Chapter Eight
“You are sure you’re
ready?” Mircea asked me.
It was seven hours
later and several decades earlier, and I wasn’t sure of a damn
thing. My hands were sweaty and my stomach hurt and I was starting
to rethink my dress choice for the evening. I’d already rethought
it once, going with the red silk, which had seemed chic and
sophisticated in the shop. But now I thought the top might be a
little low, and I hadn’t had time to have it altered, so it was too
tight in some places and too loose in others, and I wasn’t sure
that the color looked that great with my hair, especially since I
hadn’t gotten all the green out yet, and—
“I’m fine,” I said
tightly.
Mircea gave me a look
that said I wasn’t fooling anyone. But he pressed the doorbell
nonetheless. And at least he looked like he belonged
here.
His dark hair was
sleek and shining, confined in a discreet clip at his nape. His
black tuxedo fit his broad shoulders like a glove, the material
soft and sheened as only truly fine wool can be. He’d paired it
with a crisp white Frenchcuff shirt with small gold links that
glinted under the lights. They were carved with the emblem of a
royal house, although he hardly needed them. Nobody was ever going
to mistake him for anything but what he was.
Apparently the butler
agreed, because despite not having an invitation, we were ushered
straight into the party taking up most of the ground floor of a
swanky London mansion. There were a lot of gleaming hardwood and
glittering chandeliers and softly draped fabrics and fine carpets,
and I barely noticed any of them. Because across the main salon was
a small, dark-haired woman in red. And by her side was . .
.
“She is beautiful,”
Mircea said, snagging us champagne from a passing
tray.
I didn’t say
anything. I clutched the flute he handed me, feeling a strange
sense of detachment. I could feel the cool crystal under my
fingertips, taste the subtle bite of the alcohol, but it seemed
distant, unreal, like the people crowding all around us. I heard
the soft sounds of their laughter and the conversation that swelled
and ebbed, like the notes someone was playing on a distant piano.
But none of it mattered.
Not compared to the
tall girl in the bad eighties ball gown, standing by the side of
the former Pythia.
Her dress was
electric blue satin with big, puffy sleeves and a peplum. There was
a lace overlay on the top and little jeweled buttons down the
front. Her shoes were dyed to match. It was absolutely awful, like
something a bridezilla would stick on a too-pretty bridesmaid. Yet
somehow she carried it off. The blue matched the color of her eyes
and complemented her dark hair and pale skin. And when she laughed,
you forgot all about the dress, didn’t even see it.
Because you couldn’t
take your eyes off her face.
An arm slipped around
my waist. “Dulceață, I do not think
you want to get so close.”
I suddenly realized
that I was halfway across the room, although I couldn’t remember
moving. Mircea pulled me off to one side, near a row of
floor-length windows that looked out into the night. The one in
front of us was as good as a mirror, allowing me to stare at the
girl’s reflection without being so obvious.
Mircea is right, I
thought blankly. She was beautiful. And delicate and fragile and
poised.
She looked nothing at
all like me.
“I don’t agree,” he
murmured. A warm finger trailed down my cheekbone, tracing the
track of a tear I couldn’t remember shedding. “There’s a similarity
in the bone structure, in the shape of the eyes, the contour of the
lips. . . .”
“I don’t see it,” I
said harshly, gulping champagne and wondering why I was suddenly,
blindingly angry.
“You said you were
prepared for this,” he said, pulling me against him.
His chest was hard at
my back, but his arms were gentle. I felt myself relax into his
embrace, even knowing what he was doing. All vampires could
manipulate human emotions to a degree, but Mircea could practically
play me like a violin. It was a combination of natural talent and
more knowledge of what made me tick than I probably had. But for
once, I didn’t care. I clutched the familiar feeling of warmth and
comfort around me like a blanket and told myself to stop being an
idiot.
I didn’t know why I
was reacting this way. I’d known in advance what she looked like.
I’d seen a photo of her once, a faded, grainy thing taken at a
distance. But it had been clear enough to show me the
truth.
I didn’t resemble my
mother in the slightest.
“I’m fine,” I told
him, my throat tight, only to feel him sigh against my
back.
“You are not fine,
dulceață. You are feeling anger,
loss, betrayal—”
“I don’t have any
reason to feel betrayed.”
“She abandoned you
when you were a child—”
“She died,
Mircea!”
“Yes, but the fact
remains that she left. And hurt you in the process.”
“I wasn’t hurt. I was
barely four.”
“You were hurt,” he
insisted. “But you do not deal with such emotions, Cassie. You
ignore them.”
“That isn’t
true!”
“That has always been
true. It is one of the defining aspects of your
character.”
I scowled at his
reflection in the window, but if he saw, he didn’t react. He took
the empty champagne glass from my hand and sat it on a nearby
table. Then his arms folded around me again, trapping me, although
it didn’t feel that way. I didn’t want to talk about this. But
suddenly I didn’t want to move, either.
“Do you recall when I
visited Antonio’s court when you were a child?” he
asked.
“Of course.” He’d
been there for a year, from the time I was eleven until I was
almost twelve. It had been a lengthy visit, even by vampire
standards. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it; Tony often had
visitors, and it had made sense to me that his master would
eventually be one of them. It was only later that I found out
Mircea had an ulterior motive.
He’d discovered that
the little clairvoyant Tony had at court was the daughter of the
former heir to the Pythian throne. My mother had run away from her
position and her responsibilities to marry a dark mage in Tony’s
service. That effectively barred her from any chance of succeeding,
but made no difference as far as my own odds were
concerned.
“You hoped I’d become
Pythia one day.”
Mircea didn’t bother
to deny it. He was a vampire. Utilizing whatever resources were
available within the family was considered a virtue in their
culture, and a possible Pythia was a hell of a resource. “Yes, but
you were also interesting in your own right.”
I snorted. “I was
eleven. No eleven-year-old is interesting.”
“Most
eleven-year-olds do not wander about talking with ghosts,” he said
wryly. “Or pipe up at the dining table to casually mention that one
of the guests is an assassin—”
“I think Tony would
have had heart failure,” I said, remembering his face. “You know,
if he had a heart.”
“—or lead me to a
cache of Civil War jewelry hidden in a wall that no one else knew
about.”
“The guy who put it
there did.”
“My point is that you
were a fascinating child, not least of which for the way you dealt
with pain. Or, more accurately, the way you avoided dealing with
it.”
“I deal with it
fine.”
Mircea didn’t
comment, but a hand covered the fist I’d bunched at my waist,
finger pads resting on sharp knuckles. “I had been there perhaps a
month,” he said softly, “when I chanced to be passing your room. It
was late and you were supposed to be asleep, but I heard you cry
out. I went in to find you sitting in bed, your arms wrapped around
your knees, staring at the wall. Do you recall what you told me
when I asked what was wrong?”
“No.” I’d been
watching images flickering on the wall and ceiling, like
reflections of headlights on a road. Only there was no highway near
Tony’s farmhouse, which was set well back from a two-lane dirt
track in the Pennsylvania countryside. But the scenes had washed
over the room nonetheless, like the stuttering frames of a silent
movie.
They’d looked sort of
like one, too, the colors mostly leached away by the night. Except
for the blood. For some reason, it had been in bright, brilliant
Technicolor, standing out starkly against the blacks and browns and
dull, asphalt gray.
But as horrible as it
had been, it hadn’t been particularly unusual. I’d had visions
almost every day, until I grew up enough to learn to control them,
until I learned how not to see. I probably wouldn’t even remember
that one, except that Mircea had been there, jolting me out of
it.
Tony’s people didn’t
do that. They had standing orders not to interrupt, because I might
see something he’d find profitable. So it had been the strangest of
strange sensations, to suddenly feel a touch, human soft and blood
warm, on my shoulder.
“It was just a
nightmare,” I told him.
“You said you had
seen a multicar accident. Or, as you described it, blood leaching
into puddles of oil; broken bodies lying on shattered glass; and
the smell of gasoline, burnt rubber and charred meat. The next
morning, the news reported a ten-car pileup on the New Jersey
Turnpike.”
“Did it?” I asked,
suddenly wishing I had another drink.
“I wondered then what
it would be like, to grow up as a child who saw things no child
should ever see. Who, every time she closed her eyes, was
surrounded by pain, by horror, by death—”
“That’s a serious
exaggeration.”
“—by sights that kept
her up at night, shivering in fear, and staring at a blank
wall.”
“It wasn’t blank,” I
said shortly. “Rafe drew things on it.”
Our resident artist
at court had been none other than the Renaissance master Raphael,
who had been turned after unwisely refusing a job for Florentine
up-and-comer Antonio Gallina. It had been the last time he’d
refused one of Tony’s commissions, not that he’d been given many.
Appreciating art required a soul, something I was pretty sure Tony
had been born without.
“Yes,” Mircea agreed.
“Because I asked him to.”
I frowned. I hadn’t
known that. “You asked him? Why?”
“I thought a child
should have something to look at besides death.”
Dark eyes met mine in
the window for an instant, until I looked away. “I want another
drink,” I told him, but Mircea’s arms didn’t budge.
“Of course you do,”
he said. “I wish to discuss your feelings about your mother, so
naturally you become thirsty. Or hungry. Or suddenly recall an
errand that you need to perform.”
I struggled, Mircea’s
hold no longer feeling quite so comforting. “Let me
go.”
“To get a drink, or
to avoid the conversation?”
“I’m not avoiding
it!” I snapped. I just hadn’t expected this to be so
hard.
Mircea and I had
crashed the party, if walking in escorted by a gushing butler can
be termed such, because I’d wanted to see my mother. Not talk to,
not interact with, not do anything that might possibly mess up the
timeline. Just see.
Because I never had,
other than in that one lousy photo. But now that I was here, seeing
wasn’t enough. I wanted to get close. Wanted to find out if she
still smelled like honey and lilac, with a hint of waxy
lipstick.
Wanted her to see me,
too.
But even more, I
wanted to ask her things. Why she gave up a job most people would
have killed for to marry a man most people would have liked to
kill. Why she’d had me. Why she’d died and left me with fucking
Tony.
If she’d ever loved
me at all.
“Let me go,” I said
unevenly. Mircea released me and I moved away, needing space,
needing air.
I hugged my arms
around myself and stared across the party, an almost physical ache
gnawing at my insides. Her hair was dark, as I’d assumed from the
photo, but it wasn’t brown. The lights were shining on it now, and
it was a deep, rich, coppery bronze, as rare and striking as her
sapphire eyes.
I wondered if that
was where the red threads in my own hair came from, if maybe it ran
in the family. I wondered if I had a family, distant cousins or
something, floating around.... I’d never really thought about it
before, maybe because I’d grown up surrounded by people who never
mentioned theirs.
Vampires usually
acted as if their lives started with the Change, instead of ending
with it. And in a real sense, they were right. Most masters Changed
an individual because they possessed a talent they needed, or
strength or intellect or wealth they wanted, none of which included
a human family. And few were willing to Change a bunch of
hangers-on who could be of no real use and who might be a danger,
since a master was responsible for the actions of his
children.
As a result, most
families got left behind when a baby vamp joined his or her new
clan. And I guessed that, after a while, you must stop wondering
about people long dead, whom you probably had nothing in common
with anymore, anyway. After a while, you must stop missing
them.
Only I didn’t think I
was going to live that long.
“My mother was also
quite beautiful.”
I’d been so lost in
thought that it took me a moment to realize that Mircea had
spoken.
And then another few
seconds for what he’d said to sink in. “Your mother?”
He smiled slightly.
“You look surprised.”
“I just . . . you
never mention her.” In fact, I’d never thought about Mircea having
a mother. Stupid; of course he had. But somehow I’d never imagined
him as a boy.
It was surprisingly
easy.
The mahogany hair had
a faint wave to it that might once have been curls. The sculpted
lips, so sensual in an adult, had probably been a cupid’s bow then.
And the dark, liquid eyes must have been irresistible in a child’s
face.
“I bet you got away
with murder,” I said, and he laughed.
“Not at all. My
parents were quite strict.”
“I don’t believe it.”
I tried to be strict with Mircea, I really did, but somehow it
never worked. And I doubted that anybody else had better
luck.
“It’s true,” he
insisted, settling us into chairs by the wall. I didn’t stay in
mine more than a few seconds. I felt too antsy, too oddly keyed
up.
Mircea started to get
up when I did, but I pushed him back down. “A gentleman doesn’t sit
while a lady is standing,” he admonished.
I put a knee on his
leg to keep him in place. “And if the lady insists?”
“Hm. A quandary.” A
strong hand clasped my thigh through the silk. “Since a gentleman
always accedes to a lady’s wishes.”
“Always?” That could
come in handy.
He laughed and kissed
my hand. “Unfortunately, I am not always a gentleman.”
“Close enough,” I
told him honestly, and slipped the clip out of his
hair.
A dusky wave fell
over his shoulders. He looked up at me, dark eyes amused. I’d
always had this weird fetish about his hair, which we didn’t talk
about. But he knew.
It felt like cool
brown silk flowing over my fingers. And, as always, touching him
felt more than good. It felt right, steadying. And right now, I
could really use some of that.
“You were talking
about when you were a boy.”
“Ah yes. The trials
of childhood,” he mused, that hand slowly stroking my thigh. “One
of my first memories is of being thrown out to play in the snow,
completely naked.”
“Naked?”
“Hm. It was not too
bad when the sun shone, but after dark—”
“After dark?”
“—it became somewhat
. . . frigid.”
I stared at him. “How
old were you?”
He shrugged. “Three,
perhaps four.”
“But . . . but why
would anyone do that?”
“To demonstrate my
fitness to the people. I was my father’s heir, and although he had
no throne at that time to leave to me, he had absolute confidence
that it would one day be his.”
“Yes, but to risk a
child—”
“Life was about risk
then. And there was no childhood, in the modern sense, when I was
young. Not for peasant children, who started work in the fields by
age seven. And certainly not for those of us in the
nobility.”
“That doesn’t sound
like much fun.”
“Some of it was.
There were puppet shows on feast days and sledding in the winter.
And I could ride an unsaddled horse at age five at a full gallop,
as could my brothers. Well, except for Radu,” he said, talking
about his youngest brother. “He was deathly afraid of the creatures
and took rather longer to come to terms with them. I should know; I
taught them to ride.”
“Them?”
“He and Vlad,” Mircea
said, his smile fading. I didn’t say anything, but inwardly I
cursed. It was rare enough for Mircea to talk about his family, and
that particular topic was almost certain to make him shut down. But
to my surprise, this time it didn’t.
“Radu had absolutely
no seat at all,” he said, after a moment.
“Neither do I,” I
admitted. Rafe had tried to teach me, but had finally given up in
despair.
“But you do not need
to lead charges in battle, dulceață.
He did! My father finally solved the problem by tying him onto the
largest horse in the stable, and promising that he should remain
there until he could ride it properly.”
“And did
he?”
Mircea looked up at
me, baring the long line of his throat as he leaned back against
the chair. It exposed a vulnerable area, a traditional vampire sign
of trust. “With amazing alacrity.”
I stared down into
those velvety dark eyes, fascinated by the pleased humor on the
handsome face, by the crinkle of the eyes, by the white, even teeth
and the glimpse of tongue behind them. Without thinking, my hand
stopped combing through the thick silk of his hair and dropped to
his nape, before sliding forward to curve around his
throat.
Most vampires would
have moved away or at least flinched. Mircea just looked up at me,
eyes bright, but no longer with amusement. There was something dark
in those depths, something fierce and possessive that made my
breath come faster and my hand tighten over the pulse that beat
strong and steady under my fingertips.
His heart didn’t need
to beat, of course, but he knew I liked it, so he rarely forgot.
Like he always remembered to breathe when I was around, to blink,
to do all the things that made him seem human, even though he
hadn’t technically held that title for five hundred years. But he
was human to me.
He would always be
human to me.
“You shouldn’t look
at me like that when we are in public, dulceață,” he murmured, stroking his hand up and
down my leg. “It makes me wish to cut the evening
short.”
“How
short?”
Those fingers
suddenly tightened. “Very.”
And for a moment,
that sounded like a really good idea. Really, really good. But if I
left with Mircea now, I knew how the rest of the evening would go.
And it wouldn’t involve a lot of talking.
I licked my lips and
stepped away a few paces. “You were telling me about your
mother?”
Mircea didn’t say
anything for a moment, but when I looked back, he didn’t appear
annoyed. If anything, his body seemed to have relaxed, and he was
smiling. “Princess Cneajna of Moldavia,” he said easily. “Tall,
with raven hair and green eyes. Radu took after her, not in
coloring but in a certain delicacy of feature.”
“What about
you?”
“They said I
resembled her more in temperament, although I never saw it. She was
more . . . fiery. More highly strung. I remember her as beautiful
and passionate, proud and ambitious.”
I bit my lip. I
thought that described Mircea perfectly.
“I always thought I
was more like my father,” he told me.
“How
so?”
Mircea’s head tilted.
“He was a . . . prudent sort of man, a diplomat, for King Sigismund
of Hungary. He was around your age when he was sent as a special
envoy to Constantinople to discuss a possible merger between the
Roman Catholic faith and the Orthodox. It never happened, of
course, but he impressed the Holy Roman Emperor with his tact and
judgment.” Mircea smiled. “Although probably not for his
piety.”
“He wasn’t
religious?”
“No more so than was
politically expedient. My mother was the devout one in the family.
Forced her poor sons into the care of the Dominicans for part of
our education.” He shuddered.
I smiled. “You don’t
like monks?”
“I always have
suspicions of any man who can willingly turn his back on the finest
of God’s creations.”
Brown velvet eyes met
mine, and a shot of something warm and electric shot right through
me, making my pulse pound harder in my throat—and other places. I
decided I really wanted that drink now. Luckily, another of the
ubiquitous floating trays was headed my way.
I moved forward and
reached for a glass, at the same time as a man on the other side.
My hand brushed the flute, toppling it and sending a splash of
golden liquid onto his pristine white shirt. He looked down and I
looked up, an apology on my lips. And that was where it stayed, as
both of us froze in stunned recognition.
Because we knew each
other, and neither one of us was supposed to be there.