Just then, the door to the guestroom flew open, and Marquis Silivasi filled the door frame like a velociraptor hovering in an otherwise peaceful sky, his six-foot-two, massive physique consuming the space like a prehistoric menace about to descend on its prey. “What is it?” he demanded, his phantom blue-black eyes flashing an instant crimson-red before returning to their usual threatening hue. He was scenting the room, eyeing the contents, and feeling for errant energy all at the same time—all instinctive reactions for an Ancient Master Warrior in the house of Jadon, a lethal weapon trained to identify the enemy and strike without mercy, all in the space of a single heartbeat. He stepped toward Ciopori, and she quickly sidestepped in front of Vanya to block his line of sight.
“Uh, ’tis nothing, Warrior,” Ciopori said with a sheepish smile. “I…overreacted.”
“To what!” Marquis growled, the tone of his voice making it abundantly clear that he was not in the mood to play games.
“To…uh…” Ciopori swallowed so hard, her throat convulsed from the effort. “To Vanya mentioning that she would like to see Saber again.”
Marquis’s intense glare shot from Ciopori to the trembling princess hiding behind her; and Vanya could have sworn that he stared right through his mate to glare at her with x-ray vision. “Over my dead body,” he growled.
Vanya struggled not to pass out.
Dear gods, if the Ancient Master Warrior knew what had transpired—
She quickly cut off the thought.
It wasn’t even worth the risk of thinking it in his presence.
Luckily, Ciopori intervened on Vanya’s behalf. “Those were my sentiments exactly.” She stepped forward toward her mate, using more than a little feminine charm in the sway of her hips, and his appreciative eyes followed as intended. “But I do believe I’ve acted too hastily.” She placed a soft hand on Marquis’s iron-hard chest and pushed against him, failing to budge him an inch. “You should let me talk with my sister.” She glanced over her shoulder, and her face grew ashen. “These are matters better discussed between women.”
Marquis looked at Ciopori suspiciously, turning his nose up in disapproval. “I’ll wait outside the door,” he said in a stern that’s-my-final-offer tone of voice.
Ciopori sighed. “Marquis, that isn’t necessary.”
He cut his eyes at her in disapproval, although the actual sentiment behind the glare was more of a mixture of undisguised love and concern. “My mate trusts me implicitly. She knows that I would move heaven and earth for her—or her younger sister—yet she stands in our home and lies to me as if I am too foolish to hear the rapid pace of her heart, too dense to note the downward cast of her eyes, or too oblivious to make note of the fact that she has used magic to distort the scents in this room. And Vanya, she hides behind you like a captive bird.” He waved his hand in dismissal, letting them both know he wasn’t interested in a false explanation. “No, Ciopori. I will wait outside the door for five minutes, while the two of you sort this…whatever it is…out. And then I will enter again like the esteemed male I assume I am to you; and I will expect to hear the truth.” With that, he simply shimmered out of view, somehow slamming the door behind him.
Ciopori turned to Vanya and cringed. “Well then!”
Vanya winced. She hadn’t meant to get her sister into so much trouble. “Is he going to behead you or something?” She was truly concerned.
Ciopori frowned. “No, he’ll calm down. He’s just…you know…Marquis. He doesn’t get concerned; he gets tyrannical. And when he’s tyrannical, he is not an easy vampire to deal with.” She held up her hands in exasperation. “We will deal with that in a moment.” At that, she reached for Vanya’s right hand, held it up in the air in order to expose the trunk of her body, and stared pointedly at her stomach. “By all that is holy, sister”—her voice caught in a sob—“tell me what happened.”
Vanya was beyond confounded. For heaven’s sake! Yes, Saber was a monster, a Dark One as far as everyone in the house of Jadon was concerned, but Vanya was not a child. And this reaction was way over the top. How dare Ciopori stare at her womb, as if pointing out some violation. Not only did it lack respect, but it was completely absent of decency. “To begin with,” Vanya said sharply, being careful to keep her voice to a whisper, “I think it bears pointing out that I don’t owe you, Marquis, or anyone else an explanation. I am an adult. But for the record, yes—since it’s so obvious—I spent the night with Saber.” She spat the words out bluntly, knowing that they sounded unnecessarily harsh, but believing it was better to just get it out in the open.
Ciopori practically wilted, her elegant shoulders slouching in defeat. She forced herself to straighten, and she nodded. And then she held her tongue for what seemed like an impossible expanse of time. When at last she chose to speak, her voice was flat and to the point: “Then your conversion? It was…quick…and relatively painless?” She sounded absolutely astonished. “You are yet Vampyr then?” She turned her head to the side, evaluating Vanya from head to toe as if staring at a whole new person for the first time, a changed species.
“Excuse me?” Vanya said, surprised. “Well, no wonder you’re so upset. There was no conversion. No commitment.”
Ciopori staggered back. She clamped her hands over her heart spontaneously, and her chest visibly shook. “What?”
Vanya frowned. “I…I…spent the night with Saber. I did not agree to be his destiny in every way, to fulfill the Curse with him, or to spend the rest of my life with him.” She sighed, wishing she could explain it better, even to herself. “I can understand if you’re disappointed.”
Ciopori let out a short, anguished cry, unable to conceal her mounting emotion. “Disappointed?” she echoed. “Disappointed? Oh…gods.” She staggered where she stood before slowly reclaiming her balance. “Oh, gods! No!”
Vanya felt the very real edge of panic creeping up on her. “I’m fine,” she insisted.
Ciopori could barely draw breath. “You are not fine, sister. You are with child!” She clasped a hand over her mouth and pointed at Vanya’s stomach.
Vanya looked down.
The words seemed to float around her more than reach her ears, her consciousness, and she had to struggle to comprehend what Ciopori was saying. “What do you mean?” She watched as her stomach gently rolled beneath her skirt, taking note of the protruding midsection where a flat, well-toned stomach had been only hours before; and then she thought about the nausea and lightheadedness she had been experiencing all day. She had thought it was just her nerves, the ever-increasing realization of the events that had taken place the night before. “No,” she whispered, “that’s not…possible.”
Ciopori reached out an arm to steady herself against a nearby bedpost, and then she slowly lowered herself to the mattress in shock. She was virtually speechless.
“Ciopori?” Vanya said, growing increasingly defensive. This wasn’t funny at all. “Ciopori!”
Ciopori shook her head slowly from side to side, and then the tears began to stream down her cheeks in uncontrollable tracks of grief.
Vanya took three unwitting steps back, as if she could simply walk away from the truth. “No,” she muttered. “That’s not possible.”
A dim flash of hope crossed Ciopori’s eyes. “Then you didn’t actually…lie with him?”
Vanya frowned. She was so confused. What was happening? “No…I mean, yes; but he would have had to call it into being, command a pregnancy. I never heard him do that.”
Ciopori collapsed on the duvet. “He doesn’t have to do it out loud. He only needs to wish it, think it…want it.”
Vanya grew deathly quiet, even as her body stood stock-still. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t even feel.
She couldn’t.
The moment—the meaning behind her sister’s words—was beyond her reckoning.
Saber Alexiares had commanded a pregnancy without converting her first. He had made her with child while she was yet human, and tha
t meant only one thing: forty-eight hours from the time of her conception, Vanya Demir would die an absolutely excruciating death as the dragon’s unborn sons clawed their way out of her body, taking her mortal life with them as they were born.
Vanya could hardly meet her sister’s eyes. By all the gods, she had been so stupid!
So naive.
What had she been thinking?
Saber was a monster, a demon from the Valley of Death and Shadows itself, as far as she was concerned, and he had acted true to his nature all along. May his blackened soul be damned, he had warned her, hadn’t he?
Yet, she hadn’t listened.
She had been determined to save the dragon from her dream—to bring something of great consequence and value back to the people—and just like her dream, the dragon had scorched her without mercy.
Vanya slowly made her way to the bed, her trembling arms and legs shuffling absently along the floor as if a puppeteer were working them. Staring blankly ahead, she gently sat down beside her sister on the wrinkled duvet and curled up beside her. She wrapped her arms around Ciopori’s trembling shoulders, all the while fighting to hide her own terrible fear, to conceal her mental anguish. There was nothing she could do now. The die had been cast.
The king, and certainly Kagen, would see to it that she didn’t suffer unnecessarily, even if they had to euthanize her before that fatal moment. As it was, she had never belonged in this world—this time—or this valley. There was simply no place for one such as her, and now her fate had been decided for her.
She pushed the morbid thoughts away.
They didn’t serve her now.
And time was far too precious.
Every moment counted—now, more than ever.
If the gods were merciful—and she hoped that they were—she could comfort Ciopori in her final hours, spend her last moments with Nikolai, and send her dark, dangerous brother-in-law to the cell where they were keeping Saber Alexiares with one final request: Remove the dragon’s head with your bare hands and deliver it to me on a silver platter.
The biblical character Salome had nothing on Vanya Demir. After all, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and in this tragic, barren moment, Vanya knew that she had been scorned beyond imagining.
Saber Alexiares’s head, in Marquis’s hands, was her last, dying wish.
Saber shot up from his cot into a sitting position, both startled and alert, as Marquis Silivasi stormed into the dimly lit watch room like a Tasmanian devil. The Ancient Master Warrior was wearing a garish, spiked cestus over his right hand, and by the look on his murderous face, he was more than just a little angry.
He was downright furious.
Determined.
Hell-bent.
What in the world?
When Marquis bulldozed past Ramsey and Santos, headed straight for the iron keys to unlock Saber’s cell, and neither one of the guards made any attempt to stop him, Saber knew it was time to pay the piper. Marquis’s jaw was set in a hard line; his eyes were feral and ablaze; and Ramsey and Santos were only too willing to stand back and allow the scene to unfold.
Clearly, the males had found out about Vanya.
They knew about the sex.
But how?
Saber leapt to his feet and readied himself in a defensive posture, watching warily as the enraged vampire made child’s play of the lock, flung open the door, and literally flew into the cell, apparently too angry to walk. “Before I am through with you, Dark One, you will beg me for death!” The vampire’s voice reverberated through the tiny space like thunder in a roiling sky, and Saber visibly recoiled.
He shook his bewildered head, trying to dislodge his momentary confusion: Unholy minions of hell, he and Vanya had bent a few rules, played fast and furious with their passion, but surely it wasn’t that serious. She was his destiny, after all.
Before Saber could respond to Marquis’s threat, the incensed warrior hurled a pulsing stream of fire from the tips of his fingers directly at Saber’s scalp, connecting instantly with his wild black-and-red mane. The flame burned so hot that it shone blue in the air before wrapping itself in a conical halo around Saber’s skull, and Saber cried out in agony from the searing heat.
“What’s your problem!” Saber glowered, panic beginning to set in. He was far too weak from blood loss to defend himself.
Marquis gave him no quarter.
The son of Jadon quickly followed the preternatural flames with an equally dangerous assault: Conjuring two razor-sharp pinpoints of light from his hate-filled eyes, he leveled his gaze at Saber and began to wield the grisly lasers like a macabre scalpel, slicing wickedly across Saber’s forehead, just below the hairline, just below the already emblazoned crown. Resolute, he began to carve a gruesome incision around the cranium, outward beyond the brows, downward toward the ears, and angled to the nape of Saber’s neck. Dark lords of hell, the male brandished the fiery scalpel with the precision of a master surgeon.
He was scalping Saber alive from five feet away!
Saber tried to step out of the line of fire. His hands shot up instinctively to his head and were instantly singed by the blaze. He tried to smother the flames to no avail—just how far did the warrior intend to take this?
The question was quickly answered.
As blood seeped beneath the fresh conical incision, Marquis stopped just short of removing Saber’s scalp. Rather, he allowed the crimson fluid to pool into a bubbling crown, where it oozed until it began to act like a buffer between the fire and Saber’s face, shielding his skin, his brows, and his eyes: Marquis was using Saber’s own blood as a natural fire-line. He was preventing the fire from spreading in order to keep it burning longer…hotter…deeper.
Saber tried desperately to extinguish the flames, to gather his wits, but the fire burned way too hot and the assault was far too relentless.
Marquis whispered something beneath his breath, and the flames grew hotter still, shooting even higher in the air. Saber moaned from the pain and felt his reason slipping away into an ever-increasing abyss of horrible agony and shock. His head was burning like the devil, yet the fire wasn’t consuming his flesh. He should have been burnt to a crisp by now. At this rate, the damnable thing might just burn forever, until his scalp was nothing more than a bloody heap of blisters, resting beneath charred hair and melted flesh. Why didn’t the warrior just kill him and get it over with? Did he really intend to scorch him, indefinitely, just for the fun of it?
Just for having sex with Vanya?
Did the vampire intend to torture him forever, or would he finally be moved to mercy—or fury—and just kill him already?
Saber panted through the unbearable pain, and then he cringed in horror as realization finally dawned on him: What was it Marquis had said when he had first entered the room? Before I am through with you, Dark One, you will beg me for death!
The hot-headed vampire had meant every word.
He wanted Saber to fall on his knees and plead for mercy—mercy the warrior would surely deny him. The son of Jadon was hell-bent on exacting his pound of flesh, and up until this point, Saber had been helpless to deny him his professed due.
Saber Alexiares blinked rapidly, several times in a row, trying to clear his tortured mind, trying to flush the dripping blood from his eyes so he could see his enemy more clearly. He raised both hands to his mouth and blew freezing shards of air over his fingertips until icicles began to form on the ends of the digits; then he massaged his hands rapidly through his hair, hoping like hell that the fire would melt the ice into water instantly. He repeated the process again and again, all the while thinking, This is like applying some damnable netherworld shampoo, until at last, the fiery blaze was extinguished.
Marquis laughed, indifferent. “Not going to save you, Dark One.”
Knowing the warrior was right, Saber decided to try a different tact. The truth of the matter was this: Marquis was much too strong, and Saber was much too weak. The sentinels had kept him so piti
fully drained of blood—deprived of power for so interminably long—that he barely stood a chance in this unprovoked battle. Still, he braced himself against the lingering heat in his scalp, the all-consuming pain, and focused keenly on his enemy. Saber Alexiares had no intention of going down without a fight, regardless of the odds. It was time to change his posture from defensive to offensive.
Without warning, Saber lunged at Marquis for all he was worth; he focused like a laser on the Ancient Master Warrior’s neck, his thick jugular vein, and the amount of force it would require to rip it open and tear it to shreds. Their bodies collided with a heavy thud, sending both males flying into the iron bars behind them before they ricocheted off and hit the floor, each laid out prone. Saber sank his fangs deep, grasping, tearing, and shaking his head from side to side like the wild animal he was. It was a desperate attempt at changing the odds, but Marquis kept his cool…and his concentration.
The warrior countered with a brutal uppercut, ramming the full potency of the spiked cestus beneath Saber’s jaw; and the maneuver worked beautifully, swiftly dislodging Saber’s fangs.
Saber came at him again…and again.
He released his own lethal claws and swiped at the Ancient’s eyes rapidly—forcefully—until a tip finally connected, scoring Marquis’s cornea. Marquis stiffened ever so slightly and growled deep in his throat, and then he released his own claws and plunged downward with his left hand, tearing what felt like an eight-inch gash in Saber’s side.
The two ferocious males traded attacks, punching, stabbing, biting, all the while rolling around on the floor like a furious ball of hate-filled energy; until at last, Saber felt his life force begin to wane at an alarming rate.