Court of Frost and Embers (The Pair Bond Chronicles Book 1)

by Leeann M. Shane

“That or I’ll be the blandest statue you’ve ever seen.”

  Neither of them laughed.

  Oh well.

  “Yes, we’ll be okay,” I sighed. I grabbed Masters’ hand. It wasn’t as ice-cold as Maxell’s. Strange. “Be careful. And thank you. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

  He squeezed my hand and gave me a smile. “Keep Maxell out of trouble, that’s how.” He gave him a heavy look. “Tend to her. You have access to my lab. You know where the fever elixir is. The synthetic blood has been replenished. You should be fine on that front for a while. If we do not return for some reason or are encumbered for a time—you never know with the fae; their realm is tricky—you can sustain yourself on animal blood. The forests are teeming with large game. If her condition worsens, you know how to turn her. If,” he added when Maxell growled at him, “it comes to that.”

  Nervousness invaded my system. I found it odd that he didn’t mention what would happen to me if he didn’t come back. Probably because the alternative was too frightening. I would burn alive or freeze. He did however mention turning me. Because that was an option if the bond between us burned too hot or froze itself in place forever.

  “It won’t,” Maxell insisted.

  “It could,” I countered, shrinking from his heated gaze.

  “It won’t.” Maxell’s gaze heated further. If I weren’t so cold, I would have caught fire.

  “I think I’ll take a long hot shower.” I slid out from his hold and locked myself in the bathroom. I rushed over and turned the shower on, but I didn’t get in immediately. I slid down to the cool tiled floor and put my head between my knees.

  Fear, much like ice had done, filled my veins. How many more chances would I have to either catch flame or freeze? And with Masters leaving, it felt a lot like I was being tossed between ice and fire.

  On shaking legs, I pushed to my feet and took my clothes off, putting them in the hamper beside the towel racks before crawling under the hot spray. I took my time washing, soaking up every ounce of heat I could get before it was too hot to breathe.

  I wrapped a towel around my hair and then one around my body, peeking into my room to find it empty and the door closed. I walked through the steam and into the closet, once again blown away by the sheer amount of clothing held within. I tried hard not to examine the depth of my gratitude, again. Instead, I got dressed, donning the warmest outfit I could find. In that case a pair of black leggings, an oversized teal knitted sweater, and black boots. I left my hair down and pulled a beanie on the same color as my sweater, heading downstairs before my thoughts could catch up to me.

  I found Maxell seated at the bar top in the kitchen, slowly skimming his finger up and down a bottle of synthetic blood. It was half empty.

  “No need for a good morning,” he said, talking to the bottle. “Yours was already ruined.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about his moodiness. “Don’t mope. It’s not sexy.”

  His eyes shot to mine, right brow raised. “And other than my brief depressed stint, that’s what I am, right? Sexy?”

  I got my bearings in the kitchen, put on a brave face, and then I opened the fridge. “So sexy.” The endless rows of bottled blood had been refilled. The only one missing was the one Maxell was eating.

  “I’m flattered.”

  I heard him swallow as I grabbed for a bottle of milk on the main shelves of the fridge. “You’re welcome.” Next, I studied the cupboards until I found the pantry. It was inlaid into the rest of the kitchen, stocked to the brim with enough nonperishables to keep a family of fifty fed for months. The sheer amount of food unnerved me. What did a family of vampires need all of this food for? It couldn’t possibly all be for me. “How many bottles of blood do you need a day?” I asked, counting the bottles that were there. There were six rows, with fourteen bottles in each row. Minus the missing bottle, that left eighty-three bottles.

  “Masters says from a scientific point of view we need what’s already in the human body, so around five liters, but we don’t require it three times a day the way humans constantly need sustenance. I feed constantly to keep up my strength and mostly my control. But there are variables. If we’re injured for one, we need more blood than normal to heal. Newer turned, as in myself, have a deeper thirst. It’s almost unquenchable. So there’s science, and then there’s making a blank statement for all vampires.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Why do you ask?”

  “How many ounces are in each of these bottles?”

  “Eighteen.”

  I did the math. “And you drink about nine of these a day?”

  “Nine within half a week or so,” he corrected. “Why?”

  I redid the math. “When is Masters and Reowna leaving?”

  “They went to get some last-minute supplies. They’ll be back soon. Why do you look so suspicious?”

  “There’s a lot of food in the pantry.” I pulled open the freezer, shivering as I counted the sheer amount of meals. All of the excess food Reowna had been cooking over the last few weeks appeared not to have been donated, but frozen. I could see a plastic bag doubled wrapped with scones. “Even more so in the freezer. How much blood does Masters have left?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  I turned to him. “I don’t think they’re coming back. At least not for a long time.”

  He stared at me, glancing to the bottles of blood in the fridge and then back to me. “What makes you think that?”

  “My bedroom and closet is full. There’s even summer clothes in the back. The fridge is stocked. The pantry, too. There’s enough blood for now. Masters warned of what to do if he didn’t come back in time. How could a man like Masters forget last minute supplies? How could a capable man like Masters with a pair bond like Reowna, not foresee enough ahead of time to make sure we were okay? Because they wouldn’t be here.”

  Maxell held my gaze as he worked through what I already had. As he did so, I saw how deeply he trusted Masters. How truly he believed every word out of his mouth. The mere notion that he couldn’t believe everything he’d ever said made his gaze guarded.

  “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, more to himself than to me.

  “Does it have to do with my nightmare?”

  “It must. But he wasn’t in your nightmare, was he? Reowna either?”

  “No. Just you and me. And those robed figures. Oh, and don’t forget the horrible heartbreaking loss I felt when you were tossed into the river of lava.”

  His eyes were far away. His body stilled where he sat. Not a single part of him moved as he escaped into his mind, working through his thoughts. In a weird way, he’d never looked more like a vampire. The half-empty bottle of blood beside him didn’t belie the sight. And yet, he made me pause. As he was encumbered, I could ogle him as much as I wanted. His messy onyx hair looked silky and just washed. He’d changed into a fresh black shirt and similar colored jeans. He looked like an unmoving, beautiful statue.

  I rubbed at my chest, trying and failing to ignore the fluttering and floundering my heart was doing. A loaf of freshly baked bread lay on a cutting board beside the stove. I tore off a huge chunk and shoved it into my mouth, unnerved by how quiet he was being as I attempted to fill my empty, hungry parts with carbs. Thankfully, the bread was delicious. It had swirls of cinnamon and chunks of raisins. I took out some butter and tried not to think about the fact that I was alone now.

  I wondered if anyone would come looking for me. But then I remembered that no one even knew I existed. They’d never even know I was gone.

  And was I really gone?

  I glanced at Maxell from under my lashes. When I was with him, it felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  So maybe it wasn’t a matter of spending my whole life being unwanted. Maybe it was about finally being wanted by someone for reasons I couldn’t write down. Maybe those feelings that couldn’t be summed up with one word or a single thought were the ones that really mattered.

&nb
sp; “Maybe you can talk to them?” I suggested, resting against the counter as he remained perfectly still. “Maxell?”

  He blinked, unfreezing at the sound of his name. “Hmm?”

  “Maybe you can talk to The Immortal Society. See where their heads are at. Maybe they won’t mind if you explain things.”

  He delivered me with a humor-filled, breathtaking grin. “You’re adorable.”

  I glared. “What’s so funny about that?”

  “The Immortal Society isn’t a bunch of suit-wearing, political partisans promising better health care for a vote. The Immortal Society isn’t even one thing, or a single group of people. It encompasses everything that makes us vampires. It’s the Pures, it’s the city itself, it’s the Warriors, it’s the door to the Underworld—The Immortal Society withholds the very makeup of who we are. The five Pures are kind of like the president. Because they’re the oldest living of our kind there’s no one strong enough to challenge them. There’s no living creature on earth stronger than the Pures. They won’t care what some newly turned vampire and his ill-fated human pair bond have to say.” He winked. “So, no. We cannot call them. If I can help it, they won’t get close enough to smell the sun on you, let alone close enough to hurt you.”

  “Maybe you have it wrong. Maybe my dream wasn’t about me being human.”

  “What else could I have done to earn a punishment so final?”

  I shivered at his question. I was afraid he hadn’t done it yet. Which meant I couldn’t answer him yet. “Okay, look. You trust Masters, right?” He nodded to my question. “I do, too.” As soon as I said it, I realized that it was true. Even with my human intuitions around vampires in general, I valued his help and his knowledge, and no matter how afraid I was, Masters knew the answers to our questions. “Maybe we’re reading too much into this. It’s like trying to read a book with every other page missing—we don’t have enough information. And maybe it was just a dream. Maybe the only thing wrong right now is that there’s nothing wrong.”

  He grabbed for the bottle of blood and drank the rest before roughly setting it down. “I don’t think so. And I don’t think that your dream was yours. I think Reowna’s been putting it in your head to warn you because something much bigger is going on here.”

  I glared at him. There went my attempt to rationalize all of this into a neat unthreatening box I never had to open. “Are you worried?”

  His eyes held mine. “No,” he promised, and I believed him.

  And deep down inside, I knew why he was so sure of his promise. In my nightmare, I remained alive and human. I had to wonder if that was his plan, if keeping me human was more important than keeping me forever. My heart dropped into my stomach, taking down butterflies and turning them into flightless creatures with scorched wings amid a plain of ice. Inside that feeling, there were truths in me as well. Like painful whispers that keeping him was more important to me than my mortality.

  But I knew if I told him that, I’d hurt him. All the way down to his beautiful, damaged soul.

  “I’m not worried either,” I lied, because if push came to shove the bond in me would make my mind up for me.

  He narrowed his eyes, probably thinking the same thing. Much like me, he’d never ask. We already knew what the other was thinking. We both looked away at the same time before I grabbed his bottle and went over to the sink, rinsing it out carefully before I placed it in the rack to dry.

  “I think it’s time for another dose of humanity,” he stated brusquely, if not a little tyrannically.

  Why? I didn’t ask out loud. Because your immortality is starting to look a lot like home to me? “Oh, goody,” I mumbled, watching him watch me. I tried to keep up, but his eyes sucked the reason out of me, and it was impossible to glare at someone who could do it so much better. “What do you have in mind? Something dangerous, I bet. Or maybe something super heartbreaking. That ought to teach me.”

  “Was yesterday hard for you?” His features softened, and I knew whatever discord had materialized between us had just evaporated.

  The back of my throat burned. “It was difficult,” I allowed, not wanting him to know how much. Not to mention that what I felt wasn’t even half compared to what he must have felt. “Was it very difficult for you?”

  He took a moment to answer. “If we never did it again, I wouldn’t mind.”

  “The being around humans part, or the memories of the last hours of your humanity part?”

  “Both,” he murmured, taking a step toward me.

  I took one toward him, too. “Can I hug you?”

  “Do I look like I need a hug?” He stood still, eyes on me, face weirdly serious.

  “I think you deserve one. I didn’t get a chance to give you one last night.” I opened my arms.

  He studied them cautiously. “You don’t strike me as the hugging type.”

  I began to get impatient. “Get over here and let me hug you, Maxell.”

  He stood in place. “I think it’s best I initiate any contact. Too much may hurt you.”

  Oh. He meant I may freeze in place or overheat. “So, this is about my safety, and not the fact that you’re a big tough vampire, right?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I think I’ll be okay.” I stepped forward, closing the gap between us. I wrapped my arms around his hard, cold body. The chill of him wrapped around me, and though I knew I shouldn’t like it, I did. It was such a sweet chill. One so smooth and uninterrupted. There were no breaks of heat or pauses of tepidness. It was simply pure unadulterated cold that called to me so deeply, I found myself inhaling his tantalizing scent and nuzzled my face against his chest. “Maxell.”

  His hands gently but effectively pried me off him. “That’s enough touching for the human.”

  I blushed, but I held his eyes even as fire ignited in my cheeks and ice still stung my face.

  “It’s just us now. You shouldn’t be so quick to be close to me.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s dangerous.”

  I recalled what it felt like to have them around me. I shuddered. “You know that’s not true. I need to be close to you. Even when I didn’t understand everything, I still felt better around you. Don’t you want to touch me at all?”

  His eyes tightened. “Emmie. Don’t.”

  “It’s just a question. If you don’t want to, just say so.” I shoved past him, my destination perfectly mapped out in my mind. I’d get to the stairs, stomp up them, and then hide away forever until my embarrassment swallowed me whole.

  But he was in front of me before I could get there. He intercepted me by clutching my face between his hands. His eyes found mine with the precision and expertise of someone who’d rather look nowhere else.

  “Not only do I want to touch you, I never want to stop. But that’s not safe for you. And by now you should know that my hungers aren’t more important than your safety. So please stop moping, even though your lips pucker up into the cutest pout and the thought that’s been running through my head since I met you replays itself for the thousandth time.”

  “What thought?” I breathed.

  “The one that says your lips are probably the warmest, softest, and sweetest lips on the planet. And that one kiss won’t hurt you. As long as I don’t breathe and you don’t move, but we both know that’s not true. Because I’ll want to breathe when I kiss you, and you’ll have no choice but to move.”

  “Oh,” I whispered. “That thought.”

  His eyes sparkled with humor. “I’m curious about your thoughts.”

  “I think they’re safer with me. Yours are bad enough.”

  His lips twitched and he pressed a kiss to my forehead, stepping back just as fast as he’d approached me. “You’re probably right.”

  My own warmth was starting to feel foreign. His chill felt so much sweeter to me. One second without made me step closer to him. In the battle of fire and ice, right then, I leaned more toward ice.

  “With the blizzard still in full for
ce, most of the town’s still shut in. Let’s go tickle your humanity.” He headed for the front door.

  I followed. “But I’m not ticklish,” I huffed.

  The moment I stepped foot outside, the cold took my breath away. It wasn’t like Maxell’s cold. This was brutal. No sweetness at all. My breath clouded thickly out in front of me. The trees of the forest surrounding the property were heavy with snowfall. It was half-way up to Maxell’s car. There was no way he was going to be able to drive it out.

  “Wait here,” he said, stepping down off the doorway. He easily forged through the snow, leaving a trail behind him. He zipped around the car and away from it, his figure blurry as he easily cleared a path in the snow. When he was done, ice hung from his now messy hair and his boots were saturated in it. He held open the passenger door for me.

  I brushed some ice off the hair falling over his forehead. The fine white powder looked so bright against his onyx locks. He sped around to his side and toyed with the heater until it blew hot air. We weren’t in the car long before I got a pretty good idea where we were going. After rounding back to the road that spit us out near Granny Londa’s house, the route we were on was the same one I took to school.

  The streets were slick with ice. The sky was silver overhead. Chimneys blew thick sheets of smoke into the air. There were no cars on the road. The entire city of Port Inlet was drenched in this fuzzy quiet stillness. It was as if Maxell and I were the only two people left on earth. The thought should bother me. Sadden me, even. But it did neither.

  I peeked at him as he drove. The sight of him made my stomach squirm and my breaths uneven, but he also made me feel like I was where I was supposed to be—and even if I wasn’t, I was confident that if I was in the wrong place, he was wrong with me. That had to count for something.

  My nightmare tickled the back of my mind, like scratchy fingernails on my brain. It was too awful to fully remember, but I couldn’t help it. The leaps and bounds Maxell had taken between what I dreamed and what could happen seemed so wide apart, I couldn’t fathom how to function with that horrid possibility hanging over my head.