I plop my head down and curl up against him, deciding I don’t give a shit.
Pukren’s corpse isn’t worth waking up for.
Hours later, I blink my eyes open again. I recall bathing in the adjacent bathhouse next to the brothel, and briefly wonder if Lukain’s visit was nothing but a fever dream.
The annoying nagging in my mind asks the question I don’t want to answer:He found me so easily and had every opportunity to steal me away as I stood naked before him, to bring me to his mother. So why didn’t he? Could he truly be trying to convince me of his righteousness, “rescuing” me with persuasion rather than brute force?
As I stare up at the ceiling, my head instinctively shakes.I can’t think of him. Not anymore. Not when he is an agent of Spymistress Alacine Mortis. He’s only trying to win me back forherbenefit, to get hold of my Loreblood so he doesn’t have to fight me for it.
Stretching, I sit up, noticing the sun has darkened in the window. It’s nearly twilight. We’ve slept the entire day.
I smile over at Garroway. He hasn’t moved since I slithered up next to him. Then my stomach yells at me and I grimace. “Shit, I need food.”
“Stew downstairs, I’m sure,” Garro mumbles under his blankets.
“Get up, sleepyhead. It’s almost night. We’re an entire day late—erm,eveninglate—meeting Skar at the manor.”
Grumbling the entire time like a spoiled child, my mate crawls out of bed. Reclining and smiling, I take great satisfaction in watching his naked form search for his clothes strewn about the small room.Those corded muscles, the way they flexed and constricted so delectably on the roof. That thick cock swinging as he bends over to pick up his pants—the tool used to satiate my seductions. His nearly hairless body, fit and chiseled perfectly, without a measure of fat on him.
I realize I haven’t stopped staring the entire time he dresses, and my mind takes a sordid shift.Truehearts save me, Ireallymissed these bastards during my captivity. I can hardly go an hour without thinking of their bodies or how I want them to use me.
“What’s wrong?” His brow furrows as he throws his tunic on.
I shake my head. “Nothing.” A flush burns my cheeks but I don’t want to talk about it, or for Garroway to get any ideas.We need to get to Manor Marquin. I’ve missed Skar. The most unpredictable of this trio, the refined nobleman, and the bloodthirsty torturer of my enemies.“Think Skar will be angry with us for being so late?” As I get up from bed, I issue the cozy cot a fond farewell.
Garro shrugs. “How angry can he be? You’re the key to this whole thing, not him. He’s just the spokesperson.”
I laugh at that, trying to imagine Lord Skartovius Ashfen, with all his arrogance and swagger, as nothing more than a figurehead without any real power.The man can fucking control shadows now. I think he has more power than Garro is giving him credit for. Many the dhampir still stings from his dwindling bloodbond with his master.
As we make our way downstairs, shouting erupts inside the main room of the brothel. Garroway and I share looks at thesound of men’s voices—including the barman from yesterday, Kep.
“What have I told you, you diabolical bitch? Be gone with ye now!”
“We’ll stick you with the pointy side of this fire poker if you don’t step out, witch woman,” says another.
“Get your vile hands away from our delicate waifs!” says a third.
I rub the back of my neck, feeling embarrassed for whoever is getting kicked out of the brothel and being called such awful names.
Then I hear her voice. “Sirs, please, I don’t wish any ill upon your nightladies. I only wish to rest. I was told my kind is accepted here.”
“Yourkind?” fumes Kep. “We hardly tolerate dhampir, butyou? You’re a paleskin fullblooded bi—”
“What’s going on down here?” Garroway shouts as we reach the bottom of the landing and everything comes into view. A hooded woman stands in the doorway, slightly hunched. She’s dressed in little more than rags. I can see the paleness of the lower half of her face.
Despite the woman being a vampiress—an odd sight in a brothel in Nuhav—she looks disheveled and weak. Nothing like the elegant monsters I know from Olhav.
Kep spins around with his two workers. The barman is a stout fellow with a long mustache, and his two lackeys are young and spry. All three of them tower over the vampiress, who I know poses much more of a threat than these three human men combined, despite her appearance.
My eyes stay on the girl with her hood pulled down to her nose. Her lips are a pale red, almost pink. But it was hervoicethat threw me off when we descended the steps. Somehow, it sounded familiar.
My distraction brings me to ignore Kep as he approaches me and Garro, saying, “None of your concern, half-blood.”
His friend to the right says, “Unless you’re in cahoots with this vermin.”
“Don’t trust her meekness, grayskin,” says the third.
They crowd us, as if shifting their anger to my dhampir mate because he looks similar to the vagabond in the doorway. The rest of the brothel is empty, still too early for the evening arrivals of lustful men.
