Page 15 of Craved

I nodded, and her face lit up. She danced out of the room, still thanking me.

I heaved a breath. Alone. For a few minutes, anyway.

I went to a casement window. The sun was setting over the river. Farther off, the Montreal skyline was a vibrant smudge against the dusky sky, and in the grounds below, the vampire’s night garden designed by my father was in full bloom. Lush white flowers—lilies, hydrangeas, roses—glimmered in the twilight.

The garden’s centerpiece was a large bronze fountain guarded by a trio of snarling bears, their backs forming the base. Victorine had erected the fountain as a memorial to her Russian mate, Mikhail Romanov, the final casualty in the Tremblay/Kral blood feud—and the reason that for her, my assignation with Rafe Kral had been a double betrayal.

Because Rafe wasn’t just any dhampir. He was the son of Karoly Kral, the vampire who’d staked my father—and her mate.

In the window’s specially darkened glass, the white dress made me appear almost ghostlike against the garden below. The woman everybody saw, but nobody really knew.

Behind me, my bedroom seemed even colder than usual, the black-and-white theme sucking at my soul. Victorine’s taste, not mine.

White walls, black trim, white curtains. My bed was a heavy black wood that I hated, the coverings black silk with embroidered white diamonds. Even the pictures on the wall were black and white.

The rest of the suite was the same, with white leather couches and inlaid ebony tables and chairs in the living room.

As a child, I’d longed for color, warmth. My face raised to the summer sun.

But I was that rare being, a vampire born to two vampires. I hadn’t been able to tolerate more than a few minutes of sunlight until I’d reached my teens.

I blinked, moved closer to the glass.

A man stood in the woods. I unhooked the casement window’s lock and pushed it open.

Rafe?

My cheeks heated. My heart banged against my ribcage. I set my palms on the windowsill, staring hard at the deepening shadows.

But it was only a guard. He moved out of the trees flanked by the pack of wolfdogs that helped patrol the island.

Disappointment whooshed through me. I shook my head at myself. It was only in children’s books that the prince rescued the princess.

A rustle in the bedroom doorway made me spin around.

Victorine—I hadn’t called her “Mother” since I was a tiny girl—stepped out of the shadow dimension, her slim form sheathed in a chic red dress, accompanied by the spicy orange-and-clove of Opium, her favorite scent.

The door to my suite was still shut. She must have slipped inside when Lainey had left. She’d been here all this time, watching me.

My jaw tightened. Ihatedbeing watched when I didn’t know it.

“Victorine,” I said stiffly.

“You and Lainey have chosen your outfit?” She spoke in clipped Parisian French.

“Oui. Although we had a difference of opinion on my hair.”

She took in the bangs and shrugged a shoulder. “No matter. The dress,c’est parfait, though.”

The fine hairs on my nape lifted. I fingered the barely-there skirt. “Why am I wearing white?”

Last summer, I’d been commanded to wear red; and the year before, a dramatic black-and-white, shoulder-baring confection. I hadn’t worn all white to the Crimson Ball since the year I’d turned twenty-one.

“You look young, very innocent. The men, they will eat you up.”

Something was definitely up.

“Victorine,” I said between clenched teeth. “What. Have. You. Done?”

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