Page 56 of A Throne of Blood and Ice

“Would you like a taste?” The parasite marveled as her voice came out sounding not in the sultry drawl of Cinderella, but the casual, effortless voice of her host.

A sly heady grin crept upon Nox’s lips, and when he spoke, it was not as the parasite expected. She wasn’t exactly sure what she had been expecting. Perhaps a grief to his tone that belied his inner torture, the longing for Blaise’s blood battling with his obvious fondness for the girl herself. Perhaps she expected the dripping seduction she’d so often heard in the only other creature she’d met like this boy.

But when Nox spoke, it was with neither torture nor possession.

“I don’t know,” he teased. “What are you going to ask for in return?”

There was a casualness in his tone the parasite had yet to hear, even through Blaise’s ears. When he spoke, it was as if to a lover who had been a close friend long before the relationship evolved.

It was then the parasite realized; Nox believed himself to be dreaming.

Curiosity, that treacherous nosy thing, sniffed at the air and scuttled into the parasite’s thoughts.

Nox believed himself to be dreaming, and this was how the boy would act if completely unrestrained by the consequences of the mortal world.

The parasite couldn’t help but play along, to sidle up with Nox’s misunderstanding and wait for its inevitable conclusion.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, reveling in the way Blaise’s voice could sound so intrigued and careless at the same time. She cut her eyes up to the corner of the ceiling as if she were pondering. “I suppose I could think of something.” She traced a finger along the edge of his jaw and didn’t miss the way his breath caught as Blaise’s blood lingered close to his face.

Even half-asleep, he possessed more self-control now than he had the day the foolish Blaise had sliced her finger in front of him. The parasite had known then they were in trouble—she’d noticed the sallowness in his cheeks, the way his fingers had jittered against the worktable.

Nox had gone too long without feeding that day, but the boy was clearly intent on not making the same mistake twice. He’d been nursing his canteen of blood like a drunk to brandy. The lust for Blaise’s blood was written all over his face tonight, but the signs of an oncoming frenzy were absent.

The parasite decided it had been quite a long while since she had let herself have fun.

There were no windows in the dungeon, leaving the parasite with no way to gauge when the moon would apex the sky, when she’d lose her grip on the reins and this body would return control over to Blaise.

So while the parasite longed to toy with the boy, to indulge in the physical pleasures so unique to humans, she decided she would have to postpone the fulfillment of such fantasies.

“Oh, I have an idea,” she said, allowing her wrist to linger ever so close to Nox’s lips.

His icy blue eyes darkened, nothing but pure mischief in his drunken expression. “I’d say I have more than one.”

The parasite’s heart skipped, but she tamped it down. “How about a sip for a sip?”

Nox’s grin faltered and for a moment, the parasite feared she’d lost him, burst the illusion and alerted him to reality. But when she looked again, it was not suspicion that hampered the revelry in his expression, but longing.

Something like genuine sorrow and acceptance flooded the boy’s face, and the parasite knew she had spoken well, played the perfect cards.

Nox pried the scalpel from the parasite’s hand with such tenderness she couldn’t help the wave of goosebumps that went racing across her flesh like wildfire.

He went to slice his wrist, but the parasite put out a hand to stop him. “Only a drop,” she said. Then, with the most doe-eyed smile she could muster, “We wouldn’t want to mortally wound you.”

Nox let out a startled huff, but he grinned all the same. “If you say so,” he said, lightly poking a hole in his flesh until a single orb of onyx blood protruded from his wrist.

The parasite’s heart raced, threatening to burst from her chest. Only once in all her wanderings had she met a creature like Nox, but he’d told her a secret of his kind. One he’d made her swear never to tell a soul.

Well, the parasite had kept that promise—not because she was one for keeping meaningless oaths, but because it seemed like the type of information that remained more valuable the fewer people knew of it.

As Nox’s blood glittered in the lantern light and as he brushed his wrist against Blaise’s welcoming lips and shuddered, the parasite thought she understood why.

Nox’s bloodtasted of starlight and eternity, of authority and influence, sweet and somewhat overpowering, and the parasite soon found that she could not get enough.

Intoxicating power washed over her as his silky blood touched her lips and trickled down her throat. Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself plunging her teeth into his skin as one might devour a fleshy grape.

“Whoa there,” Nox teased as he pulled his wrist from her lips. The parasite launched for it, desperate for another taste, but he dangled his wrist over her head, and as much as she groped for it, this body was not strong enough to wrestle control from him. “My turn,” he said, somewhat sleepily, and the parasite watched as Nox’s wrist knitted itself back together, wiping away the set of bite marks as though they never existed.

The parasite felt a bit dizzy. She hadn’t foreseen that Blaise’s body would have the reaction it did to Nox’s blood, and she certainly hadn’t expected that she herself would become swept away by wanton impulse.

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