Page 42 of House of Darkness
His shoulders tensed. “I don’t care if it’s suspicious.”
“I promised to play this part. If that means we need to?—”
“Absolutely not, Estrella.” He stepped back, his expression suddenly fierce.
Now it was my turn to be confused. “I don’t mind, Roman. I enjoyed this morning.”
“That was different.”
“How is it different?” I stepped toward him, closing the distance between us.
Shadows began to writhe around him, curling up his arms and spreading across the floor between us. “You wanted to then; there were no expectations. Now you’re offering out of duty.”
I reached forward, touching his arm. “You aren’t forcing this?—”
In an instant, shadows shot through the room with explosive speed, narrowly missing me and shattering the glass table beside us. Roman stepped back, his pupils dilated to mere rings of red, and his wings raised in an imposing display. My heart leaped into my throat as the tsar loomed over me, his talons unsheathed. “I said no,” he snarled.
I froze. I had seen him like this only once, the night he took me from the academy. Just like then, I didn’t know how to react, especiallywith that cascade of emotion directed at me. He broke the deafening silence with curt words, “I’m going to bathe.”
He brushed past me, his feathers grazing my bare shoulder, leaving me alone amid the shattered glass. Yet all I could see was his expression when I touched him.
There had been fear in his eyes.
By the time he returned to the main chambers, I had crawled into bed. The mattress groaned under his weight as he settled on the far side. I didn’t react, though I was sure he knew I was awake. Silence enveloped the room, punctuated only by the soft rustle of his feathers.
“I’m sorry for exploding; I never meant to scare you.” His voice was soft and defeated. I didn’t like it.
I rolled to face him. He lay on his back, arms behind his head and wings half-spread over the mattress. “Truth for a truth?”
He glanced at me with soft eyes. “Yes.”
I took a deep breath. Roman had become my image of strength, and seeing terror in his eyes terrified me. I needed to understand what had made the strongest man I knew fearful. “Why does the idea of being intimate with me scare you?”
He huffed a hollow, broken laugh. “I love the idea of being close to you, Estrella. I thought that was clear this morning.”
He shifted to his side, propping his head up with one arm. His wings stretched out behind him, damp feathers catching the low candlelight. “The idea of being with you when you don’t want it scares me.”
That wasn’t an answer. I waited silently for him to continue, my expectant gaze making him shift uncomfortably. “Did you knowmind powers are relatively common in the Koraki line?”
I shook my head. Vampire powers were mostly kept hidden, so they weren’t well understood by humans. He continued, “They are. It started with my great-grandfather, one of the original vampires, Draco. When he was turned, he was gifted the ability to gain all the knowledge a person held simply by touching them. He was a scholar, so you can imagine how useful that power was for him.”
“My grandfather had the same power, though it skipped my father. He was powerless, and the jealousy consumed him. He dedicated his life to creating an army of children, all with powers and all bent to his will. When he had my eldest brother with my mother, he knew he had found an acolyte who could reintroduce mind powers to the line, so he committed to keeping her pregnant. Then he had me and my sister.”
I hadn’t known Roman had siblings. I tucked that knowledge away to ask him about later, but it felt rude to interrupt him now. “Leonidas decided my powers were the most valuable to him, so he fixated on me. You know what that entailed, for the most part.”
Roman took a shaky breath, his eyes closing before he continued. “The rest, well, you deserve to know. He wanted more, and in his mind, the easiest way to achieve that was for me to have children. So, he demanded I do so. He bought acolytes for that purpose.”
His eyes reopened, damp and glistening in the candlelight. “It wasn’t the first time. He would force me to be intimate with high-ranking vampiresses for political gain. That wasn’t as bad, though. The vampiresses were willing and didn’t know I was being coerced. But the acolytes—I could sense their fear. I could hear their terror. I refused the first time, and Leonidas hurt her more than I ever could have. Then he killed her just to make a point. I didn’t refuse after that, though I got on birth control so I wouldn’t curse any of them with my children.”
A tear slid down his cheek, and I was stunned into silence. “They pretended to enjoy it, like acolytes are trained to. Until one didn’t. She begged me not to, and I couldn’t do it. That was the night Leonidas killed my mother—because I refused him. He killed the acolyte too.”
“I regret not killing him sooner. If I hadn’t been so weak, I could have prevented all that pain and suffering. None of those women deserved to endure that, and my mistakes will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
He made no move to wipe away his tears, and silence fell over us once more as I worked to digest his words. Finally, he broke the silence. “Say something.”
“It’s your turn to ask a question,” I said breathlessly.
“Do you hate me?”
