Chapter 21

chapter 21

Maeve

I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open. My body is heavy and there’s a faint throbbing in my throat. I can feel Lizzie’s distress, and the fact that she’s not even trying to hide it indicates how bad this situation is. Worry barely penetrates the lethargy permeating my limbs. “I’m fine.” Did I say that already? I’m not certain.

“Godsdamn it,” Lizzie mutters under her breath as she sweeps me into her arms and lifts me out of the tub with no apparent effort whatsoever. Vampire strength truly is nothing to underestimate.

She carries me to the bed and lays me down on the newly cleaned sheets. “Maeve. Talk to me.”

My neck aches in time with the slow thud of my heart. I’m aware of what went wrong. I knew what was happening while she was biting me, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want the pleasure to stop. Not mine. Not hers. But last time she bit me, I don’t think she took more than a mouthful or two. This time was different. My pleasure went on and on, cresting repeatedly as she took my throat. “Just give me a few minutes. I just need to close my eyes—”

“Maeve.” The snap in her voice forces my lids open despite the exhaustion weighing them down. She crouches next to me, naked and glorious and absolutely perfect. If not for the panic flaring in her dark eyes.

Another time, I might be delighted by the fact that she’s actually emoting. Right now, I can’t quite bring myself to enjoy it. “Lizzie.” My voice is too faint. Distantly, I’m aware that Lizzie might have cause for panic. I heal faster than a human, but only marginally. I can absolutely succumb to blood loss. And she wasn’t careful this time. She was too busy coming on my fingers.

“Under no circumstances are you to go to sleep. Do you understand me?”

I study her beautiful face, taking in the tense line of her mouth and the tightness around her eyes. “Are you worried about me?”

She snaps her teeth, which draws my attention to the fact that there’s still blood dried on the edge of her mouth. My blood. A tremor works through me, and I couldn’t begin to say if it’s the echoes of pleasure or concern. The concern isn’t for me. I feel too good to worry about the consequences of our actions. No, it’s all for Lizzie, who’s unraveling before my eyes.

I knew better than to escalate things when she was feeling so off-center. She needed comfort, not a distraction. Her control never would’ve wavered otherwise. And yet?.?.?. there’s a small, secret part of me that delights in the fact that I caused her to lose control. Me. Maeve.

Not anyone else. Sure as fuck not Evelyn.

“This ship has to have a fucking medic. Don’t you dare go to sleep. Keep your eyes open. I will be right back.”

“Lizzie.” I brush her arm with a listless hand. “You’re naked.”

She snarls at me, the sound more animalistic than anything I can make, even in my seal form. And then she’s gone, only the banging of the door against the wall an indication of her passage. I hear her yelling on deck for a medic. I don’t know how to tell her that I don’t think this ship has one. Or if they do, it’s unlikely the person will be anywhere as skilled in healing as what we’d find on a C?n Annwn ship.

I’ll be fine. Probably. I’ve never felt this woozy from blood loss, but I’ve never lost this much blood before. I tend to keep it inside my body. Bodies are good for that.

My thoughts’ strange spiral should worry me, but it feels like too much effort to dredge up any amount of concern.

Sometime later, whether seconds or minutes or even an hour, Lizzie returns, dragging Rin behind her. Ze looks terrified; zir skin is a mottled yellow that edges onto white. The color gets even paler when ze looks at me. “I told you. We don’t have a medic. We just do the best we can in between ports.”

Lizzie flings zir at me. “I don’t give a fuck. Fix her.”

“You’re the vampire. Dealing with blood loss is something that you’ve experienced more than I have,” Rin snaps. “If she hasn’t died already, she probably just needs rest and fluids. Which you can give her. You don’t need me for it.”

I open my mouth to tell Lizzie to dial back her rage. She’s terrifying the poor person, and ze hasn’t done anything wrong. But the room is swirling strangely in my vision. “I think I’m going to pass out now.”

The last thing I see before darkness takes me are Lizzie’s and Rin’s panicked expressions as they both rush to the bed. Lizzie is, in fact, still naked.

---

?????????I don’t know how long I sleep. But when I wake, my mouth feels like it’s grown fuzz and my head pounds as if someone’s taken a knife and pried my skull open. I try to shift, but my body chooses that moment to scream in protest. I try to speak, but all I’m capable of is a faint groan.

Gentle hands catch me behind the head and lift me just enough as they press a cup to my lips. “Drink.” Lizzie sounds as exhausted as I feel. That’s not a good sign.

But the water is cool and perfect on my tongue, and so I sip it eagerly. Far too soon, she takes it away. When I make a sound of protest, she says, “Go slow.”

I finally manage to peel my lids open and immediately wish I hadn’t. The low light of the cabin pierces my eyes. “I feel like death.”

“Death didn’t take you this time.”

I manage to twist my head enough to see Lizzie hunched over on a stool next to the bed. She looks like shit. Her hair hangs in tangles, obviously never combed after our bath, and her skin has gone waxy in a way that suggests it’s been some time since she ate. Which means it’s been some time since I was awake. “How long?”

“Two. Days.” She lifts the cup to my lips again, and I carefully sip a little bit more water. “We are never doing that again.”

It says something about my state of mind that I immediately want to argue with her. Yes, things got out of control, but that doesn’t mean that they will every time. We spent an entire day and night together the first time we had sex, and I only woke with a faint headache in the morning. That little pain was far outweighed by the heavy memory of pleasure that still throbbed through my body.

Without thinking, I grab her wrist, panic bleating at the back of my throat. “What do you mean we’re never doing that again?”

“You saved my life, comforted me when I was falling apart, and the only thanks I gave you was almost killing you.”

I drag in a breath to argue, but force myself to slow down and study her. This woman looks nothing like the Lizzie I’ve come to know in our short time together. There’s no hint of her icy exterior, no suggestion of her perfect poise. She looks almost fragile. Brittle. As if one strong word might shatter her.

It scares the shit out of me. “Lizzie, I’m okay.”

Her mouth curves, but not like anything is funny. “It’s so purely you that you would try to comfort me when you just woke up from a coma. I have been dribbling water and broth down your throat for two days, Maeve. You don’t get to tell me that you’re okay. We make port in Drash in a few days. The first thing we’re doing when we reach the island is take you to a proper medic. A healer.”

I don’t have much experience with healers beyond those that live in Viedna. Their specialty is specifically my people. Ours is a particular flavor of magic that takes a careful hand to coax. The rules for normal shifters don’t quite apply, so we don’t tend to go to others for help when there’s an injury or sickness.

But all it takes is one look at Lizzie’s face to know that any argument will be met with a brick wall. She wants me to see a healer, and so she will drag me there even if I’m kicking and screaming in protest. The very thought of fighting exhausts me, which is enough to make me worry that she’s right. That maybe we shouldn’t do this again.

No.I refuse to accept that. We only have a short time together, and I’m not about to waste it just because we lost control once. I was an active participant. I could have pushed her away and she would’ve gone. Instead, I held her closer and drove her pleasure higher, knowing that it fractured her control in the process.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say.

She snarls at me. “Don’t you dare apologize to me. There’s only one person to blame, and it’s not you.”

We can circle this conversation over and over again, but we’re not going to get anywhere in our current positions. Better to get out of this cabin for a little while. To gain some perspective. To remind ourselves why we’re here in the first place. I’ve reclaimed my skin, but Lizzie is still without her family heirlooms.

A perverse part of me wants to do exactly the opposite. Every step closer to retrieving her stolen items is another step closer to losing her. I want to pull her close and do whatever it takes to lose ourselves in each other until we forget all about her mission to reclaim those jewels and return home. Until she realizes that her mother is a monster who doesn’t have to maintain a hold on her. Lizzie could be happy here in Threshold, I think.

Maybe she could even be happy with me.

I don’t say the words aloud. She won’t be receptive to them right now, not with guilt riding her so hard. I suspect that Lizzie has never felt guilty once in her life, and therefore has no immunity to the sensation. Something to unpack later, perhaps.

“If I ask for a bath, are you going to lose it completely?”

She glares at me, but her expression falls into one that I’m more familiar with: complete arrogance. “I won’t lose control again.”

I examine the gauntlet that she just threw at my feet and tuck it away for later use. Just like our current argument. “In that case, I feel awful, and I think getting clean would help.”

My bath is significantly less eventful than the last one, but I do feel like a completely different person by the time I’ve pulled clean clothes on. Lizzie even takes the opportunity to dunk herself a few times. She looks more like the vampire I know once she’s pulled on her pants and shirt and laced up her boots. But the air of brittleness remains.

It doesn’t fade as the days tick by and my strength slowly returns. I still feel like I’ve been run over by a water horse, but I’m steadily improving. Lizzie hovers over me like a mother bird protecting her chicks, though I know better than to point it out or complain. She’s worried about me, and even as I start to chafe under that worry, it warms my heart to know she cares.

Three days later, we emerge on deck to find Drash looming before us. I’ve only read about this place. Its towering cliffs seem to reach into the sky and offer no entrance. We sail along the south coast, and I’m increasingly confused about how we’ll reach the port?.?.?. if there even is one. This island is essentially a tower, though one built by nature rather than people.

Alix guides us into an opening that I never would’ve noticed on my own, so narrow that I could reach out and touch the cliff walls as we pass. After a few minutes, we sail into a remarkably large bay. There are a handful of other ships here, and I exhale in relief when I note that the sails are mundane white. Not C?n Annwn. Perfect.

The village itself is built into tiers that rise up along the cliff face, round windows and doors carved into the rock, giving an indication of how many people live here. More than I could have guessed on our circuit of the perimeter. I stare up and up and up, counting easily a dozen tiers reaching well over a hundred feet, nearly to the top of the cliffs.

Rin moves to stand next to me, zir scales a nice healthy green. Ze flicks zir tongue at me in a way I’ve come to learn is how ze gathers more information about zir environment. “You’re looking better.”

“I’m feeling better, too.” I shoot a glance at Lizzie out of the corner of my eye, but she’s got her head close to Alix’s and is discussing something in a soft voice. Even so, I feel her attention on me. It’s not a heated thing, more that she believes I’ll collapse at any moment and is poised to spring to catch me. It’s comforting and disconcerting all at the same time. “Thank you for your help before. I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

“It’s fine.” Ze shrugs. “The crew likes you quite a bit. The vampire might scare the shit out of us, but it’s obvious you hold her leash. We have a vested interest in keeping you alive.”

Hold Lizzie’s leash? Zir statement almost makes me laugh. There’s no one holding that vampire’s leash. I can barely keep her from murdering everyone she comes across who slightly inconveniences her. But I don’t challenge Rin as we drop anchor and the crew gathers round.

Alix gives out orders, designating four people to stay with the ship and the rest to go ashore. They turn and look at me and Lizzie. “We have some trading to do here, since we don’t come up this way often. We have no intention of leaving without you, so you’re more than welcome to do whatever errands you need to while we’re here. You can find me in the tavern when you’re done with your business.”

I glance at Lizzie. Does she realize what progress she must have made for them not to toss us overboard and take off the moment they have the chance? Impossible to say. Her expression is perfectly locked down, even when she looks at me. It couldn’t be clearer that she intends to distance herself from me.

Well, that’s not going to work for me. I got a taste of what it could be like to really be with her, and I’ll be damned before she slams that door in my face out of fear. It would be one thing if she didn’t want me, but the barrier now standing between us is guilt and fear. Unacceptable. We have so little time left together that I’m determined not to waste it. I’m going to knock down that barrier the first chance I get.

I’m going to seduce myself a vampire.