He could feel the pleasure growing, growing, nearly cresting, but he wanted more.
Oleg reached down and tore at the shirt he was wearing, ripping it down the center of his chest.
“Your fangs,” he growled. “I want them.”
She leaned forward, bared her teeth, and sank them into the thick muscle of his chest, right over his slowly thudding heart.
Oleg came with a violent shudder, holding his wife’s head to his chest, and she bit so hard she tore the muscle. The pain only made him come harder.
Then she was lapping at the wound, and the sensation of her tongue stroking over his charged flesh created a shiver that started at the base of his skull and spread over his body, her body, and the field of elemental energy between them.
He closed his eyes, floating in their joined power. “Do you need to hear it to know?”
Her nails dug into his back.
“I love you,” he breathed out. “More than my own flesh, Tatyana Vorona. With everything I am. With everything I should have been.” He opened his eyes, tilted her chin up, and kissed her blood-smeared lips. “Is my love enough for you? Enough for a century of your life?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Ask me a thousand years from now. I will accept nothing less.”
The state weddingof Oleg Sokolov and Tatyana le Tala happened at midnight in a cathedral founded by an eighteenth-century regiment of the Russian army. It was closed to humanparishioners but restored by the immortal largesse of Oleg Sokolov and the vampire governors of the Kievan Rus.
The vivid blue domes that topped the cathedral were decorated with shining gold stars, and the interior had been restored to its lavish, original decoration with bright icons decorating the walls and massive neoclassical pillars framing the doorway that guarded the altar at the front of the church.
Tatyana and Oleg were crowned with gold, holding long beeswax candles Oleg had lit himself at the door of the church, and wearing fur-trimmed royal robes as the priest raised a jeweled goblet of sacramental wine in front of the lectern in the center of the church.
“Bless now, with your spiritual blessing, this common cup, which you bestow on those who are now united in the communion of marriage.” The priest chanted the ancient prayers. “For blessed is your holy name, and glorified is your kingdom, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and into eternity.”
Eternity.
Oleg took the cup of wine from the priest, drinking the sweet wine untainted by blood before Tatyana drank. Then the priest repeated the act twice before Oleg and Tatyana bent down, took off their crowns, and handed them to the priests on either side of the officiant so the holy father could lead them around the lectern three times, not as king and queen but as servants of the God who witnessed their union.
As many times as Oleg had witnessed this rite—in wealth or poverty, from ancient times to modern days—the traditional ceremony never failed to move him.
The words were the same no matter the language. The ceremony did not change even as the world around him transformed.
Eternity. His eyes searched for Tatyana’s, and he caught her looking down to watch her steps as she navigated the rose-red carpet placed over the uneven stone floor in her elaborate and very heavy embroidered gown.
He kept her hand firmly in his own.
Eternal mate. Eternal wife. The blood they shared would last longer than the old stone cathedral where they were joined before the eyes of the world.
His mate wore a headdress of seed pearls and citrines that draped across her forehead and temples in a veil of hanging jewels. Her face was pale and unpainted—only a spot of rouge touched her lips.
It didn’t matter if she wore a crown or an old fur cap. She was a queen in every way.
They finished their third circle, and the choir in the cathedral broke into song.
“O Holy Martyrs, who fought the good fight and have received your crowns: Entreat the Lord that he will have mercy on our souls.”
As the choir sang, the priest walked to both of them, placing first Oleg’s and then Tatyana’s crowns back on their heads, crowning them not only as husband and wife but knyaz and knyaginya of the Kievan Rus.
Despite the ceremony of the moment, Oleg heard a few whoops and cheers from the crowd. The corner of his mouth turned up. Many of his people, after all, worshipped different gods.
After the coronation, the head priest began the final prayers and blessings over them.
Oleg angled his head to look at the crowd gathered around them.
There were Poshani Hazar and wind vampires from the north hovering throughout the cathedral, observing the proceedings with watchful eyes.
