LIO’S THOUGHTS GROUND TO a halt. Then eased into motion again on the realization he had not been dreaming.
He dare not go a step nearer to her. Not till he was certain. “Cassia. You are offering...” Your
blood. Yourself. To me. “...to share your blood with me?”
“Yes.”
She was. She really was. Willing.
Lio’s reality shifted. Cassia had just redrawn the rules of it.
Every rule he had agreed to abide by as an ambassador still stood. The rules that defined her life
could still punish her. He was still a Hesperine, and she was still a mortal from whom the king, the
gods, and Lio’s duty to the Queens’ embassy forbade him to drink.
But Cassia no longer forbade him. That changed everything.
She searched his gaze. “Are there other impediments? Or does my permission satisfy the
requirements?”
They had taken the law into their own hands already for the simple rewards of companionship and
the high stakes of frost fever. Would he draw the line here, at her blood?
Lio felt none of the caution with which he so often struggled. He did not need to deliberate. His
decision was crystal clear to him.
“Yes, Cassia. Your consent is all that matters.”
“Then we are agreed?”
These were not the words he had imagined her saying to him on such an occasion as this, and that
was not the expression he had envisioned on her face. But ardent words and declarations of passion
were not Cassia’s way. It had cost her a great deal to even consider issuing him such an invitation, of
that he was certain. Far more telling than the mask she wore was what lay beneath.
He let the Blood Union take him, and before he knew it, he had closed the distance between their
bodies and all that lay within. He heard her gasp.
She lifted her face. Close enough to kiss. Her lips parted. “I am not suggesting anything indiscreet,
of course. As you’ve so tactfully explained before, desires of the flesh do not accompany the Thirst.
That is something else, which you call the Hunger.”
“You would not wish me to do more than drink from you,” he said softly.
“You know I do not find such activities prudent.” Her eyes widened slightly. “I assumed your
perspective was the same.”
Her pulse beat a swift flourish to his slower, thundering heart. A flush glazed her cheeks, a mirror
of the heat under his own skin. Yet she spoke of discretion. Of prudence.
Anger burned through Lio, but it was not his own. A dread for dawn overtook him. He longed to
sleep and sleep and awaken when the coming day was over, as if it had never been. Then another day,
another room loomed in his thoughts, awash in candlelight. A powerful presence hovered over him.
He dare not lift his gaze from the fur-trimmed hem of the royal robe that filled his vision.
The voice above him spoke evenly, but seemed to boom around him. ...it is necessary to remind
all concerned your blood is mine to use as I see fit, and mine alone.
Lio backed away, and Cassia jumped. The vision broke, and he stood once again in the clearing
under the Light Moon’s slim crescent and the burgeoning Blood Moon with Cassia awaiting his
decision. To accept what he had wanted since the moment he had met her. Or to push that gift away.
This time the frustration that overtook him was entirely his own. So close. So far. Nothing would
be truly shared between them, if she offered thus.
“Perhaps I have assumed too much.” Confusion flickered in her eyes. “I thought you thrive on
human blood in general, but I did not consider the possibility your tastes are more particular. If you
do not find my suggestion appealing, please, speak openly as we’ve agreed.”
Not appealing? Her blood, which tormented him in his dreams every Dawn Slumber, his
deliverance from his nightmares? “You speak of agreements and what is acceptable, but to share your
blood with someone is nothing so mercenary.”
“Mercenary!”
“If there was ever a time when there should be no negotiation between us, it is now. I don’t want
you to share with me as a means to an end.”
She took a step back. “To what end would I make you a means? I have nothing to gain from this.
I’m trying to do you a...”
Had she been about to say the word favor?
“I thought to do this for you,” she amended.
“I don’t want you to do it for me.” His teeth punished him for protesting such a plea from her. “If
you share with me at all, it must be for both of us. But certainly not for the reasons you have in mind
tonight. I want to be more to you than a means of revenge. More than a tool to spite your father.”
He had trespassed. All the anger he had felt within her surged to the surface. Her eyes flashed, and
her blood raged.
Her words were longest in coming, but at last they too lashed out. “I try to do you a kindness, and
you...accuse me of such a thing. You, Lio. Accuse me of trying to use you!”
He felt no triumph, although he had struck the mark. “I do not intend it as an accusation. It is simply
the truth.”
“I’ll thank you not to claim you know the truth of my motivations better than I do.”
“I can feel it in you. Do you not feel it in yourself?”
“I’ll have none of your heartwarming magical truths on this occasion. The transcendent glory of
your Blood Union has led you astray. He is not the reason. He has nothing to do with this. I am too
wise to consider any act of revenge against him and too occupied trying to stay alive to engage in
petty acts of spite. And even if that were not the case...”
Hurt welled out of her. Lio had endured a broad spectrum of her emotions, from her temper to her
grief.
He’d never felt this hurt with the knowledge he had caused it.
“I do not want him here, Lio. He has no place here, tonight, with us.”
“That’s precisely what I’m trying to say. I don’t want this to be about him.”
“Will you not accept my assurance that it isn’t?”
“How can I, when you hear his voice in your head when I draw near?”
The flush drained from her cheeks. “How dare you? After all your claims you would never
trespass on my mind.”
“I didn’t have to. You were shouting your thoughts as if they were a battle cry. You want me to
drink your blood so you can have the satisfaction of handing a piece of the king’s property to the
enemy. Merciful Goddess. That is not what I want for us. I will have no part in it.”
“Such high standards.” Cassia’s voice was cold as ice. “I see what I have to offer you is not to
your taste.”
Lio fought to sever their Union. Her anger burned, even as she intoxicated him. If he went any
closer to her now, he would not listen to his better judgment, but his aching mouth, hollow belly, and
everything southward.
Her aura sank under a lifetime of disappointment. “Of course. Who would want to drink the king’s
blood? Now that I think of it, it makes me sick, too.”
“By the Goddess, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your blood is not his. Body and soul, you
are not his. I will not help you act as if you are.”
“You deny I would taste like him?”
“You taste like...cassia and pure Will and your garden.”
She fell silent for a moment. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I have spent every night in Union with you and I know what’s in your blood. My taste is
particular. I have never in my life thirsted for anyone as I thirst for you. It has been so since my first
night here, when all my senses picked you out of the crowd on the greensward, and I longed to know
who you were. I would have you share with me for the same reason. Because you want it. Because
you, Cassia, want it for yourself.”
She held her chin high, and her pride was a thread inside her she clung to like a lifeline. “Well. I
see I have overestimated my insight into Hesperine ways. Since I have so thoroughly misjudged, I
shall leave you to your customary drink.”
She turned her back on him and marched off. At the edge of the clearing, she tossed back over her
shoulder, “My offer stands, however misguided.”
Knight insulted Lio and his ancestors with an eloquent string of growls and escorted his lady away.
When Lio knew Cassia was out of earshot, he rammed his fist into the tree.
The bark gave a satisfying crack, the trunk a creak. His blood made a red stain on the pale aspen.
The pain of his split knuckles distracted him from the rest of his body for an instant, before his hand
healed.
It was a good thing she had left when she did. He couldn’t have said another word around his
unsheathed fangs. And he wore no formal robes that would conceal just how “indiscreet” he longed to
be with her.
He could have said yes and backed her up against this tree. He could have his teeth in her right
now. The taste of her, Cassia, on his tongue. Her blood pouring down his throat and heating him
within. He could be showing her what it felt like. Finding out if she would ask for more than his fangs
inside her.
And she would have been thinking about the king and her sister and revenge.
Instead of dealing the aspen another meaningless injury, Lio took off running.