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I CAME TO THE House of Ell through the back door, a filthy bare-footed urchin. I leave via the front entrance, a vision of elegance.
Mistress Ell insisted I blow my hair dry and she applied the finishing touches...kohl and lipstick so I don’t look like a washed out rat—her words. No Silk of mine sets foot outside this house looking less than perfect. She dabbed and fiddled and stood back to observe, as if she’s some chef preparing a master dish.
I guess she is.
As we descend the stairs, piano music filters through from another part of the house. A tinkling melody at odds with the crashing thunder of my heartbeat. The beasts are refined. They are eloquent. They live in castles and travel in comfort and play musical instruments.
They possess a dry sense of humor. I’m a Silk, wrapped in silk down to my underwear and the silken gold slippers on my feet. The delicate material floats around my ankles as I walk. I’ve never owned anything this beautiful. I’ve never dressed in anything quite so spectacular.
I’m a damned fairytale princess. Emphasis on the damned. There’s no happily ever after in store for me.
We pass through a cozy parlor of puffy furniture and lace doilies on pedestal tables. The front door is frosted glass, and takes us out onto a white-washed porch and a gravel driveway where a carriage awaits. An honest-to-God pumpkin carriage, a black bubble with ostentatious gilding and drawn by a snowy stallion.
A pair of bloodsuckers stand on the rear platform. The tawny-eyed guard who attacked me earlier and his equally detestable accomplice.
My feet stall as he hops down, opening the door perched above a stepping rung. But not for long. I get myself moving again before Mistress Ell can prod me with politely worded threats and dire alternatives delivered with a simpering smile.
I’m walking myself into a deathtrap, a docile lamb to the slaughter. It feels like giving up, but what else am I supposed to do?
If I run, they’ll hunt me down.
If I fight, they’ll break my body.
If I scream, no one will come to help.
If I refuse to move, they’ll pick me up and dump wherever they want me.
This is all I can do. Hold my head high and climb into the carriage, settle myself on the bench upholstered in damask, a paisley leaf pattern of blues on gold.
It’s a short ride from the manor house to the castle. I’m delivered to an entrance along one of the wings. An iron-studded door in the charred ash stone leads directly into a luxurious room, however, nothing like the cold stone of the other parts. One wall is a window with partially drawn drapes, flooding the space with daylight. Another wall is hung with a richly colored tapestry of wild horses galloping along a shoreline of white-crested ocean.
The guard who helped me from the carriage and led me here doesn’t come inside. The door closes with a firm thud and I’m alone in this cavernous sitting room.
Not alone.
The prince sits in the shadows, one leg squared over the other, his arms stretched out over the backrest of the deep-seated couch. The cloak and boots are gone. He’s wearing black trousers and an ivory tunic top that falls softly over his broad chest. Barefoot. His hair is down, ice-blond waves sliding over his sharp cheekbones to his shoulders.
He’s as dressed down as I’m dressed up.
I get the distinct impression it’s deliberate. He’s comfortable and I’m stiff. He’s relaxed and I’m a fit of nerves.
The touch of his frosted blue stare lumps the saliva in my mouth. My heart hammers, my fingers bunched into fists at my side to cover the sudden tremble.
“I can hear your heart racing,” he drawls. “You have no need to be scared.”
Our whispers are not safe. Neither are our heartbeats, Kane.
“I have every need,” I mutter. “I’m about to be drained dry or turned by a bloodsucker.”
“Your language is foul.” He rises from the couch, bringing his features into the daylight. His brow is flattened, his eyes studying me with cruel intent. I feel it to my bones. “Never use that word again.”
Bloodsucker?
“As you wish.” Bloodsucker! Bloodsucker! “What are you then?”
“Not what.” He crosses to a cabinet that appears to double as a well-stocked bar and uncorks a crystal decanter filled with pale gold liquid. “Who.”
I note the other two crystal decanters on the silver tray. One is the innocuous color of burnt amber, but the other is a deep burgundy of age-old wine. It can’t be blood...can it?
I bring up a little in my mouth, the sour, acidic taste not helping the churn in my stomach.
“Prince Neculai Dracul...” He lets that hang in the air as he pours from the decanter, then turns to me with two glasses in hand. “Vampyre.”
His accent thickens on the word, drawing the second syllable down into the sinister realms of a hellish underworld.
The dramatic pronunciation riles me. For some reason, it’s a spark to the loss of hope and simmering rage inside me. I’m dead anyway, so why not go out with a bang?
“Dracul?” This self-styled prince’s aspirations know no bounds. “As in Dracula, the father of all Vampyres?” A bitter, bile-tasting laugh splutters from my lips. “Oh, my God, you really are that pretentious. You’re not a prince and you’re not Dracula. You’re a disease. You’re a by-product of some virus that ravaged our land!”
In the blur of an eye, he’s right in front of me, practically nose to nose. He doesn’t have me off my feet by the scruff of my neck, though. His fingers don’t close around my throat. He’s not swatting me into oblivion with a slap of his hand.
He’s overwhelming my nostrils with aromas of a moonlit forest, a sinister scent that is dark and earthy and raw, and offering me one of the glasses. “Dracula is an ancient tale of inaccuracy and willful blindness. If I were my father, I’d have had the idiot who penned it drawn and quartered. My name is Dracul, the dragon in my ancestral tongue.”
“Whatever, Prince Neculai Dracul.” The name rolls off my tongue like thick honey, totally misfiring my sarcastic comeback. But seriously, it’s impossible to say that name with sharp corners and cutting edges.
He lifts the glass higher. “Drink.”
I eye the pale liquid. I’ve never tasted whiskey before, but it can’t be worse than the moonshine Daniel procures from his uncle’s shed. The temptation of the numbing burn that comes with it is a lure that beckons to me.
I resist.
However painful, I won’t be tempted to sink into oblivion on my way out of this existence. I will be present. I will fight until my last breath.
“I’m not a ‘what’ either.” I step back from the prince, my eyes blazing defiance into him. “I’m a ‘who’.”
His mouth quirks. “You’re a what.”
“My name is Senna Rhys.”
“You’re a Silk, nothing more.”
“What’s that about, anyway? Why do you call us Silks?”
“Your blood is silk to our palettes.” He sets one glass on a low table carved out of an oak trunk and returns to lounge on the couch, one leg squared over the other. “You have uncommon knowledge of your history, knowledge your Alders have long-since erased.”
His long fingers wrap the glass resting on his knee, swirl the liquid with precise, measured control. His eyes study me with that same precision and control. “Are things changing in Ironcross?”
Kane’s words echo within my soul. The Alders believe it’s time for change. It’s time to fight back.
I can’t let the prince get wind of that kind of sentiment. Ironcross and any hope for a better future would be doomed before the fight has a chance to start.
“Things are not changing,” I say carefully. “I had no idea of this world out here until very recently.”
“You speak of being drained dry or turned,” he says. “You speak of the Vampyre race as a by-product of disease. Your history is a half-truth, which means it comes from within the walls of Ironcross.”
I reach for the glass, put the rim to my lips to buy myself time.
I can’t tell him about Kane.
My fingers tremble against the delicate crystal tumbler, betraying the turmoil in my heart. A small sip sends a smooth burn down my throat, coats my insides with warmth.
Or maybe I can...
“I was friendly with an Alder. Very friendly.” Another small sip, another coat of steeling warmth, then I set the glass down and fold my arms. “He let slip things he shouldn’t have.”
The prince watches me.
“He regretted it, once he realized how much he’d told me,” I say quickly. “I swore I’d never breathe a word of it to anyone else, but he didn’t trust me to stay quiet. He’s the reason I was Tithed. He needed me gone.”
Have I said too much? I’ve never been good at lies.
The prince sips on his whiskey, studying me over the crystal rim.
Can he hear my thoughts, too?
“You said my history is a half-truth,” I say, mainly to distract him. I’m not interested in his denials about the truths he doesn’t like to own. “What do you mean?”
After an infinitesimal pause, his glass lowers from his lips. “I’m not going to bleed you dry. That would be a waste. And I’m not going to turn you. That would be impossible.”
My heart skips a beat. “Impossible?”
“You’re immune, Silk. That’s what makes you and everyone in Ironcross special. You don’t turn when we drink from you. Your blood remains pure and warm and entirely human.”
I’m not about to die? My brain fumbles over the realization, wanting to believe. I won’t be turned into a bloodsucker.
I’ll remain human.
I’ll still be me.
My legs are wobbly, a different kind of weakness that hits behind my knees. Relief. This isn’t the end. “You’re not going to drain me.”
“That would be careless, and I’m never careless with a good Silk.”
Liar! “What about Georga?”
He looks at me, his face blank.
“The...the...” God, I hate the word. “The Silk girl that was with us? You were careless. She’s dead!”
“A casualty of the hunt,” he drawls. “There’s always a few. A Vampyre sometimes loses control in the fever of the chase. It’s only natural.”
“Then why hunt?” My tone is blistering condemnation.
Not that he notices.
He shrugs, takes another sip on his whiskey. “The hunt is a claiming process, a bonding between hunter and prey that sweetens the blood.”
“That’s the taste of fear,” I snap.
His smile is a wicked twist of his hard mouth.
I grab the glass I deposited and bring it to my lips, throwing the liquid back in one gulp. The burn prickles a path down my throat and waters my eyes. Another long moment, and my fingers finally stop shaking.
“What about my friends?” I demand. “What have you done with them?”
“The Silks reclaimed with you? They’re well taken care of.” He pats the spot beside him. “Come here.”
I stand my ground. “I have more questions.”
“So have I, Silk, but they’ll wait.” He gives the spot on the couch another pat. “You entertain me, I’ll give you that, but I don’t play cat and mouse games when I’m hungry. Come here. Now.”
His voice is cool, calm, but there’s an edge that reminds me life as a Silk in this place is temporary. We have no great value to these beasts. We are easily replaceable. Our deaths are unavoidable casualties, unfortunate accidents.
Still, my feet refuse to carry me to the couch. Thanks to the whiskey and unexpected lifeline, I’m not a quaking mess, but the idea of him biting into me isn’t exactly pleasant. I glance over to gauge the distance to the door.
I’ll never make it.
I know that.
And even if I do get through the door—
“Don’t,” the prince murmurs at my ear from behind, a hand curling around my neck as he steps around.
The suddenness of his closeness spins my blood into a rush of panic. I swallow a breath I should be exhaling and gasp.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says softly. “This will only hurt for a second.”
He snaps his jaw up in a feral motion and bares his rack of perfect teeth with a pair of elongated canines jutting over his lower lip. Fangs. “Look at me.”
Heart thudding inside my chest, my gaze lifts. There’s not a trace of warmth in his frosted blue eyes. A shiver crawls beneath my skin. Just get it over with.
His other hand comes up to brush my hair over my shoulder, exposing the full curve of my neck. Two fingers track a path from the hinge of my jaw to the hollow at the base of my throat. His eyes follow, settling on the silver cross nestled there.
Vampire lore has a lot to say about silver and wooden crosses. Hissing burns, paralysis, instant death.
Wouldn’t that be nice.
I wet my lips, swallow hard. “Does that bother you?”
But Prince Neculai Dracul is Vampyre, not vampire. His fingers slip between the cross and my skin, the cross resting against his palm. His eyes lift to me again. “Is that why you wear it?”
If I’d thought about it, sure. As much as I’d love to spit that out at him, I don’t. His fangs are out, for one. And I don’t want to lose my cross.
I blaze a silent look into his frosted stare, which appears to amuse him. A smile quirks his mouth as his lips brush over my jaw and down my throat.
The bite breaks my skin with a double stab of fire that rips a scream from the depths of my lungs. A moment later the fire dampens to a pulsing, pulling throb that seems to be pulling the very life from me. My limbs grow weak...heavy. I’m vaguely aware of an arm hooking beneath my knees, cradling me against a rock hard chest as the pulsing pull deepens and slows to the rhythm of my heartbeat.
My eyelids flutter downward and then I no longer care about the weakness claiming me. I am a living pulse of wonderful sensations that flow through me like a languid river of warm honey. I’m drifting, my body saturated with sensuous awareness and carefree longings that slowly build into a crescendo of satisfied aches.
I want to float here forever and forever and forever...but the blissful euphoria is receding, bit by bit, a relentless current dragging me back to shore.
“No,” I moan.
No...
I don’t want to leave this place.
Not yet.
Not ever.
But the amorous lethargy is lifting from my bones. My lashes flutter and I’m staring into the beautiful blue of a frozen lake. “Neculai...”
“Shhh...” He’s lowering me on the couch, propping a pillow beneath my head.
My skin is flushed with heat, my body drugged on spent desire.
The seconds tick by with my beating pulse, each pulse a little stronger, stronger, and with it the wrongness creeps in through the fog clouding my brain.
“No!” Horror grips me, my fingers blindly grasping for the bodice of my dress, trailing down the silky length over my stomach...hips...legs. It’s not ruffled up about my thighs.
“We didn’t.” The prince perches on the edge of the couch, his eyes on me, his thumb stroking my cheek. “My fangs release a pheromone substance to numb the pain. It mixes with your blood to create a sensual high unlike anything you’ve ever known.” His mouth quirks. “You’re welcome.”
Shame and fury redden my cheeks. “That’s disgusting.”
“Your body will crave it as much as I need your blood for nourishment,” he says. “It’s a perfectly natural symbiotic relationship. This is your life now. Embrace it, and it will be a good life.”
I twist my head away from him, my breaths short and tight. The bite. I feel at the side of my throat for blood and gore, but the skin is smooth and dry.
“A drop of saliva seals the vein and heals your skin,” the prince explains, rising from my side. “Now rest to regain your strength.”
He leaves my field of vision. The thought of lifting myself into a position to check on him is there, but it feels like a monumental task.
Then he’s back, placing a tall glass of amber liquid on the table. “Apple juice,” he says. “It helps restore your sugar levels. When you’re ready, your guards are waiting by the carriage to return you to the House of Ell.”
With that he turns and goes, through a door recessed in the shadows behind the couch.
I’m alive, but I can’t summon any feelings of gratitude.
I feel dirty and used.
I feel abused.