Page 107 of Mama Si's Paradise

Pulling down the fall board, I ran my fingertips over the polished wood for a moment.

“That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Valentine said.

“Lacrimosa,” I said with a small smile. “A section of Mozart’s Requiem. His last composition, in fact—he died before he finished it completely.” And I often thought that’s why it resonated with me so much. I’d always felt…unfinished,too.

What a silly thought.

And Valentine said, “I meant your heartbeat while you played it.”

I also laughed. “You’re pretty obsessed with heartbeats. Is that your fetish or something?” I said, more bitterly than I intended.

He smiled and I only saw it from the corner of my eye. “I’m not obsessed with heartbeats. I’m just becomingobsessed with yours,” he said.

Shaking my head, I turned to him. “Do you hear everyone else’s heartbeats?”

He nodded. “Yes. My ears can pick up the smallest sounds when I focus. Heartbeats are easy because they appeal to the part of me that survives through the blood hearts pump.”

Shivers washed down my back. “What’sthatlike? Are you…are you always hungry? Do you only feed on blood? What happens if you don’t?”

He looked a bit taken off guard by my sudden questions, but he answered me anyway. “It’s all I know. I was born like this, and no, I’m not always hungry. I can go weeks without feeding on blood, and longer without food. I don’t need much of it to sustain me,” he said, curiously looking at me, waiting for a reaction. I didn’t give him any. “If I don’t drink blood when I start to get hungry, I get hungrier faster, and when I’m starving, I lose the rational part of my mind completely. I become what this”—he pointed a finger at his face and moved it around with a small mischievous grin—“conceals so well.”

Goose bumps on my forearms, and he looked down at them covered by the leather jacket, as if heheardthem.

“And how do you feed?”

His grin grew. “Animals. We have laws in the Whispering Woods. The Evernights do not take from our people, only from animals, until their brides willingly offer them their life force.”

Suddenly I was back in the dining room with Vera and Lucinda and Cynthia, and they were telling me all about how it wasa privilegeto let a damn vampire feed off their neck.

“The women told me about your brothers. About how this whole thing really works,” I said, trying not to let the sudden fear show on my face.

“Half-brothers,” he then said. “We all have different mothers.”

“I see.” And I wanted to ask him where their mothers were, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate such a personal question.

“It’s very difficult for vampires to conceive. My father has sired the most children in the history of this Court—most only sire one, two the most.”

“Is he alive?”

“No—Grey killed him about eleven years ago.”

I gasped. “Grey—as in your half-brother?” It washim—the one with the grey eyes. The dragon rider who’d been watching me from his dragon’s back in the rainstorm in the morning.

My stomach twisted and turned a million times at the memory.

“Don’t be so surprised, Sunshine. It’s the way of the vampires. We kill our fathers long before their time comes. It’s a power play, the way of nature.”

I shook my head, “It really isn’t.” There was no way in any hell I’d believe that it wasnaturalto kill one’s parent.

“It is in the Whispering Woods.” And Valentine didn’t seem too happy about it. “That—and also Grey is…dangerous. More dangerous than most. Be careful around him when you can.”

I practically saw Grey watching me through my window in my mind’s eye.Fuck.If someone like Valentine considered somethingdangerous,how big of a monster could Grey Evernight really be? Was he reallya gentle giant,like Cynthia said?

Yeah, I really didn’t want to know right now.

“You said you’re not immortal,” I said instead, if only to distract myself from the image of those light eyes.

“No, but our lifespan in normal circumstances is about two hundred years. Of course, very few Evernights have actually managed to live that long, but it’s possible. We do age, just very slowly. All Enchanted age and die. Only sirens are immortal,” he explained.

---