Content, he tried to drift away again.
But cold fingers grabbed his chin, pulling him to Nadia’s dark eyes. “You will do this for me, Rhun. I have given you all of your wine—and mine. Without it, I, too, will die. That is, unless I break my oath.”
He strove to keep his eyelids open, but they slid closed again. He pushed them open.
“You force this upon me, Rhun.”
Nadia released his head and stood, a quick flash of darkness. She wrapped an arm around Erin’s waist and yanked her head to the side. Erin’s heartbeats sped until each muscular squeeze flowed into the next in one continuous thrumming.
Jordan brought up his submachine gun.
“If you shoot me, soldier, know that I can kill her before the second bullet strikes,” Nadia hissed. “So, Rhun, can you do this?”
Erin’s amber eyes stared into his, pleading for her life, and for his.
To answer that look more than Nadia’s question, Rhun found the strength. He roused himself to grasp the wine, to pull the bottle to his heart, to recite the necessary words.
The ceremony stretched into a sacrament—all the while Nadia held Erin, her teeth at her throat.
Finally, Rhun ended with “We offer to Thee this reasonable and unbloody sacrifice; and we beg Thee, we ask Thee, we pray Thee that Thou send down Thy Holy Spirit on us and on these present gifts.”
Nadia answered, “Amen. Bless this Holy Chalice.”
“‘And that which is in this chalice, the Precious Blood of Thy Christ.’ ”
He dropped his hands to his lap, the ritual complete, his strength fleeing his limbs, his only desire a wish for unconsciousness.
But Nadia refused to let him rest. She poured Christ’s blood into his wounds, into his mouth. His body took in that fire, and it burned him completely this time. He knew where it would take him, and he quailed at the prospect.
“No … ,” he begged—but this prayer wasn’t answered.
“Turn away.” Nadia’s ragged command to the humans faded as his sins carried him away into penance.
Bernard had sensed the blackness in Rhun’s heart and sent him to Cachtice Castle to cut ties with Elisabeta. Rhun told himself that he could do it, that he felt nothing more for her than the duty to serve her as a priest.
Still he prayed as he lingered on the long winter road to her door. Snow hid fields and gardens where they had once walked together. Among long dried stalks of lavender, a raven pecked at a gray mouse, the tiny scarlet stain of its lifeblood visible even from so far away. He tarried until the raven finished its repast and flew away.
He reached the castle at twilight, hours later than he had planned. Yet he stood long in front of the door before he could bring himself to knock. Snow dusted the shoulders of his cassock. He did not feel cold anymore, but he brushed the snow away as a man would do. He would not show his otherness in this house.
Her maid, Anna, answered, her hands reddened with cold. “Good evening, Father Korza.”
“Hello, my child,” he said. “Is the Widow Nadasy at home?”
He prayed that she was far away. Perhaps he should request that she meet him at the village church. His resolve was strongest there. Yes, the church would be better.
Anna curtsied. “Since the death of the good Count Nadasy, she walks late in the evenings, but she will return before dark. You may wait?”
He followed her thin figure into the great room, where a fire crackled in the immense hearth. Chamomile sprinkled atop the floor rushes lent the room the familiar smell of summer. He remembered gathering leaves of it with her on a sunlit afternoon before Ferenc’s death.
Rhun refused Anna’s offer of refreshment and stood as close to the fire as he dared, drawing its heat into his unnatural body. He prayed and thought of Ferenc, the Black Knight of Hungary, and the man to whom Elisabeta had been bound. If Ferenc were still alive, all would be different. But Ferenc was dead. Rhun pushed away thoughts of his last visit, when he had told her of Ferenc’s passing.
Elisabeta entered wearing a deep burgundy cloak, snow melted to darkness on the shoulders. Rhun straightened his spine. His faith was strong. He would endure this.
She shook water from her cloak. Dark droplets spattered the floor. A servant girl took the heavy woolen garment from her outstretched hand and walked backward from the room.
“It is good to see that you are well, Father Korza.” Black skirts swished against rushes as she walked to join him at the fire. “I trust you have been offered wine and refreshment?”
Her tone was light, but her racing heart betrayed her.
“I have.”
In the firelight, she looked thinner than he remembered, her features harder, as if grief had tempered the softness from her. Even so, she was achingly beautiful.
Fear flashed through Rhun’s blood.
He longed to flee, but he had promised Bernard, and he had promised himself. He was strong enough to do this. He must be.
“I imagine that you are here collecting for the Church?” Her bitter tone told him that she knew how he had failed her when he left her to grieve for Ferenc alone, that she did not forgive him for deserting her in her hour of deepest need.
His mind screamed at him to run, but his body would not obey.
He stayed.
“Father Korza?” She leaned closer, her dark head tilted in concern, her heart slowing in sympathy instead of speeding up in anger. “Are you ill? Perhaps you should sit?”
She guided him to a straight-backed wooden chair, then sat across from him, their knees a mere handsbreadth apart. The fire’s heat cooled in comparison to the warmth of her body.
“Have you been well, Father Korza?”
He roused from the song of her strong red heart. “I have. How have you fared, Widow Nadasy?”
She shifted at the word widow. “I have been bearing up—” She leaned forward. “Nonsense. We have known each other too long and too well to be untruthful now. Ferenc’s death has been both a great burden and a freedom to me.”
A freedom?
He dared not ask. He raised his head.
“You look as if you have been ill,” she said. “So tell me the truth. How have the past months served you?”
He fell into her silver eyes, reflecting orange from the firelight. How could he be apart from her? She alone of all he knew he had trusted with memories of his mortal life, only keeping secret his unnatural state of being.
A ghost of a smile played on her soft lips. Her hand brushed water from her bare shoulder, then fell coyly to her soft throat. He stared at her fingers, and what they covered.
She stood and took his hand between hers. “Always so cold.”
The heat of her hand exploded under his skin. He must move away, but instead he stood and put his other hand over hers, drawing more of her warmth into his chilled body. Just that. A simple moment of connection. He asked for nothing more.
Her heartbeat traveled from her hands through his arms and up to where his heart had once beat. Now his blood moved to the rhythm of hers. Scarlet stained the edges of his vision.
Her eyelids fell closed, and she tipped her face up toward his.
He took her flushed cheeks in his marble-white hands. He had never touched a woman before, not like this. He caressed her face, her smooth white throat.
