The Eternal Vessel: Desired by Vampire Princes

The Wounds Closed

Elena woke to a locked door and the taste of iron under her tongue.

For one thin breath, she was back on the stone floor, Adrian Blackthorne's mouth at her wrist, everyone watching her fail to die. Then the ceiling sharpened into carved black beams. Red glass lamps burned low. Heavy curtains smothered the windows, though morning found the floor in one pale line.

Not a cell.

Worse, perhaps.

The bed was too wide, the sheets too clean, the air stripped of other people. No servant moved in the corners. No guard leaned against the wall. The door had three locks, all sealed from the outside with dark metal bands.

Elena sat up too fast.

Pain answered, colder than last night, deep under the skin. Her bones remembered being emptied. Her hands shook before she could stop them.

Alive, then.

She checked her wrist first. Adrian's bite had been there, tender under her fingers. As she pressed, the skin tightened around the marks. The edges drew inward, slow and sure, until the punctures became two dark pinpricks and then a bruised shadow.

Elena stopped breathing.

The marks thinned into a crescent of silver under the skin.

Her palm held the old sacrifice cut.

Or what was left of it.

The red split from Greyclaw's altar had closed into a fine silver line. At the center, a faint moon-shaped mark curved beneath the skin.

Elena rubbed it with her thumb.

It did not come off.

Cold brushed the back of her thoughts.

Not a sound in the room. Not a voice outside. Something thinner. Older.

Blood Codex.

The name arrived without invitation.

Silver letters opened behind her eyes, too quick to read as a page, too sharp to dismiss as fever.

Moon-Healing Blood.

The letters vanished.

Elena's hand curled into a fist. Pain stung cleanly. When she opened it again, a bead of blood welled along the silver line.

It should have fallen.

Instead, it sat there, dark red with a pale sheen, then sank back into the cut. The line closed again.

Elena wiped her hand on the sheet anyway.

"Convenient," she whispered. Her voice scraped. "For someone."

The locks answered with a soft turn.

Elena slid off the bed before the door opened. Her legs nearly betrayed her, but she stayed upright and put the bedpost between herself and whoever entered.

Adrian came in alone.

He had changed from the blood-stained clothes of the hall. Black coat, high collar, gloves pulled neat. The veins at his throat were gone, but Elena saw the place where his pulse moved too carefully.

He noticed her noticing.

"You should still be unconscious," he said.

"You said I should be dead last time. Your predictions are getting less dramatic."

His gaze went to her palm.

Elena closed her fist.

The corner of his mouth did not move. "Show me."

"No."

The word landed hard. Fear did not bend her spine. It sharpened everything.

Adrian stopped before he came within arm's reach. A choice, or a leash. Elena marked it.

"Last night," he said, "you lost enough blood to kill three ordinary humans."

"I am not human."

"No." His eyes lowered to her wrist, where the bite had become almost nothing. "Nor are you what the wolves sold."

Sold. The word found the empty place under her ribs and pressed.

Elena looked past him. Two guards stood beyond the threshold, backs turned. Farther down, a woman in gray spoke to a servant in a voice too low to carry.

"Am I allowed to leave this room?" Elena asked.

"No."

"Am I allowed to know why I am locked in it?"

"Because half my household saw your wounds close. The other half will invent worse by nightfall."

"That sounds inconvenient for you."

"It is dangerous for you."

She laughed once. It hurt her throat. "Dress it however you like. You locked the door because you need what is inside."

His silence was better than an answer.

Elena looked at his gloved hand. A fine tremor touched two fingers before he closed them into his palm.

There.

Not gratitude. Not trust.

A fact.

"If I am only food," she said, "why are you the one trembling?"

The air changed.

The guards outside went still.

Adrian's eyes lifted to hers. For a heartbeat the thing from the hall looked through a prince's controlled face. Then he turned toward the corridor.

"Mira."

The woman in gray appeared at once. Her expression held no warmth and no foolish pity, which Elena almost preferred.

"My prince."

"No attendants in this room unless I name them. No physician tastes her blood. No report mentions the speed of recovery."

Mira's gaze flicked to Elena's bare wrist.

Only once.

That once was enough. Her face did not change, but the servant behind her made a small sound and stepped back as though the floor had shifted.

Adrian heard it.

So did Elena.

The servant looked young. His eyes had gone black around the red. He stared at Elena's hand as if starving and ashamed. Silverware rattled on his tray.

"Leave," Mira said sharply.

He tried.

His knees hit the floor first.

The tray crashed down. A glass broke. The servant bowed over his own hands, not toward Adrian, but toward Elena.

Elena went cold.

Adrian moved before the guard could. One black-gloved hand closed around the young vampire's collar and hauled him from the threshold.

"Eyes down," Adrian said.

The servant pressed his forehead to the floor.

"Forgive me, my prince. I did not mean-- It is her blood. It is full again."

Mira's face tightened then. Not fear. Calculation under ice.

Elena looked at her own wrist.

The bruise had faded while they spoke.

Full again.

Last night she had been a bargain sacrifice dragged from a wolf pack that wanted her gone. This morning the locks were finer, and the danger dressed itself in manners.

Low-priced offering to high-priced prisoner.

Elena held the thought where panic could not chew through it.

"How far did the scent carry?" Adrian asked.

Mira was already moving. "Not beyond the inner corridor if the vents were closed."

"Were they?"

Her mouth flattened.

That was answer enough.

Adrian released the servant to the guards. "Take him below. No punishment unless he speaks."

"And if others smelled it?" Mira asked.

"Then they will forget what they smelled."

"That will not hold if any Veyr eyes are in the old garden."

For the first time since he entered, Adrian looked away from Elena.

Only for a second.

But she saw it.

A prince who had drunk enough from her to live, and still had something to fear.

Adrian turned back. "Seal the east wing."

The order cut through the corridor. Doors answered one by one in the distance, iron sliding into iron.

Mira bowed without bending her knee. "At once."

Adrian's gaze returned to Elena's palm, to the silver moon still shining faintly beneath her skin.

"And pray," he said, "no one from House Veyr smelled that."