Daysider

spite of its thinness, it was easily strong enough to bear a large Darketan’s weight or keep a dhampir firmly bound.

Alexia struggled, but her excursion to look for him and Carter had taken a severe toll on her body. Damon pinned her down, caught both her wrists in his free hand and lashed the cord around them. He let her go just long enough to secure the cord and then helped her sit up.

There was nothing but cold contempt in her eyes.

“You won’t like what happens when I get free,” she snapped.

“I’ll take my chances.”

Alexia lapsed into silence, and after a while her chin began to sink to her chest as she gave way to her body’s demands. Damon wasn’t deceived. She might be too weak to resist him now, but he knew she wouldn’t give in, even with her last breath.

So he waited her out, keeping watch over her and looking for any sign that she might be worsening. He removed the remnants of his shirt and undershirt, leaving his torn jacket spread over a bush to air out.

The night was cool and silent save for the usual animal sounds, and Alexia fell asleep sitting up within fifteen minutes. Gently Damon laid her down and pulled half the blanket over her. She didn’t awaken at his touch.

He knew he shouldn’t postpone the inevitable, not even for another hour. Yet when it came down to the decision of forcing her to drink his blood, he couldn’t do it. She had to be willing.

As “willing” as she had been before? Or fully conscious of her choice?

He had no answer, and so as the long night dragged on, Damon paced the hilltop until he had memorized every twig, every rock, and every leaf on every bush. Still Alexia slept. A few hours before dawn he lay down beside Alexia, his back to her chest, and forced himself to relax. Even if he fell into the twilight sleep Darketans and Opiri used to regenerate, he would still be fully capable of sensing danger.

But sleep wouldn’t come. He rolled over and studied Alexia’s quiet face. Her features were soft again, revealing that strange innocence that her years as an agent had erased from her conscious mind. Her lips were slightly parted, and her lashes brushed her cheeks like fine strands of silk.

Slowly he reached for her, brushing his fingertips across her chin. She sighed and curled toward him.

Her body did what her mind could not. It trusted him.

Damon let his fingers trail across her lips, move up to trace her brows and brush back the hair that had fallen across her forehead. He couldn’t bear it, this strange tenderness, this desire that was so much more than physical. How could he justify the way he had taken her dignity by trussing her like a steer bound for the serfs’ table?

Rising silently, Damon walked around her and knelt to free her hands. He tossed the cord aside, settled her arms in a more natural position and rested his hand on her back. It was like touching a smoldering fire. A shiver worked its way through her body, and Damon knew she was sinking into fever again.

She would be vulnerable now, as vulnerable as she could ever be. But Damon knew he couldn’t steal her will and dignity again.

Even if I must let her die? he thought.

No. He’d let her keep her pride until her body and mind failed, until there was no hope left. And then...

He stretched out beside her again, cradling her against his chest. Her breath hitched and released, but she was no longer shivering. Damon rested his face against her hair, breathing in the fragrant scent that days of hardship hadn’t erased. He pressed his lips to her neck, feeling her thready pulse and the sluggishness of her blood. He nuzzled her shoulder, her ear, her jaw, drawn into a memory of Eirene lying in his arms on his narrow cot in the Darketan dormitory.

The image froze and Damon stopped, arrested by the recognition of a change in himself he had never expected. Until this moment, his thoughts of Eirene had been acutely painful, laced with hatred, grief and guilt he thought he would carry until the end of his days.

But suddenly those feelings had receded into shadow, driven away by the remarkable woman he held now. He could remember Eirene’s smile, her courage, the warmth and gentleness even a Darketan’s rigorous training hadn’t diminished. He could remember and not despise himself.

It was almost as if he were free—not of the memories of Eirene’s death, but of the blackness it had left festering inside him.

The blackness that would come roaring back to life when Alexia died.

But not yet.

“You would have liked Eirene,” he murmured against Alexia’s ear. “She was not afraid of what all Darketans fear most.” He brushed his knuckles across Alexia’s cheek.

“She cared for me, and I lost her. But now...”

Alexia shivered again. “Now,” she echoed. She pushed her back against Damon’s chest, compelling him to loosen his hold, and rolled over to face him. The first, thin light of false dawn filtered through the darkness, deepening the shadows under her lower lids and beneath her cheekbones, but there was a kind of peace in her eyes. No fear, no anger, only acceptance.

“Now is all we have, you and I,” she said. “It was all we ever could have, even if I still had my patch.”

Damon berated himself for having spoken his thoughts aloud. He had never meant Alexia to know about Eirene, or anything else about his life in Erebus.

But it was too late to take back his confession. And what did it matter? Alexia was right. Even if she hadn’t been condemned to a painful death...

“Yes,” he said. “There could never be anything else.”

Alexia bowed her head and examined her wrists, unbound and unmarked. “You let me go,” she said. “Why?”

“I could not take your choice from you,” he said. Hesitantly he touched the moisture gathering under her eyelids. “I didn’t know that dhampires wept like humans.”

She gave a husky laugh. “Don’t rub it in.” She scraped her palm across her cheeks.

“Do Darketans? Cry, I mean?”

It was an absurd conversation under the circumstances, but he had already exposed the worst of his weaknesses to Alexia. One more would hardly make a difference.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his expression carefully neutral. “Darketans are capable of it.”

She searched Damon’s face. “Who was Eirene?”

He reached for the canteen and offered it to Alexia. “Drink,” he said.

Without taking her eyes from his, Alexia took the canteen from his hand. Her arm trembled so much that Damon had to help her lift the vessel to her lips. He watched her uneasily as she swallowed the stale water, half afraid she might choke, but she finished without difficulty and let him take the canteen away.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing moisture from her cracked lips. “I’ve never been so thirsty.”

Nor, Damon realized, had he. But not for water. A short time ago he’d seen Alexia bite her lip and tried to ignore his immediate reaction to the sight, dismissing it as a brief aberration. He had taken nourishment just before he had left Erebus, and that had been only been a few days ago.

But now, all at once, he began to realize that his lapse then hadn’t been just a passing impulse. It seemed his need for blood had come on him far more quickly than it should have. If he concentrated, he could trace this new and unexpected hunger to the moment when he had tasted Alexia’s blood during their interrupted embrace and had detected that

“other” in its signature.

Whatever had brought it on, there was nothing he could do about it. Not without leaving Alexia.

“Tell me about her,” Alexia asked softly. “Talk to me, Damon. I don’t want to be alone in my head just now.”

Alone in her head. How many times had Damon felt the same, knowing how few Darketans would understand?

Eirene had.

He rolled onto his back, staring up at the lightening sky. “She was Darketan,” he said quietly. “One of the best operatives Erebus has ever known.”