Page 5 of Blood Slumberm

He had always hated this aspect of Hesperine nature. The Blood Union constantly inundated him with the feelings of any creature that had blood in their veins, and he had never mastered the art of controlling it. Hesperines called their empathic ability their greatest strength, but he considered it a curse to feel others’ sentiments as if they were his own.

Until now. After his long solitude here, he drank down her vibrant emotions. She was a banquet of passion and pride, sadness and anger. So much anger. His fangs throbbed.

“Thank you for waking me, Celandine.” Hardly recognizing his raspy voice, he cleared his throat. “You have my gratitude.”

She inclined her head. “I believe we can help each other, Troilus Tauri, Prince of Galeo.”

He gave her a humorless smile and gestured to his fangs. “The only title my kind may hold in the human world is ‘heretic.’ My Hesperine name is Firstblood Troilos.”

“It appears you still harbor some bitterness about that. I understand that Rixor Pavonis is the man who took everything from you. A grudge I share, for reasons of my own.”

“What do you want with the man who betrayed me?”

Malice glittered in her eyes. “He stole your throne. His descendant stole mine. Will you help me wipe their legacy from the face of the earth?”

The worddescendantsent another shock through Troi. “What year is it?”

She hesitated. “When you fell asleep, did you not know how long the curse would last?”

What curse? What did she believe about him?

She was no ally of the Hesperines. She was here for her own ends, and she made no secret of it. Her fear told him she thought of him as a monster.

He was as weak as the night he’d been turned. If she decided he was more useful to her dead, she could be a genuine threat. Especially if she knew how to use that staff.

No matter the bond of gratitude he had with her for waking him, until he knew what she was planning, he must consider her his enemy.

three

Troiframedhisquestioncarefully. “Did the curse last as long as you expected?”

“Yes,” she answered. “One hundred years. Well, minus seven days. I woke you before the mages of Anthros came for you.”

His chest seemed to tighten around his heart, and he was suddenly blind to his surroundings. All he could see were the faces in his memory.

His men had fought at his side every time they faced death and laughed with him every time they survived. They had stood with him at his father’s funerary rites and toasted him at his fatal coronation banquet. They were his brothers, not by blood but by bonds of loyalty more powerful than any he had ever shared with his own kin.

They lived only in his memory now.

No. Was she lying, trying to manipulate him? Even as doubt crept in, a familiar sound reached his sensitive immortal ears through the shuttered windows of the house. The gong at the Temple of Anthros. At midnight on each night of the SummerSolstice festival, the war mages beat out the year to celebrate their god’s long reign over the world.

Troi counted the reverberating beats. One millennium. Five centuries. Twelve years. It was the year 1512. Celandine was telling the truth.

Every human he had ever loved was gone.

The barest brush of emotion brought him back to the present. Although he could see it nowhere in Celandine’s hard gaze, deep within her, there was a thread of sympathy.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Rixor’s heirs still live?” Troi asked through gritted teeth.

“After you were turned, he laid claim to your principality. His direct descendant, Rixor IV, rules Galeo now. I’m afraid this forsaken manor is all that remains to you.”

None of that mattered. His men were dead, while the man who carried Rixor’s name lived.

“Where is he?” Troi growled.

“You can’t go after him in your current state. I can help you prepare, and on Summer Solstice, I can get you close to him for the perfect opportunity to strike.”

---