Page 5 of Dark Fire Kiss

My father gripped his dagger hilt more tightly, his ruby ring catching the light. “The only unnatural lust here is the desire you harbor for said throne. An unrequited desire, because you’ll never sit on it.”

Grigory went utterly still. Around the table, the warriors stirred. A few placed their hands on their weapons.

I clenched the arms of my chair. If Grigory struck my father…

“He won’t,” Aleksander murmured. “Grigory knows his place.”

Immediately, I pictured a brick wall in my mind. I’d stopped concentrating and Aleksander had read my thoughts. That kind of carelessness was dangerous in Krovnosta.

Sure enough, Grigory gave my father a short bow. “I merely seek to serve it, as I do you.” He straightened. “Brother.”

For a moment, the tension held. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the anger left my father’s face. He turned toward the banquet table and spread his arms. “Enough of this bickering,” he said in a booming voice. “Let us feast!”

The warriors shouted in agreement, several banging their fists on the table.

I grabbed my goblet of blood wine before it could spill.

Grigory stalked to his seat, lifted his own goblet, and drained it.

My father went to his throne on the dais. Immediately, two female thralls emerged from the shadows. One knelt at his feet and leaned her head against his knee. The other climbed into his lap and offered her wrist. He stroked a beringed hand through the first thrall’s hair as he smiled and sank his fangs into the second one’s forearm.

Her lips parted on a pleasure-laced moan, and her eyes went glassy.

I released the breath I’d been holding and sat back in my chair. More thralls—human females from the streets of St. Petersburg—moved around the table with pitchers of blood wine. A few giggled as warriors grabbed them around the waists and fed directly from their veins. In seconds, the bubbly sounds turned to gasps and lustful moans. The tense atmosphere lifted, replaced with laughter and the hum of conversation.

Aleksander sipped from his goblet and gave me a mild look. “Crisis averted.”

For now. My father was never going to change. I looked at Grigory, who had taken his seat and now stared at the flames leaping in the hearth. He claimed he didn’t want the throne. That he was more useful as an advisor.

But I wasn’t certain I believed him.

Not that it mattered. The Blood had chosen my father to rule. Grigory couldn’t kill him or overthrow him, as the Blood prevented vampires from rising against their prince.

A thrall approached Aleksander and leaned over the table with a hopeful look in her dark eyes. Her arms were covered in tattoos. More ink swirled across her chest. Her pupils were dilated, and her eyes gleamed with hunger as she eyed Aleksander. “Will you feed, my lord?”

He looked her over, his blue eyes lingering on the swells of her breasts. “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new?”

“Da.” Yes. “But I’ve been enjoying my stay.”

“I’m sure you have.”

She licked her lips. “Will you feed?”

“Not tonight.”

She gave him a crestfallen look, then switched her attention to me.

“Neither will she,” Aleksander said before the thrall could speak. Quick as lightning, he grasped my chin and squeezed, forcing my jaws apart. “My sister is a dhampir, as well as a bastard. See her little fangs?” He clucked his tongue. “Alas, not long enough to pierce your pretty neck without causing a lot of damage. It won’t feel good, either. She doesn’t have enough sila to make you come.”

I breathed hard through my nose, my eyes watering from his grip. Several warriors had noticed our little scene, and malice danced in their eyes as they watched my mouth gape open.

The thrall frowned. “Dhampir…”

“Half human,” Aleksander said, his tone conversational. “That means her mother was a whore, just like you. Now shoo.” He released me and flicked his fingers at her.

She stumbled back and whirled away, already scanning the table for someone willing to feed. One of the warriors grabbed at her, but she darted out of his reach and kept going. The males on either side of him roared with laughter.

I lowered my gaze, my jaw throbbing and my chest burning with anger. My mother hadn’t been a whore. She’d been a victim, the same as the thralls who attended my father now. She’d merely had the misfortune to conceive his child. My father hadn’t been thrilled, but he’d let me live because some dhampirs were born with enough power to be useful. When it became obvious I wasn’t one of them, he’d left me to fend for myself. Most of the time he seemed to forget I existed.

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