“I am yours, my mistress, my little goddess,” he whispered.
I encircled his wrist with my long knobby fingers and pulled his thumb away. Irritated, I said, “I’m not a goddess.”
“As you say, my mistress. I swear loyalty to you above all others, in every circumstance outside of my misericord duties. In your absence, I swear to your clan and to its scions and cattle.”
“Backatcha, little bird.” But it didn’t come out flippant, as I intended, but somber, unsmiling, and resolute.Gee stepped back and when he was about five feet away, he bowed, bending one knee and sweeping with one hand, as if to push a cape back. Or his glamoured wings. He took a seat.
Crap.This was getting heavy.
Leo said, “Edmund Hartley, you have claimed to be bound to your mistress. Is this so?”
I whipped my head to the side and saw Edmund, a nondescript, brown-haired, brown-eyed man, small statured, at least compared to modern-day norms and my own height. He had been healed of the stakes in his belly and was now sober, wearing a tux, when Eddie had been drunk and wearing a navy suit last time I saw him. Edmund looked pretty good in a tux, his dark hair swept back with goop, his expression strangely gentle.
Ed stared at me, his lips up in the smile that had surely been the reason he was turned. “It is. We are bound. She called me back from true-death and I answered.”
It hadn’t been my intent. I didn’t want a slave. But it had kept him alive and at the time that had been a bargain worth making.
Leo said, “You have sworn privately to Jane Yellowrock. Do you renew those vows now?”
“I do.” Ed’s smile widened and he pretty much quoted what he had said more privately, not so long ago. “Jane Yellowrock. I, Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, do hereby swear fealty to you and to yours, to your entire extended and many-peopled and many-creatured family, and to Clan Yellowrock. I swear to provide for, protect, care for, fight for, and die true-dead as you may need. I place all my needs second to yours and to theirs. I place my hunger second to yours and to theirs. I place all that I am and all that I can be and all that I can do at your disposal, into your hands, for the duration of the next nineteen years. I am yours in life and undeath and in true-death.”
Those danged tears gathered in my eyes again. But Eddie wasn’t done.
“I swear fealty to the Everharts and Truebloods, for as long as Jane Yellowrock is theirs and the Everharts and Truebloods are yours, one clan, placing my own well-being beneath your own. I promise that I shall protect your godchildren and their parents and their children’s children unto the laying down of my own undeath.”
Edmund smiled slightly. “Since I first spoke these words, I have become heir to Clan Pellissier. Jane Yellowrock has become the Dark Queen and I am primo to Jane Yellowrock. You no longer must protect me, my mistress. It is my job to protect you. Our lives are now intertwined. My blood is yours to spill.”
Leo stabbed Ed’s thumb. Red blood welled and ran down, fast, faster than most vamp blood would run, since their hearts didn’t beat much. I had been fed Edmund’s blood. I knew its taste, its power. I took his wrist and guided his thumb to my mouth, wondering for a single instant what outsiders would think of this ceremony, so nonhuman, so foreign to any culture of any group of humans, so... sacrificial.
Such blood drinking had guided the actions of Torquemada and the Inquisition for so many years, fueling fear and hatred and torture. And then Ed’s flesh was in my mouth, between my fangs, his blood on my tongue, his power open and moving, fast as a mountain stream. I swallowed and took in his magic. It was a river of might, raging but held in check, the way water thundered down a gorge, kept in its bed between massive boulders. Whitewater, powerful enough to destroy, but full of life. Held into its course and purpose by tall and mighty rock walls.
In his blood, I saw myself as Edmund first saw me.
On a night battlefield, bodies piled high behind the female warrior, flames leaping. Gunshots sounded in the distance. The reek of bowels that had opened as humans died, the particular odor of Mithran death, smoke, blood, and the stink of gunfire hung on the air. Koun was stepping from an ambulance, the broad-shouldered man wearing only a loincloth, a sword at his hip, and Celtic tattoos, dark blue and black. He was pale. He had lost blood. Or given it.
“I left my master’s fight to heal a human,” Koun snarled at the armed warrior. “You owe me a boon, woman.” The warrior was a woman. Black haired and golden skinned.Jane Yellowrock, the woman Pellissier had hired for some obscure reason. Koun pulled his sword.
The woman stepped back, going for a handgun at her side. But Koun was on her in an instant, moving Mithran-fast. His longblade sliced for her throat. Her eyes blazed golden. Edmund moved closer, to watch.
The blade cut into her throat just as she leaped. She dropped away, tucking into a shoulder roll. Officers shouted, “Put down the weapon! Police!” They fired and Koun stumbled before coming upright. He stood over the golden-eyed woman, his sword in both hands, the blade pointed at her belly. “A boon!” he demanded.
Edmund expected her to scream or cry or wail. She shouted, “What boon?”
“I am weakened, and the primo requires yet more blood. You will fight in my place.”
“Done,” the woman said.
Koun stepped back and the woman, Jane Yellowrock, rolled to her feet, the motion more fluid than a Mithran’s, as impossible as that seemed. “How many are there?” she demanded. “Who are they?” And then she fought. Edmund had followed, protecting her rear. Watching.
I swallowed again. Yanked Edmund’s hand away from me. From where he... kneeled at my feet. Which I freaking hated. I reached out and placed a fingertip beneath his chin and lifted his face to my half-lion face. “I swear loyalty to you,” I said.
“Yes, my master. And I to you.”
Mistress. Master. I had bound Ed long ago. I had sealed that binding now. I was a monster. I almost ran out of the room.
CHAPTER 10
My Fangs Were Bigger Than His
