Dark Slayer

Her body felt warm and soft and so giving against his. She smelled of the forest, of the wilds, deep and green and secret. There was a touch of snow, distant and compelling, an ice princess yielding to no one, yet giving of herself to him. It was fanciful. He'd long forgotten fanciful and his wayward thoughts didn't belong in the midst of her retelling such a traumatic event in her life. Everything seemed so dreamlike, yet he'd ceased to dream, knowing Xavier extracted information from his sister when he dreamt. He hadn't even been able to stop that and save Natalya such grief. He knew she'd been attacked by Xavier, but four vampires? Four?

He struggled to get up, to try to go to his sister's aid.

The singsong voice soothed him. «Not Natalya, Dragonseeker, the vampires attacked me. Xavier wanted the most horrendous death he could envision for one like me. He had them chop off my head and then cut me to pieces, scattering me across a field so the wolves could consume me. They should have incinerated my heart. I did not have the will to die, not when I needed to see Draven and Xavier gone from this earth.»

For a moment the horror and agony of what she had endured was in her mind-and his-and then, before he could possibly assimilate and process what she had given to him, it was gone, replaced once more by the soothing touch of her fingers stroking over his temples and her whispered, seductive voice.

You are so hungry, Dragonseeker. You have been starved for so long and kept without true strength. I am offering you life. Strength. A chance to join me in defeating the devil himself. You have only to take what is freely given. If, when you are at full strength, you choose to walk away, I will take you from here and you are free to go your own way.

The thought of separation from her gave him pain somewhere in his tattered soul. She was his lifemate; once found, he could not simply abandon her, yet he knew-frowning-that there was a reason he must not utter the words that would bind them together.

She rubbed gently at the frown lines between his eyes. Be at peace. You are safe here.

He shook his head, although it was difficult to do so. More than anything he wanted the touch of her magic fingers and the warmth of her body after he'd been cold for so many centuries. He'd existed in the ice caves with so little blood to live on, Xavier determined to keep him from strength, that he had all but forgotten warmth-or kindness. He didn't want to destroy the illusion that someone cared enough for him to render him aid without strings.

It wasn't true, of course; he'd learned that painful lesson over the centuries. No one could be trusted, least of all himself, but the illusion could sustain him when his starving body and his shredded mind could no longer function properly.

She leaned closer. Her breast grazed his face and his body tightened strangely in reaction. Hear the beat of my heart. Match your rhythm to mine.

He could hear her heart, steady, like an unfaltering beacon, a signal for him to find his way home.

Ivory looked over his ravaged face and her heart contracted painfully. She hadn't felt compassion for another in centuries. She'd been careful to avoid the traps and pitfalls of emotion. Her beloved brothers had betrayed her. Her own family. She would never forget how she sought them out, crawling out of the ground, her flesh barely intact, fighting every inch of the way back home, only to discover that centuries had passed and her brothers had joined the very ones who had chopped her into little pieces and left her for the starving wolves.

Hearing Razvan confess to the betrayal of his own sister and aunts, of his child, she had thought to aid him to find the dawn, even though it would mean condemning herself. But once inside his mind, she realized more than he did the centuries of struggle, of fighting to protect everyone around him from a monster. And he had held out in spite of torture and starvation and anything else she could ever conceive of.

In some ways it scared her to think what his will and determination would be when he was at full strength. Never once during the time Xavier held him captive had he been at full strength. He'd been a youth when Xavier had taken him, and even then, as a mere boy, he'd protected his sister. He didn't consider himself good with spells-his sister was a far better mage-but he was Carpathian male through and through, strong and protective and unflinching in his fight, no matter how weak he had grown.

Hear the blood rushing in my veins. It flows like the tide itself, like sap in the trees, nectar of life, flowing for you. Can you smell it? Do you feel your body crying out for life?