Darkness Embraced

by Pennington, Winter

  “Are you satiated?” she asked.

  “Yes, are you?”

  She smiled like a contented cat. “What do you think?”

  I rested my head on her breast, kissing the soft and delicate skin there. “I think you are.”

  She laughed and kissed me. “Then you would be correct,” she said. “Though I shall never in a million years think that I could ever get enough of you.”

  My heart gave an expectant leap. I touched her face. “It’s hard to believe this is how it once was. Hard to believe we ever lost this.”

  “I know,” she said and I felt the pang of sorrow and regret inside her. The look she gave me was somber. “Yet, it feels as if nothing has changed at all, except for you.”

  “And you,” I said.

  “I have changed?”

  “A little.”

  “How?”

  I tried to pinpoint what exactly was different but couldn’t. “I don’t know,” I said at some length. “It just feels…different. It’s a better different, but it feels different.”

  “Perhaps it is only different because of your growing powers and not some change in me. My feelings for you never wavered.”

  I remembered her mouth between my legs. I had felt her love then, felt her love and lust that was so much like my own, but at the same time so very different. It hadn’t been my body or the sex she wanted to possess.

  It was me, and in her own way, that was love.

  I knew without doubt.

  Everyone loves differently, Cuinn mused. Methinks your Queen is right. Ye did not see her love because ye did not know that in her own way she loved ye.

  Cuinn…

  Aye?

  I don’t need relationship advice from a fox.

  He seemed to think that was amusing, because he gave a startling bark of laughter that rang in my skull, making me flinch.

  “What is it?” Renata asked.

  “Cuinn,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What did the little volpe say?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I murmured, “he’s agreeing with you, is all. Volpe?”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “Fox in Italian. And I may very well like him after all.”

  “I would like him much better if he weren’t in my head.”

  “Well”—Renata nestled back against the pillows—“you are the one that picked the sword.”

  She’s r—

  Cuinn, I warned.

  I don’t need to say it.

  No, I thought, you don’t.

  Chapter Ten

  As strange as it may sound, I was loathe to wash the scent of our lovemaking from my skin. The idea of walking before the entire court and smelling of her claim upon me sent a little thrill through me. In the end, I was reluctant to be so brash and baiting. I wore a wine-colored dress that cinched at the waist. The sleeves were long and wide, but not so much that they would get in the way. It was something comfortable that I could move freely in.

  There was a knock on the door and I stood from my perch in front of the vanity table.

  Epiphany.

  I sighed and took the fox blade from the dresser, since Cuinn made it clear I had to.

  It’s only Vasco.

  I was close enough to the door that I could smell the crisp scent of his cologne.

  Caution before folly.

  I rolled my eyes, opening the door.

  Vasco strode into the room and I closed the door behind him, laying the fox blade back on the dresser.

  When I turned around, I got an eyeful of his attire. He looked like a white and silver wrapped present.

  “Damn.” I stared at him for several moments. “Is it Christmas already?”

  The pants he wore were very tight. The only darkness was his hair and the black leather boots that hit just below his knees. There was a slight heel to the boots, making his legs look longer. The silver thread was still twined in his hair, but the braids had been pulled back, held captive in a low clasp.

  Vasco grinned at me.

  “Don’t even start,” I said and motioned with a hand at his outfit. “That was worth a stare or two.”

  He laughed one of his low, rumbling laughs. “Even from a woman that loves women?”

  “If those pants were any tighter, Vasco, you’d be a woman.”

  He gave me a serious look. “Sì.” He wiggled his hips. “They are a little tight.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I shook my head at him.

  He gave a quick grin and returned to seriousness. “We do not have very long to talk. I am to escort you before the Elders.”

  I nodded, already guessing as much. “Are you going to tell me about the upcoming challenge?”

  He spread his arms out. “That is why I am here.”

  I went back to the vanity table, watching his reflection in the mirror. He sat on my bed.

  His nostrils flared and he turned toward the pillows like a hound on a scent trail.

  “Vasco,” I said before he could pick the sheet up and hold it to his face.

  His hand hovered. “Who did you sleep with last night, colombina?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  He started grinning again.

  I pointed the brush at him like a weapon. “Stop it, Vasco.”

  He was still grinning when he picked the sheet up and inhaled loud enough that I could’ve heard him without the supernatural hearing.

  As quickly as the grin had appeared, it vanished. He dropped the sheet to the bed with a look of shock and horror.

  I folded my hands in my lap with a sigh as Vasco leapt to his feet and started cursing in a slew of Italian. Although I couldn’t understand what he was saying, I understood what he was feeling. He was afraid, not just for me, but for Renata too.

  I managed to catch the word, “Foolish,” and then that too was sucked in and drowned out by another long line of fast and indecipherable Italian.

  “Great,” I said. “That’s nice, Vasco. Can you repeat that? In English, please?”

  He froze. Apparently, he hadn’t realized he’d been speaking Italian.

  After a moment, he blinked. “What have you done? What have you both done? You heard what she said last night!”

  Impatiently, I started pulling the curls of my hair back, tying it off with a long black ribbon.

  “I heard a lot more than you did, Vasco.”

  He sat back on the bed heavily. “What is done is done.”

  “It is,” I said. “Now tell me about the next challenge.”

  “Signore dei Sogni. Lord of Dreams.”

  “Sognare?” I asked, remembering the Elder’s name. Sognare had never been, in my opinion, one of the crueler Elders. In fact, in the past two hundred years I couldn’t remember him bothering me at all.

  “Sì,” he said.

  “Lord of Dreams?”

  Vasco nodded. “His power has to do with dreams, inspiring them, controlling them.”

  I tilted my head. “But that’s impossible. We don’t dream.”

  “If Sognare wants you to dream, you will.”

  That was interesting. I’d never heard much about Sognare. Actually, come to think of it, I hadn’t heard much about the Elders and their specific powers. I’d seen Sognare several times. And if you ask me, he reminded me an awful lot of the way humans portrayed their fictional wizards. However, that was probably because he was the oldest vampire that I’d ever seen. His gray beard was long enough to sweep the floor.

  “That doesn’t sound very physical,” I said.

  “Mental.” He shrugged. “Physical. It is both.”

  I picked the fox blade up. Call it a hunch, but I had a feeling Cuinn wasn’t going to let me leave him behind.

  Vasco eyed the sword. “It is true?”

  “This?” I lifted the blade.

  “The volpe spirito,” he said.

  “Renata told you?”

  “Sì,”
he said. “She explained some. I have been assured that you have not gone deliriously mad and that your wits are still about you.”

  “Well, not yet,” I said.

  He offered his hand. “May I carry it? I know they are peculiar about such things, but you cannot walk into this challenge armed, as it is not a challenge of weapons.”

  Not visible ones.

  I waited for Cuinn to add more, but he didn’t.

  Cuinn?

  Aye?

  Will you let Vasco carry you?

  He seemed to consider it.

  Then he surprised me by saying, Aye, I suppose.

  I handed the sword to Vasco, hilt first.

  Vasco took it. I turned toward the door when a heavy thump made me turn on my heel. The fox blade was planted firmly in the floor. I watched as Vasco struggled to retrieve it.

  I heard Cuinn give a little snicker of laughter.

  “Cuinn,” I said, this time aloud.

  Vasco gave me a look and tugged on the sword again, bracing his booted feet several inches apart. The sword wasn’t budging. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to, either, supernatural strength or no. Vasco swore and this time I heard him say, “Volpe!”

  All he needs to do is ask nicely.

  “Vasco, ask nicely.”

  “What?” He looked startled.

  “You’re going to give yourself an aneurism; just ask him nicely!”

  He blinked. “Why?”

  I moved toward him and the sword Vasco and moved out of the way. I pulled the sword out of the stone in one fluid motion. “I’m not handing the sword to you until you ask nicely.”

  Vasco blinked again. “Per favore?”

  That’ll do.

  I handed the sword to him. Vasco removed his own sword from his back sheath and laid it on the bed. He slipped the fox blade into his sheath, checking it with his hands. He seemed satisfied that it fit.

  I let the surprise show. “It fits?”

  “The sword and sheath were blessed by one of the Stregheria.”

  “The what?”

  “Stregheria,” Vasco repeated. “An Italian Witch. The sheath will fit any sword.”

  “And the sword?” I asked.

  “The sword will kill a vampire.”

  “That’s a nice thing to be carrying on your back.”

  “Right now I am carrying your volpe spirito trapped in steel, and this too is a nice thing to carry on one’s back.”

  I didn’t know if he was teasing or not. “You’re saying my sword can bring true death to one of our kind?”

  “Sì, or anything that you wish it to kill, for that matter.”

  Cuinn, I mentally purred at him.

  Aye? he said again, but this time he sounded irritated.

  Is this true?

  His ears swiveled back as he rested his maw on his forelegs.

  It is.

  You didn’t think to tell me, why?

  ’Cause ye’d find out eventually.

  I shook my head. “Let’s go.”

  Vasco bowed. The pommel of the fox blade was hidden behind the long braided tresses of his hair. I opened the door and stepped out in the hall, too busy giving in to my irritation to be particularly afraid.

  Chapter Eleven

  Renata turned toward the doors as I made my way before her. I caught a flash of her dress, blue velvet so dark it was almost black, before I sank gracefully to my knees and fixed my gaze on the stone below me.

  “Vasco,” she said and he rose from his kneeling position, knowing her will and taking his seat among the other Elders.

  To me, she asked, “Is it your will to proceed?”

  I dipped my head lower. “It is, my lady.”

  “Lucrezia,” she said, “summon Sognare.”

  I sensed more than saw Lucrezia get to her feet. She moved past me, and as she passed, the bulk of her heavy skirts brushed the side of my body.

  A spark of anger flared through me and I fought to conceal it. The double doors clanged closed and the room was suddenly filled with eerie silence. It was a silence that belonged to an empty room, but it was not. It was only a room full of vampires that had no real reason to make any noise. Or so I thought.

  A rustle of material sounded. Someone whispered, “Little rabbit.”

  I looked up then, turning my face toward the sound of Gaspare’s sour voice. He sat beside Baldavino, who reclined at ease, rolling his eyes at Gaspare’s comment. The hair brushing his shoulders was as gold as a lion’s mane. Both of the Elders wore deerskin breeches, but where Gaspare’s velvet jacket was black, Baldavino’s was the solid color of pine needles.

  I met Gaspare’s eyes and the look of taunting malice in them.

  Cuinn’s androgynous voice crooned through my head, Your mother was an ogre and your father the dribble from a goblin’s arse.

  I gave a short and unexpected laugh.

  On the dais, Gaspare’s hands clenched into fists. “You dare to laugh at me?”

  Aye! Cuinn’s voice was a deadly hiss in the confines of my skull.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “or perhaps it occurs to me that you would dare loathe the rabbit when you yourself are a terrible huntsman, Gaspare.”

  I heard the sound of his chair clatter to the floor a moment before his fist balled in my hair. He jerked my head back and drew his other hand back as if to strike me.

  Renata’s voice cracked like a whip, full of heat and command. “Gaspare!”

  I narrowed my eyes in defiance.

  He used the grip he had to pull me up high on my knees. “Wretched little bitch!”

  I heard the hiss of steel sliding from a sheath.

  “Let her go.” Vasco’s voice dripped with cold fire as he pointed the fox blade at Gaspare.

  Gaspare snarled and spat, “You would protect her?”

  Vasco’s eyes brightened with power, rocking waves of an azure ocean. His voice dripped with unrelenting challenge. “Sì.”

  I took the opportunity the distraction presented, catching Gaspare’s hand between my fingers. I am a vampire and we are all supernaturally strong. Though I have been an Underling for two-hundred years, I used my strength against him, digging my fingers into his skin between his thumb and index finger like a vice. Gaspare reacted by loosening his hold. I caught his hand, pushing it back toward his wrist until I felt the bones grinding. Something in his wrist popped and he screamed.

  Such a small noise for such a loud scream.

  I moved as I had seen Vasco move, too quick for the eyes to follow. A strike of lightning that never strikes twice. The throne room was a blur around me. I was motion. I was liquid. I caught Gaspare’s shoulders and he tried to move, tried to see it coming, but he was too slow. I threw my body into it, ramming my knee high up between his legs as hard as I could. I used the grip on his shoulders to pull his body into the collision, and then I turned, as if dancing the steps of a dance that my body knew and had performed a thousand times before. I used his weight against him, used the momentum of the impact to push him facedown on the stone floor.

  I shoved my knee hard into the back of his spine. He tried to reach for me, and I caught his wrists, jerking his arm up high behind his back until I heard the ball and socket joints of his shoulders dislocate in a sickeningly thick sound.

  Gaspare screamed for me again. On the edges of his scream I heard Baldavino’s laughter, heard him say, “Looks like someone’s been teaching the little Underling how to wrestle.”

  Baldavino didn’t speak often. On the rare occasion that he opened his mouth, I could not remember a time when anything good came of it. He was a prick, in much the same way that Gaspare had always been, and yet not. I had always been fairly certain that Baldavino simply hated everyone with an equal passion. Gaspare, on the other hand, relished belittling and demeaning those he deemed beneath him. It was two different types of arrogance, but still, it was arrogance nonetheless.

  Gaspare tried to get up and Vasco was there, placing a booted foot hard against t
he back of his head.

  “Signore, I would not advise struggling any further,” he said.

  Gaspare went incredibly still beneath me.

  “Epiphany?” Vasco made my name a question.

  “Yes, Vasco?” I asked sounding polite and calm and not like I was holding a man captive.

  “Are you well?”

  I looked up at him and felt a dark smile tug at my lips. “Yes.”

  The corner of Vasco’s mouth rose in a half-smile.

  An eruption of noise battered my ears as someone clapped, hard and rapid.

  Lucrezia’s voice slithered like a whispering snake throughout the throne room. “Brava, Epiphany,” she said. “Molto bene.”

  I didn’t turn to look at her. The space between my shoulder blades tensed as I heard the sounds of her skirt slithering across the stones. She knelt beside me, leaving only a few feet between us. Her eyes sparkled with delight and she tilted her head to the side to look down at Gaspare.

  “That was nicely done, wouldn’t you say?”

  Since it seemed she was speaking to Gaspare, I didn’t say anything.

  Gaspare didn’t either.

  Lucrezia reached out, as if to touch me. I moved from the waist up, keeping my face out of her reach. Her eyes closed, and as if slipping on a mask, when she opened them again she smiled oh-so-sweetly at me.

  I forced myself not to recoil.

  “Do you still fear me?” she whispered in a small voice, like a monster pretending to be cute and cuddly, when you know full well it will slit your throat the minute you turn your back.

  I met her gaze and said, “I do not like you.”

  “Buono,” she said in a darkly pleased voice, “molto buono.”

  I felt a touch at the back of my neck that nearly made me jump out of my flesh. “Lucrezia.” Renata’s voice dripped behind me like something even more deadly than Vasco’s and Lucrezia’s combined. The tips of her fingers rested at the base of my neck like an anchor.

  Lucrezia looked up at Renata’s face.

  I felt the movement travel through Renata’s body and knew when Lucrezia flicked her eyes to her empty seat on the dais that Renata was pointing at it.

  Lucrezia stood and gave an elegant curtsey. “Sì, mia padrona.” The serious tone to her voice didn’t match the sparkling amusement in her expression.