Page 7 of Dragon Slayer

“I was born in 1435,” he said when she asked him how old he was.

Mia paused with her coffee cup halfway to her lips. Her imagination was very specific, she’d give it that. “So…” she mused, doing the math in her head. “Five-hundred-eighty-three.” A staggering thought, even if it was a fictional one. He looked twenty-five at most. “So vampires really are immortal, I guess.”

“Quite.” He’d been sitting cross-legged, and kicked his legs out, leaning back on his hands.

Mia sat opposite, back braced against the sofa. She couldn’t help but notice that the velvet was back tonight, in all its intricate glory. “Is that what you were wearing when you…”Were captured, she left unsaid.

“Oh no.” He waved one long-fingered hand. A massive ruby ring on his middle finger seemed to catch the light. “I bargained this from a French aristocrat in 1802.” He gave her one of his sharp grins. “I just had to have it.”

“What kind of bargaining power does a prisoner have?”

His smile stretched, until it was all teeth. “He wanted immortality. I told him I’d turn him in exchange for his beautiful outfit.”

“And did you?”

“Of course not. I drained him dry and tried to escape.”

She glared at him. “You’re horrible.”

“And yet you’re the one sitting here talking to me. What does that make you?”

“Well, after that little murder confession, I’m thinking it makes me an accessory after the fact.”

He rolled his eyes and groaned. “Oh, you humans and your moral indignation.”

“Murder warrants some indignation.”

He huffed a sigh. “He was one of my jailors, and a horridly perverted one, too.”

She lifted a single brow.

“And we’re back to incarceration.”

“You won’t tell me what you were locked up for.”

“Hmm. No, I won’t.” He glanced away, pretending to inspect the blank TV screen, but Mia could see the downward quirk at the corner of his mouth.

Who’d ever heard of a self-indulgent hallucination who pouted? He acted the age that he looked, not the age he actually was.

“1435,” she said, because he was too beautiful to frown. “I’m not much of a historian. Did you live in a castle?”

He brightened a fraction, turning back to her. “Yes, the palace at Tîrgoviste. I don’t really remember anything fromSighi?oara, before. Mother always said it was very provincial. But Tîrgoviste was lovely. Father had just been confirmed as Prince of Wallachia, and the city was always teeming. My brothers – Mircea and Vlad, both older – were training to be knights. Mircea was the eldest, and he was being groomed as Father’s heir, you know. Vlad wanted to be a military man.” He chuckled. “He was martial from birth, I think.”

Vlad. The named pinged something in her memory banks.

She wasn’t a historian, no, too busy with juggling her riding dreams alongside first high school, then her tumor, then her recovery, then college. She’d majored in communications, intent on using the degree to manage the riding school she wanted to some day run. And though she loved to read, she didn’t force herself toward educational tomes; she read novels, to unwind, to slip into the skins of women with daring, dangerous, wondrous lives.

But she’d always loved vampire novels.

Romania. Prince. Vampire.Vlad.

“…I had this pony,” Val was saying, but trailed off, brows pinching together, when he saw her face. “What?”

Mia’s next breath rattled a little in her throat; a shiver moved beneath her skin as she pushed to her feet and walked across the room to the bookshelf. She ran a fingertip along the spines, searching, chantingno way, no way, nowayin her head.

“What?” Val repeated. “Is something wrong?” He sounded worried.

“Your brother…Vlad…” Most of her collection consisted of secondhand paperbacks, but she had a whole shelf dedicated to the titles she loved so much she’d bought them in hardback collectors’ editions. She found the one she wanted and pulled it out, turning the cover toward Val with shaking hands. “Your brother Vlad, as in this guy?”

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