Part 2 (1/2)
Mierna closed her eyes tight.
”You don't have to do this,” Elden said after a few seconds, lowering her hand but without letting go.
Mierna opened her eyes and looked at him. The hunger was still there, now accompanied by concern.
Had he guessed how scared she was?
”How do you ... feed usually?” she asked to distract herself.
”Animals. Demons, sometimes. They taste as bad as they look, though.”
The tone of his voice hinted at a joke, but Mierna couldn't make herself find humor in his words.
”And people ... I mean humans ... taste better?”
A slight smile curved his lips. ”They do. And they're much prettier too.” She gave him a hesitant smile, unsure whether he had just paid her a compliment.
Talking with Elden, along with the slow motion of his thumb ma.s.saging her wrist had calmed her nerves.
She took a slow breath and nodded slightly.
”I'm ready.”
His eyes remained on hers a little longer then broke away. Once again, he pulled her wrist to his mouth.
Mierna tried to remain calm, and this time she kept her eyes open so that she saw his mouth open and the quick gleam of a fang before he bit down. She let out a surprised gasp at the pain, but it didn't hurt as much as she expected. In fact, the feel of his lips and mouth when he started pulling on her blood was ...
strange, and not completely unpleasant. It awakened quiet sparks inside her, like embers ready to bring a fire back to life. Before she knew it, however, it was over. Elden's lips lingered a moment longer on her wrist and then, very gently, he lowered her hand to rest on her knee. Mierna wasn't sure whether she was imagining it but he seemed less pale, suddenly.
”Thank you,” he murmured.
She nodded, unable to say a word, and watched the slow smile that came to his lips, full of the same warmth she could see in his eyes. This smile stayed at the forefront of Mierna's mind long after she had left Elden's lair.
Chapter 3.
For three weeks, Mierna followed the same routine. She rose before dawn, rushed around the farm to finish her part of the ch.o.r.es before the middle of the afternoon then changed into the borrowed clothes that had become her fighting outfit and hurried on the trail through the woods to Elden's lair. He took her blood twice more during these three weeks, and each time was less painful-more thrilling.
As the season advanced, she had to trudge through the rain and mud more than once, her cloak a weak protection against the elements. She never faltered however, the idea of the fire roaring in Elden's fireplace pus.h.i.+ng her forward even when the first snow of the season caught her off guard one afternoon.
When she knocked on the door that day, her gray cloak seemed white from being covered in snow, and she felt frozen to the bone. She had held the cloak closed with her fist the entire way, but the snow had still seeped in, and her wool tunic, unders.h.i.+rt and pants all clung wetly to her, the wool giving in an unpleasant wet animal smell that made her wrinkle her nose every so often. The only part of her that was still dry was her feet; her high leather boots, at least, had kept the snow and mud out.
When Elden opened the door, his blue eyes widened in astonishment and he urged Mierna in with both gesture and words.
”By the G.o.ds, child ... Come in!”
As soon as she pa.s.sed the threshold, he closed the door and pulled Mierna's cloak off her shoulders.
”You shouldn't have come in this weather,” he said as he ushered her toward the fireplace.
”It wasn't snowing when I left,” Mierna replied, then clamped her mouth shut before he could hear her teeth clattering. ”Then you should have turned back when it started.”
Wood was piled up in the fireplace, and with a few prods of a metal rod Elden made the flames jump, high and bright. Mierna stepped as close to it as she dared and raised her hands toward the fiery heat.
Immediately, the snow clinging to her started melting to form a puddle at her feet. A few moments later, wisps of steam began rising from her sleeves.
”Take off your clothes,” Elden said as he threw another log in the hearth. ”You'll catch your death if you stay in these.”
Mierna lost her breath at the casual tone on which he had suggested that she should undress.
Wide-eyed, she stared at him, unable to say a word and ask him if he truly believed she would present herself in anything less than proper attire in front of him. He noticed her look and frowned at her for a moment before sighing.
”Of course,” he said then. ”I had forgotten. You humans are so shy of your bodies.”
A roll of his eyes said exactly what he thought of that, and Mierna felt like arguing with him. Hadn't he been human, long ago? Would he have undressed in front of a young woman, then? The idea brought heat to her cheeks and she turned back to the fire to hide it. She heard Elden walk away, then a door opening behind her. She wondered if he had left to give her some privacy and looked back curiously.
She had gotten used in the past weeks to Elden's quiet ways, but that didn't mean she was any better at guessing what his silences meant.
He returned after only a minute or two, carrying a piece of thick fabric as long as his arm and almost as wide.
”Here.” He handed the towel to Mierna. ”Dry yourself. There are clothes in my room that should fit you.”
Mierna patted her face dry before looking at him, then at the door he had left open at the end of the hallway. All she had ever seen of the lair were what Elden called the common room where she now stood and the weapons room where he taught her. She had guessed that the other doors led to bedchambers-after all, at least eight people had lived in the building at once in the past-but she had never had the occasion to go into any of the other rooms. Curiosity drew her forward before she could wonder whether it was proper for her to enter a man's bedroom even if he wasn't inside.
With each step taking her away from the fireplace, she could feel the cold settling on her again through her wet clothes. She walked a little faster toward the open door, and closed it behind her once she was in the room. The strong smell of a couple sap candles made her sneeze at once, but she got used to it, as well as to the faint light they cast. The fireplace, smaller than the one in the common room, was empty. A bed, a chair and a chest of clothes completed the furniture of the austere bedroom.
She noticed the clothes resting on the bed, a long sleeved tunic and trousers, both of the same fine but heavy material, both of what seemed like a deep red in the wavering light of the candles. With a quick look at the closed door, she undid the leather fastenings of her scabbard and rested the sword on the bed. She then pulled off her boots and undressed down to her smallclothes. She used the towel to dry herself quickly and slipped the dry clothes on, s.h.i.+vering the entire time. The clothes fit her too well to have belonged to Elden, she realized. And they also seemed a little dusty, when the rest of the room seemed well kept. Had they belonged to someone else-someone who had been dead for centuries?Why would Elden keep such clothes for so long when he had no use for them? He could hardly have foreseen that a human soaked to the bone would one day knock on his door.
Having slipped her boots back on, she was about to walk back to the common room and its warmth when she noticed the second chest of clothes almost hidden behind the bed. The chest she had noticed earlier at the foot of the bed was very plain, whereas this one would have been fit for a woman with its lid engraved with roses. She had the impulse to open it, just to see if more dusty clothes lay inside, but a call behind the door startled her before she could get to it.
”Mierna? You should get back to the fire, child.”
Annoyance surged through her, erasing both her many questions and the uncomfortable feeling of being cold, albeit dry now. She picked up her wet clothes and the sword and opened the door to find Elden just behind it.
”I am not a child,” she told him for what felt like the hundredth time.
Even in the near darkness of the hallway, she saw his eyes widen for a second before he turned his head to look away.
”Regardless,” he said, very low. ”You should get warm.”
He led the way back to the common room and she followed without arguing any more. He had pulled two chairs close to the fireplace. Her coat hung from a peg on the side of the hearth. She placed her sword on the seat on one chair, put her clothes to dry on the back of it and sat down on the second. She felt warmer already, both from the clothes she wore and the proximity of the fire. She started undoing her braid so her hair would dry faster.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Elden where he had sat at the table in the center of the room, watching her. He was very still, very quiet, and after a while she became unnerved at his silent observation of her. She turned her face fully toward him, catching a startled look on his features.
”What is it?” she asked, feeling very tense.
”Nothing,” he replied defensively.