Page 211 of Disillusioned
A primal fear struck her.
“Don’t even think about it.” Yanna whipped her head toward Lilac so fast, the last of her hair flew out of its braid. Her hand tightened around Lilac’s wrist, nails digging into her in panic. “Are you delusional? With him looking and—and speaking likethat? After everything he just said? The tongue of the devil, mouth of a hell hound on him.” Yanna shuddered. “Last night at the feast, I’d understand. Right now, he looks like a demon who crawled out of hell after devouring everyone there. You’re not going anywherenearhim.”
Yanna wasn’t wrong.
Garin’s hair was a nest of branch and leaf, the leftover ribbons of his shirt singed all the way off after Myrddin had shocked him. His already-large ears, she hadn’t noticed before, tapered into little points, the tips sticking out from his jet black waves. His muscles coiled under the layers of dried blood leaking from the glistening, gaping hole in his arm as he tensed, grinding his sharpened teeth against the pain. The tip of his nose to his chin was stained in the burgundy he’d gulped down from Yanna and Myrddin—fangs covered in the tar-like bile he continued to vomit.
If he never looked more a vampire at the brothel, then he was monstrous tonight.
She’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
Indeed, deluded Lilac would remain if it was her flesh that sated him, her voice that soothed him. Her blood that drew him like a beast desperate to lap at her beckoning tide.
“Your sister is right. He needs your blood, but he musn’t access it freely. He is momentarily too volatile for that.”
The wind picked up, ruffling their hair. Lilac reached up to pick a bramble from her mess of frazzled blonde hair. The eve was mild, but Lilac had spent the most of it trembling. She didn’t now, with her hand in Yanna’s. She thought of Isobel, and Piper.
She and Isobel were older—sixyearsolder than Lilac. Her mother had been young, maybe only two or three years Lilac’s senior when she’d birthed her.
“Did you know?” Lilac’s voice cracked, unable to mask the heaviness of the night.
Yanna’s laugh was scornful. “You think we’ve come to you on purpose. You think we’ve come to beg for status. For safety.”
“You would nothaveto beg. You have been immediately elevated to my court.” She almost broke a smile at the look of disbelief on Yanna’s ruddy face. “When I’d mentioned it before, it was an offer.” Lilac nodded at Gwendal, who was still unmoving. “Now it is an order.”
“I don’t believe it,” was all Yanna said in response, her expression growing dubious and cold once more. “We are not Marguerite’s daughters. Our mother is a stranger unto us. The same with our father. It’s always been me and Izzy. Just us, and only us. That’s the way it was meant to be.”
“Whether it is true or not, my request remains. You, Isobel, and Piper. My friends, Lorietta, and Adelaide, at The Fenfoss Inn. Even him.” She looked to Myrddin. “We were meant to find each other.”
Myrddin was silent. He hadn’t shown an once of surprise upon Garin’s revelation; if he felt any at all, it did not show.
“Did you?” Lilac asked him, knowing he’d immediately understand her question. He was a fortuneteller, bound by the truth.
“I have an eye for many an occurrence, both large and small. Sun and moon, reconciliation and reckoning. But I cannot see into the past. What Ido know, is that you are correct in that regard, Your Majesty. You and Mademoiselle—” He glanced questioningly at Yanna.
“Galvan.”
“You and Miss Galvan were destined to find each other, as is true with many special friendships. Piper is lovely, but it will be helpful to surround yourselves with those not unaffected by Garin’s arcana.” Myrddin picked a patch of dried blood out of his beard. “Regarding your thrall bond, you might find your penchant for unfettered obstinance an unexpected boon.”
“He seems to be worsening,” Lilac whispered, as if Garin wouldn’t be able to hear her. She wasn’t sure the vampire bothered paying attention, with all the retching he was doing. “Nothing’s a match for Garin’s will.”
“Not with his deepening hunger, as you’ve seen, no,” agreed Myrddin grimly. “But with the way your body reacts to magic, either absorbing or deflecting it entirely as we’ve seen with theGuàidisillusionment charm, I’d be intrigued to see what happens when your gall meets any other form of arcane resistance against him.” His brow arched, almost as if the thought amused him. “Tonight you’ll find Garin’s powers, usually dormant outside of your thrall bond or any active entrancement, more violent in their effects.”
“Is that why he looks like that?” Yanna asked.
“Yes. He’s taken the form of one of the ancients. A Strigoi.”
“Strigoi,” Lilac repeated, letting it roll off her tongue. Myrddin hadn’t seemed shocked by this, either. “Did you know this would happen when you sent me to enthrall myself to him?”
“I did not anticipate it, no.” Myrddin pursed his lips, studying Garin—the animalistic way he was sprawled, arms out, expelling the last of the tar-like blood from his stomach. “It is a possibility, when regnants are kept from their thralls. Forced to abstain from their bodies and blood for an extended amount of time, they turn into walking ghouls. More like the undead. Stronger. Hungrier. More swollen.”
“Garin’s not swollen,” Lilac managed, horrified.
“I did not saywhere.”
“But I haven’t fed him or—or done any of that since the night at The Fool's Folly.” She was incredibly red, her chest flushing. “But that was mere days ago.”
“What do you mean? You sucked his cock this morning in your closet,” added Yanna, throwing an arm up. “Does that not count for anything?”
