The Relic (Cradle of Darkness 2)

“Weren’t we all when life was new? Now come, Pearl, I promised the other ladies I would tempt you from your lover’s side so they might meet you.”

My fingers were freed, and a hand came to my lower back, propelling me gently toward the woman who countered the space to assure no physical contact was made. Yet still smiled and waved me nearer.

This too made the host chortle, the same host urging me to follow her. “Go on now. Everyone here will be lovely. Just don’t touch any of them.” At my back, his voice darkened. “I wouldn’t like it. And they wouldn’t like what I’d do.”

Maya chuckled yet still stepped back, assuring, “He won’t always be so obsessive. It’s not in our nature to deny physical touch. You’ll be hungry for it soon enough. Besides, he’ll give you whatever you ask for, including mercy on our poor souls.” I followed as she continued. “Besotted, utterly. A fool in love.”

Though Vladislov must have heard her, there was no waspish reprimand. Instead, I heard his tenor picking up a conversation about livestock with another, leaving me to the women who crowded as near as they might without the risk of physical touch.

“This is Eloisa, Kami, Fhulendu…” Each lady introduced by dark-skinned, glowing Maya—most of their names beyond my ability to pronounce. Features and hair, histories, body shapes, and style all so foreign, so out of place in the world I knew. Each beautiful to the point it might leave a person breathless.

All patient as I drank more wine and chose silence over conversation with demons. So they spoke to one another for my benefit, of pleasant things, of trysts, of jokes, of modern luxuries I’d never heard of. Of travel and far-off wonders. Of lost wonders. Of their children, their children’s children. A few bragging about the pure bloods they had produced, causing others to narrow their gaze as if in envy. Yet all had dozens—if not hundreds of offspring—chosen from the finest quality of humans to enhance Vladislov’s vision of Vampirekind.

As if this was normal, they were normal, and the broken piece of this puzzle was me.

I was a Daywalker. I walked in the sunlight, lived with humans, ate their food....

A kiss fell atop my head, a strong arm circling my middle. More tipsy than I realized, I leaned back into the support of something solid when the ground was sand and the world was… strange.

“What a vision the pair of you make!” A round of feminine giggles, then, “I should snap a photo to show my hive. Smile!”

A rectangular device was produced. A flash.

And the ladies laughed, the joke utterly lost on me.

Warm lips at my ear breathed, “Because of the myth that vampires cannot be photographed.”

“Oh, like how people think we don’t have reflections?” Had I just said we?

I wasn’t like these things.

Embracing me, another kiss to my hair, Vladislov spoke over the fading laughter. “My bride means no offense. Not that any of you have permission to peek, but her experiences with her kind have been unpleasant. Pearl doesn’t know what great company we can be.”

“Pearl,” Fhulendu, dark-skinned, heavy braid, beautiful to the point I wanted to cry, said, “sometime, I’ll tell you about my early years. They too had been unpleasant, so believe me when I say I understand. We all do—well, maybe not those purebloods born to this life. But for many who were changed, especially in the old world, it was a challenging period of our existence.”

“Well said.” Maya smiled, running a hand down the arm of the woman at her side.

And they seemed so nice I didn’t know what to make of it.

They felt real. So real I wished I might see what they looked like under their pretty skins. Were they pitch like Vladislov? Did they crackle with fire? Wings? Claws? Fangs dripping venom?

Did their touch burn?

“Only mine will burn you, my soul.”

Shivering from the feel of cool lips brushing my ear, I failed to resist when he took the hand dangling limp at my side, lifting my arm so I might cup the cheek of the creature at my back.

I felt a face freshly shaved, the sharp angles of high cheekbones.

I felt my eyes grow wide when he turned his head to press a hot kiss to my palm.

And then I began to cry, because I would not be fooled. Not by Lucifer, or Vladislov, or Darius, bright lights, crystal, beauty that was little more than a husk to conceal real monsters from a world that made no sense.

Breaking down into hiccupping sobs, unreasonably mortified, I was turned, my painted face pressed to the white, starched shirt of my keeper. Ruined by cake mascara and lips painted with rouge.

I sobbed, I clung, and knew I had drank far too much wine too quickly.