My fangs sank into the soft flesh of her throat. The act, usually one of supreme control and sensual power, was a clumsy, desperate butchery. A small, pathetic whimper escaped her lips, but I was deaf to it. I was a man dying of thirst, and she was the last well in a desert of my own making. I closed my eyes, anticipating the rush—the potent, life-giving essence of the Prima Key, the stolen echo of Elara’s power that would hold my crumbling form together.
What I got was filth.
It was not blood, not in the way an ancient being understands it. It was a thin, acrid fluid, tasting of cheap wine and mortal desperation. It lacked the resonant hum of true power, the complex notes of a noble lineage. It was common, weak, and worse, it was tainted. The fragment of the Prima Key she held was not i
