little to warm the chilled, splintered wood. And I could hear the scuttle of vermin on the mud-laden stone floors. The dimly lit altar, with its gilded idols, hid the filth keeping warm on the chapel’s floor.
There was a haunting stillness in between creaturely movements – an unsettling quiet. I sat transfixed on the images of Russian saints, martyrs in a war I no longer fought. Their anguished faces, lined in melted gold and crushed jewels, shimmered in the candlelight. A subtleness of linseed and lavender clung to the air, kissing my skin as I sat there.
Distracting as they were, I could still hear that gentle thud calling to me. So on the third night, I resigned to its siren song.
The overcast moon struggled behind a delicate sprinkling of eager rain. The drops trickled from rooftops, rolling into the gutters, onto the streets, their hypnotic pitter-patter luring me forward. The buildings sparkled with what little starlight managed to peak through the clouds.
The city appeared more alive that night, even though most of its people were safely inside their homes; hidden from the raindrops, hidden from the violent storm that would soon follow.
His heart spoke to me. The blood spoke to me. They drew me to him, to the palace.
His balcony was grand and furnished, but unused that night. Instead, the doors were opened and the ruby curtains closed. They were all that separated me now from him, from his heartbeat. From his blood. Its palatable aroma of succulent, metallic sweetness seduced my mind.
If I was to begin again, though, to fall in love, to be loved, I could not make the same mistakes. I had to reveal to Viktor my true nature. Something about his heartbeat, the way it lured me to him, told me it had to be so.
I drew back the curtain and spied him fireside, lounging. Its unending war-like flames raged their undying evil that he dutifully stoked. And he was completely unaware of my presence; so innocently naive to a world that encroached upon him, threatening his very life. But, I knew it was time to shatter his serenity.
I could have flown away – left Russia that evening. I should have done so. Then, he would have just died with the rest history, a meager player in his own timeline. Would he have known love in his lifetime? Perhaps. But then, if I had never spoken his name whilst out on his balcony, I would have missed out on his endless, passionate affection. And the twins.
And I did speak his name, but softly. It was almost a whisper, for I was terrified that he would hear me and be frightened.
“Prince Vladislous?” I had whispered into the quiet room. He turned, startled, and when he saw me, he jumped back and froze.
“I am not here to hurt you, Viktor.”
“How... how did you get in here?” his voice quivered as he spoke. “Guards!” he called.
There was an immediate rustle in the stairwell, followed by a skirmish of metal outside Viktor’s door. The guards smacked their leathered fists against the door, shouting for their lord’s attention.
“I can do many things,” I said as I inched into the room, slowly advancing toward him. “I’ve barred the door.”
I looked toward the fire and with my thoughts, it extinguished. Smoldering ash remained where there was once flickering flames; and nothing was left in the fireplace as evidence of the great fire that once consumed it except for it and a few grayed logs. The display of power made him back into the wall as he tried to retreat from me, to hide.
“I told you, Viktor, I can do many things. Now, call off your guards.”
“Sorceress!” he shouted as he stumbled on the corner of a rug.
Regaining his footing, he dodged toward the bed, trying to hide himself behind the crimson velvet and vanilla damask curtains. He kept his glare on me as I lingered near the fireplace.
“Viktor there is no escaping me. I can be on top of you before you can bat an eye, or shout for those blessed guards. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have already done so.”
“Then, pray thee, mistress, why have you come if not to kill me? For, I do not know what wicked treachery this is but to me drive mad with fear.”
“I promised that I would return. I always keep my promises,” I explained.
“Now, before I change my mind and leave this place, call off your guards. And, pray, if you must, that I not give you reason to fear me. For, dear sir, it is not my intent.”
“It is a false alarm, all is well,” he told the guards through a cracked door. “Return to your posts.”
“Come here and sit with me by the fire.” Waving my hand over the fireplace, a vibrant array of orange flames licked to life, touching the stones and crackling the near-ash wood. “Come,” I said, patting the spot next to me.
“I do not believe you,” he replied, as he remained, fixed behind the curtain. “I...I do not even know you.”
“We danced, Viktor. You know me well enough,” I whispered.
“I fear, somehow, you are better acquainted with myself. This puts me at a grave disadvantage.”
“And yet, you feel the connection, do you not?” I turned. He still clung to the fabric, his face now paled with moonlight’s glimmer.
“Even as I struggle you now, I cannot deny I’m pulled to you,” he replied; his words catching a wind and trailing off the balcony, softening as the sentence lingered between us.
“Then you should not fear me, nor fear your feelings for me.”
“But I do fear your sorcery, duchess.”
As promised, before he could blink, I was on top of him. I threw his body upon the bed and lay against it, his heart now beating furiously. His eyes stared into mine wildly. His breath was fire upon my face as I hovered over him. His dressing gown opened; his chiseled chest was nothing but a spot for me to rest my palm against as I pressed bore down to restrain him. My strength was far greater than his was, and when he realized this, he conceded. His mind was plagued with thoughts of death, thoughts of escape, thoughts so jumbled that I blocked them from my own.
“I could kill you this minute, Viktor. I could have killed you when I came here without you even knowing it was me,” I confessed. “But I do not wish you death, Viktor; so rid those images, those thoughts from your mind this instant. We will have no more of that, do you understand? No more unrest and unhappiness. Loneliness.”
With him still quivering beneath me, I bent my head and caressed his naked chest. His heart pulsated, its cadence quickening as my caresses advanced their march up his neck, then to his chin.
When I reached his ear lobe, he whispered, “You are not going to kill me?”
“No,” I replied, softly. I glided him from the bed; his legs jelly twigs and his arms mere globs of putty in my own. "I promise, Viktor; I will not, ever, take your life.”
"Why?" he asked; but I was not sure how to answer.
In that moment – as his blood
intoxicated me – his blood that I could taste on the tip of my tongue; that bled in his sweat; that mingled on my lips with each delicate kiss, I too wondered why I spared his life.
"Why do you not just kill me? I know what you are now."
"No, you do not."
I released him, and let him watch me as I sauntered over to the chair and sat down nearest to the fire. The flames, the orange and red beacons calling to me, they felt inviting as if I could jump right in, right then, and end this facade; this joke of an eternity. But, in the end, not even that would have killed me. In time, I would have healed; and I would become jaded by the pain.
"Then what are you if not a sorceress, who can appear on a man's balcony in the dead of night?" he asked. "You are not a ghost; not a figment of my imagination either. I know you are real. I have felt you – with these two hands; with these lips.”
"You would not understand," I explained. "You would be afraid of the truth."
"I am already afraid of you, how much harm can the truth do?” he replied. “Why did you come here tonight if you are someone, or something so frightening that you cannot reveal your nature?"
"I am lonely," I told him, and then he rose from the bed but stayed near it, holding onto the bedpost.
"Everyone gets lonely, Bree, but not everyone can scale a tower wall and breathe fire to life with the wave of her hand." He clutched the bed curtain, tightly, winding it in his fist. “Nor, can they press a man twice their size – at least – down with impressive force, rendering him immobile.”
He loosened his grip on the bed curtain as he took rest on the edge of the bed.
“And, while your frighten me, and I realize my guards are within an ear shot, awaiting my command – you surprise me. You intrigue me.”
"I did not scale your tower wall, Viktor,” I commented.
“Excuse me?” came his reply, as if he half heard me.
“I flew.”
“You flew?” he asked, glaring now, directly at me. “From the ground to my balcony, you flew? Like a bird?” “Yes, Viktor,” I replied, watching the glaze of bewilderment creep across his face.
"Then you are a sorceress," he remarked; his words tinged with sadness and awe. And laced heavily with a brewing undercurrent of terror.
"No," I assured him. “I am no such thing. No such thing exist, I can assure you that.”
"Then, before I call my guards," he demanded, "What are you?"
But, before he could blink; before he could close his eyes; before he could turn around, I was in front of him.
Before he could protest; before he could cry; before he could fight, I had a hold of him. Before he could grasp onto something; before he could dig his heels into the rug; before he could claw at me in retaliation, I had him in mid-air. Before he could blink... before he could breathe... before he could say a prayer... his blood was in me.
TEN
His body lay upon the bed; my lips, stained with his blood, had more life in them than his body. He lay motionless, gently cushioned by a pillow, as I untied the bed curtains and watched as they fell softly around the bed, concealing my sins.
Not once did I take my eyes from the slumped hulk of man as I inched to the fireplace, reclaiming my spot on the worn chair. Heavily, my body sunk into the dust trap, and I licked the remnants of his sweet blood from my lower lip. There had been just one drop, one small and insignificant drop from when I withdrew, that escaped my wanting mouth.
I sat watching him sleep, watching his body walk a thin tightrope between life and death. I had brought him to the brink, just a few more sips and his precious heart would have stopped.
That wondrous chorus of throbbing heart that had first attracted me now struggled to sing under the strain of its weakened blood supply; and slowly faded to a gentle tapping beneath his clammy skin. It was this slowing that made me stop. His luscious nectar still clung to my lips, though, and now all I could do was stare at him lying helpless. He had come close to death that night, and I had come close to taking him there.
I had come dangerously close to breaking my promise.
His flesh glistened in the candlelight. This was not the first time I had brought a body close to its end. It would surely not be my last time, either.
I sat for hours in that chair next to the fire, with his blood swimming in my body, warming me, as he slept. I was fixed to that spot, and my eyes to his face, watching for any manifestations of movement, but none came. His forehead, bathed in a moist covering of dew, and lips were pale, but I could still hear his heart beating. Even if it was but a faint whisper, it was something to embrace.
Morning threatened its approach, forcing me to leave his side. I caressed his ashen lips and left the room the same way I had come.
For two weeks, I wandered the streets of Tver, carefully avoiding the castle. News of the Prince's strange illness spread, but with the passing days, he rebounded and gained his strength.
I knew it best to avoid the prince, avoid the castle grounds. I made plans to leave the city, but when time came, I was unable to leave. As he regained strength, his heartbeat sang to me, beckoning me through the dingy alleyways, and past crowded taverns. It begged me to be near, to love it. To care for it.
The busy streets, I used for concealment. I hid in the loud noises, the constant onslaught of a hundred thoughts channeling into my mind as I resigned, allowing them to wash over me in a tidal wave of reality.
These noises did nothing to drown out that unceasing vibration, though. It haunted me, terrorized me. His blood, lying stagnant in my preternatural veins, drew me to him as a flame attracts the moth.
It was at the wedding of his sixteen-year-old sister Natalia where I would return to him. The prince, himself, was pushing a scandalous thirty-five years of age and unmarried. It was on the eve of his betrothal – at the age of nineteen – when his fiancé perished in a carriage accident while traveling to him. After that, Viktor refused marriage contracts from local and foreign courts.
Unless Viktor married and bore a son, the principality’s future fell on Natalia’s shoulders. And it was a burden he eagerly relinquished that night as he surveyed the crowd.
Russian dignitaries swarmed Natalia’s wedding feast. Viktor sat to the right of his mother, a proud woman who was long in her years. In three months, she would die of pneumonia. Her gray hair pulled back, a crown of pearls and ruby jewels adorning the silver circlet resting atop her head. The candlelight kissed jewels accentuated the woman’s piercing cobalt eyes. Their brilliance had not dulled through the years of childbirth and worry. Her wrinkled hands had seen seventy winters and two children buried in the frozen Russian soil, yet they persevered to hold a delicate wine goblet that evening.
Her daughter, Viktor’s younger sister, was a delicate chalice of femininity reflecting in her mother's eyes. Natalia’s lengthy, silk charcoal locks hung freely in the back, while tiny strands of crystal beads interlaced with two thin braids extending from her temples, kissing each other in a tight bundle at the back of her head. They were bound— eternally, it seemed— with a diamond clasp.
Viktor’s father had died five years before during a hunt, but he would have been proud of his daughter's beauty in that moment as her dress shimmered, and her hair sparkled in the candlelight.
As I scanned the room watching, the drama unfolded before me: humanity rejoicing the bonding of two, not out of love though, but necessity. And, I sensed a slight shimmer to the air that was not reflecting from Natalia's hair.
Again, almost as soon the shimmer cleared, it began again. The room wavered before me. Someone, or something, projected this mirage into my mind, making its vaporous glow rapidly disappear. Then it came again: a subtle glittering suspending itself in mid-air, gingerly dissipating the more I concentrated on it. I followed this allusion with my eyes trying to find its source, but was unable to; that is when I caught the lingering of a familiar musty scent, so subtle that I almost overlooked it.
From across the room, near a
curtain leading onto a balcony, my eyes spied him leaning against the wall. At first, I thought I was mistaken; but when he smiled, I knew it was he.
He nodded toward the curtain and then slipped behind it and out of my view. Unsure whether Viktor had noticed me, I remained close to the wall, concealed in the wedding crowd. Approaching the balcony, I drew the curtain back, and could no longer conceal the rush of feelings breaking through my calm. I ran to him, grabbing him about the shoulders, pulling him close.
"I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see you again," I whispered.
"And I you," he replied. "I have missed you."
"I have missed you," I told him, leaning away and releasing him. "I could have used you around when I have managed to make a mess of things. You always came in handy for that."
"Oh, I held you back; you needed to find your own way."
"That I have, Wesley," I replied. "That I have. But how did you ever find me?"
"It is a long story; too private for this balcony," he explained. "I have been looking for you for a long time. It was in a nearby town, not a week ago, that I heard about Prince Vladislous' illness."
"You knew it was me?" I asked.
"The symptoms sounded familiar. My maker made the same mistake with me before returning the next night and delivering me over," he continued. "So... I went to this Prince. As he slept, or so I thought - he was in a feverish stupor. I ascended and crept in from the balcony. As the moonlight flooded the room, he sat up in the bed and called out for you. I stood there watching him, not believing his words. Then I watched as he recovered. I knew that it was only a matter of time before you would return for him."
"I almost did not," I confessed. "I almost could not."
"What are you doing with him, this mortal?"
"I honestly do not know, Wesley," I admitted, more to myself than to him. "I drank from him, nearly to the point of death, when I had promised myself I would not. Yet, his blood has invaded my body, my mind; like a plague, it has consumed me and now he is an obsession."
Descent Into Madness Page 9
