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“What happened?”

“We were betrayed. My fault, actually. Our headquarters were in France, but we only recognized the authority of the Pope. We had become a powerful political and financial force and supported the king of the time, Phillip, financially as he ran his country into the ground. He was a . . . very poor ruler.” Julian’s voice gets dark at this point, talking of the king. I get the feeling that there is something more personal between them.

“Why do you say it was your fault?”

He stills, and I feel that we have come to the heart of why he didn’t want to tell me this story. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I say gently.

Julian takes a fortifying breath. “No, it’s alright, ma souris. It’s just . . . well, you see, I had an older sister. Alizée. My best friend and staunchest defender. She was like you, all that was innocent and good in the world. When we were young, we were orphaned, and our villain uncle turned us out on the streets, taking my father’s wealth as his own. By rights, I should have inherited, but my uncle had influence, I was young, and he took what was ours. We had nowhere to turn. To support us, Alizée became a rich man’s mistress.”

I start. “But you said you were both young!”

“I was but a boy of ten, but my sister was sixteen. Old enough to be married at the time, but with my uncle having taken our wealth, including her dowry, there were no takers for her hand. The man she found was a noble who could afford to put her in a set of rooms in his villa, and she insisted on bringing me. I had to stay out of the way when her patron came for her and pretend like I didn’t exist. I hated him for how he dishonored my sister and loathed that we had to survive this way. But Alizée, she was smart, smarter than me. She learned to play the perfect mistress, to keep her patron happy and, in time, to leave him for a richer, more powerful man. Eventually, she made a connection with a man who could introduce me to the Templars, and I left her to squire for the order and prepare to take my vows. I got into lots of fights with the other youths who liked to joke that I would be a monk, but my sister was a whore. Eventually, though, she played her cards right and became the mistress of King Phillip himself, and no one dared to call her a whore anymore.

“Why?” I ask. “Not that anyone should have called her a whore to begin with, but why would being the king’s kept woman be any different?”

“The King’s Mistress is a strange role, especially in France, one that commands both respect and derision. The role has the protection of the Crown, even if unofficially. I was happy for her, at first. She had become as powerful as women could be at the time, with more influence than even the queen. I was sent on missions and didn’t see her for years, but she kept her position, which was not an easy feat as she aged. When I finally returned, I had worked my way up to being the right hand of our grand master, Jaques de Molay. I could finally see my sister again, and when we met, I didn’t even recognize her at first. She was a shadow of who she was. There were bruises on her skin that her dress didn’t quite cover, and so I found out the truth: my sister was not only the King’s Mistress. She was his punching bag.”

“Oh no,” I say, turning my head to look at his expression. His face is grim, old pain clearly written across his features. It is clear that he is reliving the emotional wound as if it had happened yesterday, not seven hundred years ago. I turn in his lap and wrap my arms around him, comforting as I can be. Julian accepts my embrace, putting his arms around me and tracing lightly up my spine absently with his fingers.

He continues, “I was furious, but what could I do? I could not call out a king. He would merely send a champion and escape unscathed. I begged Alizée to come with me, to leave the king, but she said I needed to put such thoughts out of my head, that she couldn’t go anywhere he would not find her, and that I would be punished for my impudence. But I was blind with rage, thirsting for vengeance. So, the next time the king came to the Templars in need of a loan to float his coffers, I convinced the grand master to say no.”

I start tracing up and down Julian’s back, a mirror to his touches on me. I don’t know how to make this story easier to tell. “He didn’t like that, I take it?”

“No, ma souris, he did not. It started enmity between our order and the Crown, and in 1307 it came to a head. The king’s men came to us with trumped-up charges and arrested scores of us. I won’t bore you with the details of my incarceration, but I will tell you that I was tortured, as were my brothers. They were made to confess to crimes of heresy that they did not commit and were burned, one by one. But not me. I was tortured, but without reason. They wanted no admission of guilt or confession; they just wanted my suffering. I lost my mind in the king’s prison. King Phillip knew that I was my sister’s brother, and I think he knew that I was the one who led to the denial of his loan. So he kept me alive just so that he could punish me. I held out hope, though. Hope that the Pope would come to our aid, demand our release. We had served him so long and so well, after all. But after five years, I was brought the news that the Pope had truly abandoned us, dissolving our brotherhood and reappropriating our lands and wealth.”

My breath hitches. “Five years?” I was in a cell for a day and nearly lost my mind. How could he bear it for five years?

“Oh, but the story is not over yet, ma souris. I was in that dungeon for two more years, helpless and hopeless. I will always remember that last day, the day they executed the grand master. The king visited me that same day to tell me that my sister was also dead. That she had died two weeks prior. A fall down the stairs, he said, but we both knew he was lying. The king had kept me alive long enough to see the complete destruction of everything that was important to me, the punishment for daring to tell him ‘no.’ I knew then that I was next. He had no reason to keep me alive any longer. But that night, a stranger came to my cell. He was richly dressed and had a dangerous air about him. I didn’t know how he’d gotten in. He asked me if I wanted to live. I told him no. I had lost all will to live. He then asked me if I wanted revenge. That woke me up. There was nothing more that I wanted in all the world. I no longer had faith, you see, that God would deliver just desserts to those who had wronged me and mine. I told the stranger that if he could get me revenge, I would do anything. He told me that he could give me what I wanted, the power to destroy a king, but it would be painful and cost me my soul. I truly thought I was dealing with the devil and didn’t care. I agreed, and he slipped me a tonic, telling me to take it. I did, and it killed me, rather painlessly.”

“He killed you?”

Julian nods. “It is part of the process to turn a human into a vampire. First, you must die. Then, before a full day passes, a vampire must empty the corpse of its blood through feeding. From there, the change takes place. The body comes back to life, stuck in a torturous limbo, and must feed from their maker, thus completing the transformation. After that, you are more than you were, greater senses and strength, but gain the great thirst along with it.”

“Why did he do it?” I ask. “Your maker? Just a good Samaritan?”

“My maker was . . . an eccentric. He’d been alive as long as I am now back in the 1300s. He’d started a . . . hobby, I suppose you could call it, of collecting people. People who were notable or whom he found interesting. He sired many vampires because of that. He thought having the last Templar would be a nice addition to his collection, simple as that. There was never any part of him that cared about me or even my revenge. He merely said that to convince me to go through the change, which is a painful and hard process to navigate. Without motivation, getting through that limbo and feeding on your maker is hard. It is easier to simply die again, for the final time.”

“So you died, and he changed you . . . did you get your revenge?”

Julian pulls back in my arms, looking at me directly and smiling, but the expression isn’t pleasant. It’s dark and a little unhinged. “Oh yes. I found the king during an early morning hunt, just before the sun went up. He recognized me and panicked. He thought I was a specter from Hell coming to haunt him, and maybe I was. I compelled him to confess what he did to my brotherhood, what he did to my sister. He was begging and blubbering by the end, and then I snapped his neck, the way he did my sister’s. I only wish that I had had the time to make his death more painful, but sunrise was too close. The official story that went into the history books was that he had a stroke. Phillip’s son didn’t want an investigation into foul play, which would have delayed him from taking the throne. But I know what happened, and I still go back to his grave from time to time to spit on it.”

This is a lot to take in. Julian has just admitted to killing someone and enjoying it, but I suppose I already knew that about him. I think of the cavalier way he dispatched my almost-kidnappers. It was done so swiftly, in such a way that I know he’s killed before. Probably often. There’s most likely boatloads of blood on his hands. But the thing that scares me isn’t Julian or that violence, but the fact that I sympathize with him, understand him. Even approve of him. That cowardly, abusive king had it coming. I think of Colton, someone cut in that same image, and what he tried to do tonight, and shiver.

Julian notes the shiver and cocks a brow. “Have I scared you off, ma souris?”

I shake my head. “Not with this. You did what you needed to do. I don’t like killing, but I understand. After all that you went through . . . no, I’m not afraid.”

Julian looks at me curiously, then pulls me into a kiss again. It’s searching and passionate, and I’m breathless when he pulls away.

“Now, tell me, Andi, what were you thinking about before? I have told you my story in payment, I expect what’s owed.”

I blush. My thoughts earlier seem so stupid in the light of his heavy story. The mood isn’t close to the same place it was before.

“It’s dumb,” I tell him.

“Nothing you think is dumb. And anything that would flatter my ego, I will gladly receive.”

I only hesitate for a little longer, then sigh. “Alright. I was just thinking that you were the best sex I ever had and that apparently no one I’ve been with before knew what they were doing in comparison to you.” My face grows more and more heated as I talk, and a lazy smile appears on Julian’s face.