Page 54 of Zel
“I had no intention of bedding you either. For different reasons initially, but because of who you truly are and what I have seen of your healing heart, I want you all on my own. Please, Ulrich.” Zel took Ulrich’s blackened hand with his left and reached with his right to cup the curve of Ulrich’s cheek. “Make me immortal like you planned but stay immortal with me.”
“Do not ask this of me, Zel. The last companions who trusted me regretted it. Even if my old apprentice does not, one can hardly consider it an improvement when you now call her theevilQueen.”
“You… you mean your apprentice was the Queen?” Zel gaped.
Ulrich took Zel’s hand from his face to hold both between them again. “How did you think she came into power? I gave it to her, but not before molding her into the perfect, terrible replacement. She had to be worthy, and back then I believed that meant she needed to be willing to step over anyone and everyoneshe cared for, even her own family, to maintain the power I taught her to wield. You say I did not mold you, but I did mold her, and you and others have suffered for it and continue to even now.”
The admission made Zel hesitate, but stubborn youth that he was, his resolve returned. “Neither a guardian nor a mentor is responsible for their charge’s choices.”
“An easy excuse—”
“You eventually left that life and chose to be better.”
“Zel. I am getting rather tired of you interrupting me.”
Zel wisely snapped his mouth shut.
“Thank you.” Holding Zel’s soft, deceptively delicate hands did not make it easy to keep denying him. “You think I live a better life than when I was a tyrant? Devouring souls in the wood and luring unsuspecting beauties into my bed?”
Zel waited a moment before responding, as if to be certain he would not interrupt Ulrich again. “I was not unsuspecting. I asked to be taken to bed. And the souls you devour now know the risks of entering the wood and crossing onto your land. We are what molds us, but we can choose to break free of the cycle without choosing death for ourselves. Can’t we?”
“That was not the plan.”
“It wasn’t mine either. But one does not plan when or with whom one falls in love.”
Ulrich was too stunned to speak. His instincts, his experience, all he had come to know of Zel, told him those words were earnest. Ulrich had heard them before but from fanatics who worshipped him or those willing to say anything to earn his favor even if they actually loathed him. He couldn’t say whether he had ever heard words of love spoken with heartfelt meaning, other than by his mother and the friends he had eventually killed.
It was Ulrich who reached for Zel’s cheeks then, cradling his face. Against all sense that he should pull away now more than ever, he began to lean down.
Ulrich snapped back from the kiss he had been about to offer.
“What is it?” Zel asked.
“Trespassers. I can sense them on the grounds.” Ulrich’s connection to the tower and the land surrounding it made unexpected footfalls upon his property feel like someone walking over his grave, causing little pinpricks and tingles down his spine. “And judging by the strength of the feeling, there are several.”
He waved a hand, and he and Zel were both dressed, with Zel’s hair neatly braided, much as Ulrich hated giving up their routine of him brushing it first.
They had uninvited guests.
“You included my dagger, I hope.” Zel reached under his skirt to confirm its presence—a single layered skirt, one of Zel’s outfits he had made with the loom, complete with breeches and lacking a corset as he preferred.
“It is your choice if you wish to join me,” Ulrich said, “but I assumed you would want to.”
“Now and forever.” Zel brandished the dagger. “I do not like being interrupted either, and we aren’t done talking.”
“I supposed we are not.” Ulrich led the way out of the chamber into the main room where no trespassers had yet reached. “You are skilled, Zel, and much magic protects you, but you are not yet immortal.”
“Yet,” Zel repeated. “I will be careful.” He lifted onto his toes to kiss the side of Ulrich’s mouth. Then he charged for the stairwell, while Ulrich went to the window and leapt onto its sill.
When Zel realized he was not being followed, he looked back at Ulrich with a snort.
“You don’t even need stairs, do you?”
“Not when I need to be swift.” Ulrich dove from the window, descending to the garden like a bird of prey.
A gasp at his left when he landed alerted him to his first meal of the morn.
The attacker hesitated to strike a blow, leaving Ulrich an opening to lash out first. A fatal mistake. Ulrich had him by the throat, weapons dropped and mask down to suck out his soul in mere moments. As Ulrich finished the husk, he felt a tickle at his back.
