“You took my dagger, so this was the only chance I had at survival.” Anger billowed through her. “You left me no choice.”
Lilac was close enough to land the blow. Instead, she held the stake over the edge of the beam. Early sunlight from the nearby stained-glass window caught on the iron-banded shaft, casting a long shadow across the rafters.
This was a game they both could play.
“I’ve a talent for that, haven’t I? Leaving the ones I love with nothing but terrible choices.” Garin’s cruel grin disappeared. “But no,thisis how I would do that.” His eyes flashed dangerously, ablaze against the dawn. She glimpsed something like regret there. “Eleanor, I command you to drive that stake through my heart.”
Lilac stood there, panting. Bracing herself, ready to drop her weapon and?—
And what? And die?She never expected it to happen here—in a church of all places. Not at the meager age of twenty, like this, atop a rafter, sparring the one she loved. How woefully poetic.
But as her fingers shook with the weight of her only option… nothing happened.
“Do it.”
There was no urge to fight against. Lilac’s eyes widened.The bag of berries.
As if reading her mind, a look of fury overcame Garin.
She immediately dropped her gaze, feeling his intense eyes probing hers, fingering her mind for a chance at entrancement. “I won’t,” Lilac said to his boots. His long, nimble legs. “I will not. You deserve tolive, and love, and be loved, Garin.” He stalked toward her, walking her back toward the front of the church. He opened his arms wide, bearing his chest. The lump in her throat nearly choked her. “You deserve good things,wedeserve more time?—”
Her heel slipped; Marguerite sobbed below.
But Lilac caught her balance. Barely.
“Fight me when I am unable to do it. I’d never be able to live withmyself if I let anything terrible happen to you. But I’d burn this entire world and the next down if your demise was by my own hand—please, Lilac,” he crooned, chest rising and falling as he neared. Saliva dribbled from his chin, his pupils blown wide in hunger. Tears were falling past the tips of his boots. “If you love me… do it for me. For us. Put me out of the misery of fantasizing about your blood—all of it, running through my fingers, so much of it spilling into my mouth that it chokes me. This is not what you want, Eleanor. Look at me, what I am. This is not the future you deserve.”
“You said I deserve a burning, steadfast love,” she whispered fiercely. Unflinching. Her gaze rose to him, boring into him. “Try as I might, I cannot imagine one as deep or piercing, or as corrupting as yours.” Lilac leaned in, watching his eyes drop to her throat. “Ache for me, Garin. I am yours everlasting. I am bound and I amwilling.”
Her dagger shook in his hand.
As if fate itself drove her, Lilac grabbed for her blade—the blade itself.
“No!” He yanked it back, slashing her.
Hissing, she let go in time to preserve all of her fingers, but it was enough to slice her—soak her front and forearms in blood. Garin collapsedintoher, his hunger taking over his need to kill her, just as she wanted.
Lilac made to sink the stake into his shoulder, his stomach—anywhereawayfrom his heart—but he was too heavy, and his fangs had latched onto her arm.
She lost her balance, and they both tumbled off the beam.
47
When Garin felt the warmth of sun on his face and his beloved’s perfumed hair against his chest—her full weight against him—he knew he’d either gone to heaven, or had been dragged into the deepest pits of hell.
And when he felt the liquid ecstasy trickling onto his arms, he wished he’d never left that sanctum with her. For a pocket full of time, thousands of books, and the odd creature that now lay snoring in a crumpled heap just feet away, he didn’t know what he’d give.
They’d rolled and tumbled. That was all he’d remembered from their quick, unpleasant descent. Lilac grappling for her dagger in his grasp; red clouding his vision, his stomach lurching.
The way her sweet flesh gave way between his new, sharper teeth.
Garin slid Lilac’s body off of him, and reached for the dagger handle, ready to yank it out of her back and watch her chest inflate.
But he winced, his hand knocking wood. Garin sat up, watching his raw knuckle heal over, smoking in the ray of sunlight piercing the high window.
Lilac’s eyes were glassy, an expression of brief shock contorting her face as she stared back at him, unseeing, her head twisted in his direction. Red leaked lightly at the front of her damp gown, and at the crescent of fangmarks he’d left on her forearm, but it waspouringfrom her back, pooling rapidly beneath her.
He crawled and yanked it from her, then flipped her face-up.
