Page 1 of The Pureblood Princess
Chapter One
The smell of salt andseaweed permeates the crisp breeze as it pushes Nadia’s dark hair back from her cheeks. Overhead, the clouds are full and slate gray, obscuring the early-morning sun and promising an afternoon rain. Nadia takes a deep breath of the ocean air, lets it fill her lungs and swim through her veins, and wonders if perhaps she was always meant to live by the sea, always meant to breathe fresh air rather than that soiled by too many people and not enough solitude. Though she felt something akin to this at her adoptive parents’ country home, this land and its beauties are something entirely foreign.
At her right, the ocean hisses, kissing the shore and the hooves of her dapple-gray mare, Octavia. Even she has found a home here among the horses and ponies who weather the winter months in the shire of Graystone, one of many shires within Lord Niccolò Rosetti’s grand earldom.
Nadia glances back over her left shoulder, and a short distance down the pebbled beach, a dark figure rides toward her on a black horse. Far above the figure’s head, swooping smoothly through the gray sky, is a fluffy white owl, and the sight of her makes Nadia smile.
“Faster,” she whispers to Octavia, then leans forward and squints against the stinging air.
Octavia gallops down the beach, her hooves leaving perfect sandy impressions that will soon be swept away by the tide. Her body is warm and strong, all lithe muscle and elegant curves—a thing of genuine beauty. The wind plays through her creamy silver mane, and Nadia curls her fingers into it, holding tight with her thighs as they race down the sandy stretch of shore.
Here, in Graystone, the people are nothing like those in high society. Instead of worrying about party invitations and staying in the height of fashion, the villagers tend to their crops and care for their animals, and their humble deportment put Nadia at ease as soon as she stepped out of the carriage with the Rosettis. Now, galloping bareback down the beach, the wind in her hair and her feet deliciously unclad, Nadia feels freedom the likes of which she’s only scarcely tasted before.
Octavia slows to a trot to traverse a littering of boulders marring the beach, then turns away from the ocean and moves through the swaying beach grass and into the line of pines bordering the seashore. The hiss of the ocean tide is quieter here, muffled by the coastal greenery, and Nadia tips her head back to marvel at the trees stretching a hundred feet above her head. This is old land,wildland, and it whispers to her heart, calling her back to something she’s supposed to know but has long forgotten.
Behind her, hoofbeats pad across the earth, and a moment later, Viscount Theodore Rosetti rides up beside her. He’s wearing a dark overcoat and breeches, the cravat at his neck a bright white, and his green eyes are alive and sparkling beneath his windblown curls.
“Caught you,” he says, bringing his majestic black Friesian, Castro, nearer to Octavia so he can lean over and press a kiss to Nadia’s temple.
“You did no such thing,” she responds, casting him a playful side-eye. “We slowed to appreciate the wilderness. Had we not,you would’ve trailed us all the way back to the estate. Isn’t that right, Octavia?”
Octavia snorts and nips at the gelding walking beside her, making Nadia laugh.
“As I said, Octavia would never yield.”
“Perhaps Octavia wouldn’t,” the viscount says, ducking his head beneath a low-hanging bough, “but I rather think you might.”
Before Nadia can oppose his statement, Theodore is out of his saddle and reaching up for her, his hands strong and warm around her waist.
She’s still not quite gotten used to the speed at which he can move, nor has she yet managed it herself. Moving at a human pace all these years, it feels almost unnatural to tap into the innate speed and strength that her blood—vampirblood—gifts her.
Unable to resist the temptation in his verdant eyes, she leans forward, slipping from Octavia’s back and into the viscount’s arms. He lowers her bare feet slowly to the ground, where the rich earth and moss create a spongy sensation underfoot.
“You think it so easy to best me, do you?” she asks, hands on his shoulders and blue eyes glaring up at him sharply.
“I do, in fact.”
“Then you must prove it.”
“Very well.” His smile is mischievous, and she knows from the look in his eyes what he’s going to do.
With a squeal, she whirls away from him and runs off into the trees. He lets her go in the same way an elder brother may give his sibling a head start in a foot race. That alone—his certainty and surety—gives Nadia reason to run even harder.
Nadia lifts her long skirt, hiking it up past her knees so that she may leap over a gnarled log, and then her feet kiss the earthagain, and she’s sprinting through the trees, ducking this way and that, hoping this time she may outrun him.
For a moment, all she hears is her own breathing, the swish of fabric as she glides through the forest, the skittering of small animals in the undergrowth.
“Miss Magdalena,” he calls out, his voice drifting sinuously through the trees.
She glances over her shoulder and doesn’t see him. But the moment she turns back around, there’s a soft sound behind her, a whisper of air, and then his lips brush her ear.
“You must do better than that,iubit.”
She gasps, and then his fingers are at her ribs, catching her, tickling her until she can scarcely breathe. She tosses her head back, and her laughter is easy, carefree. Here, only the sea and the trees can hear it. There’s no one to tell her to mind her manners or smile just so or to leave a small bite of dessert on her plate since she’s a lady. Here, she’s free.
“Do you yield?” Theodore asks, his fingers continuing their infuriatingly ticklish dance over her belly as she squirms, trying to escape his hold.
“I yield! I yield!” she says at long last, when she can no longer sustain his onslaught.
