Daysider

civilization...

For the first time since she’d arrived, Alexia was struck by the full recognition of what Eleutheria could become. A symbol, not only of equality and friendship, but of the hope of peace founded not on mere truce but true understanding. Understanding that could end the deportation of convicts from the Enclave. That could bring people— people, not Nightsiders and humans—together as she and Damon had come together.

“Are you all right?” Damon asked with a worried frown.

Belatedly Alexia realized that they hadn’t talked since he had taken her blood. She could imagine the thoughts racing through his mind: he had taken advantage of her, he had behaved like a savage, he had hurt her. She could feel those fears as if they were her own.

She went back to the cot and perched on the edge, hands braced on the frame and gaze fixed on the floor. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly.

“About what?” Damon asked, hesitantly reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Did I do something wrong? Did I...” His fingers stopped, and she heard his teeth clench. “Did I hurt you?”

She turned to catch his hand and pressed his palm to her mouth. “No, Damon. If you had, I wouldn’t be sitting here, wishing we could start all over again.”

His expression relaxed all at once. He took her hand between his and brought it to his chest. His heart was beating strongly, and his dark eyes were warm with relief.

“I didn’t know what I was doing last night,” he said.

“Oh, yes, you did.” She spread her fingers across his chest. “You knew exactly what you were doing, and you were extremely good at it.”

He ran his thumb gently across the places where he had bitten her. “No discomfort?”

he asked.

“No. Should there be?” She smiled. “There was never any pain, Damon. Only the most indescribable—” She broke off, knowing she could never explain. Knowing if she did, she’d only want it again and again, like an addict who had no idea when to quit.

Damon’s lips brushed her neck. “It was indescribable for me, as well,” he murmured.

His voice had a little growl in it, provocation and promise, but Alexia didn’t fall into his trap. “Does it always happen that way?” she asked, leaning back. “Between Nightsiders and their vassals and humans?”

He sat up cross-legged on the cot, the blanket still draped across his lap. “I know only what I have been told,” he said, his voice roughening. “With vassals, it is said to be mutually pleasurable, but there is always an imbalance of power. With serfs...” He worked his fists into the sheets. “Whether or not they receive pleasure is of no interest to the Opir who owns them.”

“Except in this place,” she said. “If it was unpleasant, I can’t imagine the humans in Eleutheria would be so ready to provide blood at the drop of a hat. Like that woman last night.”

Damon shifted. “I apologize,” he said, a little stiffly. “When I find the woman, I will ask her forgiveness.”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to look for her yourself,” Alexia said hastily, wishing she hadn’t raised the subject. “Emma planned to introduce me to some of the other colonists once we finished our business with Theron. I’m sure I can pass on your apology.”

Damon looked up. “You have no reason to be jealous, Alexia.”

“Jealous? Because you were going to take her blood without asking me if I was willing?”

“I was incapable of discussing it at the time.”

“You could damned well have told me what was happening before it got so bad,” she shot back. “If you were so out of control, you could have hurt that woman. I know you would never have hurt me, no matter how far gone you were.”

“She knew how to react without fear or provocation,” Damon said, utterly serious. “I don’t know what I would have done if—”

“Nothing happened, Damon,” she said, resting her hand on his knee. “Everything is all right now.”

“Is it?” Damon stared blankly into the darkness. “Opiri can lose control like that if they’re starving, literally on the edge of death. But I wasn’t dying, Alexia. I was insane.”

Chapter 17

Alexia went very still. She had known the time would come when the subject of his

“spells” would arise, even if she had to introduce it herself. But now that it was here, she wanted to tuck the entire matter away into some forgotten corner where it could never disturb either of them again.

“You fell, Damon,” she said. “You were sick. Even Theron recognized your condition.”

“No,” he said, setting his jaw. “You asked why I didn’t tell you what was happening before. That was because I couldn’t acknowledge it. The Hunger should not have come so soon. Something caused this to happen, something unnatural for my kind.”

Oh, God, Alexia thought. She reached out to take the hand he had clenched in the sheets and opened his fingers, lacing hers through them. “Tell me,” she said.

“I have felt this before,” he said. “Not this level of Hunger, not so quickly. No. But the savagery...the rage...” He met her gaze. “What did I look like when I left Theron’s house, Alexia? A monster?”

“Is that what you felt like?” she whispered, beginning to shiver.

“I don’t know.” He disengaged his fingers from hers. “Answer me, Alexia.”

“You never looked different,” she said, careful not to glance away.

“But I was different,” he said. “Wasn’t I?”

She couldn’t answer the pain in his eyes. They went distant with some ugly memory.

“Until I nearly killed Lysander,” he said, “I didn’t realize that there was a pattern. But the first time I felt it was in Erebus. The first time I fought him.”

“The first—” Alexia couldn’t forget a single brutal moment of the battle in which he and Lysander had almost killed each other. She had known then that there had been something very bitter between them. Lysander had compared her to Eirene. “Spirited,” he’d said. As if he had known the Darketan woman. Very well.

“You fought over Eirene,” she said, trying to keep her feelings from her voice. “You both wanted her.”

She expected Damon to bolt from the cot and begin striding around the small room, agitation translating into frantic motion. But he remained where he was, blank-faced and emotionless.

“After the Master of Agents discovered my relationship with Eirene and separated us,” he said, “Lysander tried to claim her. No Opir had ever attempted to claim a Darketan before, but he convinced the Master to give her to him rather than sending her away. She was forced to go with him.”

Alexia imagined the scene, the depravity of it, the pain and fear. Darketans had a kind of freedom—freedom from service to anyone but the Council and the Citadel. Eirene had had that taken from her after being forcibly parted from the man she had—

Loved. As Damon had loved her.

“I was kept confined for a week,” Damon continued. “When I was released, I obtained permission to enter the Citadel proper. I was planning to break in on Lysander in his quarters, but I found him on the Grand Concourse instead, parading Eirene around and showing her off to the other Opiri as if she were a valuable serf.”

“But she was, wasn’t she?” Alexia said, longing to reach out to him. “And you couldn’t bear it.”

“No. I attacked him on the Concourse. I remembered almost nothing except sinking my teeth into his neck. And rage. Boundless rage.”

The kind, Alexia thought, that would make him equal in strength to a full-blooded Nightsider.

“When I woke, I was in a cell,” Damon said. “I was told Eirene was being sent on a solo mission, and that it would be highly dangerous. I was also told that in spite of my actions, I was too valuable to Erebus to be expelled from the Citadel.”

“Expelled?” Alexia said, momentarily distracted from the tragedy of his story.

“Criminal acts by those of rank, Bloodmasters and the most powerful Bloodlords, are seldom punished by