Dark Song

Josef came into view, several older children following him, each armed with buckets of glitter on their belts and some kind of weapon they had tied to their backs in easy reach. It wasn’t hard to see that he was the instigator.

I do love to see the children playing like this, Ferro, but sooner or later, someone will insist I talk to them, and I just can’t do it yet. She spoke on their much more intimate pathway. When so many are around I feel too exposed.

Ferro kept his arms around Elisabeta’s waist, holding her tight. “You are doing just fine, minan piŋe sarnanak. As you can see, most of the Carpathians are coming together either for the first time or getting reacquainted. No one is going to notice or be upset if I do the talking for us. I do wonder what Josef is up to with all this colored glitter. It looks as if these children are up to something.” Now the children were all gathered around the stone dragons in the middle of the courtyard.

He was just a little too pleased that she still preferred him to talk for her in a crowd. He wasn’t certain he liked that trait in himself, the one that wanted her a little reliant on him.

I will always like to have you close to me, Ferro. It is my nature. That does not make me less empowered.

Her voice brushed gently through his mind, her soothing fragrance surrounding him, there in the midst of so many other scents. He heard the sound of children laughing and watched as Tariq’s oldest boy, Danny, bent to lift Darius and Tempest’s son, Andor, in front of him onto his brown stone dragon’s back. The boy slipped up behind him and waited while Amelia put Andor’s twin sister, Aniko, on her orange dragon. The two teenagers whispered to the twins and then to their dragons.

“I want you to continue to grow in confidence, Elisabeta,” Ferro said. “Do you see Danny and Amelia? The way they are with those children? Darius and Tempest are part of the Dark Troubadours. Whenever I watch the children in any village, they are like these, ready to teach, to entertain, to always share what they have with the little ones. They help with their confidence and self-esteem. They give them knowledge, even in play.”

The way you share your knowledge with Josef to help him feel as if he can become a great hunter of the vampire when his time comes.

She wasn’t understanding what he was trying to say. She wouldn’t, because she was so caring and compassionate and it wouldn’t occur to her that he was in any way holding her back.

“Elisabeta, I am sometimes pulled in two directions,” he confessed reluctantly. “You have a giving, loving nature. I do not want to take unfair advantage of you. If I do so, I do it without realizing that I’m doing so. I confess I like you to rely on me, but by encouraging that behavior rather than insisting you speak with others I am only hampering your independence. I do not want that for you.” That was both true and not. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to find the right way to express his feelings honestly.

He wanted to be her anchor. He liked the intimacy of their merged minds when it was only the two of them speaking together, when she looked just to him. On the other hand, he wanted the world for her. The world meant she needed to come wholly into herself as a woman capable of standing on her own feet.

“I want you to always feel as if you are a fully confident woman. Fully capable in your own right of doing anything you feel you wish to do. You will never reach that if I keep you dependent on me as Sergey did.”

That was one of the most difficult, painful confessions he had to make to her. It hurt. He was grateful he was standing behind her, not looking into her eyes. He didn’t like to feel as if he were letting her down in any way, or that he was falling short of what a true partner should be. He was feeling his way with her, still trying to find a balance of letting go and holding her close when she needed it.

Love swamped him, slipped gently into his mind, a warmth beyond anything he’d known, filling him up until there was only Elisabeta and her sweet serenity. Her fragrance was in his mind, that soothing tranquility she projected when she merged with him, when they simply talked intimately. He never wanted to give that up.