Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 119

Her tone rankled, but he could not deny her this embittered rage. “No. Though incurable, wehr-wolf venom is fatal only to mortals. Your sister is of a royal bloodline.” A seraphic bloodline that had lain dormant for generations innumerable, each progenitorial Rose begetting son after son…until Emmaline and Millicent.

“Incurable,” said she with some relief, “but not fatal.” And then the blood drained from Emma’s face as his meaning became clear. “You cannot mean…?”

“Millicent will become the very thing that bit her.” His fists tightened against his sides as he watched her slide against the wall to the floor, her head drooping against her knees in abject silence. That he could offer her no comfort, that he felt helpless against her silent recriminations, only rankled all the more. “There is some small consolation in knowing that she now belongs not to Malach but to the the Valkolak clan; Gabriel and his sons will guard her against—”

“Guard her?” Emma jerked her head up. “Wehr-wolves guard her?” She was trembling with scorn. “She would not now be defiled if not for them!”

“She will be immortal and powerful!” And what was more, thought Markus, she would be cherished by the Nocturni; made royal! Black wolves were rare as it was and female Valkolaks rarer still. “Or would you rather her heart ripped from her chest and served to Malach and his Walpurgis bride?”

“I would rather have had her enjoy an ordinary life—a mortal life. One in which vampyres and witches and wehr-wolves did not exist! Would that I’d had the same for myself.”

He shook his head, regretting her plight. “Impossible, I’m afraid. The monsters of the world would never have allowed it, for you are neither ordinary nor are you mortal; everything is consequential and your fate was inevitable.” And that was her curse, the curse of Hermera, the lost daughter of his doomed sister. Whatever existence Hermera had eked out for herself, wherever she’d done so, remained a mystery to all. Her descendants, however, had not all been so fortunate as to remain undiscovered. For millenia, the Nocturni, both wehr-wolves and vampyres alike, had hunted Nephilim. So too had the Nekromantis and his brood of heart-eaters. The Nephilim were and had always been easy prey, as defenseless as the cattle they dwelled among.

“I might have forgiven you every slight against myself,” said Emma, dropping her head back down onto her knees, “but I cannot forgive you this. Milli has always been mine to protect and now…”

“And now,” he said, “she will be protected by all the Watchmen of the Night. Forevermore.” Markus knelt down beside her and would have pulled her into his arms had she not stiffened and turned away from him. “Malach has no claim to her now, my love.” A circumstance that consequently put Emma in gravest danger, for Markus knew the Nekromantis would seek restitution for the loss of Milli. “Can you not see that?”

“I see you are determined to vindicate your actions.”

“Emma…”

“Leave me, Markus.” She shoved his hand away from her. “Get out!”

For long moments he remained where he was, disturbed by the melancholic thud of her heart. Like a vampyre, she was cold, pale, and silent as stone. So very distant. He knew he would not reach her, not tonight. She needed time, and time was something an immortal had in plentitude.

Markus unbent himself and, with a parting bow, withdrew from his chamber. Not for any other creature, immortal or otherwise, would he have allowed himself to be thus evicted from his own chamber.

Below, in his library, he sat down at his escritoire to write perhaps the most important letter of his life. Words, the right words, were alluding him. An eternity passed before he finally dipped his pen into ink and began to unlade his heart upon paper, the lines flooding out like chaotic rills of black blood. Black blood that bled only for Emma. He loved her as he loved nothing else, and everything that he had done was all for the sake of possessing her. Possession and control was all that he knew; love was alien to him.

He had once believed that he loved Cleopatra, but he saw now that that love had been blackened with the stain of obsession. He had prided himself on his own fatal omniscience. And it had ultimately destroyed that which he had most cherished—he’d wanted to control not only Cleopatra but her destiny as well. And that obsession had nearly destroyed Emma too.

Emma was so like the rose in his wilderness that defied possession with the sting of tooth and claw. There was such beauty in her wildness and such strength in the roots that ran deep into the earth. So deep and everlasting that to pluck the rose was to kill it and destroy its beauty. But not before it too draws blood.

Markus snapped his pen with the force of sudden rage. He would let nothing destroy her—not Malach and certainly not himself. But the only way he could save her was to kill her; empty her heart of every last drop of mortal blood, devour her life with violence and venom, and then fill the empty vessel with his own blackened lifeforce. But what darkness would then fetch up within her heart? What would he have made of her after she awakened to the night? A monster like himself? A monster like Victoria? Or would she remain forevermore his beautiful, wild and unbroken Emma?

Markus knew now that he would rather die than kill her or change her. Better that she should be freed than be tainted by his darkness. If there was a way to free her from himself and from the Nekromantis, he would not hesitate to employ whatever power was at his disposal. Would that he was as omnipotent as he’d once thought himself to be.

Perhaps he might reason with Malach, find another Nephilim to take Emma’s place. But Nephilim were