Vampyre Bride ✔️

XXXVI ⎮The Invisible Wyrm

"I cannot bear another moment here! Stand aside, vampyre!"

"I will not." His voice lowered to a hard and brazen timber, the quietude of his conviction was steeped in fell warning such that could not be disregarded; neither her terror nor her ire was equal to it. She stood well and truly in checkmate.

Her hardihood having failed her, she retreated into the middle of the entrance hall—a defeated white queen, deflowered and tainted by the invisible wyrm that flies in the night. He was right of course, it was madness to run about the moors in the small hours. Yet perhaps madder still to stay.

"What did you see in the blood memory?" he asked.

Emma gazed at the large black and white squares of marble beneath her boots, endeavoring in vain to ignore the way his voice still affected her despite her fear. Only four and twenty hours ago his dark and rapturous whispers had been igniting her blood and now his soft accents appalled her, threatened her, though perhaps not entirely; not as completely as it ought to have. It all seemed so long ago now. Like as not, she convinced herself, it was those vestigial memories of pain and pleasure that persisted in diluting the dread from her heart.

"Answer." The command brooked no further delay in answering.

Emma sensed rather than heard him draw near—the darkness stirred the air at her back. His breath upon her nape, leaving tremors in its wake, affirmed what she'd already felt. No matter what she'd seen in the blood memory, however, Emma refused to die a stammering poltroon. If he meant to kill her... Well, there was naught she could do if that was, and had always been, his intention. Moreover, she knew that no begging whatever would induce the beast to change his mind. What she could command was in what manner she met her death: with steel in her bones and a little iron in her voice.

She turned to face him, lifting her eyes to meet the squally shadows in his. And yet... Did her senses pay her false or was there something of grief in that black and fathomless gaze? Whatever the momentary revelation, it did not signify—he was dangerous and she ought never forget that she was nothing to him but a bag of vittles. "You plunged your fangs into her breast and drank her off till her heart beat no more. You killed her."

"Aye, I killed her, but not as you imagine." If she had believed him capable of such an emotion she would have considered the subtle tightening of both his mouth and unblemished brow to betray a certain vulnerability, yet she knew better.

"Lie to me no more, I saw for myself what you did."

His brow beetled as he considered her words. "You may be sure, prickly little rose, that I have never lied to you."

"Then tell me, once and for all, am I now to be murdered?"

He snarled and stalked away to pace the floor. "You can ask me that—" with a black look shot from the tail of his eye "—after all that has passed between us?"

"All? What has passed between us, save blood and games?!" She shook her head in dismay. "And what lies between us now, pray? Love?!" She noticed the way his shoulders tensed as she threw the word, scoffing, at his back. "No, we are wolf and cat you and I. I know my place in the pecking order, vampyre, and I do not deceive myself as to what you want from me." Certainly not her heart—leastwise only insomuch as it was the vessel in which his vittles were warmed.

"You persist in using that misnomer, yet you know I am no such thing." He suddenly took her by the arms with an iron grip to keep her from recoiling. "And though I admit I am a monstrous thing, never presume to know what I feel or want. I have known love once before—such as you will never comprehend—and it made of me the beast you see before you now. I have no opinion of Love, madam." And then, quite without warning, he kissed her, the force of which struck her like a thunderstone.