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“Isolde,” he said in an attempt to draw my attention, but still I looked away, swallowing.
“I will rest,” I said, my tone far more cross than I intended.
“Isolde,” he repeated quietly, and when I finally met his gaze, his stare was gentle. “You are my light.”
I took his face between my hands.
“You are my darkness,” I said and kissed him.
We stared at each other for a long moment, and then he took a step away, and I felt the distance sink into my heart.
“Will you see me off?” he asked.
“Of course.”
I was still wearing my shift and did not want to delay Adrian by returning to my room to dress. Instead, he offered a woolen overcoat. The fabric was heavy, the sleeves too long, but it was warm and smelled like him.
We walked in silence, my hand on Adrian’s arm, and when the doors opened to the courtyard, a wave of cold air stole my breath. Frost had settled on the stones, gleaming like bloody webs beneath the sun’s light.
Adrian’s men were gathered there with their horses, and at our appearance, they knelt, rising at his command. Some were soldiers, others noblesse, and while none here had aligned themselves with Gesalac and Julian, I couldn’t help questioning their loyalty to Adrian. Since I’d joined him here, he had lost four of the nine noblesse.
Were the rest merely biding their time before they struck?
Suddenly my stomach churned. If they chose today to attack, could Adrian take them?
My gaze shifted to Daroc, Adrian’s general, and Sorin, his lover. Visually, the two made a stunning pair, but they could not be more different. Daroc, with his strong and angled features, always looked severe, his eyes piercing, as if he were trying to read everyone’s mind, and perhaps he could, but I’d learned from the start that vampires did not willingly tell their abilities. Even Sorin, who was the most forthright, had not told me he could shift into the form of a falcon. I’d learned that by chance when he had come to my rescue in the woods after being attacked by Ravena and mist-possessed Ciro. Looking at him now with his soft features and dimpled smile, I found it hard to believe he could be anything but good.
And yet someone had told Ravena that Adrian had tasted my blood. The act made me his greatest weakness—our lives were bound.
I have waited centuries for this. For you, Adrian had said. He had been so willing, comforted in the knowledge that he could trust the four who knew the consequences of the bloodletting—Daroc, Sorin, Adrian’s cousin Ana Maria, and his viceroy, Tanaka—and yet as it turned out, we could trust no one.
I took a deep breath, attempting to release the tension tightening my chest at having such a weakness known to my greatest enemy, and faced Adrian, who drew my hand to his lips, his eyes burning into mine.
“We will return at sundown.”
The words were a fierce promise, and I held them close to my heart. He claimed my mouth in a searing kiss, drawing his thumb over my bottom lip as he pulled away.
“See that you do,” I said, and he turned and mounted Shadow. I wanted him back already, but I also wanted him to return tonight, triumphant, with Gesalac and Julian as our prisoners.
With a final look, he rode out, his men falling into step behind him. They left through the gate, and I followed, watching as they cut a path through the nine impaled bodies that decorated our doorstep.
Not even the cold air could keep the smell of decay at bay. It tinged the air—subtle but sour—and it turned my stomach. Still, I kept watch until I could no longer see Adrian descending the sheer pathway into the valley of Cel Ceredi. Only then did I move, climbing to the tower wall where I tracked them, racing through the city, to the outer wall—a streak of shadows cloaked in red as they dashed into the darkened forest. Even when they left my sight, I lingered.
“Come inside, my queen,” said Tanaka, breathless from toiling his way up the stone steps behind me. I wondered when he’d joined us in the courtyard. I had not noticed him before.
Tanaka, Adrian’s viceroy, was older than any other vampire I had met. His skin was white and wrinkled, even on his cheeks, and while his hair was still dark, it had receded nearly to the back of his head.
I wondered at his age and why he was changed so late in his life. Despite having a few memories from my past life as Yesenia, I did not remember this man or his connection to Adrian, though it was possible he grown closer to Adrian in the two hundred years since my death.
A lot had happened in my absence.
“My queen?” Tanaka asked.
“I am not quite ready,” I said, not looking at the old man.
“But it is cold,” he said.
I did not mind the cold. It, at least, allowed me to feel something beyond the strange, distant numbness that had consumed my body since my father’s death.
