***
When Nero came back to see Adaria, she had a lot to tell him. They met in the drawing room, where he crawled in through the window with a sheepish grin on his face as she looked up from the book she'd been reading.
"How did you know that I was here?" she asked.
Nero scratched the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact. After two days of not seeing her, the sight of her staring at him quizzically did funny things to his stomach. He sat on the windowsill like he usually did, and when Adaria leaned in closer, his grin widened even more.
"I could smell you," he said.
"Do I really smell that bad?" she joked, pretending to smell herself.
"It's actually not you I smell, but the scent of your blood," he said.
Once again, she was reminded of his urge to drink her blood. It was a we
