Page 148 of Blood Mosaic

“Does that mean I’m supposed to like the cold?” He walked to the right when they reached the landing and turned down a narrow hallway. “There is a room at a corner of the house that I wanted to show you.”

“What’s up here?” She glanced out the windows to see the forest spreading across the hills. “There are so many windows.” It would be a death trap during the day.

“Yes.” He reached a door and turned the knob, keeping her hand firmly in his grip. “I once thought that if I was human, I would have used this room as a studio because I imagine the morning light would be very beautiful. But since I cannot see the sun in here…”

“What did— Oh!” Tatyana stepped into the center of the room and froze, her mouth agape at the beauty surrounding her. “The sunflowers, Oleg.”

He released her hand and walked around the perimeter of the room, surveying an elaborate mosaic that covered the base of the walls, growing up between east-facing windows and reaching toward the ceiling.

The mosaic was a field of sunflowers that circled the room, and while the light from the stars was a pearl grey shining through the glass, Tatyana could imagine how it would look in the morning with the light glinting off the gold and orange flower heads that grew up the walls.

“It’s so beautiful.” She lifted a hand to touch it, then pulled back. “I don’t know if I can?—”

“You can touch.” Oleg ran his palm along the wall. “I completed this one fifty years or so after I bought the house. I think it turned out well.”

The room appeared like a floating meadow over the treetops. It was empty save for a single wooden chair propped in the corner.

“No one uses it?”

“Not right now,” he said. “Luana liked this room. She used to say that if she ever chose to die, she would come up to the room at dawn and wait for the sun.”

“And burn down the entire house with everyone else sleeping?”

“Possibly.” Oleg nodded. “That would be something she would do.”

“Morbid.”

“She would think of it as romantic.” Oleg nodded at Tatyana. “She could be a bit dramatic. She was a dancer when she was human. A prima ballerina.”

Interesting. Was that why Oleg was interested in her?

I used to braid my girlfriend’s hair. She had beautiful blond hair like you.

Tatyana wasn’t keen to let questions linger in her mind and twist her guts. Zara had mentioned Tatyana’s resemblance to her girlfriend, and now Oleg told her his dead mate had been a dancer.

She walked over and looked up into his cool grey eyes. “Do I remind you of Luana? Is that why you’re attracted to me?”

He smiled a little bit. “I cannot lie that I was struck by the similarities the first time I saw you, but other than your coloring, the resemblance is not actually very strong. Perhaps she came from the same place that your people did, a long time ago. You could be… cousins perhaps?”

“Does that mean you have a type?”

“My type is women.” Oleg lifted his hand and pulled a strand of her gold hair through his fingers. “And perhaps I am only seeing what I want to see. I don’t have photographs of Luana. Only a few sketches that I don’t look at anymore.”

Tatyana frowned. “Why no photographs? Can vampires not be photographed?”

“Another superstition, volchitsa. We simply don’t take photographs because they are permanent evidence of our immortality.”

Tatyana nodded slowly. “When you talk about her, she seems…” How did Tatyana phrase this without being offensive?

“Insane?” Oleg offered. “Mad?”

“Delicate maybe?”

Oleg smirked. “Delicate is a very kind way to describe her. Luana was very unstable, particularly toward the end of her life. I believe she was ill when her sire turned her, and that can happen sometimes. Turning a human who carries any kind of infection can sometimes produce a vampire who is not… balanced.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Oleg leaned against the wall. “Still, she was my mate. I tried to protect her and keep her happy.”

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