“Cale, certainly, there are other ways,” Voss interjected. “Moldavi surely doesn’t know about the change that’s occurred with Dimitri and myself. We could accompany Woodmore and attend to Moldavi permanently.”
“No,” Narcise said softly. “No, I will have to go.” Her Mark pulsed with anger and sharp pain, but she ignored it. “But you’ll come after me. When it’s safe. When I’m certain he’s called off the invasion. You can?—”
“Narcise,” Chas began.
“Stop,” she ordered, holding up her hand. “Have you forgotten? I’m a Dracule. I think only of myself. And in the end, this will serve me well. Knowing what I know about my brother now, I have more power than he realizes.”
“But once you’re inside there,” Chas started again. “Narcise, you don’t have any idea what will happen.”
She fixed her gaze on him. “He won’t kill me. And I can live through anything else.”But at least the children will be saved.And the war would be stopped.
And maybe it wasn’t only about her anymore.
19
“You aren’t truly going,” Chas said, stopping her in the corridor at Rubey’s several hours after the discussion in the parlor. “Narcise.” He wore a tight, strained expression.
“Of course I’m going,” she replied, echoing his own response to her same question from months ago. Unlike him, she hadn’t even needed to pack a bag. “He’s my brother.” Again, she repeated his response.
“Narcise, I—forgive me for not wanting to tell you about…this. I was afraid that exactly this would happen. That you would go back to him, put yourself at risk.” He reached for her hand, drawing her closer. “But I shouldn’t have lied to you. I was wrong to?—”
“You were wrongtwice,” she reminded him, but didn’t pull her hand away. She needed the comfort of touch right now. “You don’t trust me, and you don’t believe I can take care of myself. You want to control me, just as Cezar did.”
“No, dammit, Narcise…I have three sisters…it’s hard for me to comprehend that a woman can be so…strong. I’m trying, Narcise.”
“I don’t know if I can trust you any more,” she told him. “I have a sense that you’d do it again?—”
“Devil take it, yes, I would. I don’t want anything to happen to you, for God’s sake. I’m in love with you, Lord help me…I’m in love with avampir.”
He tugged her into his arms and found her mouth, bringing her body up along his tall one as he brought her close. She sensed the desperation behind his kiss, the uncertainty in his touch…and despite the beginning flutters of pleasure, this time she couldn’t forget what loomed between them. Her anger toward him for his controlling protectiveness…and Chas’s own internal battle that, try as he might to overcome, was still a wide chasm.
Narcise was familiar with the anguish that played out in his face when they were together. The guilt and revulsion still warred with his desire as he begged her to bite him.
You could have been one of us.She wondered what would have happened if he had accepted Lucifer’s offer. Would she and Chas have found each other, been happy together? Impossible for a Dracule.
At last he eased away, his arms still loosely around her waist, and one hand lifted to brush a strand of hair from her face. “So beautiful,” he murmured, shaking his head. He looked at her, his eyes hot and heavy-lidded, his mouth swollen from the kiss.
“I’m coming with you,” he told her, and she was aware of a flash of relief…then the twitch of panic. What if something happened to Chas this time? She was still angry with him, furious…but she still cared about him.
“Dimitri and Voss…they need to stay with my sisters,” he added.
And they aren’t Dracule any longer. Now mortals, though stronger and as powerful as men could be, the others no longer had Astheniae, nor the vulnerability to sunlight…but instead, they had many other weaknesses. They would be better served remaining with the women they loved than risking their mortal lives.
“Chas,” Narcise said, pulling out of his embrace. She had to be honest. “I’m not going to change like them. I know you believe a miracle can happen…but I don’t see how it can. Dimitri tried for a century?—”
His eyes shone with a determined light. “But how do you know? Even Cale?—”
“Woodmore.” The deep, mellow voice cut in, startling Narcise as it swept over her from behind. How had she not scented him? The back of her shoulders prickled with awareness and her recently kissed lips throbbed as if filled with guilt.
“I’ll be going as well,” he informed them.
She turned, her heart racing, to face Giordan. “That’s not necessary,” she replied. Traveling with him? By the Fates, no.
She felt dizzy; he stood right behind her, so close she felt his presence seeping into her. His expression had eased slightly since the conversation in the parlor, but there were still deep lines around his lips and eyes. The place she’d nipped him on his lip had dried into a slender dark line, helping to make him look uncharacteristically rugged and rough. His wound still leaked a bit and her attention was captured by the sight of the bit of blood pooling in the elegant, golden curve of skin between shoulder and neck.
Lust and pleasure zipped through her, down deep inside.
Where had her anger gone?
