The water flowed off his body like feathers while the light from my runes shone like fingers, highlighting his bruises and making his skin whole. It was uncanny to watch because I wasn’t a healer, yet something in my blood sang to him. I wondered if it was because we were bound together with a vow not said by words but by physical action.
The memory of making love drew me to his side, and, as if sensing me near, he opened his eyes. They were bloodshot but no longer black. His nose had healed, and his jaw was only slightly puffy. His fingers curled around my wrist, and my skin tingled when his thumb brushed over the tiny bones there.
“Your light is healing me,” he whispered, confirming my suspicions. “It’s also making me hungry.”
I blanched, and he hurried on, realizing his mistake. “Hungry for real food, not blood. Lucia, my moon goddess, you should know my taste for blood vanished on the day I met you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think you’re breaking my curse.”
My heart leaped with joy and hope sofraught and delectable, I tasted the essence on my lips. “What will you become when you are no longer cursed?”
“Free to walk in the light without fear or the lust for blood haunting my steps. Free to be normal, as any other man, to choose my destiny, where I go, where I dwell, who I love.”
His eyes held mine.
Hope budded, then bloomed, and my runes glowed brighter.
“It’s presumptuous of me,” he said. “But that has been an attribute of our entire relationship, hasn’t it?”
I nodded, my words lost to the thudding of my heart. It was odd to be looking down at him because usually, he was the one in control, towering above me. Tonight, our roles were reversed. I’d come to his aid, to protect him, to save him.
“Any future I can imagine centers on you, but I don’t know what you want. I’ve never asked. So this is me asking, what do you want, my dear moon goddess?”
I tilted my head, studying the lines of his beautiful face, the strength in his body, and the way my light curled around him so gently, tenderly. “I’m not sure what the future holds, and I’m afraid to look into it because I’m not ready to choose. This is myhome; it’s always been my home, but it’s not possible to be a priestess and also. . .” I trailed off.
“I’ve made you question everything, haven’t it?”
“It’s been difficult.”
Instead of his sly grin, he sobered. “It was not my intention. I was drawn to your light and goodness, and I’m aware it’s too great of an ask to draw you to my darkness.”
“But there is good within you,” I protested.
“Don’t flatter yourself. All my will and resistance is for you. I’d tear this abbey down and destroy every knight who ever laid so much as a finger on me. But I know you wouldn’t respect me for that. Instead, I will lead them to the den of darkness, and when this is over, I will respect whatever decision you make regarding your future.”
“You speak as though vanquishing the vampires will break your curse?”
Titus rose in the water, and his broad arms encircled my waist. He bent his head and reverently brushed his lips across mine, as light as the wings of a butterfly. “I saw your face, felt you stiffen with fear when I bit you. I was but a shell of myself, full of raw anger, and it was a natural reaction to take what I needed. It was wrong of me, and you had every right to leave me in that stinking pit. Yet you forgave me. Ifelt it zing through my soul, and it gave me hope and determination. I never want to lose control like that again.”
“I didn’t know what they’d done to you. You had every right?—”
“Don’t excuse my sin.”
“It was your contriteness, your willingness to change, that told me to give you a chance, to trust you.”
His brows knitted together. “I have a question, though. When the knights were torturing me, they kept demanding I tell them why I wrote the letters. You’d even mentioned one to me, once, but I wasn’t interested at the time. Tell me, what do you know about letters?”
“Letters from the vampire king? The captain and the high priestess shared them with me, and I admit I was disturbed. But. . .they are all signed from VK, which I assumed meant the Vampire King. If you didn’t write them, then perhaps your brother did.”
Titus sagged back into the water, ducking under it and then resurfacing, a wounded look crossing his face. “Have I been a fool all this time, and my brother controlled the wheel of fate? Driving me to madness?”
“You didn’t know,” I confirmed.
“In these letters, were there demands for supplies?”
“There were.”
