Page 30 of Maksym

“This time, I was laughing at the deer. And, of course, the sparkling.”

Despite myself, something tried to rise in my chest again.

“Do not make me defend the deer and sparkling literature,” I said. “I am operating with limited materials.”

His smile quieted into something almost tender.

“You sleep,” he said. “And you will need it tonight. The transition takes energy, even with my blood driving it. You may sleep deeply. You may wake disoriented. You may dream strangely. None of that means anything is wrong.”

“Coffin?”

He coughed to suppress another laugh. “No.”

“Sunlight?”

“You will tolerate it better than made vampires typically do because my blood turned you. Born vampire’s blood carries certain advantages. But we will test nothing until your body stabilizes.”

“Made vampires,” I repeated.

“Yes. Vampires who were once human and were turned.”

“Like me.”

His expression shifted, but he did not flinch from the answer. “Yes.”

“And born vampires are what? Genetic aristocracy?”

That almost-smile returned, smaller and drier. “Something like that.”

“Of course.”

“Human food is not necessary as it once was,” he continued, letting me have the sarcasm without taking the bait. “You will not starve without it if you have blood. But protein is useful during the first days, especially after trauma and starvation. Your body remembers its old requirements even as it learns new ones.”

I looked at my empty plate. After trauma and starvation. The phrase was clinical enough to be bearable.

“And after that?” I asked.

“You may eat because you enjoy it. Good food remains one of the pleasures that does not have to end merely because life has changed shape.”

Changed shape. That was one way to phrase death.

I lifted the glass and drank again because apparently my hand had decided to collaborate with my enemy. The blood wine no longer shocked me in the same way. It settled into my body with a dark, awful rightness.

“So blood sustains us,” I said, and heard the pronoun too late.

Us. Maksym heard it too. His face did not change, which I appreciated more than I wanted to.

“Yes,” he said. “Blood sustains us.”

“How?”

His gaze sharpened with approval before he hid it. Good Lord. I was not a law student seeking praise from a professor. I was a dead woman with a half-empty glass of blood wine and no shoes.

Still, the part of me that had once lived by questions sat forward in the chair.

“How much?” I asked. “How often? From whom? What happens if I do not drink? What happens if I drink too much? Can I hurt someone accidentally? Can I stop once I start?”

“One question at a time.”