Bloodchild (6 page)

As so often happened when the
three of them were in the same room, Dame Vivien’s attention focused entirely
on Bradan as she answered. Aedan was used to it, and he didn’t mind all that much—or
at least, he told himself he didn’t mind. It allowed him to keep a close eye on
Bradan and be particularly attentive to what filtered through the bond.

Bradan’s love was first and
foremost when he cautioned their dame about that truth-and-lie trick of hers,
but as they talked of the necessity of it, something else grew, becoming
louder, harder to ignore: hunger.

Aedan didn’t say anything, but he
stepped closer to Bradan’s chair, ready to intervene if needed. Of all the
threats he’d ever imagined he’d protect their dame from, his brother had never
been one of them.

CHAPTER SIX

Hunger

Bradan couldn’t remember ever
having so much trouble focusing on any one thing—especially not when Vivien was
in front of him. The hunger was part of it, ever present at the back of his
mind like Aedan had warned him, but there was more to his discomfort than the
need for blood.

He’d awakened mere moments
earlier, pulled from a dreamless sleep by the sudden flood of emotions surging
through the bond. For a wild, crazy moment, he had almost believed that Aedan
had been acting on his attraction to their dame. As Bradan threw on some
clothes and hurriedly followed the bond down to the library, he’d told himself
that of course that wasn’t what was happening. Of course Aedan wouldn’t reveal
his feelings to Vivien. Of course she wouldn’t return them if he did.

Of course.

And yet, when he’d found Aedan
kneeling at her feet and Vivien looking at him so intently, he’d felt no
surprise. Instead, the feeling that had started to rise inside him, the feeling
he’d tried to squash as soon as he’d become aware of it, was betrayal.

Whatever they were doing, whatever
they were talking about or planning, Bradan should have been there with them.
The fact that Aedan had not woken him up, that he’d gone to Vivien alone,
talked to her alone should not have been so uncomfortable… but there was no
denying that it was. And the fact that Aedan had now pulled back from the
conversation, leaving Bradan to answer Vivien’s questions, did not change that.

“No, I’ve never heard of anyone
using the Quickening like that.” He was tempted to ask Aedan if he had, but
felt somewhat reluctant to draw him back into the conversation and continued
instead. “I’m pretty sure you can trust that it’s accurate, but I don’t know
how much you’ll be able to use that trick. If it takes that much of a toll on
you, it might not be worth it.”

He couldn’t remember Vivien’s
expression ever being so grave before, not even when she’d lost Anabel. He
couldn’t remember ever wanting her more, either.

“Oh, yes, it is worth it,” she
protested. “If it stops another spy or murderer from setting foot in our home,
it’ll be more than worth it.”

Bradan didn’t know what touched
him the most: the way she said ‘our’ home, or the fire in her eyes as she
looked at him. Either way, it only made him want her more. If Aedan hadn’t been
there, Bradan would have claimed her mouth already. He’d have drawn her into
his arms and held her close, as close as he dared, until the pain she’d felt
when she thought she’d lost him was gone, its memory burned to cinders.

“Bradan. Are you hungry?”

The question startled Bradan
enough that his head jerked as though Aedan had slapped him. He stared at his
brother, forgetting to answer. Aedan had warned him he’d ask the question, and
ask it often, but he hadn’t said he’d ask in front of Vivien. It made him feel
like a child to be asked that now.

“Are you hungry?” Aedan repeated
in the same blank tone. His expression revealed nothing of what he thought.

“I’m fine,” Bradan said, turning
back to Vivien.

She was glancing back and forth
between Bradan and Aedan, a small frown furrowing her brow, a question
obviously on her mind although her next words weren’t about their exchange. The
pulse point on her neck seemed to beat to the sound of her voice.

“I want to question Elver, too.
I’m sure he’s loyal to me but—”

“I apologize, Dame Vivien,” Aedan
cut in. He’d stepped closer and gave her a small bow as he interrupted her, but
quickly returned his full attention to Bradan. “I didn’t ask you if you’re
fine. I asked if you are hungry. You
will
answer me.”

“Aedan!” Vivien exclaimed before
Bradan could formulate an answer even in his own mind. She stood, crossing her
arms over her chest. “Don’t you think this can wait?”

Aedan’s eyes did not lift from
Bradan.

“I apologize,” he said again.
“But, no, it can’t wait. If Bradan doesn’t learn to recognize his own hunger,
then I can’t allow him to be in your presence.”

She let out a snort.

“You can’t
allow
him? This
is ludicrous. You just don’t want us—”

“Vivien, he’s right.” Speaking
those words or thinking about leaving the room shouldn’t have been so hard, and
yet Bradan struggled with both. “I am hungry, yes.”

But it was more than that. Hunger
didn’t cover the depth of his need. It wasn’t just blood he wanted—craved. It
was all of Vivien. The silkiness of her skin under his fingertips. The warmth
of her under his body, around it. The passion that burned him with every kiss,
every caress, and—

“Get up.”

Aedan’s hand had closed over
Bradan’s bicep, and he tugged as he gave the order. Bradan stumbled to his feet
and let himself be dragged out of the room. If he didn’t go, he didn’t know
what he’d do to Vivien.

“What’s going on?” he heard Vivien
call after them. “Where are you going?”

Neither of them answered, and if
she’d been thinking of following them, Aedan closing the door behind them was a
clear warning not to.

“The armory,” Aedan said curtly,
releasing Bradan’s arm. “Now.”

Bradan walked ahead of him, his
hands fisted at his sides, his mind throbbing with hunger. He was hyperaware
that his brother walked behind him—remaining between him and Vivien as he had
before. If he was honest with himself, he was glad, even relieved. Sad that
Aedan didn’t trust him fully, but relieved because he didn’t quite trust
himself. Even now that he wasn’t in her presence anymore, his need for Vivien,
her blood or her body, still pulsed through him with every step.

Once they reached the armory,
Bradan sat down on one of the benches, expecting Aedan to berate him and warn
him again of the danger he was placing Vivien in. Aedan, however, did no such
thing. He closed the door behind him, and, turning to Bradan, rolled up his
shirt sleeve. He didn’t say a word as he approached Bradan and held out his
arm.

The bite wounds on his skin were
healed, and only red marks remained; they’d be gone in a few more hours—unless
Bradan continuously broke them open again.

“I can’t,” he murmured, looking up
from Aedan’s wrist to meet his eyes. “I can’t keep taking blood from you all
the time. You need it, too. I’ve got to control it, control myself until I can
go out and hunt.”

Aedan’s expression didn’t change,
remaining cool, almost blank, but the bond said something different. He was
angry. Terribly angry. Bradan dropped his gaze to the floor. There were two
things he hated to do: hurt Vivien, and disappoint his brother. He’d done the
latter already, how long until he did the former, too?

* * * *

Even knowing she was safe in the
castle, Aedan hated to leave Dame Vivien alone. It went against every instinct
he had as a bodyguard. However, allowing Bradan to remain near her when his
hunger roared as loudly as it did now seemed like an even worse idea.

With every step they took toward
the armory, Aedan could feel how hard it was for Bradan to leave her, and he
realized that he had underestimated the problem. It was one thing for Bradan to
hunger for human blood. Aedan had gone through the same process, and he felt he
could help Bradan to learn control. But that wasn’t the whole of it.

Bradan wanted more than her blood.
And while Aedan had thought it had been a bad idea for them to be intimate
before, now the implications were more than political. If they shared a bed
when Bradan could hardly distinguish his hunger for her body and his need for her
blood, how would he manage to take one without claiming the other?

Feeling troubled and, if he was
honest with himself, a little lost, Aedan could only be glad that Bradan was
too preoccupied by what was going on in his own mind to pick up on what had to
be filtering through the bond. The last thing they needed now was for Bradan to
doubt that Aedan knew what was best—the way he did when Aedan offered him his
wrist to feed from and he looked away.

“I can’t. I can’t keep taking
blood from you all the time. You need it, too. I’ve got to control it, control
myself until I can go out and hunt.”

He’d said the same thing the
previous night, and while Aedan could understand his need to gain ground on his
hunger, he also knew denying it was not the solution.

Sitting next to his brother on the
bench, Aedan clasped his hands in front of him to hold them steady.

“You keep forgetting I know what
it’s like. I know how you feel. I know how it starts slowly, how you can ignore
it at first, like a whisper at the back of your mind. I know it’s easy to tell
yourself you can keep ignoring it. I know that ignoring it feels like control.
And I also know what it feels like when the hunger strikes back, when it
uncoils all at once and hits you so hard that blood is all you can think of,
and when that happens, there is nothing, nothing at all you can do to gain back
that control you thought you had. If you never trust me about anything else,
you need to trust me at least on this one thing. You will learn control, I will
show you how, but it will take time, and trying to rush things will only put
our dame at risk. I know you don’t want that.”

“I don’t, but…”

Bradan’s feeble protest faded when
Aedan extended his arm toward him again. He took hold of Aedan’s wrist and
brought it up to his mouth. His eyes gleamed, then closed. The bite was
smoother than the previous night; this, at least, he was learning quickly. He
drank long, deep gulps, and Aedan watched his throat work and listened to the
hunger filtering through the bond. Little by little, with each mouthful of
blood, it faded until it was no louder than the wind whistling past the
castle’s walls.

When Bradan finally lifted his
mouth off Aedan’s wrist, he blinked several times, as though awakening from a
doze. He licked his lips clean, then frowned as he watched Aedan roll his
sleeve back down, covering the marks.

“You didn’t stop me,” he said, his
voice hoarse. “Why did you let me take so much?”

“Because you needed it,” Aedan
said evenly as he stood. “Because you need to instruct Dame Vivien on preparing
for the duel, and you can’t do that if all you can think about is your need for
her.”

Bradan looked up at him, his lips
pinched in a thin line. Aedan could feel uncertainty coming through the bond.

“What is it?” he asked.

Looking away, Bradan whispered,
“It’s not just her blood I crave. I mean… I desired her before, but not like
this, not like I’ll die if I don’t get to touch her. Is it always like this?”

At a loss as to what to answer,
Aedan remained silent for a few seconds. It wasn’t that he was too young to be
a Maker; he knew of other vampires who had made Bloodchildren when they were
younger than he was now. It was simply that things had been different, for him.
The woman he’d loved when he had awakened with this new hunger had been too far
out of his reach for it to ever be a problem, and besides his own Maker had
given him distractions.

“I don’t know,” he said, choking
on the words, when Bradan turned a questioning look toward him. “There was no
one I wanted the way you want her when I was first remade.”

“What about now?” Bradan insisted,
his eyes glinting like the edge of a sword. “When you are hungry for blood, do
you get hungry for Vivien, too?”

Aedan shook his head.

“I don’t think of her that way.”

Bradan’s expression made it clear
he didn’t believe him.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t want her
earlier. I could feel you even while I was asleep.”

Irritation—and maybe even
shame—turned Aedan’s back stiff.

“She was channeling at me. You
can’t expect me to—”

Raising a placating hand, Bradan
stood as well.

“I know,” he said. “I know what
it’s like to have her channel at you. But I also know how you feel about her. I
was just asking… You know what, it doesn’t matter. I know you’d never touch
her.”

But if he truly knew, why did a
note of challenge echo in his words as he finished?

“No,” Aedan said. “I wouldn’t. And
it might be best if you don’t either, or at least not until you learn the
difference between wanting to lie with her and wanting to feed from her.”

He started for the door, but paused
with his hand on the handle and looked back at Bradan.

“Please don’t make me order you,”
he murmured, and left the room before Bradan could reply.

* * * *

In front of Vivien, colored
ribbons of air wove into an intricate braid.

The ribbons came to life out of
nowhere about a foot above her head, and they splintered into a myriad of
colors before disappearing into nothing a foot above the floor.

It was one of the channeling
exercises Brad had taught her to help her develop her visualization skills. She
always started with two ribbons of different colors entwining together, then
added more ribbons, more colors, creating increasingly more complicated
patterns while trying to keep the colors straight in her mind.

The channeling didn’t take much
strength from her, certainly not as much as her lie-detector trick demanded,
but it required her mind to remain focused on what she was doing. At that
moment, the distraction was welcome. If she hadn’t kept her mind on what she
was doing, she’d have run out of the room and gone to find Brad and Aedan long
ago.

She still wasn’t sure what had
happened, why Aedan had interrupted her conversation with Brad before leading
him away, but she suspected it had to do with Brad being a vampire. Yesterday
Aedan’s focus had been on Brad eating—feeding, he called it—before anything
else, and again today he’d asked about his hunger. She still knew next to
nothing about vampires, and now that Brad was one, she needed to know more.