Darkness Embraced (16 page)

I froze, uncertain how to react. “What are you apologizing for?”

“For making you feel like you meant less to me than you ever really did.” She touched the scars at my back with the tips of her fingers. I moved and she let me go. The dress was still bunched at my waist and I stood, tugging it down past my knees and kicking it carelessly to the floor. I crawled back onto the bed.

“I know,” I said, sensing the truth behind her words. “But why did you stop? Just to apologize?”

Her bowed mouth curled slightly. “Because,” she said, hands steadying me as I climbed onto her lap, “I desired a better view.”

I looked at her and searched for the meaning beyond her words. I touched her cheek. “That’s not all,” I said. “You stopped because some part of you cannot bear to look at it.”

Her smile wilted. She buried a hand in my hair and brought our faces close enough that her breath caressed my lips. She placed the flat of her palm over the scarred flesh and her skin was warm.

“No,” she said, “it is not all. I do not enjoy gazing upon Lucrezia’s handiwork, especially not on your body.” She was silent for several moments. “I can heal you.”

“How?” I asked.

“I made you. Two hundred years ago, when you died you woke to the call of my power. My power is the life in your veins. You doubt me, why?”

“I do not doubt your power, Renata. I have never doubted your power.”

“But still, you do not trust me?” she asked. “A hundred and fifty years ago you would not have questioned me.”

“Trust once broken is not so easily mended.”

She nodded, loosening her grip. Her fingers played over the skin of my back. “Fair enough. Then what would you have of me? What will help you to trust me again?”

The question caught me off guard. Time was the obvious answer, but what I said aloud was, “You can tell me how you would heal me.”

The look she gave me was almost sad enough to be worthy of Vasco. “In a way in which you will not enjoy.”

“And what way is that?”

Cuinn chose that moment to startle me so thoroughly that I actually jumped where I sat in her lap.

Renata gave me a strange look.

What your Queen is not telling ye is that she needs your blood to heal it.

But it can be done?
I asked him.

Aye, if you’re willing to pay for it in blood.

“And what does the little fox say?” She didn’t sound exactly happy that Cuinn was eavesdropping again. I couldn’t really blame her. He’d been so quiet for so long that I’d thought he’d well and truly gone to sleep, or at the least, out of my head.

“You need my blood to heal it.”

“That is only partial truth,” she said. “What is true is that I will have to remake the wound in the same way it was created.”

I surprised us both by saying, “So be it.”

Renata cut the binds at my wrists first, and while she did, her thoughts seemed far away. I realized that as much as I didn’t want the wounds reopened, Renata didn’t particularly care to be the one re-inflicting them. The knowledge surprised me a little.

When my wrists were free of the silken cord I spoke. “You do not seem very eager to do what you are about to do.”

“I am not.”

I touched her cheek, caught her attention enough that she stopped to look at me. “Then why did you offer?”

“It is what needs to be done,” she said and her tone was so very matter-of-fact that it made me try to sense the emotions behind her words.

She caught my wrist in her hand. “Epiphany,” she said, “stop trying to read me.”

“If you would but tell me then I would not have to try and read you.”

Her chest fell in a quick sigh. “You were more right than you know when you said I could not bear to look at it,” she said. “I cannot, not only because it is a mark on your shining body, but because it is a mark that is not mine. Do you understand, Epiphany? Do you see how selfish your Queen truly is?” she asked, unflinching.

“I do not think that you are as selfish as you wish others to believe, my Queen.”

“I thought you naive once, Epiphany, but you were never naive, not really. You were different, yes. Beneath the surface, your desires ran darker than others, is all. Do you think you were naive when first you came to me?”

“No.”

She clasped my smaller hands in hers. Her long, tapered fingers twined with mine. For a moment, she stared at our entwined hands. “Do you want me to hurt you?”

“The way Lucrezia did?” I kept my voice as even and mild as I could make it.

She inclined her head.

“No,” I said. “What Lucrezia did to me is not a pain I wish to remember. Though suffering at your hands is a great deal better than having to endure her attention ever again.”

“But you like pain,” Renata said. The corner of her mouth rose on one side. “Considerably more than either of us reckoned, I think. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, but you were right when you said I would not enjoy this.”

She raised our entwined fingers, brushing her lips across the side of my hand. “I will try to make it as pleasurable and as painless as I possibly can.”

“I know.”

“Lie down on your stomach, Epiphany.”

I moved to lay with my cheek resting against the mound of pillows. Renata climbed on top of me, using her knees to hold her body off mine. She swept my tangled hair to the side and I closed my eyes, focusing on finding some still and quiet place within. Instead, I found myself listening to Cuinn.

Ye might as well just accept that it’s gonna hurt.

Words of comfort I’ll accept, but reminding me of what I already know is only irritating, Cuinn.

Cuinn gave a little snort and grumbled,
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the coffin.

Renata’s warm hands moved down the sides of my torso. “You’re tensing. It will hurt far worse if you do not relax.”

I let out a long, unnecessary breath and tried to relax, one muscle at a time. The back of her fingers swept across the base of my spine. I knew that the knife she’d used to cut the bindings was somewhere in the bed, hidden within the folds of the coverlet. In essence, it wasn’t so different from the things we’d done before.

Then again, it was.

Renata had cut me up a little in the bedroom, but never had she cut me simply for the sake of causing pain. It had never been the raping of flesh that it had been with Lucrezia. Renata never forced me to surrender. I surrendered to her ways of my own free will.

It made all the difference, or should have, but the memories of Lucrezia’s voice at my ear, the feel of her silver blade sinking into my skin as she carved her art into my back pushed against the surface of my mind.

So many years ago and still it haunted me. It was not Renata that bothered me, nor was it necessarily the fact that she was going to reopen the wounds in order to heal the scar, but the memories of Lucrezia’s hands made me feel nauseous and unsettled.

I looked forward to the reminder of such abuse being erased.

What I did not enjoy was dealing with the memories that were resurfacing, tightening my body in fear and making my limbs stiff.

“What is wrong, Epiphany?”

“I don’t think I’m going to relax.”

“It is not so different than the things we once did together.” I turned my face enough to look at her. It was a little too close to what I had just been thinking.

“Now who is in whose head?” I asked.

Her hands swept distractingly over the back of my left hip. “I am not Lucrezia, Epiphany. You know that. I do not gain pleasure from pain alone.”

“I know,” I said. It was true. Oh, she enjoyed my pain, but only because I enjoyed it.

She bent, pressing her lips against my shoulder. “Then why are you unable to rest?”

I closed my eyes, blocking out the darkened curve of her splendidly arched brows and the twin blue jewel-like fragments that glistened beneath them. “I cannot help but remember, Renata.”

“Yes, you can,” she said. “You have but to let go and make a new memory with me, Epiphany.”

“I have many memories of you. None of them have tainted my soul in such a way as Lucrezia’s hands.”

“Shh,” she said, “Think of me.”

I tried. Her mouth worked at my shoulder, lips parting as her breath eased out, cool and warm against my skin. The soft fullness of her lips marked a path like falling rose petals down my body. Her hands cupped my buttocks. Only then did I turn as much as the position would allow to look at her. Her mouth sealed around my flesh, her fangs threatening to pierce me.

I ground my hips into the mattress and she bit down until my skin broke beneath the pressure. I gave a strangled sound as I felt her mouth sucking at the wound.

Her fingers traced my thighs and I opened to her. She stroked my clit, back and forth, allowing it to catch on her skin before dipping into my wetness and spreading it like salve. I groaned as she traced me. Her jaw cinched tighter, until I rose up off the bed, groaning.

Satisfied, she withdrew, catching the languorous flow of my blood with a sweep of her tongue.

Her hands slipped under my hips as she raised me. I rose to my knees, using my elbows to support the weight of my upper body. She inclined her head, settling her mouth between my legs. She pulled me against her lips like my body was a chalice she would drink from.

I sank into the feel of her mouth. The tip of her tongue circled me, curling like a wave dancing over me. I moaned, spine lengthening in pleasure. Renata sucked harder, hard enough that her teeth dug into me. Her tongue flicked and the muscles in my abdomen went firm as her tongue sent shockwaves of ecstasy through me.

She was quick…so terribly quick. I didn’t even feel her move. The tip of the blade pricked the scarred tissue, parting my skin. With my mind still fogged by the aftermath of pleasure, it took a moment for my body to register the pain. When it did, I automatically hissed and tried to crawl out from under her. Renata drove her knee into my back, using her strength to pin me to the mattress. I expected the second cut and the expectation made it all the worse. My body tensed, and with the pain stinging like a thousand bees against my skin, I cried out.

Renata pressed her hands against the X-shaped cut and my entire body grew rigid. The pain was so intense that it stole the scream that built in my lungs and held it trapped in my throat. Her hands burned like sunlight.

Somewhere, distantly, as if the pain had detached me from my body I heard my own strained voice pleading with her to stop.

It was worse than what Lucrezia had done to me. Even while she’d drawn her dagger as achingly slowly as she possibly could across my skin, this was by far worse.

The pain spread like a phoenix bursting against my back, traveling up my spine, down my spine, through my limbs like a fire that threatened to eat me alive.

Then, it was no longer flame, no longer heat, but a cold more terrible than Sognare’s vision. Then, I did scream.

Gradually, the cold began to ease from something fierce and biting to something soothing and cool. I was left gasping.

Her fingers swept the damp curls from my face. “Epiphany?”

I turned my head, realizing I’d been smothering my face with the black velvet pillow. If I had been human, would I have passed out? Would I have unintentionally suffocated myself?

I didn’t make a move to roll onto my back, which ached more with the memory of pain than the actual pain itself. My entire body was dewed with sweat, as if I had broken a fever.

I found my voice and it was raw and hoarse. I wondered how much screaming I’d actually done.

“That hurt like bloody hell,” I said, realizing the words didn’t quite convey the agony of the experience.

“I know,” she said, laying down beside me. “I told you the healing would come at a price.”

Aye
,
that she did,
Cuinn said, sounding somewhat disturbed.

I ignored him, touching a strand of Renata’s still matted waves.

“You kept your word,” I said, almost idly while I tried to push the memory of the pain aside. “You tried to distract me.”

“As much as I could.” She played with my hair, coiling it around her fingers. “The endorphins, even for a vampire, make the pain a great deal less than what it would have been.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, cupping the back of my neck in her hand. She drew my mouth to hers. “Yes, it worked.”

“Good,” I said. “That is good.” In the back of my mind I sensed the rising sun, like the promise of a dreaded heat against my skin.

“The sun is about to rise.”

Renata wrapped her arms around me and I settled in against the gentle curves of her body, a welcomed respite. “I know.”

While she held me, I awaited death. Dying at dawn was not like waking when the moon rises. It was at once more intense and less intense. What I could only describe as an invisible force began to seep into every corner of the room, building and waiting like a serpent for the right moment to strike. It was nothing to see with the eyes, but with the soul. That unseen force stretched and grew like a great dragon unfurling from its sleep. The energy rose and I had a moment to brace myself, a moment to will my body to submission, before that invisible dragon slammed into me. It hit, and like falling from a great height, knocked the life from my lungs, my body. In such a moment, one does not think that the world is going black. One does not have time to think.