Chapter 5

When next he woke, it was to the bright sound of song coming from a distant room.

He recognized the raw talent of Lyric’s as yet untempered voice. Give her a few decades of intense study at her mentor’s hand, he thought, and she would sound as easy in skill and as devastatingly beautiful as the voice that chimed in suddenly in chorus.

He lay quietly listening for long minutes. In spite of himself, they easily drew him into that half-hypnotic state that soothed even the harshest of souls. There was even a music in the way they carried out their tasks, which he came to understand was cooking their first evening meal. The heat of the kitchen and all its rich scents drifted on the notes their voices stroked and toyed with. Windsong’s coloratura was a masterpiece in sound, Lyric’s gentle soprano like the sweet crystalline tinkling of bells.

Damien sat up, running his fingers through his hair, trying to absently smooth it into a semblance of order as his eyes drifted over to the second bed in the room, situated perpendicular and to the right of his own. He assumed the beds were Lyric’s and Windsong’s own, surrendered for the well-being of their patients.

Patient.

The word did not sit well on a man like Damien, and he moved to get out of bed. He hesitated when he realized his bloody clothing had been stripped from his body, leaving him nude beneath the covers. Mistrals were not at all like his race, being far more conservative and reserved in all things except goodness and song. While Windsong was several centuries old, he was certain that Lyric was not used to such things.

He smiled to himself, even laughing under his breath. It had been a while since he had needed to think like a gentleman. He found it refreshing all over again.

He pulled a sheet with him as he rose to his feet. He was a little hungry, which was a good sign, and feeling incredibly light of heart. He realized, as he wrapped the linen fabric around his hips, that it was probably an effect of the song being tossed about with merriment in the distant room.

The Vampire Prince moved to Syreena’s bed, leaning over her and touching gentle fingers to the bandages swathing her hairline. He sensed the strong and steady rhythm of her pulse, smelled the herbs that had been used to treat and bathe her. She smelled strongly of lavender, strangely enough a favorite of his. It compelled him to sit beside her on the bed, taking the time for a closer inspection.

She was bruised darkly across her face, but mostly on her throat. Her blood loss was retarding her normally quick healing or they would have been mostly gone by now, just as most of his damage had seemed to have healed over the daytime.

He noticed her hands were heavily bandaged and it surprised him. He lifted one from the handmade quilt she was bundled under, and unwrapped the gauze and strips of cloth in order to find out why. What wound had he missed there?

He made a soft, angry sound deep against his vocal cords as he realized she had several wounds penetrating through and through her hands.

Bad enough the sick bitch had plucked the unfortunate Princess’s feathers, but she had effectively clipped her wings as well, although the wounds would probably not last a tenth as long as the memory of their acquisition would.

Damien laid her palm gingerly onto his own upturned one, his fingertips of his opposite hand moving softly and gently over the wounds on the back of her hand. He heard her heartbeat alter and he looked up to her face quickly.

Her calico eyes were open, regarding him through halfraised lids and puffy, swollen flesh.

“Welcome back,” he greeted her quietly.

She did not respond. Instead, she flicked her mismatched eyes over her surroundings in a quick, succinct inventory. “You came after me?”

Her voice was hoarse, her throat bruised by burst vessels from within, a result of the strangulations she had suffered.

“Once I realized what had happened,” he told her.

He was instantly curious. Windsong and Lyric were still singing robustly in the background, yet she did not seem affected by it like she should be. It was a possible mark to her own mental discipline, but he found that hard to believe in her weakened and battered state.

“I thank you,” she said on a sigh, closing her eyes and trying to shift herself slightly. She winced, a wholly slight response considering the magnitude of the pain she must be feeling.

“There is no need for you to move,” he said soothingly. “You are being well cared for. Wait until you have healed some more before attempting to do so.”

Her eyes opened again, this time a little wider, her awareness of him and her other surroundings clearly increasing.

“Where are we?”

“Brise Lumineuse ,’’ he told her, knowing she was familiar with both the place and who lived there.

It had been Windsong who had saved Siena from severe sun poisoning a little over a month ago. He could tell by the expression in Syreena’s eyes that the Princess understood she was now doubly beholden to the generous Mistral.

Her eyes flicked down to the hand he held, and he followed her gaze. Damien realized with surprise that he had continued to stroke her softly as they spoke. He felt an incredible sadness as he looked at the wounds once more. He met her unusual eyes, not caring that she could probably read his emotions within his own.

“I am sorry,” he murmured softly, his fingers replaced by the warm press of his palm.

“For what?” she asked.

“For taking so long to find you,” he said.

He had nothing to apologize for, Syreena thought as emotion ravaged her features. Such tender sensitivity and concern from so unlikely a source stirred up the turmoil she had kept under tight control since this ordeal had begun. She could not stop the tears that leaked out of the corners of her eyes, but she turned her face away from him as she tried to regain control over her feelings of fear, anger and … and so many others she could not even face.

“Do not do that,” he said suddenly, his fingers reaching to turn her face back to him. “Do not be ashamed of what you are feeling.”

“This from one whose species feels very little and expresses even less?” she retorted, a bit of the fire he was used to snapping into the remark. It made Damien smile.

“This from a woman who has met a total of two Vampires in her entire lifetime?” he countered. “What you know of us from your Monks and your books varies greatly from what we truly are,” he informed her.

Syreena was already beginning to realize that. But she did not like feeling so vulnerable and exposed to so utter a stranger. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to try to irritate him. She could deal with the barbs they tossed between them better than she could this wellspring of concern she had never thought him capable of.

Then she finally took note of his state of dress, or rather undress, and it occurred to her that he might be hurt as well. She recalled that there had been an explosion and the backlash of a great deal of magic when he had arrived for her. It must have been an extraordinarily painful ordeal, one that only someone as powerful as he was could possibly survive.

Her searching eyes roamed the handsome planes of his face, the long, loose length of his blue-black hair, and his bare flesh over the span of his shoulders and chest.

“Are you well?” she asked at last when she saw no visible signs of harm on him. In fact, he looked far too healthy for a man who had been through so much in one night. She envied him his quickly healed body and the clearly robust health accented by his precisely defined musculature.

“So far, so good,” he responded rather cryptically.

But the mystery of the comment disappeared in the next instant as she was flooded with sudden memory.

Syreena sat up so suddenly that she took him by surprise. She pulled her hand free of his and reached to take hold of his shoulders. The Princess repeated her scan of him, trying once more to find some sort of damage.

“Damien,” she uttered in a voice full of shock and comprehension. “Are you well ?”

He immediately understood the difference between her first question and then the repeat of it. He reached to take her hands from his shoulders, a soothing sound clicking off his tongue.

“Yes, I am well,” he assured her, urging her back into a resting position.

She shrugged off the attempt, her pupils radiating her disbelief in his statement. “Why would you do such a thing? You could have been killed!”

“But I was not,” he reminded her.

“You risked your life for mine as if you had no responsibility to an entire race of people! It was a foolish and ridiculous thing to do!”

“It would have been my mistake to make,” he countered sharply. “I am not used to people criticizing my actions, Syreena.”

“Well, perhaps they should! I would never have allowed Siena to do such a foolish thing!”

“Oh, really? Just as you prevented her from almost dying for the sake of her husband?”

It was a twisting knife in a very tender spot for her, and he knew it instantly by the expression in her eyes. It was only then that he realized she did indeed blame herself for her sister’s near encounter with death that recent October.

“Was I supposed to let you bleed to death, Syreena?” he asked quietly, trying to take back the pain he had caused her with the balm of his words. “Why are you so eager to value my life above your own?”

“Because I am not so special that an entire people should be deprived of their monarch for my sake!”

“Lucky for you, I disagree with that assessment.”

Damien understood, however, that there was baggage beyond her statement other than the immediate disagreement. Still, it did not measure up for him. She had never struck him as the type who devalued herself.

She looked at him as if he were completely insane for a long moment, her confused eyes searching over him for an answer and a logic that just was not within grasp. Then, without knowing why, she leaned in and kissed him.

Damien was shocked for a moment at the forward and illogical act, his hands reflexively circling her arms as her warm mouth pressed gently to his. Her unbandaged hand came up to lie against the side of his face, her contrary eyes sliding closed for a long, painful moment.

He felt, and then tasted, the salt of her tears.

She pulled away, only a couple of inches, her body trembling beneath his hands as he looked into her eyes with a confusion of emotions and sensations struggling through him.

“Why did you…?”

“Because,” she interrupted with a sob catching at her words. “Because it is a fairy tale, Damien. And in a fairy tale, the Princess always kisses the Prince who rescues her.”

It was an enchanting and ingenuous thing for her to say. She was a woman of great learning, amazing strength, and a sense of logic that negated any illusion of na?veté, yet she was willing to expose herself as a hopeful idealist in order to express her gratitude. He realized that it was a preciously protected streak in her makeup that very few people were allowed access to. It subsequently meant more to Damien than the most profuse and eloquent words of any language.

“Syreena …” He paused to clear the coarseness in his throat. “I am no hero,” he told her with rough quietness. “You should not make me into one.”

She defied the statement by forcing it into silence with the cover of her mouth.

This time Damien saw it coming, but it made him no better prepared. This time it was not a quick and simple expression of impulsive gratitude she was reaching to express. This was a little different, and on an instinctive level he knew it.

Completely in spite of the soundness of reason that rang stridently in his head, Damien allowed himself the luxury of the feel of her lips. Caught less off his mark and having had a moment to think about it, he returned the intimacy with equal warmth and measure. From one heartbeat to the next, his hands found their way into the hair at the back of her head, his fingertips sliding with careful languor, mindful of all she had suffered and been through and in no way wanting to cause her even a moment of additional pain.

Syreena was also sliding her fingers into a position that held his head to her, just in case he thought to argue with her any further about her desires in this matter. His darkening eyes were looking directly into hers, seeking for things beyond both their comprehension. She met his searching gaze with eyes full of surety and strength. She knew what she wanted, amazingly enough without a single doubt or second thought. This moment, those fascinating eyes messaged to him, was to be precious for them both. The next moment would come soon enough. But this moment …

This moment was for thanking, for gentleness, and, most of all, for feeling something that had no pain, struggle, or immediate ramifications to it.

It simply would be what it was.

A kiss.

A kiss between a man and a woman.

Not Nightwalkers. Not a Prince and Princess. Not a Vampire and a Lycanthrope.

Simply a man and a woman.

Damien’s eyes closed as the keen purity of that ebbed into him. He seemed to suddenly realize that her mouth was a soft, heated fullness that had nothing to do with bruised tenderness. That she had flavor, in both bouquet and taste, and it was like tasting heated syrup. She was liquid and soft solid and every other essential that was natural to life.

At the same time, he understood that she had never kissed a man before.

Never in all of a century of life.

I have lived in a cloistered setting, forbidden any opportunity toform attachments or affections outside of a student teacher relationship. What I was starved of at first, I was soon too complacent and numbed against after so many years of deprivation. So I never sought it.

These were her thoughts, easily read even if he had not been able to study them.

So the kiss was also an act of total bravery. A baring of her soul and her vulnerability because of her inexperience. It ought to have been awkward, but it was not. She moved against his mouth in delicate increments so that there would be no clumsiness on her part. As with all things she had taken on in a lifetime of being a student, she gave an exemplary performance of her quick ability to learn and adapt.

Damien’s lips stroked against hers, opening slowly until she was mimicking him perfectly. She anticipated him, though, her little tongue touching his lips before he could seek it out himself. His breath fell quick and hot against her, the reflex automatic in spite of its lack of requirement. She exhaled into his mouth as he reached deeply for her, perfecting the hungry seal of their mouths.

He lost sense of everything but the exquisiteness of her kiss and the piquing interest of his own body. She smelled of lavender and those indefinable perfumes that had led him over miles of land and sea to find her. The exposed nails of her other hand skimmed down the thick column of his neck, making his throat convulse with an uncensored sound of pleasure. She slid her tongue over his, letting them touch and twist together in an erotic dance of sensation and curiosity turning into a purer appetite.

Damien loosed a hand from the cling of her hair, drawing it down the back of her neck and the bare track of her delicate spine. She shivered under the caress, the shudder pulling her in closer to his chest.

The Vampire Prince broke from her mouth when her bare torso connected to his, the heat of her naked skin unbelievably intense and almost bracing. He struggled for equilibrium, touching his forehead to hers as his gaze fell down onto their touching skin.

He had never known how much depth there could be to so seemingly simple a bodily contact, the most remarkable thing being the intense heat that emanated from her and into him. It brought back memories of the taste of her blood, the way it had bled hotly into him, the way she had writhed beneath the intrusion of his bite and the subsequent feeding.

Damien groaned, the sound mutating into a soft growl full of desire, sensuality, and frustration. He pulled her forward so her cheek was pressed to his, taking a moment to appreciate the heat of her flushed face before he had to move away from her.

“Don’t,” she begged him on a whisper, her hands tightening to hold him to her.

“I have to,” he argued roughly, his fingers betraying his actual wishes as they stroked up the supple skin of her bare back.

“Why? Why do you have to?”

“So many reasons,” he sighed into the soft, feathery tresses falling over her cheek and ear.

“Are there any reasons to stay?” she asked.

“So many more,” he confessed, but he pulled back from her all the same. “You have thanked me, Syreena, expressing your heartfelt gratitude in wonderful measure,” he said kindly, his tender thumb brushing at the traces of moisture from the kiss that had been left on her enflamed lips. “But this is where gratitude must end. Anything beyond this … must come perhaps another day … for other reasons entirely.”

After delivering that truth, Damien extracted himself from her hold with patient but persistent gentleness. After a moment, she let her hands fall away from him and allowed him to lay her back against her pillows while he pulled the quilt up snugly around her.

He hovered over her a moment, nose to nose with her as he mined her thoughts through her eyes. Syreena wondered if he was even aware of the way he was absently stroking her sensitive hair.

“There is one thing a Vampire of great age enjoys more than anything else in the world,” he told her, “and that is to be deeply and delightfully surprised. You, sweetling, are a veritable bundle of surprises.”

She smiled at that, feeling his sincere bafflement at his realization. Then the Prince drifted a brief kiss of his lips across her forehead and left her bedside.

Elijah walked around the little cell of stone slowly, his keen eyes in search of any clue that would explain what he was seeing. He glanced at his temporary partner, who was crouched near a corner full of dark stains of blood.

“This is where they were keeping the Princess, of that there is no doubt,” Jasmine murmured, her voice distant as she sorted through her sensory information. Elijah had already divined that from the evidence himself. He was waiting for her to tell him something he did not already know. “Magic-users, hunters … a Demon.” Her dark gaze flicked up to him questioningly.

“Ruth. A traitor.”

“Ah yes. Her.” Damien had shared the story with Jasmine, as well as his insights and speculations on the matter. “Well, they have all abandoned this place rather quickly. They have several hours’ head start, since we had to stop for the daylight.”

“I will worry about them later,” Elijah told her, reminding her his interests lay elsewhere.

“The damage is from Damien, of that I have no doubt. From this point I have no sense of his trail whatsoever. But I expect that is because he is now purposely hiding it in order to throw off pursuers. What is not hidden as easily is the spoor of the Princess’s blood. She was clearly bleeding with profusion.”

Jasmine did not point out the obvious. The warrior had eyes in his head. They both could see the remains of the massive loss of the precious fluid that had pooled and sprayed all about them. Neither of them could see how she would ever survive such a depletion, no matter how quickly Damien might find aid for her.

“Wherever she is,” Jasmine said, “whatever her state, she is with Damien. We can be assured of that much.”

“We’re in Mistral lands,” Elijah noted as he walked out of the room and into the loft leading around the storage room below. “They have been here for a while,” he observed when he saw the cots, supplies, and all the evidence of their inhabitance.

“It does not look as though these others were prepared for leaving,” Jasmine said as she followed in his footsteps. “They were mid-mealtime when Damien arrived,” she added, looking down at the long tables full of half-empty plates and upended mugs. “I do not understand. Why would an enemy take a leisurely meal when so dangerous a prisoner was being kept just above their heads?”

“Perhaps they did not know there even was a prisoner,” Elijah said. “I have a feeling Ruth was acting on her own agenda, and as usual left these fools in the dark.”

“I would have to agree. You are right. She is quite deranged. Only manic persons make these kinds of impulsive choices.”

“It certainly is not the way I taught her to think,” Elijah said grimly. “Not what I know her to be capable of.” He turned to the Vampire. “We better continue on after Damien and Syreena. As much as I would like to, I can’t afford to chase these necromancers down until I am certain they are safe.”

“Agreed,” Jasmine said, admiring his logic and his ability to circumvent the very powerful emotional instinct to seek out his enemy. It was what made the difference between a warrior, and a leader of warriors. It was why Jasmine was certain Elijah would catch up to Ruth in the end. Ruth was a poor leader, wasting her energy and her resources to satisfy her emotional needs, rather than satisfying a proper strategy.

Assuring herself in this way, this time she followed the warrior as he took off to track Syreena’s trail.

Damien stood out in the cold darkness, letting the night wind blow over his body. It rippled through his freshly laundered clothing, snapping back his retwisted braid.

He was in need of a feed.

He pushed the need aside easily, however. He could not in good conscience leave the cottage and those within it for any amount of time. Windsong and Lyric had put themselves at great risk for his benefit, and he would not leave them to their own devices when he had potentially led enemies straight to their doorstep. Windsong’s protection songs were quite impressive, but they would not work forever, nor would they keep out someone like Ruth who had no doubt become largely immune to such manipulations.

Frankly, he was surprised she had not already come.

It was a logical move to let her prisoner slip away at this point, because if one Nightwalker had been able to track her, there were likely others in his wake. If it were Damien, he would have concentrated on misdirection and other tools to mislead anyone trying to find them as they escaped their discovered stronghold.

But logic was rarely a part of the thought processes of a woman driven in the way Ruth was. It would be very like her to ignore wise tactics for the sake of personal gratification.

At least, it was at this point.

It was clear that Ruth had discarded all sense of self-preservation for the present. If only her lackeys would come to realize that, maybe they would stop following her commands so easily. If they were eliminated from the equation, it would make her capture much more likely. Magic was such a nonquantifiable resource. There were no set guidelines. The outline of possibility changed with the variables. Until now, for instance, no one had known it was possible for a Nightwalker to even use magic.

What a frightening prospect that was. Black magic had one true universal: it corrupted unanimously. It was why magic-users smelled so vile to Nightwalkers, this corruption that went soul-deep. It was …

It was the antithesis to the love of soul mates.

Elijah and Siena were soul mates. Theirs was a love that had transcended cultural taboo, their personal independence of spirit, and had managed to defy every written rule of the Nightwalker world. While magic could accomplish these things as well, the effects were the telling point.

Siena and her mate were now a synchronous being. They had come into harmony to create a unified force that was impressive and powerful. It was rapidly destroying walls of prejudice and suspicion; it was eliminating the possibility of any future wars between their two disparate societies. It was building a prospect for those in the present, and their children of the future.

Magic only created discord. It hurt, it harmed, it tore carefully sewn seams to shreds. Nature became unbalanced and suffered under its poison. An example in the starkest sense would be the magical act of a Demon Summoning. It stole the named Demon out of his or her life, entrapped them in a poisonous pentagram, forcing them under magic’s sway. It mutated them into monsters without souls, without conscience, the ultimate insult to a member of a species who were normally so moral and conscious of their behaviors.

Magic had its ways of hurting Vampires as well. He had seen them murdered with it, eviscerated, decapitated, and paralyzed, left on the ground until the dawn came.

It would never be truly eradicated, the Prince realized, until every spell book, every scroll full of those cursed words, was burned into nothingness, and then those who had such things in their memories were also destroyed.

It was an impossible prospect. The discovery of spell compendiums in the hidden Library had shown him that. For 100 years magic had been quelled, but its recent resurgence made it all too clear it could not be eradicated.

“Damien.”

Damien turned sharply, surprised to realize he had been so deep in thought that he had not heard the approach from behind.

Then again, she was hardly a threat.

After a fashion.

“Syreena, you should be resting.”

“I can’t sleep,” she said with a shrug.

She had wrapped herself in her quilt to keep herselfwarm. He saw the flash of a powder blue skirt around her knees. Apparently Windsong had lent her a dress to replace her torn and soiled one. Her feet were bare, and just the sight of them on the cold ground was enough to give him a chill down his neck.

“Come here,” he commanded gently, beckoning her forward.

She obeyed without argument, a testament to how vulnerable she still was and still felt. He reached around her slight figure, scooping her feet off the ground and raising her up into the seat of a boulder that was just beside him. With the quilt beneath her to protect her from the cold of the stone, it was an improvement, if not much of one.

The rock situated her just above the level of his waist. He did not join her because there was not enough room on the slightly slanted surface. Instead, he leaned his hip against it near her knees, facing her as he gave her a good study from head to toe.

“I have only been sick once before in all of my life,” she mentioned quietly as she turned her face up to the pronounced stars above her.

“This is not a sickness,” he reminded her gently.

“It feels the same. If not worse.”

“I can imagine.”

“It was when this happened,” she noted, her fingers sweeping through the brown strands of her hair first, and then what remained of the thinned gray.

“What color was it originally?” he asked out of honest curiosity.

“Hmm. I actually don’t remember. It was so long ago. I think I asked Siena that question in a letter once and she conveniently ignored it.”

“Perhaps so she would not allow you to bias yourself against half of yourself.”

“I agree,” she said with a nod. “It was very hard to accept being so different in the beginning. I imagine I was a bit of a nasty thing to be around at the time. It is strange how things that are so important to us when we are younger become so impossible to remember later on.”

“I don’t remember much of my first one hundred years,” he said. “It was all something of a blur.” His half-smile of mischief reached his eyes, making a liar of him.

“I see. Caused a bit of trouble, did you?”

“A bit,” he chuckled. “Too much. Too much fun. When we are young, we do not understand that such a thing is possible. Not until we hit the downside of the mountain.” His smile faded as he looked up at her. “I fell into torpor shortly after that. My disenchantment was by far the worst thing I had ever felt before or since. I literally found myself a hole and curled up for one hundred twenty-one years. When I woke, I made a pact with myself to be more gentle and appreciative of my time and my amusements. I have not needed to sulk in that way since then.”

“Which is why you have accumulated the power and wisdom to become Prince of your peoples.”

“I suppose so.” He studied her features for a long moment. “Do you never resent the fact that all the course your life has taken has been decided by someone else?”

“I do. Resent may be too strong a word, though. Resentment is for childhood. Adults are merely frustrated.”

Damien understood her distinction all too clearly. Her position did not allow her the luxury of a good old-fashioned temper tantrum.

“Perhaps one day you will have the opportunity to go your own way.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps after Siena begins her family, securing the line of the throne. Even then, I am her most trusted and essential advisor. I am logic when her emotion is harmful. She needs me.”

“And what do you need, Syreena?” he asked her softly.

“I need to be needed,” she said at first, assuring herself that it might be enough to satisfy her. However, they both knew that was not the entire truth. “Why do you ask me this?”

“The question should be ‘why don’t you ask yourself this?’” he remarked.

“I see. You suddenly know me so well?” Her tone was mean and clipped, defense mechanisms so obvious they were like a neon sign saying KEEP OUT!

“I know what it means to have responsibilities and to be the focus of everyone else’s expectations of me. I know what it means to be royalty, Syreena. I am the closest thing you will ever know to yourself besides your sister.”

He had too valid a point, Syreena realized angrily. He read her too well, for all he was a stranger. It made her feel even more vulnerable, a feeling that she would always despise in herself. She hated being weak in the face of anything.

But why not? she thought bitterly. She had proven herself to be nothing short of weak in the past twenty-four hours.

Damien knew her confidence had been shaken. He had known it from the moment he had found her huddled in the corner like a sick and frightened puppy, beaten and bleeding and terribly defeated. She had nothing to be ashamed of, she just did not understand that. She did not realize that Ruth could have done just as much damage to anyone of them—Noah, Siena, and himself included.

“Syreena, do not blame yourself for being victimized,” he said quietly.

“What do you know of what my blame and my feelings are?” she snapped with sudden acrimony. She leapt from the rock in her anger, stumbling as her feet hit the ground. He instinctively reached to balance her with a helping hand, but she struck him away. “Stop trying to help me! The rescue is over. Yourduty to my sister is fulfilled. Youdo not have to be so nice to me any longer!”

She stalked off, but he quickly followed at her heels.

“I do not recall your sister ever entering my mind when I decided to come after you,” he shot at her back.

The remark made her come to a halt. She whirled around to face him, her bicolored eyes narrowing with suspicion and rage.

“Don’t you dare patronize me!”

“I was not aware that I was.”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you still here? Why are you following me yet? ”

“Because you apparently need to be followed. You need to be protected. And, as you said yourself, you need to be needed.”

Damien could understand her sudden expression of surprise. He did not know where that last item had come from.

“In what way could you possible have a need for me?”

The multitude of answers that flooded Damien had the power to make even a Vampire blush. Where it came from, again he had no idea, but it was there all the same, bright and bold and piercingly sharp. It was an instinct, and he had lived by them too long to start ignoring them now.

“How is one to find out the answer to that if you keep walking away from them?” he said instead.

“Do not take pity on me just because I wept all over you before. I am not some weakling girl who needs a pat on the head and praises.”

“Everyone needs praises. And if you were a weakling, Syreena, you would earn my disgust, not my pity. I have a very low threshold for people who sit around crying, waiting for everyone else to save them.”

She didn’t have a way to be immediately angry with that, and Damien knew that was because she agreed with him. She floundered, searching for a way to keep her temper up. She was having difficulty because it was not him she was truly angry with and he was not providing the necessary target for her temper.

He was struck by how like her father she was in that respect.

“I am not!” she bit out, newly furious, marching back up to him with as much dignity as she could muster considering her weakness and soreness. “Don’t you ever say that again!”

“I did not say it,” he responded. “I thought it. If I had wanted to share, I would have given you permission to access my thoughts.”

What he was not telling her was that he was shocked that she had even been able to do so. Very few beings could read his well-protected thoughts even when they did have his permission. How had she done so? Lycanthropes were not telepaths. They only divined things through a collection of vibratory data and a fairly acute sixth sense. Syreena had caught on to him fairly word for word, by the potency of her reaction.

She took a moment to be equally confused, her expression telling him she was also trying to figure out how she had done such a thing.

“In any event, I meant your temper, not in the essence of who you are,” he explained calmly, his dark, midnight blue eyes never wavering from hers. “It is nothing you do not already know.”

“I don’t need a total stranger telling me so,” she retorted. But her words were losing their punch. She was tired, upset, and trying too hard to blame him for how she was feeling.

“What you need is rest and peace, Syreena. You are too hard on yourself and you are thinking too hard for someone who should just be letting herself heal.”

“Will you please stop telling me what to do,” she sighed.

She collapsed where she stood, too tired to even hold her own weight anymore. Damien moved like a blink, his speed bringing him to her before she had sunk even two inches below her height. The Vampire Prince swept her up into his arms, high against his chest until her heavy head settled in the nook between his right ear and shoulder.

In spite of himself, he pressed his cheek against hers, letting her feel his warmth and the security of his presence.

“Stop this,” he whispered into her tiny ear. “Stop trying to prove to me how full of quills you are.”

“I don’t … I don’t understand you,” she cried softly. “I don’t understand what you want!”

“I know,” he murmured. “And I am not surprised.”

He shifted her closer and began to walk back toward the cozy cottage sitting some distance back in the darkness.

“Tell me what you want,” she pleaded.

“I want …” He paused long enough to laugh at himself on a soft breath. “I want to know what you want. And since you do not know what that is, I will have to wait to find out.”