My voice deepens, “While we are having sex, when I am inside of you, I will bite your neck and drink your blood. When I spill my seed I will be drinking your blood.”
“Will it hurt?”
“No, this will not hurt because first, I will lick your skin, which will cause a numbing effect. You will only feel pleasure. The blood drinking makes the orgasm more intense for the both of us. And then afterwards I will lick you again, which causes you to heal. But there will be a small scar afterwards, on your neck, which I will be proud to see on display, marking you as mine.”
“Will you need to drink my blood every single time we have sex?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I do not need your blood to survive. But we will need it for procreation.”
The scent of her arousal intensifies.
“And, if you and I were to be bound,” I continue, “the Council would resist. Strongly. Krovenia has just survived the public process of accepting one human queen in this generation — my brother’s Claire. The kingdom is still raw from it and the traditionalists in the Council have been waiting for me to choose differently. Your life would not be quiet either. The Krovenian tabloids would track you. Some nobles would hate you on principle, simply for being human. They would whisper about Lily as your stepchild and about any future children we might have as half-bloods.”
Her eyes are wet now.
“I would of course not let any of this affect you personally, this is only what they would say behind your back. They would know better than to say this to our faces.” I make myself keep going. “Your family in Cleveland and Dubai would be subjected to scrutiny they did not ask for. Your father is a lawyer, he might not be pleased.”
A faint, watery smile from her at that.
“And you would have to swear allegiance to House Draven. You would retain your American Citizenship, but you would have to live here, in Krovenia with me. I would not be able to live with you instead, in America.”
I pause. “This is what it would mean. To choose me.”
The room is silent. My pulse is loud in my ears. She is sitting three feet from me with her hand on the arm of her chair, her cheeks flushed, eyes shining, and her chest rising and falling slightly faster than it was when she walked in.
Her arousal reaches me again on the next breath. I grip the arm of my chair and keep my face still.
“Viktor… “ Her voice is rough. She is trying. Her hand has come up to her throat. “I am not — I have so much to — “
There’s a sharp, urgent knock at the study door.
We look over, startled.
Madam Petrova enters the study. “Sire. Miss Novak. The princess. Her tutor sent for help because she has spiked a sudden fever and is not responding well.”
Hazel and I are both on our feet before the sentence ends. In moments we are both entering the nursery. The royal physician is already there because Madam Petrova called for him the instant the tutor raised the alarm.
Lily is in her small bed with flushed cheeks, her eyes are closed and her hair is damp at the temples. One tiny, fisted hand is grips Max’s ear with terrible little-girl strength.
She is hot to the touch.
The physician looks up at us. His face is grave but composed. “Krovenian childhood fever,” he confirms. “The next twelve hours will tell us how severe.”
Chapter Seven
Hazel
“It is a developmental milestone, not an infection,” the Krovenian royal physician continues, I assume, for my benefit. “Every Krovenian child goes through it between the ages of four and seven. The body is maturing the vampire physiology, the fangs strengthen, the senses sharpen, the cool-running biology stabilizes. It is the body doing its work.”
I stand on one side of Lily’s bed. Viktor stands on the other. Madam Petrova hovers in the doorway with both hands folded against her chest.
“How long?” I ask.
“Twelve to seventy-two hours,” the physician answers. “The first twelve will tell us much.”
“And the treatment?”
The physician shakes his head gently. “There is no medicine that ends it, the feveristhe maturation, to suppress it would interrupt the process. We can manage comfort and keep the temperature from spiking dangerously high with a mildKrovenian fever-reducer, which I will administer now. Keep her hydrated and cool. But her body must do this on its own.”
