Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 87

“As you wish.” With a fierce look, the vampyre shot from the window. He was like a monstrous black raptor, poor Milli as boneless as a doll draped over his arms.

The gale shrieked along the battlements, whipping at the trees and flinging twigs and leaves at the windows. The curtains blazed in fits and starts and the thunderclaps rattled the window panes.

Emma considered the chess board in front of her, paying no heed to the rain lashing the windows or the fire snapping lustily behind the grate. It took every ounce of concentration just to move a chess piece calmly across the board, what with those cool black eyes boring into her. It was such a weighty stare to bear.

She lifted the black rook that she had just now claimed from Winterly, running her thumb over its marble crenellations. But Winterly still had a rook to spare and both bishops to aid his king and queen in the endgame. Her bishops were both taken and her king was now protected only by the white queen and a lonely rook. A particularly powerful piece, the rook. A tricky piece. Like the master of Winterthurse, she thought, lifting her gaze from the chess piece in her hand to her opponent sitting quietly across from her in his armchair. He had something of every piece in his character—black knight, black king, and black rook. A rook with sharp spurs mounted on his stygian wings. Those weapons were now folded away, concealed beneath his skin, or so he’d intimated earlier when she’d asked how it was that he kept them hidden. The heavens had ruptured not long after his return from Hobkirk Priory.

Of Valko and the rest of the gentleman there was no sign. Even Boudicca had determined to camp indefinitely under the bed, so Emma felt quite alone in the castle with Winterly. She’d have liked nothing better than to join the cat under the bed, but she’d been summoned by Skinner to dine with the master in that great empty hall.

Rather, she’d dined and he’d watched her. There was no longer any need for pretense—she knew very well it was not solids that sustained him. Not even for the sake of easing her discomfort had he made an attempt at feigning the deed, only sat there in brooding silence over his untouched napery and empty dish; would that Skinner had forgone the trouble of setting his side of the table.

After dinner she’d had every intention of escaping swiftly to her chamber, but he’d invited her to play a game of chess by the fire. Had insisted, really. So here they were.

“I think you are very like this rook,” she said, placing the piece beside her small collection of captured foes. “A lethal adversary. And I am that pawn”—she pointed to the useless white pawn beside his black bishop—“to be used and resigned to a dangerous fate, entirely at the mercy of another’s whim.”

He sat back. “Is that so?”

“Decidedly.”

“That is your choice. You may choose to be a pawn…or a white queen.”

“My choice is to be free—to be your equal.” But she was neither. “Instead I am at your mercy.”

He moved his rook to menace her king without breaking eye contact. “You do not have to possess supernatural gifts, nor be a giant, to be powerful. Take the Battle of Thermopylae.”

A battle he had no doubt witnessed from some distant espial. “A battle in which a king lost to a god? Hardly a David and Goliath tale.”

“Ahh, but Leonidas died as he lived, with ferocity, freedom, and honor, and thus made of Xerxes a flesh and blood mortal where once he’d been a god. The freedom I offer you is, I grant you, without Spartan glory, but it does not follow that it should not be considered a liberation of sorts; or that you will not enjoy it.” He leaned forward. “Did you know rooks mate for life?”

“I did not know that,” she answered. “But I do not for a moment believe a devil like you is in want of a life mate.”

“You little know me and you know even less about what I want; you cannot see into my heart.”

“What heart?”

“What sharp thorns you have.” He smiled. “Yet for all her thorns, the rose savors of the very sweetest perfume.”

Emma’s brow furrowed.

“Desire.”

“You’re mad.”

“Blood does not lie,” he said, “and yours courses with desire even now.”

Her throat convulsed as she moved her threatened king.

No sooner had she made her play than Winterly made his. The black bishop now cast his fatal shadow over her king. No matter the direction of her next move, her king would be taken by either his bishop or the black queen herself. She was deadlocked with nowhere to go. A daunting parallel of her current condition.

All that was left now was for her to move her king and hear the dreaded ‘checkmate’ slip smugly from his lips. She couldn’t bear it. Resigned, she rested her hands in her lap and said. “The game is over. You’ve won.”

“And what have I won?” A sudden cold gust rushed out towards her, seeming to emanate from his flesh. “Certainly not a smile. You have decried me time and again for being a devil; you are determined to sit there as though I mean to take your virtue as my prize. But I will no longer allow you to make a devil of me. And your misery is hardly a worthy meed for a victor.”

Surprised, she met his eyes.

“Despite the affirmation you gave me, not six hours ago in this very room—” he gestured to the rug “—I will not come to your chamber tonight, nor any other besides.”

She was stunned. It was a reprieve most unexpected.

“It is for you to seek me out henceforward, of your own free will.” He lifted the white queen and, as she’d done earlier to his rook, ran his thumb reverently over her