Damien (14 page)

But at least they did not cause harm to one another. They were both clearly thriving and robustly happy. Such a thing was clearly not possible between Damien and Syreena. It had been foolish of her to even attempt to think otherwise. More foolish of him, considering he had already been aware of the painful ramifications of playing with that fire.

Syreena made a frustrated sound and stopped to lean back against a cool wall for support as she rubbed at the ache in her temples. No matter what she did, she could not stop herself from thinking circles around this issue. Why could she not convince herself that this was simply the end of a string of bad choices? Why, in spite of everything, did she still have this overwhelming craving to seek him out?

Footsteps approached her and she quickly resumed her walk. She passed a pair of Monks and they nodded to her in polite acknowledgment. She nodded back, using great mental effort to not cover the bare patches along her ragged hairline when their eyes fell onto it. She wished she could tolerate wearing a shawl or scarf over it to guard herself from such observation. But where all Lycanthropes balked at confining their hair in any manner, she found she was even more repelled by it than before.

It would take years before it became unnoticeable again. And it would never all match in length again. There was an ironic humor involved in it as well. Until her hair reached a certain length again, the dolphin would be forced to lie dormant within her. It was almost as if she were being cosmically punished for her resentment of her two halves. Now that it was out of reach, she suddenly wanted it back with all of her heart.

The Princess self-consciously reached to comb fingers through her soft brown hair, arranging it to cover the bare places. The effort was obvious, considering the even part that was normally there, but it was better to look like a zebra than a victim. At least there were those who naturally had striped hair color in their society. Those who did not know her would not look twice at it.

Unfortunately for the Princess, there were few people who did not know her.

Still, it was better than nothing.

The Vampire Prince was brooding again.

Jasmine sighed softly as she spied on him from the balcony of the mansion. The turn of the tables was unnerving.
She
was supposed to be the moody one. However, she did not have that luxury any longer. She was too overcome with concern for Damien.

He was walking the darkened gardens sprawled out just below her, heading toward the cliffside where he would no doubt spend another collection of endless hours staring out at the Pacific Ocean.

Jasmine assumed it was toward Russia which he looked.

She did not assume this because he had confided in her about anything that had occurred. She had been left to her own devices of deductive reasoning on that matter.

The Princess could possibly manage to hide the truth of things from her sister and their people with tricks of hair and jewelry, but a Vampire could not be fooled in such ways. The bite of a Vampire was something like an animal rubbing up against a tree, a marking that outlined territory and pronounced the power of the beast within its borders.

A Vampire could always sense when another had been before it. Since they were so territorial by nature, that was how they managed to keep from treading upon each other’s toes.

So anyone who crossed close enough to the Lycanthrope Princess would know that Damien had been there before them.

Besides that divination, Jasmine had been quite shaken by the simple sight of them sleeping together in the Mistrals’ home. Damien went to bed with his women, but he did not sleep with them. She imagined it was because he did not trust any of them as far as he could throw them. Or perhaps it was because the intimacy of it was too potentially misleading. Damien did not like for his enjoyments to form attachments to him. He preferred to keep that in accord with his own wishes. Infatuated females were too much work and headache if he did not want them to be infatuated with him.

It had taken four years for him to show any affection for Jasmine, though she had been aware of it long before the expression of it. Even now, it was a part of how they functioned that she would always protest any need of him. Neediness was unattractive to Damien. In truth, while they were deeply friendly and caring of each other, she did not need him in any overtaxing way. She certainly did not claim a dependency on him. They had never been lovers, though she had contemplated it once. She had decided long ago that she would rather have his unending interest in friendship rather than his passing fancy in bed. Jasmine believed this was what had kept them side by side through the centuries.

Damien was also not forthcoming about what effect his little marking of the Princess had had upon himself. Jasmine knew, however, that there had very much been an effect. This knowledge was what had prompted her to send all the others who shared their home, friends and servants alike, away to another of Damien’s households for the time being. She had conjured up an excuse about diplomatic obligations and traveling, something they were used to. Whatever happened, the others must never be made aware of any changes in Damien. Change was often viewed as a sign of weakness in their society. Weakness, even among friends, had a way of causing huge amounts of trouble and danger.

They would quickly be able to sense what she had sensed about Damien, that there was indeed a difference. The Prince could not have been ignorant of it, either. It was impossible. If she could sense the differences in him, then he could feel them in himself. However, there was no way she could get a true sense of the nature of the change so long as Damien was actively blocking her. Only his invitation would allow her evaluation of what alterations there had been.

It was all too disturbing. Which was why, she supposed, the Prince kept sitting at the edge of a cliff looking toward impossible things night after night.

Jasmine was as silent as the grave she purportedly slept in. If a single whisper of these events got out, it would be like blood in the water. Ambitious Vampires would be sniffing at Damien’s heels in search of his crown, seeing all of this as a weakness to be exploited.

Part of Jasmine wanted to go out and see to it that all who knew of it remained just as silent. Permanently. Anything to protect him, as he had always protected her. But considering who the parties were, she would end up setting everyone involved at war, more or less.

Besides, Damien would probably frown on the indiscriminate assassination of heads of various Nightwalker provinces.

Oh well.

Jasmine was not a very patient creature. It was probably why she so easily grew weary of the world around her. She stretched out her arms and rose up into the air, the breeze fluttering through her long, loose hair. She could smell the salt of the ocean on the wind, even though they were set back a distance from the water. She skimmed the treetops in a position perpendicular to the ground, following in Damien’s wake, the tips of her booted feet smacking an errant leaf here and there as she went. Her ankles were crossed, a preferred position when she flew that made for less wind resistance and effort against her legs.

She set down on the gravel path with a gliding walk that made an obvious crunch. Damien had already taken his seat on the stone bench just steps from the edge of the cliff.

He turned at the sound of her feet.

Damien had been expecting the confrontation eventually. He knew Jasmine was not the sort to beat about the bush when she had issues to discuss. “Jasmine, why can you not just let it be?”

“Very well. If you will stop mooning about the manse, I will not ask a single question.”

“I do not moon about,” he said shortly, turning back to the dark sounds of the ocean tides.

“Moon, mope, melancholy, pout…call it what you will, but you are most certainly doing so. Do not think you will pull the wool about me, Damien. I know you too well.”

“And not at all,” he said sharply.

“Yes. Even after five centuries. Although I do know enough to know that this behavior of yours could lead you to risk everything important to you.”

“Perhaps what I viewed as important before is not now.”

Jasmine was certain that had she a heartbeat, it would have skipped in tempo just then. This was beyond mere moodiness, she realized. It was not like Damien to question his goals and his rather steady ideas of what he wanted from the world.

She moved to his side, sitting on the cold bench and leaning into the warmth of his body as she often did when they spoke of serious matters.

“Damien, I am your best friend. Why will you not tell me what is hurting you so?”

Damien turned his head to look at her as she rested her chin on his shoulder. Jasmine rarely pulled this particular ace on him. Professing her understanding that she meant so much to him was something spared for cataclysmic events. For the first time, he saw himself as she must be seeing him. Altered. Forever changed. A stranger she did not know and was afraid of meaning nothing to. This was how she expressed her love for him, and he immediately regretted pushing her to it.

He reached around her shoulders to hug her close to himself. “Do you remember 1562?” he asked her, whispering his words softly into her hair.

“The French uprising?”

“Before that.”

“Ah. The freckled queen of England.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It was just before I found out she had contracted smallpox.” He smiled against the silky strands of midnight pressed to his lips. “It was the last time we were all together.”

“Simone, Racine, Lind, Jessica…”

“Dawn,” he added.

“Silly chit. Getting herself killed on a French battlefield, of all things. Turning a feast into a funeral.”

“It was a mistake. We all make them. Unfortunately for Dawn, hers was a fatal one. If you recall, we had a rash of mortal mistakes within that group over the next century.” He released a melancholy sigh, reaching to rub at the spot between his brows, as if he had a headache. “Anyway, I had turned her away that night in England. I always thought there would be time.”

“Damien, she warmed your bed, not your heart.”

“No. I know. But she is the example of all those I always thought I would get back to later, yet never again had an opportunity to.”

“Why are you talking of this now?”

“Because there is something I need to get back to. Not tomorrow, not a week from now. This very instant.”

“You mean the Lycanthrope Princess, I take it,” she said softly, not believing what she was hearing. “Damien, she means nothing to you.”

“Are you so certain of that?”

Jasmine lifted her head to look into his eyes with surprise.

“I am no longer certain of anything about you anymore, I am discovering. Who is she to you? Just tell me what happened. I want to understand. I cannot support you if I do not understand. And believe me, if you are thinking what I think you are, you are going to need my support.”

Damien paused for several beats, the fingers of the hand around her back stroking against her shoulder absently as he reconciled his thoughts for her.

“Do you know why we do not wed for life, Jasmine?”

The question seemed out of left field, but she played along. “Because we need variety too much. Because we do not believe in silly old practices of that kind like Demons and Lycanthropes do.”

“Or because we do not do what we need to in order to find that type of partner.”

“I do not understand you,” she confessed.

“I am the longest-lived member of our species, Jas. In all that time, I have never seen a Vampire fall in love, wed, or mate for life. I think I have figured out why.”

“Damien…”

“Because we do not feed from Nightwalkers.”

She laughed out loud. “I do not understand what that has to do with—”

“Perhaps,” he interrupted her, “we will find something about it in the Library. The Library goes much further back in joint Nightwalker history than even we have conceived of. Perhaps it will know the truth about why we forbid ourselves to drink the blood of Nightwalkers. Think about it, Jas. Think of how we are, of all that is missing. Why don’t you love me, for instance?”

“Damien, that is a ridiculous question.”

“Is it? We have known each other all of your life. You became a part of my household five hundred years ago. We are very likely the two closest Vampires on this planet. I have never met anyone with our friendship, our companionability, in our culture. So, though we have lived side by side and, as you pointed out, been the best of friends, why did love not follow? I mean outside of my clear regard for you.”

“Because love does not work in such ways,” she reasoned.

“Then how does it work, Jasmine? Have you ever been in love? How can every other intangible feeling and state of being that exists for every other species, Nightwalker and human, exist for us, except love? And do not tell me love does not exist, because I have seen proof with my own eyes that it does.” He reached for her chin and made sure she met his gaze as it bored into her. “Do you know any Vampire capable of being in love?”

“No, Damien. We are too selfish for—”

“How convenient we make that excuse,” he argued irritably. “What a pat little rationale for walking away from those grapes we cannot reach. Even humans, who think they are in love and change their perception of it later on,
thought
they were in it. We never even mistake it. We simply say we are not cut out for it.” He shook his head. “You said just a moment ago that I never loved Dawn. As if, were it someone else, you thought it was possible. Yet now you say it is not possible. Which is it?”

“You are confusing me, Damien, and talking yourself in circles. Are you trying to justify your desire to go back to the shapechanger?”

“If it were just desire, I could ignore it, you know that. It is obsession. I think of nothing else. I want for nothing else. My mind repeats certain incidents I shared with her over and over again.”

“That sounds like infatuation.”

“A convenient adjective those who are afraid to feel with this kind of passion use to justify themselves and their behaviors!” Damien could not sit a minute longer. He stood up and paced away from Jasmine before turning back. “But I have felt infatuation. I know what it is. It is not what this is.”