The Dead and the Dusk (The Nightmare Court Book 2)

by Val Saintcrowe

  Eithan detached from her, but not quickly enough. It took effort. He pushed up on his elbows and gazed down at her, but he spoke to Absalom. “Fine. I’ll go.”

  “So, it’s like that, then?” Absalom said. “I suppose Septimus had the right of it all that time ago, when he accused you of enjoying it.”

  Nicce was acutely embarrassed. She scrambled out from beneath Eithan, and her whole body felt swollen, as if it had been wrapped too tightly, and now it was free and smarting and pulsing. She backed up into the corner of the bed, putting her back against the wall, drawing up her knees against her chest as if they would protect her. Her hand went to her neck.

  Eithan hung his head for a moment, taking deep breaths, and then he was up and moving for the door.

  Absalom stepped into his path. “No time. You’d best hide somewhere.”

  Nicce looked at her fingers. There was no blood there. But her neck hurt now, a strange stinging ache.

  “Under the bed?” said Absalom.

  Eithan ran a hand through his hair. “So Ciaska will come and find the two of you together.”

  “Yes,” said Absalom. He glanced at Nicce. “Your mussed hair is a nice touch.”

  Her hand went to her hair. Her face was hot, but her entire body was hot. She found she couldn’t meet Absalom’s gaze. This was mortifying.

  “Right,” said Eithan. He nodded. He rolled his neck on his shoulders. And then he got down on the floor and climbed under the bed.

  Absalom crossed to the bed and sat down.

  Nicce hugged her knees tighter.

  “Come over here,” said Absalom. “Act as though you like me?”

  She hesitated. It seemed wrong to do that. It seemed horrid. But she had to. She forced herself to scoot over near Absalom.

  He examined her neck. “It’s not bleeding, but we’ll move your hair over it anyway. Ciaska won’t notice.” He arranged her.

  She shut her eyes.

  Absalom brushed her hair away from the other side of her neck. “Here,” he murmured. “Don’t worry. I’ll just rest my forehead here. It won’t be…” His gaze caught hers. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, too quickly.

  And then the door was opening again, and Nicce saw the misty tendrils of the goddess filling the room, and Absalom bent his face to her shoulder.

  * * *

  Eithan was coming unraveled. He lay under the bed and saw Nicce close to Absalom, and he clenched his hands into fists, and he tried not to breathe too loud.

  Ciaska’s mist was coming over the ground, and he shied away from it. He didn’t know how it worked, not exactly, but he knew that Ciaska could pick things up with it and use it to manipulate objects, so it stood to reason that if it touched him, she’d feel it.

  “Absalom,” said Ciaska. “I need you.”

  Absalom jumped up off the bed. “Of course, Exalted One.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company,” said Ciaska.

  Eithan couldn’t see her, and he was maneuvering away from her mist as best he could.

  Ciaska let out a little laugh. “You don’t mind, do you, Nicce?”

  “Of course not, Exalted One.” Nicce’s voice was breathless.

  Oh, gods, he thought of her body beneath his only moments ago, and his entire body throbbed. What had he been doing? He was supposed to drink her blood, not… not whatever he’d been doing. But she’d offered him her neck, and she’d pressed herself against him, and she’d been so warm and soft and… and her flesh and the taste of her blood, it had blurred into a mixture of sweetness that had unmade him.

  He tightened his fists, trying to drive out the memory. Best not to think of it right at this moment, not with Ciaska so close.

  “Good,” said Ciaska. “Absalom is so good at listening, and I need someone to talk to. I feel so wretchedly alone right now. No one understands me like he does.” Her voice was a croon.

  Absalom went to her. “Whatever you require. I am yours, Exalted One.”

  “Yes, you are.” Ciaska sounded satisfied, like a well-fed cat. “Come, then.”

  The mist receded.

  Eithan let out a long, slow breath, but he waited to move until he had heard the door close and several moments had passed. Finally, he crawled out from beneath the bed.

  Nicce was sitting there, looking stunned. Her face was flushed, color in her cheeks, her hair a bit askew, her dress pulled down in the front, and she was utterly beautiful.

  He needed to apologize. He needed to put a stop to this. If he bit her again, had her sweet blood flowing into his mouth, he would fall apart.

  “It was different that second time,” she said.

  “I was trying to go slower,” he said. “I thought if I didn’t take so much blood at once, maybe I could stay in control of myself.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Was it working?”

  “Not even remotely,” he said.

  “It didn’t hurt as much.”

  He let out a funny sound that might have been a laugh. Now, tell her that this is madness and that it can’t continue. He sat down next to her on the bed.

  She touched her neck, where he’d bitten her. “I suppose I should have realized it would be that way.”

  “What way?” Why did his voice sound like that?

  “After the first time you bit me, sometimes I would touch myself and think of the way you looked at me.” Her voice came out in a breathless rush.

  His throat was tight. He was awash in a flood of desire. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe.

  She trailed her fingers over her neck and her collarbone.

  He made some kind of growling noise in his throat, and he pounced on her.

  She cried out, wrapping her arms around him as they fell back on the bed.

  His mouth was at her neck again. He sank his fangs into her, and her blood was like honeyed wine, and she clutched him, pulling him tighter against her heat.

  The world fell away. There was nothing but Nicce, and her blood and her soft body, and he was lost.

  * * *

  Nicce was fighting for consciousness.

  Sometime, she wasn’t sure how long ago, she’d lost the ability to move her limbs. She hadn’t noticed right away, because she’d been mesmerized by the way that Eithan’s fingers felt as they made lazy circles on her bare thigh. Her clothes were askew, lots of her skin was bare, and he was sucking her blood and stroking her. It felt deliriously good, and she had been focusing on that, and then she began to realize that she was weak.

  Sun and bones, she didn’t even know how long it had gone on. He said he was taking her blood more slowly. It had seemed like hours. Eternities. A tunnel of sweetness that had pulled her down, where the sensations had ebbed and flowed into high points of intensity and goodness and then fallen away to give her a chance to recover.

  She hadn’t wanted him to stop. She might have said something like that, because she’d been completely given over to it, and she hadn’t cared what she done or said. That was how her clothes had gotten pushed aside. She’d done a lot of that, squirming under him, moving her clothing to give him better access. She’d whispered things, his name over and over, that it felt good, begging him not to stop. She thought she’d said that more than once.

  And he wasn’t stopping.

  But now, she was slipping away.

  Sun and bones, what if he did kill her?

  She needed to stay conscious. She needed to find that thing she’d found before, the change in her blood. Did she need to be afraid of death for it to work?

  Well, she was.

  Eithan seemed oblivious to the fact that she had stopped moving. He was going to suck her dry.

  Change, she begged her blood. Please.

  Eithan’s hands strayed from her thigh, traveled over bunched up clothing to the band of skin around her waist that was bare. He hesitated a minute and then his fingers plunged under her shirt and closed around her breast.

  She didn’t react, although it
still felt good. The pleasure distracted her from trying to concentrate on the change, and she felt herself slip out, into some dark, cool place of oblivion.

  When she came back to herself, Eithan was shaking her. He was saying her name, panic threaded into his voice, his eyes wide.

  Her eyes were open but strangely unfocused. Everything was blurry.

  How had it happened before? Why couldn’t it happen now?

  “Gods, Nicce, I’m sorry. How did I not realize you were...?” There was more than fear in Eithan’s voice, there were tears. He was convinced she was gone.

  What if she was? What if this was death, trapped in a body that no longer responded, trapped while it decayed?

  No.

  An answering pulse in her heart, which she hadn’t noticed had stopped beating. Now, its familiar rhythm started and it soothed her, and she suddenly realized how she’d done it.

  It had been a choice. She had thought that her blood had changed over because of something out of her control, because her body had gotten to a certain point in which it needed to save itself. But no, she had decided not to slip away. She had decided to live, and to heal herself, and now it seemed so obvious, a little knob inside herself she could turn on and off at will, and she felt heat flowing through her, radiating out from her heart, filling her veins, bringing life back to her.

  She threw her head back as it spewed out of the wound in her neck, out of her mouth and eyes and nostrils, the light so bright and so strong.

  Eithan let out a gasp, and he was thrown off the bed.

  She got to her feet, stronger than she’d ever been, full of her power.

  Eithan was on his knees, gazing up at her in awe. “You… you did it.”

  She pulled him to his feet. She pressed her body into his. She wrapped a hand around his neck and drew him down.

  Their lips met.

  The sunlight spilled out as they kissed, as their tongues entwined.

  She melded herself against his cold firm body, and wherever she touched him, warmth radiated into him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Nicce clung to Eithan and their kiss went on and on. His arms went around her, and she tucked herself against him, her palms pressed against his solid chest. Everywhere she touched him, he warmed. His lips were warm. His chest was warm. His hands, splayed against her back, holding her close, were warm.

  He pulled back, but only an inch, taking a breath.

  She opened her eyes but just barely. His face was a golden reflection of the light that was shining out of her.

  “We should have done this first,” he murmured.

  “Done what?”

  “Kissed,” he said, smiling.

  “Oh. Is that the proper way of things, then? First, kiss a girl, then suck her blood?”

  He laughed, and she didn’t think she’d ever heard a laugh like that escape his lips. It was so light, nothing weighing it down, no irony.

  Something welled up in her at the sound of it, and she captured his lips with her own again.

  He moaned against her mouth, and then they were kissing fiercely, their tongues stroking each other, her body shot through with wave after wave of goodness.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing,” he gasped.

  “Mmm?”

  “Because now that we’ve started, we don’t seem to be able to stop.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  And then she was stolen away by his lips and tongue again, by how perfectly she fit into his arms, by how kissing him woke up every square inch of her, and by how she had never felt anything so good in her life.

  They would have likely gone on kissing for some time, maybe all night, maybe forever, but there was a soft knock at the door, and Absalom’s voice—low and exhausted. “Please tell me you’re both wearing clothes and that Nicce’s still alive.”

  Eithan let go of her, stumbling backwards. He was smiling. She’d never seen him smile like that. She liked that smile. That smile of his made her heart squeeze. She wanted to touch him again, but she clasped her hands together to stop herself.

  “You can come in, Absalom,” she said.

  The door opened, and Absalom threw up both hands to protect himself against her light, letting out a mangled cry.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry.” In her mind’s eye, she reached in and found that figurative knob within her. She turned the light all the way down, and it went out.

  Eithan closed the distance between them, grasping her hand. “How’d you do that?”

  She looked up at him, and she got lost in his eyes. She forgot how to form words.

  His expression darkened, and she was sure he was going to kiss her again.

  Absalom cleared his throat. “Obviously, you two are going to be worse than ever. If Ciaska wasn’t suspicious before, she will be now.”

  Eithan blushed. He touched his face. “You made my blood warm,” he murmured, shaking his head.

  Nicce smiled. “I could feel that it was making you warm. Everywhere I touched you, you were warm.”

  “It’s like when I walked in the sun,” he said. “I’d forgotten how good warmth feels.”

  “Fine,” Absalom muttered. “Ignore me. I don’t mind. I’m over the moon that you’ve figured out how to make this all work. Now, if there’s some way I could have some privacy. I’d like a hot bath after my little interlude with the Exalted One.”

  Nicce turned to look at him, feeling as if she’d been doused in cold water. She took in his ripped shirt and his tangled hair. He seemed a bit more haggard than usual, his expression drawn. She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Absalom. Here we were, and all the time, you were going through… through that. We should have realized. We should have…” Well, she wasn’t sure what they should have done, but something. “I really am sorry.”

  “I’m fine,” said Absalom, and he wouldn’t look at her. “Don’t be like that. I can’t bear that.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “So, drinking your blood is what works after all? Does it have to be Eithan, or can someone else do it? If the rest of us drink your blood, are we going to become besotted with you as well?”

  “I was besotted before the blood drinking,” said Eithan, with that same silly grin on his face.

  And Nicce couldn’t help but smile too. “It wasn’t the blood drinking after all. It was just… me. I had to decide to do it. Watch.” She turned to Absalom. “You might want to step back.”

  “Why?” Absalom was wary.

  Nicce reached into herself and turned the imaginary knob again. She felt the heat rise within her, felt it grow and burst. Light came out of her eyes and nose and mouth. Light glowed below her skin.

  Eithan gasped.

  Absalom was cringing. “That’s impressive,” he said.

  She turned it off.

  “Easy as that?” Eithan laughed. “That’s amazing, Nicce. So, I didn’t have to drink your blood at all? I wish I hadn’t, then.”

  “Oh, do you really wish that?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

  He blushed again, looking away. “Well… you know what I mean. It was terrifying. I thought you were dead.”

  “Wonderful,” muttered Absalom. “I’m glad to know things very nearly were disastrous.”

  Eithan’s shoulders fell an inch. It was as if the weight he carried around with him all the time had begun to find him again.

  Nicce wanted that blushing, smiling Eithan, the one who almost seemed carefree. She took his hand. “It’s all right. I’m fine. And if we do it again, I can heal myself easily, so—”

  “No, we wouldn’t do that,” said Eithan, slowly extracting his hand from hers. “It’s appalling. Monstrous. You could have died.”

  “I didn’t die,” said Nicce. “Stop that. I won’t have you that way about me. I can’t be the source of your suffering.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re not. But I think that I bring you pain.”

  “No,” she whispered, stepping closer to him. “How can you think that?”


  Eithan’s gaze flitted to Absalom.

  Nicce stepped back. “Sorry, Absalom. I suppose we should go.”

  “We can’t go together,” Eithan said. “You go first.”

  “No,” said Absalom. “She should stay. It only makes sense that she waited her for me and then that we would have some time together after we were interrupted.”

  “Oh, does it?” said Nicce. “After the goddess abuses you, you’re usually in mood for… for…”

  “A palate cleanser?” said Absalom. “Possibly. But your point is well taken. I might likely send you off. It doesn’t matter, however, who leaves first, because if anyone sees you leaving, Eithan, I’ll never explain what you two were doing in here together.”

  Eithan folded his arms over his chest. “This was your plan.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t get that far. I didn’t think past the sunlight blood,” said Absalom. “Don’t you have any brilliant ideas?”

  “I…” Eithan shook his head. “My head is not particularly occupied with useful thoughts at the moment, I’m afraid.” He glanced at Nicce.

  She felt lightheaded from the way he looked at her. She wished they could be alone again. She wished he could walk her back to her room and that they could lie down in her bed together, spend the entire night in each other’s arms. She wanted all of him. She wanted it now. She didn’t want to be parted from him.

  “I should go to Ciaska,” said Eithan.

  “What?” said Nicce, appalled. “No, you should not.”

  “It would ensure she wasn’t looking for me,” said Eithan.

  “You’re flushed,” said Nicce. “She’ll notice.”

  Eithan touched his face, which had more color than usual. He wasn’t nearly as pale as he normally was, and his eyes weren’t glowing as much either. “I didn’t think of that.” He considered. “A fight then. I’ll make a show of having walked in on you two. I’ll be angry. Absalom, you will send me on my way, and then you’ll walk Nicce back to her room to make sure she’s safe.”

  Absalom rubbed his chin. “As long as no one is watching, I think it would work. Obviously, if anyone sees you leave and come back in the room, all is ruined.”