Page 66 of Beds and Blades

This was exactly what something that wanted to kill me might say.

Her head tilted slightly.

“Morvanna sent me with an offer. What happens next is your choice.”

She smiled, and nothing in her face softened.

“You are not the first woman to arrive from your world,” she said. “You will not be the last.”

Her gaze moved over me with slow, precise interest.

“The others were described in many ways in the old accounts. Brilliant. Restless. Difficult.”

The smile widened by a fraction.

“Voracious was the word that appeared most consistently.”

My hand remained still at my side. The sword was on my belt. I could feel the weight of it. I could also feel, with terrible clarity, the distance between my hand and the handle.

“They came hungry,” she said. “Hungry for what your world had denied them. Hungry in ways they had not been permitted to name.”

She took one step closer.

I did not move back. I wanted to. I did not.

“They found pleasure here. Power. Bodies that answered them.”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

“You came with the same hunger. Morvanna understands pleasure as a principle rather than a pastime,” she said. “The women who joined her were not asked to be less than what they were. They were given a court of people who felt everything they felt and wanted more of it.”

Another step. Slow. Unhurried. She had time. She believed she had all the time in the world. “They did not find the arrangement unsatisfactory.”

I could still hear the garrison below, but distantly now. Boots. Orders. Someone yelling for archers. Someone else calling for the High Commander.

Too far away.

“You are here because the bridge brought you here,” she said. “Morvanna understands what that means. What it has always meant when a woman from your world arrives in ours. She has no interest in fighting the pattern.”

Her red eyes caught the torchlight. “She wants to ensure that you serve the correct purpose.”

I swallowed. The movement felt loud.

“She is not asking you to give up anything,” the vampire said.

Her voice softened. That made it worse.

“The dark bond does not require surrender. It requires the opposite.”

She let the word opposite settle between us.

“Everything you have ever wanted from a man, felt through the bond by everyone at once. Amplified. Returned to you doubled. Every want answered the moment it surfaces. Every sensation shared and multiplied,” she said. “And you would not age. Your beauty would be preserved. What humans measure in years, you would measure in centuries.”

Her eyes moved down me, not crudely. Clinically. As if she were determining whether I was worth preserving.

“Morvanna has been waiting for someone like you for a very long time. Not to fight her. To stand beside her.”

The torches hissed. Below us, something heavy struck stone. She did not flinch.