Page 84 of Across the Sapphire Sea
“Next time we meet, it is you who must come to me.”
“Wait!” Mahu put all the force into the command that he could muster, which is to say, very little force at all.
* * *
When the door creaked open, Daka was gone. Mahu sank into the bed, eyes closed, ready to surrender to fate.
Voices filtered through the haze in his mind.
“Oh my, he’s worse off than I imagined.” A woman’s voice, light and airy though tinged with concern.
“Can you help him?” A young man. Gentle and timid.
“Yes, Elias. I think I can.”
Without opening his eyes, Mahu heard her approach, sensed her presence at his bedside, but all he could think of was his lost love.
“Hello, Mahu. I’m Sachi. I hope we’ll become friends.”
Did she want him to answer? He could not.I’m sorry.
A bright scent caught his attention. Blood. But more than that. Roses. The smell blossomed under his nostrils as the woman pressed her dripping wrist to his mouth.
A spark of strength he hadn’t known he possessed coursed through his veins, enough to allow him to part his lips and bite.
Her blood was like no other. Thick and coppery but with a floral bouquet of aromas. She tasted of spring flowers and sunshine, warm like a summer evening, crisp as fall leaves, pure as winter snow. Her offering brought a host of experiences, a hint of the divine, a mother giving life.
Mahu opened his eyes.
Dakarai. I will come for you.
22
Valeri, Present, 1432 Common Era
Seated at his desk, alone in his and Elias’s rooms at Bran Vigny, Valeri stared at an unopened letter. All the way from Russia, surely the missive was from Fedor, which was an excellent reason to throw it directly into the fire. Nothing good came from Fedor but money, and the money already belonged to Valeri in the first place.
With a sigh, he ignored the correspondence to stare out the window. The moon hid behind the clouds, its silvery glow outlining the edges. High enough within the castle to see the tops of thousands of trees swaying in the breeze, Valeri wished he felt like he belonged there. But even after the mission had proved a success, he found he was no more accepted by these vampires than he’d ever been. Always the misfit. Forever an outcast.
The part of him that cared was mercifully silenced by the part that didn’t. Elias fit in here, and that’s what mattered. Elias—as happy as Valeri had ever seen him—had endless engagements with friends and mentors. Letting go of the restraining leash he’d kept Elias on since that fateful night in the barley fields had been easier than he could have imagined. Elias’s joyful smiles were all he needed in trade. If only he’d known that sooner. How stupid he’d been. How awful.
Elias and Sachi had become attached at the hip. Together they’d gone to Mahu’s bedside, and Elias had watched as she fed him. Elias then reported these details to Valeri.
Slowly, night by night, Sachi’s miraculous otherworldly blood nursed the dying vampire back to health.
Mahu had been skin and bones upon their return. His eyes sunken in his skull, his skin paper thin, his constant murmuring unintelligible. But when Sachi opened a vein in her wrist and pressed it to his lips, his garnet eyes fluttered open and he drank.
Her secret was safe with The Dozen for now. Valeri had been threatened on pain of death to tell no other soul, and he’d sworn an oath. He’d had enough of ancient secrets and magic blood to last a lifetime. Besides, he had no one to tell. Elias was his only companion, and soon, he’d lose him too.
His ribs had finally healed from his tussle with Gauss. The thug had crushed him like an insect. Valeri had heard each bone break with an awful chorus of pops. Had it only been one or two, one day’s rest would have done the trick, but Gauss had broken the lot of them. It had taken a vat of blood split between several donors and three full days of rest before he felt like himself again. He’d never seen poor Elias more worried.
His gaze drifted to land on Elias’s books. Presents from a girl called Clara who Valeri didn’t know, but who’d discovered Elias was learning to read. In the early morning hours, Elias would curl up with him in bed, and they’d practice endlessly. Elias was ravenous, drinking in knowledge with the same sort of zeal Valeri had reserved for sex, blood, and killing.
This would never work.
Valeri was going to lose him. He knew it like he knew the sun would give way to darkness each night.
The separation was already happening, one agonizing bit at a time, inevitable. Even now Elias was gone, out gallivanting elsewhere in the castle with his precious new friends. The friends he’d always longed for, finally at his beck and call, so Valeri could be more easily cast aside. Discarded now that his part had been played.
