Promises to Keep

“I think it would be best if I ask you to make very clear what you are offering,” Xeke said.

Jay tilted his head—a very feline expression of impatient curiosity—as he met the vampire’s eyes directly. “I’m offering blood. I’m offering to let you into my mind. Is that clear enough?” Sometimes he forgot that others needed words to make these things obvious to them.

“Clear enough to be irresistible,” Xeke replied as he stepped forward and gently grasped Jay’s wrist. He wanted to control Jay’s dominant hand, the one best angled to draw his knife.

Jay closed his eyes and let the vampire maneuver him into the position he wanted. Unsurprisingly, he had never done this before.

Xeke was firm but not rough, making it clear in the pressure of his grip that it would be best if Jay didn’t struggle. Jay relaxed into the restraint.

At the moment when fangs punctured skin and the blood began to flow, he felt Xeke’s mind nudge his. Jay’s shields were too good to be penetrated without permission, but he gave that consent, dropping his mental walls so he was as defenseless as a human.

Suddenly—screaming.

Jay shoved away from Xeke and ran toward the shrieks of pain, agony, anguish. He raced through the crowd, dodging couples in bloody embraces, until he was once more at the paintings of Freyja.

No one in the crowd approached the artist while she shredded her own work with her nails, leaving bloody trails behind.

The wild madness rising from her made Jay’s head spin. Why had he left her alone? He looked around, and the question changed to Why is everyone leaving her alone? Some people stood and stared with bemused curiosity. Others simply walked away.

Xeke approached but then drew back, shaking his head.

She was like an animal with its foot in a trap, desperate to chew off its own leg, and they were all just going to let her.

How can they be so callous?

As he approached, the woman snarled and raised her hand to strike him. When Jay dodged the first blow, she gave up and let him pull her back against his chest. He laid his cheek against her matted hair and wrapped his arms around her waist as he tried to project a soothing image into her fractured mental landscape.

“Beautiful lady,” he whispered to her, letting himself see her the way she saw herself. “Lovely dear one, beloved night.”

She stilled physically in his arms, though her mind continued to struggle. Her shrieks turned to quiet whimpers. She collapsed, sobbing.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. “He’s gone.”

“I’m here,” Jay whispered, over and over, trying to soothe the woman’s utter loneliness. In her head, she walked through a barren wasteland of parched red earth. “I’m here.”

CHAPTER 4

TOTAL WASTE, BRINA thought savagely. Useless drivel.

Brina had started the Freyja series, inspired by her brother’s Lady with a Falcon on Her Fist, just before her brother’s death. Technically the paintings were excellent. Color theories and compositional techniques were instinctive to her by now, and she could mix media and pigments in her sleep.

But how could an artist do justice to a goddess of passion when she herself felt no passion? Brina had painted battle scenes without hope or triumph, lovers with no love. The only painting in the set worth the cost of its oils had been the one of Od, Freyja’s slain husband.

She had given him Daryl’s face.

She couldn’t stand looking at it; she couldn’t stand that everyone else was ignoring it. They all just walked by. Walked past the statue in the hall, walked past the painting, didn’t even think to look, because they didn’t …

Didn’t care.

I’m here. You’re not alone.

She half heard the voice, but it only made her angrier. That was what he had promised. Put on a pretty dress and a beautiful smile, Kaleo had said. You’ll feel better when you aren’t hiding alone in here.

She’d tried to do what he said.

She’d dressed. She’d put up her hair.

But at the thought of facing that painting, her still blood turned cold in her veins. Impossible. Instead she had fashioned a noose. Strung it from the rafters of her studio. Climbed onto a stool.…

“Come away from that,” the voice said now. “You don’t need to be there.”

Who is that?

She opened her eyes.

Ah, the stranger from the gallery.

He was pretty, but his ignorant attempt to compliment those pieces of trash had been almost as infuriating as being cut down from the rafters by a slave who didn’t have the good sense to just let her mistress be alone. This vampiric curse, which had once seemed so freeing and beautiful, now denied her the right to die.

She should have died with Daryl.

“You really loved him, didn’t you?” the stranger murmured as she leaned against him.

He sounded surprised—a tone she had heard too often. A tone like the trainers had, those bastards who were supposed to be experts in manipulation but constantly thought they could belittle and slur her brother, and then turn around and try to woo her.

“I’m sorry,” the stranger said, his voice softer, more sincere. “I never knew him. What was he like, to you?”

He was my world.

When they had been on the streets, hungry and cold, Daryl had taken care of her. Had insisted she eat even when there was only enough food for one. Had sold himself in any way he’d needed to, so she wouldn’t need to do the same. Despite his attempts to keep her ignorant of the sordid details, she knew he had done things that had horrified him—demeaning, illegal, and often dangerous work, which had left him exhausted, bruised, and heart sore.

He’d sworn he would get them a life worth living, no matter what he had to do.

And he had. For more than a century, they had lived as Lord and Lady di’Birgetta. Even when Midnight had burned, and it had seemed like they were certain to end up on the streets once again, he had gathered what was left and kept them comfortable while their world was rebuilt.

“He’s gone,” she said.

The stranger didn’t say much, but he held her tightly, in a way no one had in a long time. The gentle rhythm of his heartbeat and breath formed a lullaby that soothed her panic. At some point, she had turned to hold him back. Now she never wanted to move. If she could just stay right here, like this, she might not fracture into a million pieces.

But … where is here? she wondered at last.

She couldn’t well recall the moments—perhaps hours—since she’d made the decision to kill herself.

As she lifted her eyes and focused on his face, the stranger said, “I’m Jay.”

No, that’s all wrong. “You’re more of a sparrow, or lark,” she said. He had a thick mane of deep auburn-brown hair, smooth skin of a color somewhere between caramel and burnt sienna, and lovely eyes specked and swirled with green, gray, gold, and brown. “Blue jays are cold colors. But you can be a