Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 80
When they reached the lantern lit courtyard, he stopped to press a heated kiss atop her hand. “Emma,” he whispered against her skin, “shall I come to your room tonight?”
It seemed an eternity before his words registered in her foggy brain. When they finally did she stepped back instantly, drawing her hand away. She shook her head, appalled—appalled because for a precarious moment there she’d been about to say yes.
“Then,” he said with a curt nod, “I bid you good night my prim little rose.”
She nodded and retreated from him, lifting her fingers to the ruby dragon resting below her throat like a crucifix. His smile became almost feral as a long howl disturbed the night. She shivered and hurried into the castle. What manner of hound haunted these shady moors? A veritable Cerberus, no doubt.
The thought gave her pause. But she was safe, wasn’t she? She was wearing his protection now: the mark of the beast—the ruby dragon that guarded her throat from the claws and fangs of di inferni, the titans below.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Perfume Of Antiquity
My Dear Mary,—Would that I could tell you all I know of the master of Winterthurse, but I fear there are no words I could employ to make you believe me. I have always prided myself on choosing the right words, yet today the ink dries upon my pen before I can commit any sense to paper.
I have a mind full of thoughts, but none I can faithfully translate into words. Yours thoughtfully,
Emma.
The sun was high overhead by the time Emma left her chamber, overcome with a sudden urgency to see her sister. Boudicca appeared to suffer no such distress, for she was curled atop Emma’s pillow and seemed in no hurry to upset her slumber. Milli had likely not found her own bed before dawn.
Tiptoeing carefully into her sister’s room, Emma’s niggling worry was at once eased by the steady rise and fall of her sister’s chest beneath the coverlet. But even the sight of Milli’s reposing form, swallowed up by the monstrous four-poster bed, was insufficient to becalm all of Emma’s disquietude. She parted the curtains to let in some light and then carefully drew the coverlet away from her sister’s neck.
With tentative fingers, she peeled Mill’s nightshift lower, unveiling the girl’s throat and shoulders for inspection. “Milli? Are you awake?”
Her sister gave not a flutter of an eyelid nor a stirring of a limb.
For some time she contemplated her sister’s unmolested flesh, relief filling her heart by degrees. No preternatural fangs had, as far as Emma could discern, pierced Milli’s soft skin. Yet the bloom of health seemed wanting in Milli’s complexion. The apples of her cheeks had lost much of their former couleur de rose, her creamy skin tainted with grey. A Chlorosis of some sort?
Perhaps the long night had exhausted the poor girl so much that no sound could penetrate her fog of slumber. Emma would even allow that her sister’s exertions had cost her some healthful color. Leastwise Emma hoped so, for the alternative was that Milli had fallen victim to the vampyrpest rife in the castle.
That awful thought spurred her to apply Devil’s Bane to Milli’s throat. Her sister would not thank her for it, but Milli was hardly in a position to offer resistance at present. Even if Winterly was right and all it did was to mask the scent some small degree, it was all Emma could offer her sister and it would have to count for something. Why else would Ana have bestowed it if not to deter a vampyre’s kiss?
The Devil’s Bane clung tenaciously to the crystal wand as Emma held it poised just below Milli’s bare throat. Almost unwillingly, the drop hung suspended, but finally it fell. Milli recoiled with instant violence, startling Emma into nearly upending the precious brew. The girl moaned and mumbled into her pillow before burying herself back under her coverlet. She was still asleep despite the thrashing. An acrid reek tainted the air now, the sharpness of the odor summoning tears to Emma’s eyes as she leaned over her slumbering sister. Perhaps the Devil’s Bane was becoming sour.
“Milli, are you all right?” She gave her sister a light shake.
Milli peeled one bloodshot eye open and shot the window a baleful glance before thrusting a pillow over her head. “Do draw the shades, Em.”
“But it’s midday,” said Emma helplessly.
“So it is,” was the muffled reply from beneath the pillow. A dismissal if ever Emma had heard one.
Emma worried at her lip but obliged her sister nonetheless. She left the bed to give each drape a hard tug, dousing the room once more into darkness. She then withdrew after one last glance towards the cocooned little form beneath the bed hangings, her eyes still smarting from the perplexing odor that had come as swiftly as it had vanished. She was loath to leave her sister, for she felt certain there was something amiss. Yet she had found no evidence to support her dread and could therefore not justify disturbing her sister from the slumber she so obviously relished.
Having seen to the duties invested to her by the bonds of sisterhood and love, Emma finally betook herself to the master’s den. Her mind was reeling with a congeries of doubts and intrigue.
The dread Markus Winterly, a vampyre. She ought to be repulsed, but she wasn’t. Not in the least. Her heart, that wretched antipode, craved him.
Fatal obsession drew her to the library, proving that her body was in better accord with her heart than the deprecating voice of her conscience. Emma knew she was only borrowing trouble, but she reasoned the more time she spent in his company, the better she would understand him and the better she might know how to