Darkness Embraced (2 page)

“Sotto?” I asked, eyeing the stone walls illuminated by torchlight. “That is this place? The place Hawk-nose has brought me?”

 “Hawk-nose?” he asked.

“Uh, you know, the man with the nose,” I said, gesturing at my face.

His laugh rumbled against my body.

“Our Queen may like you very much, piccolo.”

“Queen?” I asked, thinking furiously as he turned down a hallway. “The woman in the cell was your Queen?”

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

He stopped. “If the Queen of the Rosso Lussuria has chosen you, you will know.”

“Chosen me for what?”

“You will see.”

“You are vague,” I said, teeth chattering with cold. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“And you’re very brave for a girl that has been taken from her world and brought into ours.”

I forced myself to smile weakly. “I’ve had some time to become fairly well acquainted with the idea of my death.”

“Not yet, you haven’t,” he said cryptically.

“Dominique.” A voice as thick as syrup rumbled through the hall. I noticed the way he greeted the other man as if he knew him well. Dominique turned on his heel. When he turned, my stomach turned as well. I groaned, cursing my fragile body.

“Dante,” Dominique said.

“A bath has been prepared for her, at the Queen’s request.”

Dante wore a black tunic that looked a little outdated for our age. I frowned, thinking on it. In fact, neither of them appeared to be Victorian gentlemen. A lock of hair fell over the side of Dante’s face, obscuring it from view.

Dominique nodded and started following him.

“I have legs,” I protested. “I can walk.”

“I’ll not have you cracking your skull for the sake of your pride, piccolo,” Dominique said.

“Who gives a wounded animal a bath before they put it out of its misery?” I asked.

Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Dante glance back at us.

“How am I to die, then?” I continued rambling. “In much the same manner as those two girls the both of you dragged from the cell, I imagine.”

“Has she been babbling the whole time?” Dante asked.

“She’s feverish,” Dominique said, moving toward him. “Untie her hands.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Dante asked.

“She is sick. She does not care.”

I felt his fingers plucking at the knot, tugging it free.

Once I could move my arms, the pain in my shoulder blades multiplied. Dominique steadied his arm around me, holding me out from his body enough to draw the cloak off his back.

“Here,” he said draping it over me and settling me back in against his chest.

“Thank you,” I murmured closing my eyes against the dull throb in my head.

I felt his legs working as he walked. I was focusing on the rhythm of his steps when the exhaustion pulled me under.

*

“Epiphany,” a woman’s voice spoke my name.

I tried to think past the cloudiness in my head.

Candle flame sent a dancing light throughout the room. A sea of black velvet stretched above me. My head finally made sense of what I saw, a black canopy. I sat up with my heart pounding in my ears.

A hand touched my shoulder, guiding me back to the mound of pillows. “You are in no immediate danger,” she said.

I thought it had all been a strange fever dream. I met her striking and binary colored eyes.

“Where am I?”

“In my bedchamber,” she answered, propping her elbow on the pillows beside me and resting her jaw on her hand.

“May I ask why?”

“You fell asleep,” she said. “Dominique, my guard, brought you here.”

“For how long?” I asked. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her brows were dark against her pale skin, dark and arching. Her lips were fleshy and sensuous, made for kissing and tracing with fingertips.

The thought sent my nerves to tingling.

“You slept for a few hours,” she said, calmly watching me.

I covered my mouth with the back of my hand and sat up, coughing against the tickle in my lungs.

I groaned as the tickle turned into that damned bruising pain. When I drew my hand away, there was blood on my skin.

I tried to take another deep breath and winced.

“Epiphany,” she said. I took the kerchief she offered.

“Why are you being kind to me?” I asked.

She shrugged as much as her position would allow. “Why not?”

“I watched a man beg you for his life and you treated him as if he did not matter.” I set about wiping the blood off my hand. “Yet, here I sit, not begging for my life, and you show me compassion. Why?”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-four years of age,” I said. “Why?”

“You are young,” she said, reaching out and brushing a damp lock of hair out of my face. “Too young, I think, to feel death’s touch so soon.” Her fingers brushed the curve of my ear. A strange feeling fluttered at the bottom of my stomach. “Sleep,” she said. “We will speak more after you have rested.”

I closed my eyes. “You have not told me your name.”

“Renata.” Her breath tickled my lips and I looked up. She smiled, inches from my face, holding the length of her body above mine.

“Renata,” I whispered, “you do realize that my body is being taken by the consumption?”

The low laugh she gave was like silk and velvet. Her eyes sparkled. “Ah well,” she said in a silky tone, “you’ve not yet been consumed.”

Before I could speak, her hand slipped to the back of my neck. She pressed that sensuous mouth against mine.

I had been kissed before, when I was much younger. I had been kissed by a girl before too. When I was a child, my friend Abbey and I had been playing blind man’s bluff in the parlor of my father’s estate. I’d gotten exceptionally good at catching her whilst wearing a blindfold. Abbey had a bad habit of giggling. Once, when we were nine, I caught her and she caught my face in her hands and kissed me, slipping her wriggling tongue inside my mouth.

Thankfully, none of my father’s house ladies were in proximity of the parlor, or both Abbey and I would’ve endured a thorough scolding.

This was so very different. Her lips parted against mine. Unthinkingly compliant, I opened to her. My hands trembled slightly at her shoulders.

Her tongue slipped past my lips, spilling slowly into my mouth.

It was nothing like the way Abbey had kissed me.

Renata kissed me as if she meant to drink my soul from my body. If I had any thoughts, her mouth erased them. I found myself returning the kiss, as if it were natural, as if I’d done it more than once. I felt the tips of her canine teeth gliding across my tongue and paid no heed of them.

Her kiss superimposed the tide of pain, masking it with pleasure.

When she broke it, I was panting, mind boggled. My body no longer felt real.

She licked her lips and smiled, revealing small, pointy canines.

“What are you?” I breathed.

“Your salvation, if you agree. I’ll return on the morrow’s eve.”

“Agree to what?” I asked, but she had disappeared, leaving me with a fierce ache that burned between my legs.

In time, I slept.

True to her word, she returned the following evening wearing a gown of black velvet that laced between her breasts. Long sleeves trailed from her wrists, offering glimpses of blue taffeta nearly identical to the midnight blue in her eyes. Again, I was reminded that she seemed not to embrace the modern and ridiculous fashion of crinoline and corsets.

“If you are a queen,” I said, watching her light several candles around the room, “where is your crown?”

“I’ve no need of a crown,” she said idly.

“That’s a rather odd thing for a queen to say.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “Power rests within,” she said, “not atop one’s head.”

“You are not like the others who are afraid to come near and catch my disease.”

“I am not like the others who can catch your disease,” she said in a manner of matter-of-fact tone.

“How is that?” I asked.

She stood, changing the subject. “Do you feel well enough to bathe?”

I remembered Dominique’s words.
If she has chosen you.
A part of me wanted to question her until she relented, but a greater part of me knew intuitively she would not relent until she chose to do so.

A bath was drawn and an attendant summoned. The attendant was a girl that appeared to be some two or three years younger than I was. She was gentle and quiet, with hair the color of dark honey. She kept her triangular face lowered while helping me into the tub. The water was warm and the waves of steam felt terribly good to my aching lungs.

I placed a hand on the edge of the tub, sitting upright while she poured rosewater in my hair and attempted to scour my unruly curls with some vigor.

She rubbed oil into my skin, and although it smelled better than lye, it was unfamiliar and I recognized only the mild smell of mint.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It will help you breathe,” she said and I recognized the French accent to her words.

It cleared my nasal passages but set my throat to itching. Once the oil was washed from my skin, I felt cleaner and more alert than I had in a long while. I toweled off with a bath sheet while the girl procured clean garb, holding open a white flax-linen chemise that she slipped over my head. The nightgown was in pitiful condition, soiled with sweat and dirt. In the low candlelight, my skin was visible beneath the white folds of the chemise.

“It does not leave much to the imagination, does it?” I asked, looking at her.

Her eyes flicked briefly to mine before she moved behind me, using the bath sheet to wring the excess water out of my hair.

“It fits well enough,” she said.

True, it did fit.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Justine.”

The weight of damp hair fell against my back.

“Why am I here?”

There was a long pause filled with silence. Finally, she said, “That is not for me to say.”

I emerged from the bath to find the room beyond warm and heated by a brazier. Renata sat on the edge of the bed, gazing off into the distance. When I entered, she turned her head slowly to look at me.

That one look made me stop.

“You wish to know why you are here,” she said, rising. She stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to look up at her. She was a good head taller than I. “If you were offered a second chance at life, would you take it?”

It was a strange question, and I did not comprehend why she asked it. I only knew by her visage and the tone of her voice that she was not jesting.

“There is no cure for what ails me, lady.”

“Ah,” she said, lips curving, “but there is.”

One moment I was gazing into the blue fragments of her eyes. The next I was falling into them, drowning in waves that crashed in my mind and thrummed against my skin.

Ensorcelled by her, rationality left me. A carnal hunger sang through my veins, kindling a fire between my legs.

I knew the kind of aching fervor that had nothing to do with illness and everything to do with want and need and the dire urgency to feel her bare skin against mine.

I pressed myself against her, molding the lines of our bodies. Her lips found mine, parting. Our tongues touched and I fed at her mouth. Her hands branded my skin, resting at the base of my spine. A flood of strange longing spilled from betwixt my legs, dampening my thighs.

She drew away, breaking the kiss, breaking her spell.

I cried out, falling to my knees on the rough floor.

A great void nipped at the edges of my being.

I was crying and shaking and did not know why.

“Epiphany,” she said, her voice rendering a spark in the void. I raised my chin to look at her.

“Do you begin to understand?” she asked.

“What are you?” The question spilled from my mouth in a breath.

Her eyes glistened with amusement. “I am the one mortals pray their Gods will keep them safe from.”

Her words made me think past the void. “And when they pray, whose side are you on?”

She smiled. “Neither.”

“There are stories,” I said, “stories of demon-women who crawl into one’s bed at night.”

“Shall I crawl into your bed, Epiphany?” She closed the distance between us, touching my hair. “Would you have me climb atop your body and show you pleasure such as you have never known, such as no mortal lover can give you?” I turned my face into her hand, unable to resist the call of her skin. She traced my bottom lip with her thumb.

“What have you done to me?”

“This.” She trailed her hand down my throat, causing my eyelashes to flutter. I leaned my head back, arching into her touch. Her hand continued its steady descent, sweeping across my breast. My nipples stiffened like tiny dart tips against the chemise. “This is your own doing. I no longer hold you in thrall, and yet”—she caught my nipple between her fingers, sending a shock of pleasure and shame through me—“you sway at my touch.”