Dark Song

It wasn’t the first time he had said this to her, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. His advice had to sink in and take hold. She had to believe she was really free to choose her own way. Her brain refused to believe, and anytime there was a choice to be made, she shut down and became paralyzed with fear. Ferro didn’t seem to mind. He showed endless patience with her.

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath and slid her hand along his very muscular forearm down to his wrist, as if that could give her the necessary strength to take the step toward the door, and maybe it did. She forced one foot in front of the other. She expected him to let her go, and he did, although he turned his hand and caught hers in a tight grip, so they were still connected.

“I will go in first and you stay right behind me,” Ferro said.

The relief she felt was so tremendous that for a moment her legs felt rubbery. She dropped back by a couple of steps, allowing his larger frame to step in front of her. She kept her head down, not daring to look around her for fear of seeing too much and getting dizzier than she already was.

“Once inside, if the room is too big and you want to keep moving to a smaller one, you tell me and we will do so, otherwise we will stop there, sit down and just take small pieces of the room to look at and familiarize ourselves with. I want to attempt to remove the vampire’s barrier on your memories.”

Elisabeta reacted, both with fear and with hope, tightening her fingers in his, knowing he was in her mind, although his touch was so light she could barely feel him there.

“Sívamet, do not let your hope grow too much.” His voice was very gentle. “After so many centuries of not remembering, you most likely will not be able to on your own. Your brother, Traian, is here with his lifemate, Joie. He did search centuries for you, refusing to give up when everyone else did. He will return as many memories to you as he is able.”

She didn’t want to think too much on what her brother would expect of her and how much she would disappoint him. Instead she considered that it was twice now that Ferro had called her sívamet. His heart. An exact translation was “my heart.” For some reason that made her stomach do a slow-rolling pitch and then continue into a complete somersault. He was slowly stealing her heart when she thought she no longer possessed one. She thought Sergey had chopped her heart into little pieces and removed them from her one by one. He had taken her trust and stomped that into those pieces and then strewn them across the ground like so much trash because he had no use for such things. Somehow, Ferro was finding them. She didn’t know how he could do that. Just that he could frightened her more than everything else combined.

“Sergey is a vampire, Elisabeta, but in his own twisted way, he felt something for you. You provided him with some emotion, which is why he survived so many years when others completely failed. He needed your heart, sívamet, and your ability to allow him to feel if just a little emotion, twisted and obsessed as it was.”

She kept her eyes closed, one hand in his, the other fisted in the back of his shirt, matching her steps to his as they entered the house. It was cool inside, and she pretended it was just another cave. Another cage. She wasn’t lost, and a monster’s puppet with wicked serrated teeth wasn’t going to jump out at her and tear at her flesh and try to devour her alive while her master laughed in amusement.

Abruptly, Ferro spun around and swept her into his arms. “Elisabeta, you are breaking my heart. Why would this vampire treat you so cruelly to make you so frightened to enter a new dwelling? Your mind is consumed with terror. I feel every one of your senses flaring out, seeking his puppets, certain they will set upon you at any moment to try to rip as much flesh off you as possible before he calls them off. Why does he do this to you?”

She pressed her forehead to his chest, refusing to meet his eyes. Refusing to answer.

Ferro caught her chin and forced her head up so that she was looking into glittering iron-colored eyes. Those eyes had gone hard and scary. “He did this too many times. I command you to answer me.”

Elisabeta touched her tongue to her suddenly dry lips. “I refused to give him access to your soul. I told him I would suicide first. He allowed his puppets to consume children and I carried out my threat. He was barely able to save me that time. Twice more he did things to others I couldn’t tolerate, and I suicided. After that, he only punished me. I knew you would survive if I died. I would be reborn with your half of our soul intact, but if he was able to take it from me, you could be made his servant, and he would have been able to corrupt or harm you in other ways. I couldn’t take the chance.”