And looked like he genuinely didn’t get it.
“Because, when you’re part of someone else, you don’t get to make that call,” I told him quietly.
And then felt like cursing, because the damned man still didn’t get it.
I could see it in those shimmering blue eyes: confusion, awkwardness, more than a little fear. He, who wasn’t afraid of anything, was afraid of this. Of me. Of being sent away.
And there was one really good way to solve that problem, wasn’t there?
I felt my fangs pop. “I’m proprietorial about my things,” I snarled, and bit him.
And, God, yes, it was good! So good, so warm, so rich. I heard Louis-Cesare cry out, felt him grab my arms and try to push me off, but I knew his true strength now, and he wasn’t pushing very hard.
Not that it would have mattered. I wrapped my legs around him as my fangs sank deeper, and I felt it: the swirl of magic around us. It should have been a surprise, but it wasn’t. Maybe because it was so right, so good, so—
“Perfect,” I heard him murmur, and then he was drawing me close, and it was. It really, really was.
* * *
—
I awoke an indeterminate time later in a warm embrace, one that had ended up with me wedged into an armpit, with Louis-Cesare draped over top of me. Like he wanted to make sure I would still be there when he woke up. No worries, I thought, letting my fingertips ghost over the tops of the new little fang marks on his neck.
He shuddered slightly, and drew me closer, tightening the embrace even in sleep. But not so much that I couldn’t slide out from under, when I felt it again. A mental tug from above.
It was still dark, although on which day, I didn’t know. It felt like I’d been in bed awhile. I was stiff, to the point that it took me an embarrassingly long time to get the sash up on a window and look out. And then to clamber onto the roof.
Dorina was there, looking something like Mircea’s ghostly form, only paler, less distinct. But it was more than I’d ever seen of her before. “So you can materialize.”
“Not to anyone else. At least . . . I don’t think so.”
She sounded a bit unsure.
I knew the feeling.
“You let them go,” she said, as I settled beside her.
“What?”
Visuals came, instead of words. Mircea’s gloved hand picking up the glowing ward where Alfhild had kept her power, all those years ago in Venice; him arguing with Abramalin, who couldn’t do as he’d promised, after all, since he’d just made up the procedure to get Mircea to work for him; Mircea bending over me as I lay in my small child’s bed, his eyes glowing with stolen power . . .
And then there were two.
“So, that’s how it happened,” I said, my voice hoarse.
She nodded.
I didn’t know how to feel about that. It hadn’t sounded like it was possible to return the energy stolen from the bones, once it was extracted and made into something else. But even so. People had been destroyed for it, real people, with hopes and dreams and lives. . . .
It had been done at a megalomaniac’s command, to quench her thirst for revenge, not so Dorina and I could live. But it had given us life, all the same, and so it still felt weighty. Not like a burden, but like . . . a gift. And a responsibility, not to waste it.
I’ll try, I thought, staring up at the stars.
“I should have told you before,” Dorina said. “But I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“So much power, in those bones. Fey, even more than vampire. I knew what Mircea had done with it; I didn’t know what you would.”