Blood Games

I stood by impatiently, gnawing on my thumb and pacing the room as I waited for him to emerge.



Finally, the water slowed to a trickle, nearly twenty minutes after I’d come into the room. There were footsteps, then the sound of fabric on skin.



He emerged a minute later, a towel wrapped around his waist, and scrubbing another through his hair. He might have been immortal, but he looked tired. Gaunt, as if the hour with the psychics had literally pulled away parts of him.



He spared me a glance, a line of worry between his eyes. “Is there a problem?”



I shook my head. “Just checking on you. I brought you something to eat in case you were hungry.”



He nodded and wrapped the second towel around his neck, holding the ends with his hands. We stood there silently for a moment.



“That felt like hell. The House shook with it.”



Ethan’s gaze searched mine. “You’re all right? Everyone’s all right?”



“We’re all fine. Worried about you.”



“I survived,” he said, and walked to his closet, a dark, script tattoo across the back of his calf.



I debated whether to follow him or give him space, had no idea of the appropriate behavior for a boyfriend who’d just been put through an emotional ringer. I doubted Cosmo had addressed it; my nerves in overdrive, I nearly laughed aloud at the thought of seeing Sup Cosmo on a supermarket shelf. Just consider the articles: “Woo Your Wolf with White Lingerie.” “Sexy Scabbards Your Vamp Won’t Forget.” “Kicking Him to the Curb: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Vampire Lover.”



I knew Ethan didn’t need to be pushed—Luc had reminded me of that well enough—but at least I could try to tend to him the way he tended to me.



I picked up the bottle of Blood4You, uncapped the top, and carried it to the closet, offering him sustenance instead of peppering him with my burning questions.



He stood in front of the chest that sat in the middle of the closet, which was large enough to be a room in its own right. A drawer was open, and he pulled out a dark, folded T-shirt, placed it on the top of the bureau. His hair was wet and slicked back, and he’d already pulled on dark silk pajama bottoms that rode low on his hips. His toes peeked from the bottom hem, his abdomen bare above the waistband.



When I offered the bottle, he reached out and drained it in seconds, throat moving as he drank. Still silent, he placed the empty bottle atop the bureau and looked back at me, eyes silvered.



Lust bolted through me. Not the lust of seduction, but survival. He’d gone through something—something we’d experienced vicariously—and come through the other end. I wanted to be near him, close to him.



I missed him.



But there was still something between us, so I didn’t step forward.



That didn’t stop Ethan. He moved to me, sunk his lips into mine with enough force to draw blood. I felt his banked strength, even as his muscles trembled with exhaustion.



I had strength to offer. I tilted my head, offered myself to him—blood, body, and soul—shivered as he traced his lips across my jaw, to the nape of my neck, to the crux of my shoulder. Just to feel him touch me was a miracle.



But he stopped. He slid fingers along the line of my shoulder and cheek, cupped my face in his hand. When I lifted my eyes to him, I found his wracked with pain and fear.



“Do you want to know what I saw? When she was in my mind, when she was battling me, do you want to know what I saw?”



His agony was so obvious I was terrified to nod, but I was more terrified to decline. I nodded, and Ethan caressed my lips.



“I saw you. You and me. And you were taken from me. Ripped away. That’s how they test you, Merit. Not with anger or pain, but with loss. With the loss of all that you love, all that you want, all that you don’t even have the courage to hope for.”



He stepped away, and I nearly gasped at the absence, the sudden chill against my skin, the loss of his comforting scent and the caress of his magic.



“I won,” he said, and it took me a moment to catch up with him. “I beat Nicole.” Lakshmi must have finished tallying the official scores.



“Good,” I said. “That’s good.



He nodded. “Tomorrow, the physical test.”



I thought of the pain he’d obviously been through. I asked the difficult question. “Do you want to continue?”



He didn’t answer for a very long time. “Yes.”



I chose my words carefully. “She’ll be angry that she lost to you. Afraid that she’ll keep losing. She may escalate because of it. She may try harder to hit you.” I paused. “And she may target your past again.”



“She very probably will. But that doesn’t change my mind.” He smiled, just a little. “I’ve tried to teach you to fight beyond fear, Merit. I can’t very well play the coward.”



“Okay, then.”



He looked back at me. “Okay?”



“Okay. I agreed to support you in this a long time ago. I’m not going to change my mind because it’s hard.” And I won’t change my mind about you either, I thought. But I still want to punch you a little.



“This hasn’t exactly been easy for us,” he said.



“No, it hasn’t. It’s been downright miserable, and it’s been hard on the House. But it’s what I agreed to.”



Many emotions crossed his face—awe, surprise, love. And maybe a bit of regret that I wasn’t giving him an excuse to quit, to walk away when it would be so much easier to do so. But he hadn’t trained me that way; quite the contrary. He pulled on the T-shirt, the damp ends of his hair just touching the collar. Then he leaned back against the bureau and slid down to the floor, knees raised.



I sat down on the facing wall, gave him silence.



“This is usually the part where you ask me to talk,” he said.



“I’ve already asked. You declined.”



He made a rough sound of agreement, pushed his hands through his hair.



And there on the floor, in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, Ethan Sullivan began to talk.



“As you know, I was a soldier. As a human, I mean. We were in Nördlingen, in southern Germany. We were outnumbered and, frankly, outcommanded. But one did what one had to do.”



My chest tightened. I’d seen him die as a vampire and didn’t much want to imagine him dying as a human in the middle of a battlefield, dark and alone.



Ethan rubbed his shoulder, the place where an arrow had felled him, taken his life. “Night came, and so did Balthasar.”



“He made you, and you traveled with him.”



He nodded. “For a decade. We traveled. Pillaged, and worse.”



“And Nicole was with you.”



A pause, then another nod. “She’d been born in Martinique, traveled to Europe with the humans who believed they owned her. Balthasar made her a vampire.”



“Effectively freeing her.”



“Yes. She took to it immediately—biologically, strategically. He was crazed—unstable, difficult to predict. But she learned to work through that. He considered me a soldier; he considered her a prize. Their relationship was considerably different, although even she wouldn’t argue he had little regard for life, human or otherwise. His immortality had, ironically, made him callous toward it. If anyone could have immortality by exchanging a bit of blood, then life was cheap.



“Life was cheap . . . as was love. Balthasar trained us to be monsters. To take what we wanted, discard the rest. To take who we wanted.”



Fear curled low in my belly at the disquiet in his eyes. Then his gaze slipped away again and back into the past.



“There were women, Merit.” He raked fingers through his hair. “For years on end. For decades on end, there were women. I hadn’t yet learned to take blood without taking pleasure. It was part of who I was, who I’d learned to be. Been trained to be.”



He looked at me again. “Who I’d been trained by Balthasar to be.”



My voice sounded so quiet. “That’s what you didn’t want to tell me. Because you’d had affairs?”



He nodded. “There was no faithfulness. There was no fidelity. There was only . . . decadence.” He paused. “Nicole was one of those lovers. Only for a brief time. But as, it seems, I’m being honest . . .”



He didn’t finish the thought, but gave me, I knew, a moment to reflect, to gather my own.



None of it should have been a surprise. Not given how I’d come to know Ethan. Before we’d fallen in love, only days after we’d actually met, Ethan had asked me to be his Consort—the paid and titled vampire whose job was to see to his carnal satisfaction.



That was shortly before I’d seen him in flagrante delicto with Amber, the Consort I’d have replaced. That, strangely, had been the first time I’d seen him naked, the first time I’d seen him in the throes of lust. And Amber hadn’t been the only of his lovers I’d faced down. Ethan was much desired.



But still . . . this was different in a way I couldn’t yet name.



Amber hadn’t meant anything to him. Hadn’t affected him, and he hadn’t hidden that relationship. He’d retired the position after learning of her treachery against the House, but he hadn’t hidden it.



If he’d been afraid to tell me this—how much worse was it, at least in his own mind?



“That look in your eyes paralyzes me, Merit.”



I shook my head. “I . . . just . . . I don’t know what to say.”



“I’ve lost you once tonight,” he said, fear writing lines in his face, spilling magic into the room. “I saw you leave me, watched it happen. And I cannot see that happen again.” His voice softened. “But if you’d leave me, then let it be for truth—because of who I am when you see the whole of me—and not because I was afraid to let you see it.”



He swallowed hard. “There was a night in London. It was near the end, although not near enough in hindsight. We’d played at being ton, with titles bought and paid for.” He paused. “There was a girl who fancied me. She was a wisp of a thing. Cream and roses complexion. Feminine in the most delicate sense.”



Ethan smiled wistfully, his affection for the girl obvious in his expression, his tone. But there was sadness, too.



“I might have loved her. In time, in a fashion. In the way I’d been capable of then.” Storm clouds crossed his face, darkened his eyes. “Balthasar watched us one night, saw me dance with her. Caught what was, to him, a hint of affection for someone other than himself. He was a narcissist; that was not allowed.



“She’d worn a white dress with small green flowers. White satin slippers. She lay on the floor of his den, blood everywhere. She’d fought him; he made sure to tell me that. I came in—found them—just as he’d drained the life from her.” His expression was vacant, as if he stared at a mental photograph of that moment.



“He’d been grinning. ‘She fought me,’ he’d said. ‘You’d have been proud of her, for the fight in her.’” Ethan paused, tapped fingers against his knee. “He left me there with her, with her body limp on the ground.



“He’d wanted me to try to change her—or beg him to change her—to create another vampire he could manipulate. That was the way he operated, feeding on guilt and sadness and fear. She didn’t deserve that, to be made one of us, to be dragged from her world into ours. So I didn’t do it.”



“She died.”



He lifted dark eyes to mine. “Did she? Or did I kill her? Did I kill her and others, Merit?” He shook his head sharply, as if that might soothe his pain, clear the emotions from his face. “That’s when I left him. And I didn’t bite another human, didn’t make another vampire, until I became Master of this House.”



“Nicole knew about her?”



“She knew about all of it. About Balthasar. About the women. Nicole was there the night Persephone—that was her name: Persephone—died. And now, after biding her time for so many years, she’s claiming what she believes is due to her—a crown.”



We sat in heavy, impenetrable silence.



He needed, I knew, a decision from me. Unfair or not, there it was. Either I accepted who he was—good, bad, and ugly—or I walked away now. And that was the option he’d expected I’d choose.



I looked at him, found his gaze on me, fear in his eyes. “You were afraid I’d run from you if I knew who you’d been?”



After a moment, he nodded.



“You stopped so you wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”



He opened his mouth, closed it again. “Yes. Although at times like these, it hardly feels sufficient.”



“That’s because you care. Because Balthasar couldn’t strip your humanity away. Not completely, even as much as you like to think otherwise.”



And that was the sum of him. He might not ever truly forgive himself for the man—the boy—he’d been for so many years, for the things he’d been taught by a vampire bent on turning his pupils into the same monster he’d become. Ethan had tried in the ensuing centuries to make himself into something more than he’d been. He was still trying to make a better future for his vampires; that was why we were sitting on the floor of our closet as dawn crawled toward us.



I’d made my decision long ago. I leaned forward, met Ethan’s gaze directly. “I have no blinders, Ethan. I see you exactly as you are.”



The love in his eyes, the green fire of them, was nearly blinding. Relief and magic mixed and danced in the air.



“God, but I love you.”



I smiled at him. “Once upon a time, I chose not to be your Consort. I did that because I deserved more, because we both deserved more than that. More than physical release. Because we both deserved love and understanding. And because we are more than the sum of our pasts. Far be it from me to snatch that back from you now.”