His fangs lanced her neck.
There was no pain. Or maybe it was just so mild compared to the wound in her stomach that her body didn’t register it. But Elias’s hand on her chin, his forehead against her temple, told her he was drinking, his desperate sounds lurching the dying heart in her chest.
Placing all of her trust and hope in the one person who’d ever deserved it, she let herself drift. Mist surrounded Roksana, rendering her weightless and suddenly she was barefoot in the snow, looking down from above at her bloody body cradled to Elias’s chest. Red spread like a flood, forming a great circle around them, the stake she’d embedded in her stomach tossed several yards away like it had offended Elias. All around them, the trees waved with flames, but she and Elias seemed to be in a protected sphere of energy, like even his unpredictable abilities wouldn’t dare touch the moment.
Overhead, the flames in the sky parted, as if beckoning her through with a flare of moonlight. An unseen force pulled her upward and her body began to lack gravity, her toes leaving the spot where they’d buried themselves in the snow. But the pull toward the man howling for a second chance into her neck demanded her soul remain. Her heart demanded she remain and so she fought, screaming into the ether, bargaining for re-entry into her own body.
Around her, the forest dissipated.
For a long while, there was nothing but blackness, sorrow, the sound of lonely wind, no feeling anywhere. Nothing but a lost, weightless sensation. Floating. She had no human form, but love for Elias kept her rooted to earth, casting her down, down—
She woke up struggling, snow crunching around her, her stomach clenching violently. Rolling over and rising onto her knees, she bore down on the pain, but it wouldn’t subside. Elias crawled to her in the snow, his face red and ravaged by grief, but there was hope dawning in his amber eyes. Oh yes, there was hope and its purity almost appeased her hunger.
Almost.
The flames died slowly around them, snow swirling in the night breeze, the pungent scent of burning wood mingling with Elias’s crisp smell. She could see every molecule of her breath in the air, count the ridges of every snowflake.
Roksana opened her mouth to speak and fangs jabbed into her lower lip.
It had worked, then.
An elated sob escaped her. She wasn’t dead, but immortal. Never to be parted from her beloved. And she was starving. “Some of your blood was left inside me from last night after all.” A wave of hunger mowed through her belly. “Temnota moya,” she managed, the sound of his pulse coming to her as if through a bullhorn. “Please.”
Elias made a choked sound and reached for Roksana, determination seeming to imbue his muscles with strength and life once more. His hands were purposeful as he pulled Roksana onto his lap, slinging her fatigued legs around his hips and guiding her mouth to his neck. “Drink from me, mate. Drain me if you have to, just don’t try to leave my side or this earth ever again. Swear it.”
“I swear.”
Their mouths met in a hard kiss, Elias’s arms banding Roksana to him like she could still be snatched away by fate. “You stabbed yourself,” he grated against her mouth, his expression wild. “You had no way of knowing it would work, Roksana. You gambled with the only thing I love, goddammit. Never again. Please, never again.”
“You either.” A sob erupted from her mouth. “What you did for me…”
“You pay the debt by existing. I love you.” He kissed her hard. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She sniffed and reached into her pocket, holding up the endless list of names and addresses. “I gave Inessa a bunch of blank pieces of paper. We still have the game piece. Reward me for my cunning, vampire.”
He huffed a sound, admiration warring with emotion in his voice. “I never doubted you.”
“And I’ll never doubt you again.”
“You didn’t, baby.” He gathered her face close to his. “That’s why you could never kill me.”
Salty tears rolled down her cheeks. “You remember the night we met.”
“Every. Beautiful. Second.” Sincerity and love radiated from his eyes. “And I’d do it all again this time tomorrow.”
EPILOGUE
One Week Later
Elias twisted his wife’s wet hair into a knot, holding it on the top of her head so he could kiss her neck. The ethereal glow of the Blue Lagoon worried around them in gentle eddies, rippling like whispers against their skin, the Icelandic moonlight fanning out around them like a wavy spider web. Roksana floated on her back in front of him, her toes peeking out of the water, her back against his chest. Though her body was already limp, it went even more boneless as Elias traced her tongue slowly up the slope of her shoulder, nuzzling her ear.