Page 37 of Eternal Ruin
Taj caught it easily and tasted it, chestnut eyes catching red. “It’s fresh.”
Iniko drank from it too, raising a brow. “It’s fine, Yos.”
“Or is it only Kidan’s blood that does it for you?” Taj’s smirk slid away when Susenyos stiffened at the mention of her name.
Without control, his fangs had torn through, cutting his flesh. He was recalling her night-oak and rose scent, his vision blurring.
Iniko’s face hardened. “Have you fed from anyone else since the ceremony?”
He’d tried but all of it had tasted putrid. Even Silia’s.
Taj was having a truly grand time at Susenyos’s misery. “Quite traditional of you, Yos. I thought blood monogamy was a myth.”
Susenyos’s brows drew together, catching on slowly to what they were implying.
“No,” he breathed.
Iniko leveled him with a gaze, studying the blood he refused to touch. “It’s the only explanation.”
His heart pounded in his chest, a ceaseless rhythm traveling to his temple. He felt a little ill.
Iniko spoke the damning words. “Mortal Vowed.”
The world caved in on him with a sudden thrust.
When had he last heard those words? Decades ago. When he was first inducted into Uxlay, Andreyas had spoken to him. The Last Sage had never wanted vampires to drink from multiple actis. He wanted monogamous pairings. Uxlay once tried to enforce this before it failed catastrophically. There was too much hunger in vampires, too much desire, and so blood courting was permitted.
A way to taste other house actis’ blood.
Taj was laughing. Loud and pure.
Usually, it was his favorite sound but not right now.
“When… how?” Susenyos could barely speak.
Taj’s joy cut off abruptly. “You don’t know how? You mean you didn’t choose this?”
“It was unconscious?” Iniko asked.
“Can this happen to me too, then? Christ, no. Think, Yos,” Taj urged, adjusting his golden headband lower on his forehead. “You must have done something.”
He was thinking.
He never chose this. He wouldneverchoose this.
Taj blurred before him, shaking him by the shoulders, panic stark in his eyes. “Did you drink too much of her blood? Bite a specific part of her body? I always go for the neck. Maybe I should switch it up? The shoulders—”
Susenyos shoved him off, growling. “I don’t know.”
Iniko was pulling up her phone, searching through Uxlay’s massive knowledge base. “Both of you calm down. It should be easy to check… here. ‘Mortal Vowed, a bond that forms when a human is willing to give more than their blood. A true surrender of their life, and the vampire is willing to guard it. So when the human passes on, the vampire chooses to die with them. A mortal vow for an immortal. Only their blood will be drinkable to the vampire.’”
Silence fell upon them. Susenyos snatched the phone, reading the binding words for himself.
Had it been in the Bath of Arowa? When he bit Kidan’s neck for the first time? It had been an otherworldly experience, dark and euphoric because he’d glimpsed her lack of desire, how close she was to giving up on all of it—her precious life.
He’d wanted to pull her back from that dangerous edge more than anything.
But this… God, no.
