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He was angry.
Buried deep beneath that infuriatingly handsome face he wore like armor, something still bled from the argument inside his chambers. She had found a wound she did not yet understand, and like any predator tasting fresh blood upon the wind, every instinct urged her to keep pressing until she uncovered the bone and marrow underneath. Lucan despised the one they called the Bloodlord—as she suspected most vampires did—but something about this ran deeper than the wounds caused by dictators blind to suffering. Gods knew Elarian had many moments in her life when she wished ill on Reshva for his cruelty, even though she carried his favor above others’.
But the way Lucan’s face twisted when she spoke Aurelion’s name, and how he’d unshackled his monstrous nature for her with only a half-uttered name, told exactly what she wished never to hear: monsters were not all the same.
Lifting her second goblet high, Elarian began to drink, sputtering as she choked on her breath.
“Careful.”
The voice came from below them. Blinking back tears, Elarian’s attention drifted downward until landing on one of the councilors she had met that morning.
Lord Ataen stood near the foot of the dais steps, one hand loosely wrapped around a goblet of his own. Copper-red hair spilling carefully over one shoulder caught the witchlights like banked embers. Though broad-shouldered and thick with muscles, there was a stillness about him unlike the restless confidence displayed by the other lords scattered throughout the chamber. A faded scar disappeared beneath the high collar of his black coat before emerging again along his jawline, black against his pallid skin.
“Lucan,” he said quietly as he inclined his head.
Elarian froze. Surely she did not hear the lord correctly. Learning the politics of the vampires had never interested her—unlike Reshva and a few of her fellow Blades—but she knew that saying the prince’s name directly went against court decorum.
Yet, Lucan only softly laughed behind her and extended a hand, rubies glittering against his fingers as he moved. It struck her as stranger than the golden chain around her throat. No one else in the room dared speak Lucan’s name aloud.
“Jace. What a lovely surprise. Come, sit.”
Senna appeared out of the shadows with an ornately carved wooden chair in hand, set it down quickly, then disappeared again. Lord Ataen settled himself on the chair as if he had once sat there often. Elarian peered at him over the rim of her goblet, taking in the way one side of his face drooped slightly, lip pulled downward into a permanent frown. Copper locks covered the side of his face, and Elarian suspected that beneath it lay a wound even vampirism could not cure. Despite the imperfection of his visage, life burned bright in those deep crimson eyes. The other side of his face lifted with gaiety, a gentle laugh trilling as he took Lucan’s hand, rubbing two fingers before letting it fall away.
Curious. Elarian was certain anyone else who touched the vampire prince in such a way would soon find themselves lacking a hand—if not more.
“You have never been subtle, Luc,” Lord Ataen said after his laughter faded. “Stripping her naked, truly?”
Elarian grimaced, clenching the goblet tight until her knuckles turned white. Her—as if she wasn’t sitting right there, still bare and perched atop Lucan’s lap like some prize for the court to see. Another sip of bloodwine filled her mouth, quelling the acidic retort building upon her tongue. Lifting her gaze to the witchlights above, she squinted until they looked like dancing stars in the endless night.
“She enjoys it,” Lucan replied calmly. He hooked one finger around her chin, forcing their gazes to meet. Mirth filled his gaze, and some deep hunger she could not name; not lust, nor desire for her death, but…possession? “Don’t you, Eliyn?”
Parting her lips to reply, she gasped instead as a shadowy tendril forced apart her thighs, looping around her toned muscles before snaking over her hip. A fire even hotter than the fever eating her blood and marrow ignited in her center. Gods, she hated that Lucan was right—that some sick, twisted part of herself enjoyed letting him humiliate her, degrade her, so long as pleasure came with the price. Morals only kept one alive so long in a court of blood and undeath. Pleasure and pain were her only companions here.
“See? She can’t even speak because she is only dreaming of how to entertain me tonight. She is fine, Jace.”
Lord Ataen only shook his head. He took a long sip from his goblet, then turned his attention to Elarian. His eyes never left her face, and for that, she found herself grateful. Doubtless he meant it as such, but Elarian took comfort in the clothing he let her pretend to wear. His gaze lingered on the faint cut beneath her jaw before returning to her eyes. Something unreadable crossed across his face before it vanished beneath another easy smile.
“I had wondered,” he said lightly, “whether you would still be standing.”
Elarian arched a brow. “I disappoint easily, it seems.”
“On the contrary, my dear.” His smile deepened just enough to soften the scar cutting through his chin. “I’ve watched Lucan frighten sturdier creatures than you into fainting before supper.”
Lucan sighed.
“Must you, Jac?”
“Yes, I must.” Ataen lifted his goblet in a mocking toast. “To keeping you young, White.”
“And to the elf who finally made you handsome, Red.”
For the first time all evening, Lucan smiled. The expression transformed him, hard lines of his face softening. For one torturous heartbeat, he looked impossibly young. Taut muscles relaxed beneath her legs, and his breath grew deeper, steadier. Their conversation drifted past her ears without sound while she observed the man who continued to defy every category she had built to define the monsters she hunted. But now, his list grew to include impossibilities.
Monster. Captor.
These were the terms she understood.
But caretaker?
