Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Emperor (4 page)

The idea of that made her
sad and she took his hand on impulse, squeezing it. He looked down
at their joined hands, his eyebrows raised and eyes
wide.

“
Varkans must
be able to love. You must feel attached to something. You must be
capable of feeling it.” Her own words sounded stupid to her ears.
Her heart told her that he would know if he could feel love.
Someone on the Varkan planets would have felt it by now if the
species could.

“
What
symbolises love?” He moved closer to her, his fingers closing
around hers. He raised her hand. “Does this?”

Sophia’s eyes widened.
“No. Maybe for some people. This is... sympathy
perhaps.”

“
What
symbolises love to you?”

She stared at the floor,
at their feet only inches apart. She could see herself in the
reflection on his black boots. What was love to her? Her thoughts
strayed to her parents.

“
A kiss,” she
said with confidence and a smile as she remembered how her parents
would kiss when they thought no one was watching. To her, a kiss
was love. It held love or it had no meaning.

Before she could even
squeak, Regis had grabbed her, dragged her into a dark room and was
kissing her. Her eyes were wide as his mouth glided over hers,
sending thrill after thrill chasing across her skin and buzzing
along her nerve endings. She closed her eyes and hesitated for only
a moment before clutching his upper arms and returning the kiss.
His tongue brushed her teeth and she parted her lips to let it
pass, her own coming to meet it. He backed her into the wall, his
body against hers, the pressure of it making every inch of her burn
with desire. No one had ever kissed her like this. It was intense,
mind-blowing, and even though she knew that she should stop him,
she couldn’t bring herself to push him away.

She wanted to cling to
him, to hold him and beg him to never let her go. She could kiss
him forever.

Her tongue brushed his
canines and she flinched at their sharpness.

His fingers closed around
her upper arms, pressing in and gripping them so tight that it
hurt. She wriggled against him but he deepened the kiss and pushed
her against the wall so hard that she struggled to
breathe.

A metallic taste filled
her mouth.

Blood.

She couldn’t
breathe.

Her heart exploded with
panic, thundering at the thought that she was running out of air
and Regis wasn’t letting her go. She released his arms and pushed
her hands against his chest, trying to shove him off her. His grip
tightened again and she whimpered in pain. His mouth didn’t leave
hers. She shoved him again, closing her eyes so tight that a tear
ran down her cheek. With one final push, he stumbled
backwards.

Sophia choked on the air
as she breathed deep, her heart still pounding with
fear.

Before she could say
anything, Regis pulled her back into his arms, holding her so
gently that it confused her. He said something that she didn’t
understand, a language similar to the one he had sung in, and
stroked her cheek. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against
his chest, too tired to fight him again. Her head felt light but
heavy at the same time. It spun occasionally, making her legs feel
weak. She had never been so frightened.

“
I am sorry,
your highness,” he whispered into her hair, his fingers still
caressing her jaw and hair. “I was not in control of
myself.”

Sophia coughed and drew
another lungful of air as she thought about what he had said. He
wasn’t talking about the kiss. It was what had happened afterwards.
It was her blood.

“
Understand
that I would never consciously hurt you,” he said and she
frowned.

Stepping out of his
embrace, she reached out behind her and touched the control panel
beside the door. The lights slowly came on.

Regis flinched away but
not before she saw how red his eyes were. Crimson. Not the dark red
they had been before. She continued to frown, wondering what had
happened to him to make him almost hurt her.

He turned away. “Do not
look at me like that... do not look at me at all!”

Suddenly, he was gone. The
window was open and the warm midday breeze was drifting in,
tousling the long thin curtains and washing over her.

She hadn’t even seen him
move.

Her hand rose. Her fingers
pressed against her lips. He had kissed her and it had been nice,
more than nice, until she had cut her tongue on his teeth and
everything had changed. He had changed. Her blood had altered him.
Could this be the bloodlust that the books and computer spoke of?
She’d thought it was just a figure of speech, something to sum up
their violent nature in battle. Did it mean something else? She
didn’t understand.

Sophia went to the window
and looked out at the bright square below, but couldn’t see Regis
anywhere. There was so many questions that she wanted to ask him.
He had to be back in the palace somewhere. The Lyran sun was too
strong for him without his visor. She was about to go to find him
again when she thought the better of it.

He had told her not to
look at him.

She had felt his shame and
horror. A moment before she had broken free of his arms, she had
felt his remorse. And before that, when he had been kissing her,
she had tasted his hunger.

If she went to him now,
while he was still feeling such muddled emotions, he would turn her
away. She needed to give him some time alone. She needed to find
someone else to answer the question burning within her.

Looking back out of the
window again, she smiled when she saw her father walking the square
alone.

He would answer
her.

She took the quickest
route down through the palace, unable to leap from windows like
Regis. She had read Lyran Imperial Army reports that stated Varkans
had strange abilities—a strength like no other species, bones that
wouldn’t break when they leapt from great heights, and an urge for
violence that made them natural soldiers. She wouldn’t have
believed it if she hadn’t witnessed it herself.

Coming out in the square,
she looked around for her father and spotted him walking towards
the garden.

“
Father!” She
ran after him, lifting the skirt of her deep blue dress so she
didn’t trip. He turned and gave her a smile.

“
I see you are
feeling better,” he said and placed his arm around her shoulders.
The sleeve of his loose pale blue shirt tickled her neck. She
looked up into his near-black eyes and smiled at the concern in
them. Her father had always made her feel better. “Although you are
a little flushed.”

Sophia touched her burning
cheeks. It was Regis’s kiss that made them blaze, not her phoney
illness.

“
Father, can we
walk a while?”

He nodded and they headed
in the direction of the garden. Sophia struggled for a while,
trying to find the courage to ask her question. It was difficult
enough to ask her father this. It would have been impossible to ask
Regis.

“
What are
Varkans?” she said, voice trembling.

Her father sat down on one
of the benches in a shady corner of the garden, ran his fingers
through the strands of his black hair and then patted the spot
beside him. He crossed his legs and adjusted his dark blue
trousers. Normally her father didn’t dress so informally but it was
hot out today. A smile touched her heart when she remembered how
they normally passed hot sunny days swimming in the crystal clear
palace lake. Sophia sat sideways, facing him. His pensive
expression unsettled her.

“
You seem
troubled by them.” He cupped her cheek and his brow furrowed with
concern. His dark eyes searched hers. “Is it the
emperor?”

She shook her head, nerves
churning her stomach.

“
The Count of
Sagres?”

Her eyes
widened.

Her father laughed. “Your
mother was right. The moment they arrived she knew that it would
not be the emperor who captured your heart.”

Sophia placed her hand
against her chest and looked at it. “My heart? How can someone who
cannot love capture my heart?”

She sighed when her father
placed his arm back around her shoulders and pulled her close. It
was comforting to feel the weight of it against her and his firm
grip on her shoulder. It had been a long time since she had been a
child, and since she had turned mating age, but it still made her
believe that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

“
You must have
noticed that it is difficult to sense their emotions.”

She nodded.

“
Varkans
control their emotions to control their bloodlust. The species do
not feed in the same manner that we do. Intense feelings bring out
their bloodlust.”

Her hands fell into her
lap. Bloodlust. Was her father suggesting what she had feared,
insinuating that Varkans drank blood for sustenance and that it
affected them? When she had been close to Regis, she had been able
to sense his feelings, but after she had cut her tongue and he had
tasted her blood, his feelings had been so intense that she had
felt them.

Everything he had felt,
she had felt too.

She had never experienced
another’s emotions before, not like that. It had been
overwhelming.

She opened her mouth to
speak but her father raised his hand, silencing her.

“
I do not think
it is I who you should be posing these questions to. I will detain
the emperor again so you may ask the right man for the job.” He
smiled at her when she gave him an unimpressed look and then rose
and walked away.

The right man for the job.
Her eyes scanned along the palace and stopped on the room she knew
was Regis’s. Perhaps her father was right. Regis was the one she
should be asking, even though she was afraid to. He was Varkan
after all. If anyone could make her understand the species, it was
him.

****

Chapter
4

Regis stalked his room,
grabbing everything that he had unpacked only hours ago and tossing
it back into the large cases on the floor. He was a fool for
thinking that he could do this. His father would have been sorely
disappointed with him if he had still been alive.

He paused by the window.
The curtains and the tall windows were open. The world outside was
still painfully bright, stinging his eyes enough that he thought
about putting his visor back on. He didn’t. He walked to the edge
of the room, standing on the threshold of the balcony, and stared
out at the city. He had never seen such a blue sky before. Sophia
wore nothing but blue. Even if she did agree to marry Emperor
Varka, it would be impossible to convince her to leave this place.
She loved it as much as any Varkan loved their home
world.

As much as he loved Varka
Prime.

Although her skin was pale
and her eyes and hair were dark like a Varkan, she was a completely
different creature. She craved the sunlight while a Varkan needed
the darkness.

With a growl, Regis
unbuttoned his black jacket and tossed it onto the expansive bed
beside his sword. Bare-chested, he walked into the bathroom and
stared at himself in the mirror above the marble basin. Dark red
eyes glared back at him. He knew what she had seen when she had
looked at him in that room. It was the exact reason his species
were so secretive. Other species didn’t understand their ways and
their needs. When they discovered the truth about them, their view
changed. His kind became something else entirely in their
eyes.

Monsters.

When she had looked at
him, she had seen a monster.

He hung his head forwards,
grasping the edges of the basin for support, and closed his
eyes.

He wasn’t a
monster.

Or perhaps he
was.

He had almost killed her
after all. Something with feelings, with a heart that could love as
well as merely hate, wouldn’t have done such a thing to someone so
beautiful.

A knock at the door made
him tense. His fingers tightened against the basin edges,
threatening to smash the stone. He pushed away from it and went
back into his room, throwing the rest of his clothes into the
waiting trunks.

Another knock.

“
I wish for no
company, Van. Leave,” Regis said, hoping the younger Varkan would
do as he had asked. He had known Van since they were younglings
together on Varka Prime and under normal circumstances would
welcome his company, but not today. These weren’t normal
circumstances. He would leave a note for Van, the Count of Aeris,
and then make his way to the ship. His friend would
understand.

They knocked
again.

Perhaps he
wouldn’t.

Regis’s temper frayed when
another knock sounded and he stormed to the door.

“
Van!—” He
yanked the door open and stared at the blank space were Van’s face
should have been. His gaze dropped almost a foot to a
crimson-cheeked Sophia.