Her blood smells so alluring when she’s blushing. Not mouthwatering like when she’s scared, and not hypnotizing like when she’s angry, but alluring. It doesn’t make me want to feed, it makes me want toprotect.
It frustrates me that she’s not a cruel, malicious person like Yekaterina was. It would have made this last month so much easier. All she has wanted from the very beginning is to go home. After she told me the story about her father and brother, I felt worse for her mother, who has lost everyone she loves to demons.
Unlike me, Adelasia’s thoughts do not seem to be of her home this night. Her captivating blue eyes are slightly dilated from the wine, but the solemn expression she so often has when she’s around me is nowhere to be found.
As the song goes on, a smile graces her features and our steps become more elaborate, adding dips and turns that are done with such precision and speed that any other human would find themselves disoriented. Not her though. With each new step, her face grows more radiant with challenge. She’s enjoying this–showing off her talent and technique.
I’ve been alive for a long, long time, and I’ve never seen anyone look more precisely confident than her when she dances. She puts the elegance of all other women combined to shame.
When the song ends, I have her in a dip so low the crown of her head nearly touches the floor. When I lift her back up, strands of hair have fallen out of her bun and now frame her face, some stuck to a thin sheen of sweat. Her chest heaves against mine, and we’re so close I can almost taste the lingering soap on her skin from her earlier bath.
A small applause fills the room, and whatever thoughts were floating around in her head cease in that moment. She takes a step back from me and murmurs under her breath that she needs some air. I nod, and give her a few paces worth of space before I follow her out of the ballroom, down the hall, and out to one of the balconies overlooking the lower city of the valley.
I give her some physical space, lingering in the doorway. She looks over her shoulder to address me, but doesn’t meet my eyes.
“You should go back to your celebration. I won’t be long.”
I approach her side and lean over the railing as she is, my hands clasped together with our shoulders and arms touching. “I’d rather be here with you.”
She laughs quietly to herself at that, and my brow furrows. “What’s so funny?”
“You’d have dropped dead if you lied to me just now.”
I incline my head slightly. “Then it’s fortunate that I was not lying.” She looks back out over the railing and nervously picks at her fingers, zoning out towards the horizon. I brush my shoulder against hers to grab her attention. “Was it me?”
“Hm?” she hums in response.
“You ran away from the celebration for a reason. Was it me?”
“You wish,” she teases humorlessly. Then she looks at me from under her lashes. “I was thinking about my mother. About how she’s probably crying and alone right now while I’m dancing under the moon with a smile on my face.”
I consider that for a moment, and then brush her shoulder again. “Write to her,” I suggest. When she gives me a confused look, I say, “Write her a letter, telling her that you’re alive. I’ll get it to her.”
“Really?” she asks hopefully, and I can hear the emotion getting caught in her throat.
“Really,” I confirm. She looks as though she wants to ask if she can simply go home, but I think she understands well enough at this point that I would not allow it, even if she doesn’t know why.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “But you’re scaring me with all this sudden kindness.”
I smirk. “I can go back to being a cold brute if you wish.”
She shakes her head. “You’re not as cold as you want the world to believe.”
“I was though, once,” I admit. “I think you’re overdue for a history lesson, Adelasia.” She stays silent, waiting patiently while I contemplate how to tell her the truth without revealing her part in it.
“Do you remember when you told me that human legends believe that the vampires and the disappearance of the Tenth Priestess were related?” I ask. She nods. “I told you your legends are correct, but only partially. The Tenth Priestess was unfathomably powerful. She had an affinity for magic her sisters could not even begin to possess. She was…extraordinary. Cruel and malicious and ruthless, but extraordinary. She created the vampire race because she was bored one day and wanted to unleash her evil on the world.”
“And…you were one of the first?” she asks.
“I wasthefirst.”
I watch as she does a calculation in her head, and then she gives me an expression of awe. “But that would mean you’re a thousand years old.”
I give her the slightest hint of a smile. “One thousand and fifty-eight. I was thirty-one when I was cursed. I was the only one the Tenth Priestess ever made before her death. Every vampire walking this earth is descended from me. I originally changed two others. Dravon is one of them, and that’s why he’s my closest advisor.”
Her lip curls at his name. “What about the second?”
I tighten my jaw and continue without answering. “After I changed them, they created more vampires, and those vampires created more vampires and so on, but all of them lead back to me.”
