Page 50 of Midwinter Night's Prince

Seth slid a plate of food in front of Alexius. “The girl carries part of my soul.”

“You were always curious about her—she got under your skin when she reached your dreams,” Alexius said. “But let’s be real, back then you would have happily crushed her under your feet and played with the remains. You care now.”

Seth shrugged indifferently. “So I care. What’s the big deal?”

Alexius grinned wordlessly. Damn the smug asshole. He knew Seth better than most on the hill, because they were alike in many ways. They could each count on one hand the individuals they gave a damn about, for one. Seth had been raised to become a good leader to the Stormhales, and he’d see to the clan’s welfare. But there was something missing in him—the general empathy he should feel for people was muted at the best of times, usually entirely nonexistent.

Blair mattered though, more every day. He didn’t like it. Caring for anyone was always a gamble, but mortals were far too fragile to waste energy on.

He knew where those words came from. They weren’t truly his, though he’d readily adopted them.

Drusilla had drilled this fact into him since infancy, treating any human as worthless. To the Stormhale founder, mortals were, at best, food. Seth hadn’t been cruel or demeaning toward them. They simply hadn’t existed in his mind. Until Blair. She was strong, loyal, beautiful. A bright soul that would shine for as long as there was breath in her lungs.

That was the rub. For all that, she’d grow old and die eventually. The magic in her veins would make the process slower than a regular human’s decline, but she was declining all the same, while Seth could live until the end of time, and longer yet.

So, yeah, she mattered far too much for a butterfly doomed to die. He wasn’t going to give her more space in his mind. Not if he could help it.

“She’s human,” Seth said. “I won’t go there. I mean, she could be turned.”

Seth ignored the churning in his chest when he thought of that option.

Shecouldbe turned. She could live forever.

He dismissed the thought as soon as it entered his mind. The vampires that were made were far weaker than born vampires. Even if she consented to becoming one of them, there could be no future where she stood by his side. She’d be a vulnerability his enemies would exploit to get to him.

Fuck.

How the hell had he taken the leap from thinking about her as a vamp to seeing her next to him?

Because you want her there.

He hated Alexius in that moment. He’d been blissfully content ignoring what his mind had told him for weeks, months. Maybe for over a year.

“Seth…you realize you could die tomorrow, right? All of us could.”

That was true, but there was no denying that Blair was far more likely to die than him.

“Let me throw you a bone.” Alexius typed away on his phone for a moment, before showing Seth the screen.

A video was playing. A white background with moving circles of dark purple.

“What am I looking at?”

“I filmed her blood under the microscope, so she could understand what’s going on.”

His mind drifted back to the biology courses he’d taken. He vaguely remembered seeing blood cells a lifetime ago, in high school. That looked about right.

Suddenly the screen was filled with inky black.

“What’s going on?”

“That’s just a drop of poison. Keep looking.”

Seth did as he was told with no argument, for once.

His mouth fell open. The purple particles turned bright gold, pulsing, and the black background faded back to white.

“What’s going on?”

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