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“Weddings?” I looked up. “Then you’re already married?”
“Yep. A couple weeks ago.”
“But . . . you’re not marked.” Her long neck, visible under the simple V-neck top she wore, was clean and unblemished. I resisted an urge to feel my own throat, where Mircea’s marks stood out clearly from the skin.
“I bit him.” She saw my surprise. “He never really had a family, at least not the way he looked at it. It’s a long story, but basically, he wanted to feel like he finally belonged somewhere . . .” She shrugged again.
And I felt a sudden surge of pure, unadulterated dislike. Not because of the trying-to-kill-me thing, but because of this. This . . . joy . . . radiating off her. She was utterly, blissfully happy with her relationship, and I was a horrible person, because I savagely envied her that.
You suck, I told myself.
You really, seriously suck.
And I did, I knew I did, but goddamn it! After everything I’d gone through lately, my own love life was as screwed up as ever, maybe even worse than usual. I’d broken up with Mircea, something that had absolutely been the right thing to do but that had left an ache in my heart that I couldn’t deny. I missed him, more than I’d expected. And the only other man in my life—damn it!
I’d spent weeks scared out of my mind, running after Pritkin, trying to get him back from Adra’s freaking spell and all the while being sure I never would. And then, once I somehow did, once that whole epic clusterfuck was finally over, what happened? I got one night with him and he disappeared with the guy who killed him!
Not to mention the fact that while I’d told Pritkin I loved him, he’d never said it back. Not once. And yes, he’d been busy battling crazy dark mages in supernatural Hong Kong while recovering from actually being dead for two weeks, but goddamn it!
I stared at Dorina’s ring, and it was lovely, but I couldn’t see myself wearing one like it. Couldn’t imagine a fairy-tale ending to my story. The far more likely scenario, assuming Pritkin didn’t manage to get himself killed—again—was that I was going to screw this up royally. And end up with nothing, nothing at all.
Of course, considering how Pythias’ love lives usually went, maybe that was for the best, I thought darkly.
“Are you okay?” Dorina asked.
“Yeah.” It was hoarse.
She looked concerned and went to get me a glass of water, which made it worse. I wanted to hold on to that flash of dislike, because she was prettier than me and she was happier than me and she was living proof of Mircea’s ability to get women to fall head over heels for him in whatever era he happened to be in at the moment. He probably didn’t even miss me.
And that was fine, okay? I didn’t need him or Pritkin or big-ass flashy rings that didn’t look flashy on her slender hand, just elegant. She could probably make a croker sack look elegant, I thought evilly, and then I felt bad some more.
Why was I like this? I thought, for what had to be the hundredth time.
As usual, I didn’t get an answer.
I did get some water, though. “Look,” Dorina said, crouching in front of me, because I’d sat back down on the bed at some point. “I get that you’ve had a bad day, but I need confirmation on this.”
“Why? So you can tie Jonathan up with a bow and give him to your husband as a belated wedding gift?”
“Yes.”
I just looked at her.
“Maybe without the bow,” she conceded.
“And you think that will help?” Because Louis-Cesare hadn’t struck me as the vengeful type.
Admittedly, I didn’t know him very well, but he’d seemed strangely . . . normal . . . for a vampire, from what I remembered. And while it sounded crazy to say about a dueling champion, he hadn’t actually seemed to like violence. I was sure he was capable of it, but the relish a lot of vamps took in their enemies’ pain . . . no. Not so much.
“I think that will end it,” she said viciously, and there came the baby fangs. As a hybrid between vamps and humans, I guess it only made sense that she’d have half- sized fangs. But like with everything else about her, they’d ended up cute.
Goddamn it.
“He can’t get past it,” she told me now, her eyes dark. “I want to help him, but I don’t know how. He seems fine, and then I see it—a shadow crossing his face. And he has nightmares. Have you ever known a vampire to have nightmares?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, he does. And it’s always the same thing. I don’t know everything that went on there, when he was with that monster, but he’d already had some abuse in the past that—”
