"Yes?" she asked, expecting a barrage of the usual dry wit he had used in the past. She wondered if his dislike of her was based on her having called him Hook Nose the first time they met. He seemed vain enough.
"You don't look happy."
She glared suspiciously at him. Sympathy? From Andrei? "No, I'm not happy."
"I'm not surprised. You haven't gotten what you came for, have you?"
She frowned. "I didn't come to get anything. I came to help Nicolae."
Andrei laughed with scornful disbelief and sat down beside her, close enough that his arm brushed against hers, his thigh touching hers until she moved it away. "You can tell me," he said confidentially, leaning his head toward hers. "No one else will hear. What are you trying to get from Nicolae?"
"Nothing! Why do you dislike me so? Is it because I called you Hook Nose the first time we met?"
"We all know what you are."
She rolled her eyes. "I have not tried to hide it. But I'm human right now."
"So you say. You say, too, that you'll turn back into a demon soon."
"Yes. What of it?"
"Tell me what you came here for. Maybe I can help you. What is it that you want?"
She didn't believe his offer to help. The man clearly distrusted her. It tempted her to throw the truth in his face. "There's only one thing I want right now, but you'd never believe me if I told you."
His eyes lit up, as if he were about to be let in on her deep, dark, evil secret. "I might."
"I want…"
"Yes?"
She felt the sting of tears starting in her eyes. No! She didn't want to cry now, in front of this arrogant, judgmental, loathsome—
"What do you want?" he coaxed. "Tell me. What is it? Is it Nicolae's soul?"
"
Yes
," she whispered, sight shimmering with tears.
"Ha! I knew it!"
"I want his soul, if that means I will have his heart."
"You want that, too? Do you plan on cutting it out of his chest and serving it to your dark lord and master?"
She blinked, a tear sliding slowly down her cheek, and shook her head. "I want him to love me, nothing more."
"Because if he loves you, you can steal his soul."
"No! I just want him to love me. Just… love me," she finished softly.
Andrei stared at her as if she'd just grown a third arm out of the top of her head. "Why?"
"I…" She didn't want to say it, not to Andrei. She didn't want him to sneer all over the words.
"You're not going to try to pretend that you're in love with him, are you?
You
?"
"
Me,"
she growled. "Why would it be so impossible to believe?"
"You may feign lovesickness well, but it will never be real. You don't have a soul."
His words pierced her heart like an assassin's dagger, sharp and swift. He was right; she didn't have a soul.
"Nicolae will never love you. You may lure him to your bed. You may work your wiles and blind him to what is right, for a time. You may even succeed in making yourself an obsession of his. But he will never love you. Men do not love demons."
All her own doubts, simmering already over the fire of Nicolae's disregard these past many days, began to boil over. "He might grow to love me, a little bit," she protested weakly.
"He doesn't love you now though, does he?" Andrei said, his mouth twisting with cruel satisfaction. "He stays far away from you."
Samira looked up at the tower. The dark windows held only the most empty of answers. "He won't talk to me. He barely looks at me," she admitted. "He doesn't touch me. I think he must hate me." The simple words brought a sob boiling up from her chest, and she covered her face with her hands, trying to stuff the infernal weeping back in where it came from. Instead, she wept into her palms, wiping her running nose on her hands, and had to wipe them dry on her skirts.
Stars and moon
, she hated being human sometimes.
Nicolae must hate her for her part in Dragosh's dream, and all that had followed. Even if she hadn't been a demon, that one misdeed would be enough. It was unforgivable.
"If you really love him, like you say you do, then you shouldn't be trying to make him love you," Andrei said. "The best thing you could do would be to get as far from him as possible."
"Why?" she asked, trying to sniff back the tears that kept falling.
"Because if Nicolae needs a woman in his life—which he doesn't; not now—it would be a real woman, one who could bear his children and be married to him in a church of God. You can never be a wife to him. You can never be anything to him. You won't even be human in a few days. Why would you want him to love you, when you will be disappearing from his life?"
He was right. Why hadn't she thought of that? It was selfish of her to want Nicolae's heart, when she would have to give it back in such a short space of time. It was cruel of her. If Nicolae was going to open his heart to a woman, it
should
be to someone who was real, and who could stand by his side as a true helpmeet and partner. He didn't need a demon.
For all that she pretended, Samira knew that she was not really a human woman. This was only a mask, donned for the space of a month. Nicolae needed more than that.
"I never meant to hurt him."
Andrei put his arm around her. She stiffened in surprise.
"I can see now that you never meant to cause trouble," Andrei said, his voice oily and false. He pulled her closer. "You just wanted to be close to a human man. That's all it was, wasn't it?"
She shook her head, trying to pull out of his embrace. "No!"
"You just wanted to feel the warmth of a man's body. It's understandable.
I
understand. There's nothing so very wrong in wanting to be touched. Held. Made love to." He put his face to the side of her neck, his lips softly grazing her skin, his breath warm and moist.
But he wasn't Nicolae. Samira scrunched her shoulders up and tried to turn away. He was strong, though; much stronger than he looked. He held her tighter, her arms trapped within his, and began to push her down onto her back.
"Stop it!" she cried, as he pinned her beneath him.
"It's all right," he cooed, one hand going between their bodies to squeeze her breast. "You can want a man.
That's what you're made for, isn't it? I can give you everything you truly want. Everything you really need."
"I don't
want you
!" Samira cried, and then began to sob heavily; deep, wracking, gulping, ugly sobs. The tears and snot flowed, and she didn't care. She didn't care about anything except that she couldn't have Nicolae. "I love him," she moaned. And what a misery that love was. She was ill with it.
The pressure on her body eased. She sobbed a few more gulps' worth before she turned her eyes to Andrei. He was frowning down at her, the oily falseness gone.
"You really
do
love him, don't you?" he asked in amazement.
She blubbered and nodded.
He shook his head as if in disbelief, but she could see the acceptance of the truth in his eyes. "I would never have believed—"
Andrei was suddenly jerked off her and thrown to the ground.
Nicolae was standing there, silhouetted by the sun. Samira squinted up at him, his face in shadow, but what she could see of him was disheveled and pale, like a man with a fever. "Nicolae, are you all right?" she asked, sitting up and wiping the wetness from her face.
"What's going on here?" he asked, voice tight. "I saw you from the tower, Andrei, forcing yourself on her. I warned you at the beginning to stay away from her."
"I don't want your demon whore," Andrei said from the ground, his voice preternaturally calm.
"My
what
?"
"You don't want her either. You just don't want someone else touching your things. You've never liked that."
Nicolae narrowed his eyes, and then flicked his gaze to her. "Samira, would you leave us alone for a moment?"
She looked between the two of them, feeling the hint of violence just below the surface. She parted her lips to speak, but all words felt inadequate.
"Go," Andrei said softly to her, but loud enough for Nicolae to hear. "You know you should."
"Go!" Nicolae barked at her, as if trying to override Andrei's command with his own. He clearly did not want her obeying someone else.
Maybe she
was
just a possession to him; an otherworldly toy that he didn't want to share. Hadn't that been the reason he finally made love to her? He had been upset that Theron had touched her. It had nothing to do with his own feelings for her. She of all women knew that a man could have sex with a woman without loving her.
There would be no comforting words of affection from Nicolae. Andrei had opened her eyes to everything she feared but was afraid to face. With an unhappy set to her mouth she dragged herself away from the men to the other side of the courtyard.
"Just what in the hell do you think you're doing?" Nicolae asked quietly as Samira went out of earshot.
"Trying to save you from yourself. May I get up, or are you going to insist on tossing your most faithful of friends into the dirt again?"
Nicolae snorted in derision. "Faithful friend. Ha."
"More faithful than you give me credit for," Andrei said, warily rising from the ground and dusting himself off. "I was testing her motives."
"Is that what you call it?"
"For God's sake, Nicolae, have I ever tried to take a woman from you?"
Nicolae glared at Andrei, his exhausted mind wearily trying to hold on to both his anger and the reason for it; a reason which seemed to slip and fade as soon as Samira was out of sight.
"Sit down, you fool, before you fall down."
"Not until you explain… explain…"
Andrei raised his brows at him. "Yes, explain…"
"Quiet, you son of a whore," Nicolae said. The burst of energy it had taken to rush down from the tower and toss Andrei off of Samira had depleted him, and his thinking was going fuzzy. How long had it been since he'd gotten more than a few minutes' sleep? Days? "Explain what you were doing with Samira."
"Trying to convince her that you were better off without her."
"Since when did you take over making the decisions about what was best in my life?"
Andrei sighed. "Will you sit down?"
Both the days with little sleep and the warm feel of the sun on his back pushed Nicolae toward the bench, and he dropped down on it with relief. A murky stew of anger over seeing Andrei on top of Samira still bubbled through him, but in with it was a turnip of awareness that his friend had never lied to him, and deserved to be heard. Briefly. Before Nicolae woke up well enough to skewer him with a sword. "Speak."
"She's a demon, Nicolae. That's all it comes down to. She's a demon."
"She's human."
"For only the space of a few more days. I wouldn't be your friend if I didn't protest this, or try to stop her from pursuing you. She can only bring you harm."
"Harm? What harm has she brought me?" Nicolae asked incredulously. "Before she came, my body was slowly healing from what Dragosh had done, but my spirit was dying. I was learning nothing from those books but despair. I never even came out into the daylight. Harm! Yes, what a lot of harm she has done me!
"She's good for me, Andrei," Nicolae went on. "Demon from Hell or human woman. What's the difference?"
"A priest would say there was plenty of difference. Are you in love with her?"
Nicolae looked across the courtyard to where Samira was idly circling the well and stopping periodically to gaze down into its depths. "I don't know what I feel, except that she's mine and no one is going to take her from me. Call it possessiveness if you will. I don't care. She's mine."
"Is
that
why you've been so feverishly working? You don't want Dragosh to get his hands on her."
"I'm working to save Moldavia." He was silent a long moment, and then confessed, "And to save Samira. But not from Dragosh."
Andrei raised his brows in question.
Nicolae shook his head. "Would you have ever guessed that there was a Queen of the Night? She's the daughter of Chaos—apparently—and is Samira's grandmother."
"Samira's grandmother is a queen? That means she has royal blood."
Nicolae laughed, short and harsh. "I hadn't thought of it that way. This queen, this Nyx, this royal
grandmother
, is going to come destroy Samira in a few days' time. I was hoping to find a way to stop her."
"Did you find one?" Andrei asked.
"No. How does one stop Night?"
"So there's no hope for Samira?"
"A situation which no doubt pleases you."
Andrei rubbed his face with his hands, then sighed and dropped his hands. "No one wants to see his friend ensnared by a damned demon, Nicolae. You must at least credit me with caring about your welfare."
"I can, but I will not stand by and let you harm Samira, whatever your convictions about her may be. This is not your decision."
"I'm not going to harm her. I'm not even going to protest any further. I've said my piece, and I am at least convinced that she is not here to hurt you."
"No, she was sent here to help me regain what I lost. A penance, of sorts, for past misdeeds. If she fails, the penalty is death. The only chance I can see for her is if we defeat Dragosh. Nyx might then show some mercy."
Andrei looked pointedly around the empty monastery. Nicolae saw what he saw: The courtyard was devoid of an army. Devoid, even, of a single other man than themselves. Samira was sniffing a flowering vine that grew over one wall; then, as he watched, she did a little panic dance, swatting ineffectually at a bee. His demon did not look much like a warrior.
"There's no hope at all, is there?" Andrei asked.
Movement and voices at the gateway just then drew their eyes. It was Constantin and Petru, sweaty and dirty, jogging into the courtyard.
"My lord!" Constantin shouted.
"Yes, what news?" Nicolae asked, standing quickly, his exhaustion falling away.
"Dragosh's army is no more than two days hence. He has three thousand men, possibly more. They're a poorly disciplined lot, but well armed."