The Beginning of a Long Night
All at once her body lifted into the air. Terrified of falling, she locked her arms around the man's neck.
"Your Grace—please, steady yourself..."
He had no patience left for the bedroom upstairs. He kicked open the nearest door and carried her through. The lock snapped shut behind them, loud in the quiet.
Strange. The others fell asleep at once. She had promised, with perfect confidence, that she could put him to sleep, yet in truth Evelynn had used the ability on only two people: her son, Liber Azantis, and her husband's elder brother, the former Archduke, Nasser Azantis.
The insomnia of the Azantis men seemed to run in the blood. She had thought it would take her husband as well.
She hit the mattress with a soft thud, and the plush give of it scattered the rest of the thought. He set her down and stared as if he meant to see straight through her. Only his breathing filled the room—rough, slow, dragged out of him. It was the silence of a beast in the instant before it tears out a throat. No lamp had been lit. In the dark her hearing had grown painfully sharp, and the sharpness only fed her fear.
Ilya sat on the edge of the bed and lifted Evelynn's hand. A wet, hot tongue dragged over the finger she had cut earlier, the one that still stung.
There wasn't enough blood. I'll have to open it again—
She tried to sit up. A hand caught her shoulder and pressed her back into the bed. Ilya swung himself over his wife and bent low. His weight made it hard to breathe; she could only pant in short, shallow bursts. His rain-soaked clothes were clammy, and the hard body beneath them burned so hot she thought it would scald her.
"And after this... what do I do?"
His voice had always been low and unhurried. Sleep had dragged it lower still, and it hummed against her ear.
"I don't know. I don't know..."
"It's all right. I think I do."
The wet whisper kept pouring into her ear until Evelynn thought she might come apart.
His hand found the nape of her neck. She was panting like an animal in the moment before it is eaten. Ilya closed his fingers around a throat so slender it looked as if one hand could end her, and lifted it a little. The other hand drifted—ear, cheek, the bridge of her nose, her lips—then followed the line of her jaw down to her neck, slow as something swimming.
Those fingers stroked her skin at a languid, drifting pace, and Evelynn bit down hard on her lip. Heat was rising from below her navel, quiet and insistent, ready to break from her mouth at any moment.
His closed lips touched her jaw. Cold mouth against tender skin, and she could not hold the sound back any longer.
A broken moan left her. Whether the sound excited him she could not tell; he rubbed his cheek and his mouth wildly over her face. Everywhere his lips touched burned so hot she thought she would melt.
She was on the verge of screaming when it struck her how much he resembled her little son fussing his way toward sleep. The tension eased, just a little. Evelynn lifted a hand and stroked her husband's broad back the way she would have soothed the child.
That was when he bit.
Ilya sank his teeth into the tender skin and sucked hard. A metallic scent began to curl through the air.
Pain tore a scream out of her. She thrashed, but the weight bearing down on her only grew heavier. It felt like being eaten alive.
Is this how I die?
Better this than being sold to some lecherous old man and beaten to death.
A fresh pain flared where jaw met throat. Evelynn arched her neck back and clutched the sheets in both fists.
It was the beginning of a long night.
Eyelids growing heavy at night, and sleep coming of its own accord. Waking in a pleasant haze when the sun rose, and simply getting up. Ilya experienced that ordinary thing for the first time in his life.
Morning light blurred across his vision, and he blinked, content. Through the wavering haze he caught a tangle of golden thread.
A woman?
Blue-gray eyes swept the bed. The owner of that golden hair was curled tight in one corner. And everywhere across the sheets, dried blood. God.
"Evelynn? Are you all right? Look at me."
He was agitated in a way that was nothing like him. Before he knew what he was doing he had bolted upright and wrapped her in the blanket. The blood-soaked body in his arms was burning with fever.
Curses spilled through his teeth—damn it, you mad bastard—and he shouted.
"A physician! Bring a physician!"
The head maid must have been waiting just outside; she came running at once. The maids who followed her gasped at the carnage on the bed. The head maid mastered her face in an instant and approached.
"Your Grace, please give me my lady. And... it would be best if Your Grace washed as well."
Ilya sat frozen as a statue, his wife gathered against his chest, and seemed not to see her at all. Uneasy, the head maid pressed him, carefully.
"Your Grace? Before the physician arrives, we ought to move my lady to another room..."
"Your Grace. Please give us my lady."
Only then, and reluctantly, did Ilya surrender his blanket-wrapped wife to the maids. The fine feeling he had woken with was already long gone.
"The former Archduke's funeral must be held as soon as it can be. Not a day should be wasted."
"Yes. See that it moves as quickly as possible."
"And make it grand," Ilya added.
The previous Archduke had died young, without any particular achievement to his name. Even so, Ilya meant to see the rites conducted with every courtesy.
"And..."
The aide could not bring himself to ask about the thing that had filled his lord's mind all day.
The moment Ilya had seen Evelynn curled on the bed, covered in blood, he had thought he was trapped in a nightmare. But his body—light in a way it had never been—told him last night had been no dream.
"Has the physician been?"
The aide seated across from him answered with an awkward look.
"Yes. That is... my lady was caught in a great deal of rain, and the bleeding was very severe, so..."
He could not finish, and mumbled the rest away. For some time a fierce gaze from the doorway had felt as if it were boring a hole through Ilya's face.
"You tell me, Naz."
The man at the door crossed the room in a few long strides. The uniform of the knight order sat impeccably on him, and his face was full of displeasure.
"You. Go out and see to your work."
"Yes, Your Grace."
Sweating through the awkwardness, the aide fled. Once the two of them were alone in the office, the glare fixed on Ilya only sharpened. Those stubbornly sealed lips showed no sign of opening, and at last Ilya asked, a little deflated.
"Naz Fillain. What are you displeased about this time? Speak."
"Dragged through all that rain like a dog on a leash, bitten all over, and bleeding for the privilege!"
Ilya said nothing.
"She still hasn't come to. The fever's raging. The whole household is in an uproar."
He spat it at three times his usual speed, venom and all, without a moment's restraint.
"She still... hasn't regained consciousness?"
A crack ran through the face that had been expressionless all morning. The bloodless face he had seen at dawn rose in front of him. Naz let out a small sigh, hesitated, and then went on.
"I'm saying this as your friend, Your Grace. The name Mardus sets my teeth on edge as much as anyone's. Even so—don't do that to my lady."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Part on good terms. You've received your title now, so while you're at it, see that the settlement is a generous one."
Rationally, Naz was right. House Mardus and the Black Forest Knights could not live beneath the same sky.
On the Tatar campaign, the Black Forest Knights had nearly been slaughtered because of the eldest son of House Mardus. In a joint operation he had broken his word and abandoned his allies. The knights had gone into the canyon to draw the enemy in, and that betrayal had trapped them there. More than ten times their number sealed the mouth of the canyon and waited for them to destroy themselves once the water and the food ran out.
"No matter how many times I turn it over, walking out of that canyon alive still doesn't feel real."
"And of all moments for the King of Tatar to die, and the princes to fall on one another. Heaven's own luck."
Ilya and the Black Forest Knights had come back from hell, and they had sworn a blood vendetta against House Mardus.
"The heir was only following his lord's orders, wasn't he? It was plainly the work of that cunning old man, Ayatoll Mardus."
"Yes. That fool would never have dared something so bold on his own."
The Marquis of Mardus had been the first to sense that something was wrong in the Tatar royal house. Claiming that his incompetent eldest son had failed to send reinforcements and thrown the allied army into peril, the marquis himself had bowed his head and apologized.
"To cut off his own eldest son's head, right there on the spot."
"A truly vicious man."
As proof of an unshakable alliance, Ayatoll Mardus had offered a vast indemnity together with the head of his heir. Ilya had ground his teeth, but victory required money and allies, and both were desperate needs. He had no choice but to endure, and wait.
It was around then that Evelynn gave birth to their son. What had he felt, hearing the news from the battlefield? He thought he had been glad to be far away. Had the child been standing in front of him, he might have killed the boy with his own hands.
As Naz said, he had meant to divorce Evelynn Mardus quietly once the war was over. He had been certain of it. And yet last night, that woman...
"I need to go to my wife."
Whatever else was true, for now he had to go to her.
Evelynn was ill the whole day through, and only late at night did she manage to open her eyes.
The man in the small chair at the bedside looked down at her and let out a long sigh.
"Are you... all right now?"
She tried to answer. Only a rasp came out. She could do nothing but nod, barely.
"Last night I was too worked up. From now on, I'll restrain myself."
The words were ripe for misunderstanding. The physician and the maids standing behind him flushed.
From now on, he said. It worked. Strength seemed to rise through a body that had hung limp as waterlogged cotton.
She hesitated, then lightly took her husband's hand. A fine line creased between his brows, but he did not push her away.
She held that hand in one of hers and, with the other, slowly traced the words against his skin.
I... am... hungry.
Evelynn looked up at him, watching his face for any sign of his mood. The man who had tasted the sweetness of sleep for the first time wore a faintly loosened expression.