Page 51 of Zel
“Zel?” Ulrich questioned when Zel stopped reciprocating and tensed in his hold.
“It’s nothing.”
Ulrich frowned.
“Nothing I want to think about until I am more awake. I am still buzzing from last night and basking in the memory of your touch.”
“Is that your way of saying you are too sore for another round this morn?”
“Ask me after breakfast.”
Now it was Ulrich who laughed. “Breakfast in bed it is.” He chastely kissed Zel’s lips. “Unless of course you’d rather—”
“Breakfast in bed sounds wonderful. With coffee?”
“It is my pleasure to serve.” Ulrich kissed him again before rising. He was naked as he crossed the room, striking in his powerful, otherworldly figure. His blackened arm with its painfully glowing veins while out of contact with Zel’s hair didn’t mar a single bit of him. Zel still wished it would stay healed,since it caused Ulrich so much pain, but he liked the feeling of claws across his skin.
As Ulrich conducted with his hands a few paces away, summoning a cart on wheels and all the trimmings of a hearty breakfast, including steaming coffee, he also manifested a robe to cover himself. Zel mourned the loss of the view, but Ulrich was still sensuous looking with the robe parted down to his navel. When he moved, rolling the cart toward Zel’s side of the bed, his bare legs peeked through too.
“Does this please you, Zel?”
“Delicious looking.” Zel eyed not the food yet, but Ulrich.
“You can taste more of me whenever you wish.” Ulrich bent for another kiss.
Norapunzelwas ever served with breakfast, but as Zel began to eat and enjoy his coffee, with Ulrich having pulled over a chair to sit opposite him at the cart and partake as well, he kept thinking about the lettuce. He ate it every evening and had done so all his life. Because Ulrich had wanted him healthy, robust, ripe with natural-born magic.
Natural-born magic…
Zel no longer feared Ulrich meant to consume his soul, but that phrase plagued him, and his appetite began to wane. Only someone with natural-born magic, like Zel, possessed what was necessary to drain Ulrich of his magic and leave him vulnerable enough to…
Zel set down the bite of bread he had been about to take.
“Is everything all right?” Ulrich asked.
“You said someone born of magic could drain yours the way you drain souls.”
“I did say that.” Ulrich set his next bite of food down too. “There are few ways such a thing could be done. Technically, someone not born of magic could accomplish the same, but itwould take far longer for them to amass the amount of power necessary. The latter was how I became immortal to begin with.”
“By amassing enough power to drain someone else?”
“In part. In my case there was more to the exchange.” He waved at Zel with a curl of his blackened fingers and then spread them wide to show the bisected circle carved into his palm. “With continuous blood sacrifice, this symbol can grant long life, but long-lived is not the same as immortal.”
Lothar. Now Zel remembered. Lothar bore the same symbol on one of his rings!
“For eternal life, a larger sacrifice must be made, and it must be willingly given.”
“Willingly? Someone let you drain them?”
“No.” Ulrich grinned. “Hence the curse. It would have consumed my entire body after forcibly draining someone. To keep the curse contained, I had to drain all of my closest and most powerful companions. My friends. It had to be them, for no one else was near enough to me in magical strength. It is unlikely anyone but someone as powerful as I was could have consumed enough souls or so quickly as to outrun the curse. Even I almost failed, but I was determined.”
Zel recalled that the orphans who had remained with Ulrich the longest and who’d seemed the most corrupted over time had eventually vanished from the scenes of his past, and by the end, Ulrich had stood alone.
“For a long time, I felt no loss for betraying my friends, no regret,” Ulrich continued. “The last I consumed, a man gifted in shadow magic, used to say, ‘What’s one more life if it’s worth taking?’ I said the same to him when I killed him, and he smiled before I took his soul. We had all grown cold and cruel by then. Only the physical pain of my curse prevented the numbness from overtaking me as the centuries passed. To drain my powernow would require someone of equal strength, or someone born with magic, curated for many winters to expedite its growth.”
“With lettuce from your own garden,” Zel confirmed. “You weren’t surprised nor upset to find my dagger or to discover me having dispatched that awful man last night, because as you admitted, you knew exactly why I came here.”
“I should hope so.” Ulrich held Zel’s stare without blinking.
