“I don’t know,” I repeat, painfully honest. “My training—everything Hunter’s Hamlet gave me—is who I’ve always been, it’s what I’ve always known. When times were tough, I never had to question. All I needed was blind faith to make it through. I’ve never had to worry about what I want, what I need, because I’ve never had any kind of option. Now I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of them.”
“I see you, Floriane. I know exactly how you feel.” The words are deep and purposeful.
My hands relax, and I hunch over him. My forehead is drawn to his before I can think about it. I shut out the world by closing my eyes and I simply breathe.
In the wake of my silence, he speaks. “I was born into a cursed and dying people. From the first moment I drew breath, I was already in a distant line of succession that charted the course of my life. I should have never even thought of leading the vampir but here I am. My covenant looks to me for help and guidance but I’m not the lord they need. I’m no one, really.”
I laugh softly and lean away. “The lord of the vampir, calling himself no one.”
“It’s true, though.” Ruvan gives me a tired smile. “I’m only the vampir lord because my people had to plan out thousands of years of leaders when the long night began. I am far, far from their first choice. And the next person will be even less so. That’s why I must end this curse. I can’t trust that the next person, or the one after, will.” He pauses, head dipping back into his pillow. His eyes are glassy, gaze soft and distant. Ruvan turns his head, looking to the window. “No…it’s more than that. I want to end the curse selfishly, too. To prove that I was worth something—that my life has meaning. That I wasn’t some throwaway lord at the end of the list.”
“I don’t think anything about anyone is ‘throwaway.’”
“Even about a vampir?” He brings his eyes back to mine.
“Perhaps,” I say. But then force myself to say what I really mean. “Yes.”
Ruvan smiles gently. “Now, I’ve told you of the inner workings of my heart. Tell me, Floriane, what are yours? What does your heart say about us? Not the instincts brought on by your training. Your heart.”
The one thing I’ve never listened to. The one thing I’ve hardly ever heeded. I’ve always known what’s right for me because I’ve been told and directed.
What does my heart say?
“That…I feel for you,” I confess. “That I want to keep learning who you are and knowing you.”
“And I feel for you.” He pulls me a bit closer, his hands still around mine. “I ache for you. I burn for you. I want you.”
He wants me. Heat pools in my lower stomach. My throat is dry, mouth wet. I swallow thickly.
“There might still be a part of me though that sees you as my enemy,” I confess.
“I know.”
“And sometimes, that part that tells me I should hate you, all the voices of my family and ancestors, might win out over my want to be gentle to you, to know you. I might not always be the person I want to be toward you, for you.”
“And that’s all right.” Those words are among the sweetest I’ve ever heard. It feels as though he has accepted me for all I am and yet also all I’m not. It’s as though he is the first person to look at me and really, truly begin to know me. My mother sees me as her daughter. My brother as his sister. The hamlet knows me as the forge maiden. They all see and know parts of me, but has anyone ever, truly tried to see the whole picture? “Neither of us will win against our entire upbringing in days, or weeks, or even years. We will have to work to learn something new day after day. But…” Ruvan leans up to brush his nose against mine as he tempts me with an almost kiss. “I dare think learning you will be a delight.”
I shiver as his warm breath runs over my cheeks. I consciously force all doubt aside. All second-guessing. And, for a moment, it works. Long enough for me to say…
“Kiss me.”
“There you are, commanding the vampir lord again.”
“What are you going to do about it?” The words are coy, sensual, said on the back of my tongue with the edge of a grin.
“I’m going to kiss you, just as you command.” His lips press gently against mine. Ruvan doesn’t go for my neck, he doesn’t go for my blood at all, only my lips. The kiss is relief and more tension. It’s everything I needed to free my brain of this constantly burning desire. To heat myself to the point that I’m malleable enough that everything will go back into place.
Instinct tells me to loathe everything about this man. I should resent these circumstances. The way he makes me feel…
I should hate it. I don’t want to hate it. I can’t hate it…
I love it.
