Bloodchild (11 page)

“Why not?”

He swallowed hard. Should he tell
her? He didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want her to think less of him because
of what he was now. But at the same time, he couldn’t bear the thought of lying
to her, or of hiding part of himself from her.

“I… I don’t want to hurt you,” he
said. “Right now, you smell better than anything in the world. You smell like…
like a feast, and I don’t know if I want to drink you up or make love to you. I
don’t want to lose control.”

He could see slow understanding
spreading on her features. He waited for fear to follow. It didn’t. When he let
go of her hands, they returned to his chest, trembling a little, and slowly she
started doing the buttons up again.

“Okay,” she said shakily. “All
right. Does that mean… never again?”

She bit down on her bottom lip as
she finished, and he wanted to replace her teeth with his own, wanted to nibble
on that succulent lip, make it plump, make it bleed—

He shook his head, both an answer
to her question and to the images in his mind.

“After I feed, it’ll be better. I
won’t have blood on my mind and I’ll be able to focus on you the way I should.”

He raised a hand as he spoke, and
brushed his thumb over her lips, soothing away the small indentation she had
created.

“Okay,” she said again, pursing
her lips to kiss his thumb. “So… tonight? Will you please come to my bed
tonight?”

Bradan couldn’t have said no, not
for all the blood in the world.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rising Fears

Aedan was torn between his duty
and his shame, between the service he owed his dame and the impossible feelings
he had toward her. His mind was such a jumbled mass of contradictory thoughts
that he didn’t immediately notice what was coming from Bradan through the bond.
When he did focus enough to understand, cold fear coursed through him and he
stopped mid-motion, the sword he was swinging at a training post still raised
high above his head.

He wasn’t supposed to wield a
sword; the weapon was taboo for vampires. Still, as an outlet for frustration,
hacking at a wooden post as hard as he could was more effective than anything
he could do with his knives.

With shaky hands, he set the sword
back on the hooks attached to the walls of the armory and hurried out. He could
hear the sword clattering to the floor behind him, no doubt because he hadn’t
balanced it right, but he couldn’t manage to care and rushed in the direction
the bond indicated, already knowing they had to be in the library.

The fire, hunger, and need that
flashed through the bond made it quite clear what Bradan and their dame were
doing—and it was just as clear to him that stopping them was paramount,
regardless of how angry they might be when he walked in on them. Their dame’s
very life was at stake, even if neither she nor Bradan seemed to understand it.

What did Aedan need to do make
them both realize they were playing with fire?

He was three steps away from the
door, already raising a hand toward the handle, when the sensations flowing
through the bond changed. He slowed down, then stilled, closing his eyes and
focusing on what he felt—what Bradan felt.

He’d stopped… hadn’t he? He still
wanted their dame, her body as much as her blood, but the craving was turning
to longing, no longer a raging fire but instead contained embers.

Aedan needed to be sure that he
was interpreting the situation correctly and that Bradan had in fact managed to
control himself, but what excuse did he have to walk into the room now? He only
ever entered when his dame invited him to do so, and while he would have barged
in to save her, he didn’t believe her life to be in danger anymore.

The flash of an idea came to him,
and he walked past the library and toward the kitchen, keeping his attention on
the bond in case it flared up again. When he entered, Doril was seated at the
table, sipping from a wide cup that, from the smell of it, was full of that
coffee drink their dame had brought back from the Otherworld.

Doril smiled when she saw him and
invited him to sit with a gesture.

“Nice to get some company,” she
said, then tilted her head and frowned. “Unless you’ve come to use my
channeling again? I thought you’d roped poor Elver into doing Passing Room
duties now.”

“I haven’t ‘roped’ him into
anything,” Aedan scoffed. “Our dame asked for his help. And, no, I’m not here
for your channeling or for company. Dame Vivien would like some refreshments.
Tea and a few treats.”

Already, Doril was on her feet and
gathering what she needed: she set a carved metal tray on the table, covered
the bottom with an embroidered doily, set a single cup in the center, a plate
of small pastries to one side, a pot of water she quickly heated with the
Quickening on the other side, and a small jar of honey. At last she threw in
the tea leaves in the pot and picked up the tray, but Aedan stepped forward at
once to take it from her.

“I’ll take it to her,” he said.
“No need to trouble yourself.”

She let out a huff but let him
have the tray.

“First you try to make me do
things that have nothing to do with being a cook, then you do the things that
are actually part of my job. Make up your mind, boy.”

For some reason, hearing her call
him ‘boy’ did not make him smile as it usually did.

“In my experience, cooks don’t
serve,” he said, balancing the tray on one hand while he opened the door.
“We’ll need to find you some serving staff next.”

She scoffed again, and he could
hear her muttering until he was halfway down the corridor. The bond was still
much quieter than it had been earlier, with the barest thread of amusement
coming through. It led Aedan not to the library this time, but to the ballroom
where, earlier that day, he’d helped his dame practice channeling while
distracted.

When he knocked and entered, he
found her sitting on the floor in the center of the room, ribbons of colors
swirling around her, their path sometimes disturbed when Bradan threw her one
of the soft balls she had created that morning.

She was speaking when he stepped
in, though she stopped mid-word, leaving Aedan to wonder what they’d been
talking about. They both turned to look at him, and while Dame Vivien’s
colorful ribbons winked out of existence, Bradan’s amusement faded, replaced by
wariness. Aedan had rarely felt as out of place as he now did.

“I brought refreshments,” he said,
aware he was stating the obvious but needing to say something.

He came further in and set the
tray on a low table by an armchair. From the corner of his eye, he could see
Bradan offer their dame his hand to help her up. Even that brief contact caused
sparks of want to shoot through the bond, and Aedan gritted his teeth.

“Great timing,” Dame Vivien said,
coming to take a seat in the armchair. “Remind me to thank Doril.”

Inclining his head, Aedan
retreated to what was a proper distance for a guard. Bradan, on the other hand,
sat next to their dame, ignoring Aedan’s glare and the irritation he made no
effort to keep from the bond.

It was wrong. All of it was wrong.
A guard wasn’t supposed to act like this toward his charge. Twins weren’t
supposed to let anyone divide them. A Bloodchild wasn’t supposed to repeatedly
go against his Maker’s orders.

And a vampire wasn’t supposed to
become Maker to his own blood kin.

Aedan was the one who’d made the
biggest violation, here. In just one day, he’d be punished for it. But then who
would be left to make sure Bradan didn’t slip, let his instincts take over, and
hurt their dame? Should he talk about it to the new guards when they came
tomorrow? And say what if he did? Casually mention that his brother and Dame
Vivien were in love, and that given Bradan’s new status as a vampire, he might not
be able to stop himself from biting her if they were allowed to be intimate
again?

Just the thought of saying any of
it aloud made Aedan sick.

But the thought of what might
happen if he said nothing was worse.

The next few hours seemed to crawl
rather than pass at normal speed. Dame Vivien had her tea, then trained again
with Bradan’s help. She had her dinner and then, as night was falling,
announced she wanted to go for a run as was her habit. The entire time, Bradan
was at her side, no more than an arm’s length away, while Aedan remained at a
proper distance. Aedan could feel a sense of expectation rising from his
brother, and he was worried he knew exactly what it was about. Worried also
about what he would need to do if he was right.

Dame Vivien retreated to her rooms
after her run, and Aedan was almost relieved when Bradan didn’t follow her.
He’d been sure that this would be it. Instead, Bradan finally acknowledged what
had been echoing so strongly through the bond for hours now: his hunger. Aedan should
have said something sooner, but he hadn’t said a word to his brother since
Bradan had brought up Aedan’s feelings for their dame. He still didn’t feel
like talking to him now.

“Should we go hunt?” Bradan said,
sounding irritated.

Leaning back against the wall
across from Dame Vivien’s room as was his custom, Aedan kept his eyes straight
ahead of him and shook his head.

“You go. I’m not hungry.”

It wasn’t true; he did feel a
little hungry. With the bond flooded by Bradan’s pangs of hunger, however, his own
barely registered.

“You’re always reminding me I need
to feed,” Bradan said gruffly. “Come on, let’s go.”

Now Aedan glanced at him, his brow
furrowed.

“I’m not hungry,” he repeated.
“Nor do I want to be in your company right now. Go on your own. You don’t need
me there to hold your hand, do you? The Quickening knows how little you care
about what I have to say.”

Bradan flinched, much as he might
have if Aedan had hit him.

“Of course I care about what you
say,” he muttered. “But am I not allowed to disagree with you sometimes?”

“Disagreeing is one thing.” Aedan
returned his gaze to the wall across from him. “Refusing to accept what every
vampire before you learned to be true is different. Disobeying your Maker is
something else. And betraying your brother’s confidence…”

He let the end of that sentence
hang between them. For a few seconds, Bradan remained by his side, still and
silent. Guilt seeped through the bond, tinted with regret, but Bradan said
nothing before finally walking away.

Aedan closed his eyes and tried to
clear his mind. They couldn’t go on like this.
He
couldn’t go on like
this. Bradan had hurt him, yes, but if these were the last few hours they spent
together, Aedan needed to move past the betrayal he felt and try to impress,
one last time, that his only concern was their dame’s safety. Whether he
approved of Bradan’s relationship with her or not wasn’t the point; he knew
he’d lost that battle. But if Bradan could only understand that the risk was
very much real that he’d hurt her without meaning to…

There wasn’t another way around
it, Aedan decided. He had to try again. He had to tell Bradan things he’d
rather have kept to himself—things that still filled him with guilt even after
decades had passed.

When Bradan returned, his hair
still wet from a dip into the lake, his hunger satiated, and his sense of
anticipation almost overwhelming, Aedan was ready for what he expected his
brother would say, and while the words weren’t those he’d imagined, the intent
was all too clear.

“I’ll keep watch tonight,” Bradan
said. “You’ve barely gotten any sleep since her birthday. You should get some
rest.”

He did worry, Aedan knew that, but
he also knew there was more to this offer of taking tonight’s watch.

“You don’t understand,” he said
with a sigh, pushing away from the wall and resting a hand on Bradan’s arm. “I
wish you’d believe me. The instinct to bite while making love... It’s strong.
Stronger than you can imagine. When the hunger for a lover’s body and the
hunger for blood are rising at the same time, it’s like a wave. It swallows you
and drags you under. The younger the vampire, the deeper the instinct. It took
me years to get rid of it, years before I could sleep with a human without
wanting to tear their throat out. I thought I was ready long before that, and I
almost killed a woman. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

He hoped Bradan could tell he
wasn’t lying or exaggerating. For once, he wasn’t trying to restrain what he
was sending through the bond, and he supposed his worry and guilt might come
through just as strongly. He wasn’t sure what it was that came back in
response, however. Bradan’s emotions felt… muddled.

“You never said anything about
that before,” Bradan said, frowning and taking a step to the side that forced
Aedan’s hand off him. “In all the years we met here to talk about what was
happening, you never mentioned this.”

Aedan grimaced. He could hear the
unvoiced question. Why was he telling Bradan now? Because it was true, or
because it was about Dame Vivien and he’d seize any excuse to force Bradan away
from her?

“I never told you before because I
felt guilty about it,” he admitted. “Not only did I almost kill the girl, I
also came close to ruining all our plans. If I had killed her, I’d have been
executed, and me becoming a vampire, finding my way into Rhuinn’s guards, it
would all have been for nothing. You’d never even have known what had happened
to me. But just because I didn’t mention it before doesn’t make it a lie.”

Bradan considered him for a moment
before asking abruptly, “What was her name?”

Surprised at the non-sequitur,
Aedan blinked and stuttered.

“I… What? I don’t… That’s not the
point.”

“Okay. Tell me this, then. Did you
love her?”

Aedan didn’t reply. He didn’t need
to. Hadn’t he told Bradan he’d only ever loved one woman?

“You talk about making love,”
Bradan said with a small shake of his head, “but was that what you were doing?
You didn't love whoever it was you slept with, did you? Not like I love
Vivien.”

Aedan’s jaw clenched and
unclenched repeatedly. Bradan just refused to understand. He refused to see
that he was a vampire, governed by vampire instincts, and nothing changed that,
not even love. If anything, love made the situation more dangerous, because it
made him want Dame Vivien even more.

And if Bradan refused to listen to
reason, Aedan would have to resort to those same vampire instincts he was
trying so hard to warn Bradan about.

“Enough,” he said in that
almost-growl that he remembered all too well his Maker using on him when he’d
been a young vampire. “Go to your own bed. Sleep. You’re not seeing our dame
tonight.”

Just as he said the last words,
the door to Dame Vivien’s chambers opened and she appeared there, wrapped in a
nightgown, barefoot, her expression thunderous.

“Last I checked,” she said in a
frosty tone of voice, “you have no say about who I see or not. And you
certainly have no say in my love life, or Brad’s. Get used to the idea and
leave us alone.”

She held Aedan’s gaze even as she
extended her hand palm out toward Bradan. He took her hand and let her draw him
after her into her suite. He didn’t look back at Aedan before closing the door
on him, but his feelings rang through the bond, clearer than ever.