“You never need to feel shame, Elisabeth, and I do not wish for you to regret the gift I’ve given you. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that you resented me.”
“Never.” The answer was immediate, reflexive, leaving Elisabeth to wonder if she’d in fact meant it.
“Return with me now, then.”
Elisabeth stuttered, but the queen wasn’t interested in refusal. Alina’s lips fell on her at once, her tongue striking like an uncoiled snake. Their mouths interlocked and Elisabeth felt her need for vengeance wavering beneath this persistence.
The queen preyed on vulnerability, so this was no surprise. Gentle kisses quenched Elisabeth’s thirst for companionship. Their tongues rolled, slowly at first, but then much harder, as familiarity returned to this passion.
Elisabeth thought she must’ve smelled worse than a city trash heap, having been out here for so long. Last thing she wanted was anyone standing this close to her, queen or not.
Alina’s mouth retreated long enough to offer a breathless whisper. “Remember the siege of Paris?” She chuckled and tipped her forehead to Elisabeth’s.
Oh, how she remembered. A countryside of razed earth and burning windmills, replete with a hysteria-steeped populace. Food, a scarcity. They’d feasted off that fear, taking flesh as they pleased and turning others into lunatic madmen over the flimsiest promises of survival. That was, of course, until the conflict reached a regrettable, anticlimactic finish. Thousands of people wilted and died from starvation, almost at once. Paris, a metropolis of misery, had become a cathedral of silence overnight. Together, Alina and Elisabeth had admired Henry IV’s brutality, his willingness to serve death by the hundreds of thousands so that his claim to the throne could no longer be contested.
The horrors visited upon the innocent throughout that siege were numerous, but Henry of Navarre got his crown in the end. There was a lesson about the calculus of war in there, and Elisabeth came away from it understanding that a million losses were acceptable if it meant standing victorious.
She didn’t think she agreed with that anymore. At least, she didn’t want to. One more night with Aetius was preferable to all of the destruction she’d visited upon these lands. What’d she have to show for any of that? All of the urges she’d felt like sating, and the lives ruined because of them. Just footnotes now. And the price she’d paid for them had been too high in the end.
“How I miss you, huntress,” Alina said. Her lips pulled away leaving a thread of shared spittle between them.
The queen’s hands slid to Elisabeth’s hips and lifted the frayed cloak in balled fists. It shimmied up over her thighs until Alina’s hands clasped around her bottom, squeezing fingers over soft flesh and purring in admiration.
“Please,” Elisabeth said. “Do not…”
“Tell me why.”
“I cannot lose myself in you. I want to…more than anything else, I need it. But the ones who killed Aetius are out there…”
“We will orchestrate their deaths from behind Castle Daciana’s walls.”
The castle offered the safety that Elisabeth craved, carrying her far away from the realities facing her now. The thought of curling up at the foot of Alina’s throne was a powerful lure. It was a room of pure splendor; the earliest prophet remained crucified there to this day, clinging to life, sustained by an eternal supply of blood trickling from his severed genitals.
Alina had enjoyed this tableau so much, that she had rendered him a permanent fixture there centuries earlier. He revels in the debauchery of her kingdom, a witness to nightly orgies and bloodbaths, cackling with madness every now and again at the sight of the most blasphemous accomplishments.
Elisabeth wanted to hear that cracked voice once more. It was more welcoming than a homecoming feast, and Alina stood here offering a way out.
“I know you loved Aetius,” the queen said. “As did I, but…”
“I need to bathe in their blood,” Elisabeth said, “and I have to do it myself.” Plotting the familiar one’s destruction from Castle Daciana was too impersonal for what these men deserved.
“I had to try,” Alina said. “I wish my huntress would come back.”
“I’m not sure she ever will be back,” Elisabeth said. “Once I kill them all…”
Alina pushed a finger to her lips and dragged it back and forth like a paintbrush.
Elisabeth resisted the urge to swallow it. The mixed appetites of hunger and lust were baffling, and she blamed her animal instincts for the competition. Anger and desire were pent inside, and she wouldn’t allow herself to experience the latter. She’d kill every person in this world before dishonoring Aetius like that.
“If you choose to do this alone,” Alina said, “then you will truly be alone. The wolf cannot return to you until you’re at peace with yourself. With what you are.”
“I no longer know what I am.”
“You’ve always known, girl. You were only all too happy to forget.”
“How many little girls have I orphaned? Were their screams any different than my own all those years ago?”
“Stop thinking you had this coming. And do not equate yourself with the butchers who attacked you. They are human cowards, lashing out at us because they can never be as great. If you remember the siege of Paris, then you know this. They think nothing of harming their own kind over the pettiest of squabbles. You? You’re better than that. We all are. We don’t hurt each other, for one thing. So never apologize for what you do. This is your world, not theirs.”
“Doesn’t feel like my world.” Elisabeth rubbed her belly where the pike had sliced her.
“Even with the gift of invulnerability, you are not unstoppable.”
“So I’ve learned,” Elisabeth said.
Alina lifted the dulled blade off the ground beside Elisabeth’s feet, looked it over, and handed it back with glaring disapproval.
“I salvaged this off the vampires,” Elisabeth said. “I do not need anything more.”
“Make them suffer, then.” Alina said.
Elisabeth smiled through the tears as the queen turned to walk. She watched her dissolve into the night.
“I will do more than that,” she growled.
The wolf was quiet, wherever she was.
***
They stood against the face of darkness and listened to the voice that spoke from the bowels of the mine.
“Why have you come?”
“We are passing through,” Garrick said.
Sebastian hung between the other two men, their arms hooked beneath his shoulders. His breathing was shallow and growing worse with every moment he remained upright. They chose their steps carefully, shuffling through the cooling shadows as the bottom neared.
It didn’t matter how cold it got, Sebastian’s head was scorched and sweaty. He could feel the darkness below thinking Garrick's response over.
“I figured,” it said. “No one dares come this far otherwise.”
“We do not mean you any harm…”
“An assurance like that has no meaning to me or any native. Not anymore. You are not from these parts. I can tell as much without setting eyes on you.”
“Do not fear us,” Timothy said.
“If it was fear I felt, you would have succumbed to my defenses.” An eruption of yellowish light shot up over them like meteor trails. “Which I have just disarmed. If you intend to come all the way down, do it now. I will set these again as soon as you enter my home.”
The wall sconce just beneath them danced with newfound fire that sent shadows rummaging. They walked toward it, and then headed for the next one, using them as markers to navigate the void. The ground leveled out and the darkness ahead stirred, assuming the shape of a small woman.
“Relax,” she said. “This is my sanctuary, and you are welcome in it until I say otherwise.”
“Our friend is hurt,” Timothy said. “Can you do anything for him?”
The answer was a soft purr.
“We h
ave to put him down,” Garrick said.
The woman stood outside their light, opposite the freshly lit torches. She moved through the black, performing a task that Sebastian was only vaguely aware of. Then the center of the room boomed with fire, and their host stood beyond a roaring pit of flame.
“Please,” she said, her timbre rising over the blaze’s excited pops and hisses. “Come with me.”
They followed the petite, almost elven-sized creature as she kept in front. Only a thin piece of loincloth decorated her slender frame, and the bottom curves of her derriere poked out from beneath the cut.
Sebastian remained man enough to ogle, thinking that there were worse ways to die than in the presence of a woman like this.
She ducked beneath a flap of patchy fabric that led into a man-carved tunnel, and to a room decorated with a damp rug and a dresser topped by lit candles. A corner bed called to him.
“Put him there.” Her voice was soft and her accent unlike any Sebastian could place.
He fell onto the mattress. It was like dropping into a pile of fresh-plucked feathers.
A small and soft hand tapped his cheek. He opened wide to find a beautiful face in his: exotic eyes, a mixture of coral blue and summer green, thick and sharp cheeks, a wide mouth of large teeth. Sebastian felt as though he had died and that this was his angel.
Never had a woman of such beauty given him anything more than a sack of coins. And that was only for retrieving stolen property. This one was at the bottom of a salt mine.
Still think you’re not hallucinating?
“Let’s get you out of that shirt,” she said and eased him up, lifting the fabric off his stomach. He screamed when she tried moving his injured shoulder and so she reached for a blade and cut free the linen.
She wrestled it off his torso and Sebastian saw the undersides of her small, beautiful breasts.
“I’ll clean his wounds.” She grabbed a bucket off the ground and gave it to Garrick. “If you would, please go back the way you came, you will find a small spring beneath the exit. Fill this.”
Timothy stood against the wall looking helpless, the blunderbuss bandied across his chest.
Garrick returned with the water and she took it at once, sitting on the bed so that her naked thigh brushed against Sebastian’s torso. It felt impossibly smooth. She took his flask and popped it open, emptying its contents straight onto the bloody shoulder wound.
Sebastian’s teeth gnashed, but she was faster, clamping a hand over his mouth and leaning in. She smelled of sandalwood oil, and her brownish-blonde hair tickled his mouth like fresh blades of grass.
“You mustn’t,” she said. “I’m certain you know what else is out there…”
The pain roared, though he wanted nothing more than to feel her touch all over. This treatment was worth twenty stab wounds, easy.
She daubed Sebastian with fresh water, wiping crusted blood off him. Her touch was soothing, even as she redressed the wound. Once she was finished, she patted his chest and flashed a smile warmer than his delirium.
“I’ll be back to check on you, as soon as I see about feeding your friends.”
“I think we’ll stay here just a while longer.” Timothy crossed the room and checked over Sebastian’s bandages, flaunting his mistrust of this hospitality.
“As you wish.” She smiled and slid into the seat across the way, crossing her legs and showing off muscular thighs that flexed in just the right way to captivate the room. “It’s not often that anyone finds their way down here.”
“Do they ever?” Garrick said. “This is a mine, is it not?”
“It’s also the safest place in Moldavia. The soldiers aren’t going to come down here, and there’s hardly anyone else left to worry about.”
“Hence the traps,” Garrick said.
“Hence the traps.”
“Are you from the village nearby?” Timothy asked.
“Yes. Prah.” The name rolled off her tongue. “It was destroyed last summer when the Russians tried seizing this corner of Moldavia out from Ottoman control. Most of my people died, but a few of us escaped into the trees and made it here. I was the only one without fatal injury. As such, I am the only one who still lives.”
“It must be lonely,” Garrick said.
“It is safe.”
“You can leave with us,” Timothy said.
The woman looked to Sebastian and laughed. “I think I am better off taking my chances here.” Then she stood and waved a come-hither finger at them as she exited the room. “Come, please. I have plenty of stew and some mead. I will tend to your friend while the two of you relax.”
Garrick and Timothy looked reluctant to leave, but Sebastian nodded his approval. Truthfully, he was looking forward to being tended to. Conversation in the next chamber was jovial but quick, and he was relieved to see her return soon. She stood in the doorway, watching in silence.
Sebastian stared at the seductive outline, unable to think of anything but the things he wanted to do to this woman.
“I opened my finest mead for them,” she said. “They are well occupied and that will, I hope, allow us the necessary time to get to know one another.”
“I haven’t had the pleasure of your name.”
“Tulcea,” she said and crossed the room with a motion that resembled a slither. “Believe it or not, this might be the first good night of sleep I’ve had in a year.” She brushed the loincloth straps away from her shoulders and slipped from it, disappearing into the shadows before he had a chance to admire her body.
Sebastian watched the darkness with more intensity than he thought possible. He spotted her at the foot of the bed, the outline of her chest rising and falling. He felt her eyes trained on him, and the heat dripping off her was more inviting than any campfire.
“H-had I known you were here,” he said, flubbing his words and becoming a stammering fool. “I would’ve made a pilgrimage to this mine. A lady such as yourself should be afforded a hundred restful nights.”
“So silver-tongued.” She didn’t laugh though, coming around the bed so that the light caught her face. Her eyes sparkled with mischief, and her tiny breasts stood firm, nipples hardened by the mine’s open air. He wasn't ashamed to admire her, drinking in a small but polished torso. She was patted in dirt, as to be expected from someone living at the bottom of a cave.
Her gaze matched his then, and her mouth became an inciting grin. What confidence!
Tulcea dragged the chair bedside. She sat and smiled as she caught his eyes studying her contoured legs, and what was between them. She didn’t speak, only reached into the water bucket for the soaked cloth.
She pressed it to his head and he groaned beneath the refreshment.
“What business brings you here? Your dress is very regal and you feel…different. Capable. A trait that departed these lands long ago.”
Contentious voices carried in from the main chamber. Garrick and Timothy, dueling ideologues. Worse now, because their argument was tempered with alcohol. He hoped their blather would leave them passed out so there might be peace and quiet for once.
It would afford him some well-earned alone time with this beauty.
“We were looking for someone,” he said.
Tulcea studied him. By candlelight, her features were warm and inviting. More than generosity, she showed interest. Her lips parted to reveal a dazzling smile—the kind he had never before received.
She was a thing of beauty, and looking upon her got his heart racing.
“Do not be afraid,” she said, selling the assurance with a bat of her eyelashes.
“What would I possibly fear?”
“Me,” she said and stood. Her features vanished as she blew out the candles. Light steps slinked across the room and tugged the fabric roll over the room's entrance. It dropped down in front of the doorway, blotting out the hall’s faint candle glow.
“Show me what kind of warrior you are.”
In a moment, Tulcea got onto the be
d and hovered. It was dark, but his eyes soon adjusted so that he could drink in her slender figure. Her feet slipped against the sides of his thighs and a cool shiver spread through him.
Injured shoulder and flu be damned, he needed to have this woman. There would be plenty of time to heal later. His spirit had been wounded for far longer, and Tulcea offered the purest remedy for that.
What mattered tonight was her caress. Those curves. Her taste.
She dropped and her meager frame writhed atop him. She suckled at the tip of his chin with a playful snicker and her nails, long enough to leave hot, white trails of passion beneath them, raked his sides; euphoric sensations that were unlike anything. His thoughts were adrift in this moment, and there was no regard for anything beyond it. Maybe he would stay here and take her as a wife.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said with a giggle.
Sebastian might’ve considered that comment under different circumstances. Tonight it was easier to close his eyes and moan beneath her cleansing touch. How she had peered into his thoughts and plucked one of them out was a mystery for another day. Or maybe it was the influenza fiddling with his perceptions once more.
A hand slipped beneath the band of his trousers and he grew against her touch. Then she snapped her fingers free, laughing at the tease. They were damp and for that he felt a swell of shame. A sliver of light shone on her face from a source he couldn’t find. It illuminated her mouth, a smile that cast this moment in splendor.
That’s right, she hissed, somehow in his head once more. He questioned it now, but his thoughts drowned in desire.
I am yours.
The room was lit again, faint at first, but then glowing hotter. Tulcea spun so that Sebastian got a lavish view of her femininity. She was on all fours, glancing over her shoulder through dark and damp blonde hair.
“Taste me,” she whispered. “Wherever you want.”
The urge to lick her clean propelled him forward. Candlelight—or whatever it was—bounced off her posterior. His heart raced and his hands shook as he clasped them over the jiggling flesh. Hard to believe this was happening.
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