Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

Malcom had taken him away. I think he might have killed him afterward, to be honest. I didn’t care; I just never wanted to see him again.

The whole event had left me in a mood for a night or two, one lifted by a trip to the opera with a beautiful man on my arm. And a sea of familiar faces unsure why I ignored their invitations and waved them away from my box.

I wore white. I always wore white for Malcom, and I suspected that had I placed a veil on my head, it would have done nothing but given my vampire pleasure.

And it hit me, leaving me smiling during intermission as if I were in on his trick. “You’re waiting for me to call you my husband.”

Malcom kissed my fingers and said nothing.

The lights flickered, and the second act began.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Malcom

It took her a year. Pouting, arguments. Four seasons, timed almost to the day that she’d brought down the Cathedral to begin truly accepting her place in my world. One year for her to be ready, to experience a healthy relationship and life the way a modern immortal might crave.

We had all the time in the world for her to capitulate. But she would not be truly happy without that one last, small concession. Patience I could and would afford her. Not that she wasn’t regularly corrected. Over my knee, with orgasm denial, with timeouts and physical restraint. Still so young, so impetuous, so mine.

I didn’t ask when I’d thrown out all the clothing she’d owned before she’d become my wife. My female—my pure, clean, worthy female—would wear white, and only white. Let her believe it was she who chose such things to please me. Let her scoff when a true wedding gown, carefully selected of course, came to hang in a position of obvious importance in her closet.

The minx refused to call me husband.

Were I introduced to humans at all, it was only as Malcom. Even if I pawed her before other interested men. Even if I kissed her dizzy and smeared all that red lipstick she loved to paint on her mouth.

She found my silent insistence on the term irrelevant. Thought to punish me for refusing her my cock, though she was blood and cum drunk on me several times a day. Absolutely addicted. Those glowing red eyes of hers never even glanced in the direction of another male or female. Quite a feat, considering her appetites and former temperament.

The collar locked around her throat, she could not get it off. This bothered her greatly. But the statement it made was far more important than her frustration. We were forever. A concept for one so young that had to feel weighty and intimidating.

I might never remove that collar from her throat, what care had I if it clashed with her fashion choices or chafed her skin. One day as a God, she’d still wear it.

“You don’t wear a collar! You don’t wear a ring!” This she’d spat at me when I’d caught her at her vanity picking at the mechanism with some tool. A tool she’d thrown with such precision it had pierced me right through the shoulder. Which was fucking hot as hell. My princess was learning.

An hour later there was a ring on my finger. I’d been keeping it on hand for just this occasion.

At first glance of the hammered band of steel, she blushed, frustrated to be thwarted, then settled into my side so I might read to her in old languages. So she might know she was safe, loved, and would endure through her tricky transition.

Jade healed.

Considering the amounts of blood she’d swallowed straight from a demon’s veins, it still took a remarkable amount of time. I’d catch her in the kitchen, talking to herself as she made a sandwich, piecing out old memories and not sure which was real and which was fake. She’d get stuck in circular arguments with her reflection, grow frustrated to the point of tears, drain me, as if the answers might lie at the center of my steadily beating heart… if only she could get to it.

What mattered most was that she had made herself the sandwich. It sounded like so small a thing, but was so epic in a world where she had hardly wiped her own ass.

So we would talk and I would tell her what I knew, fact from fiction. What I could not confirm, we’d consider together. And I found in doing this, I too began remembering things. Things that had Darius still ruled, he would have crushed me on the spot for holding in memory.

Devious Darius had a great secret.

One he’d gone to remarkable lengths to conceal.

With part of him alive in me, there was just enough to recall her face. I’d torn out her fangs and delivered her to a rotting, bored, and unkind king who had not moved from his throne in a century—not even to feed.