Dinner With a Vampire (The Dark Heroine #1)(116)
Author: Abigail Gibbs

‘It doesn’t have to be so soon,’ he murmured back, rubbing his thumb in circles across my hand, which he had taken in his again. ‘You have two weeks before we go to Athenea, remember?’

I pressed the back of my fingers to my lips to hide the fact they were quivering as I fought back a flood of tears. ‘I know. But I’ll lose my nerve if I don’t do it soon and I want to be in control of the thirst in Athenea.’

‘You will be,’ he reassured, wrapping his arm around my waist. ‘It’s not so hard, I promise. But do you think it’s a good idea to turn so soon after your father is captur—’ He stopped mid-sentence. ‘I mean, so soon after he arrives?’

I let my head fall against his shoulder, appreciative of the fact he had corrected himself. ‘I don’t know. He can’t do anything, can he? He’ll just have to deal with it, I guess.’ I sighed and asked a question that had been bugging me all evening. ‘Is it wrong than I’m nervous about seeing my own father?’

‘You are?’ Out of the corner of my eye I could see him cocking his head, looking puzzled.

‘You seem surprised.’

‘I just thought you would be happy. Isn’t this what you have wanted all along?’

I frowned. ‘It was at first. I was scared and homesick and I hated you all. No offence,’ I added, catching sight of his affronted expression. ‘I had just seen you murder thirty men, after all. But at some point that changed. I don’t know when. I just stopped missing my family and I stopped thinking of Trafalgar Square as murder and I stopped …’ I trailed off as he leaned in, tilting his head to the side and pausing just short of my lips.

‘Stopped what?’ he asked, his voice so low I only just heard him.

My breath caught. ‘Stopped hating you,’ I replied and without hesitating, he pressed his lips to mine. It was only brief, but it was like kissing cool metal – I could taste the blood of the rabbit on his lips and I pulled away, shocked at the fact I liked it. He lowered his eyes but I raised his chin with a single finger, meeting his eyes, so bright and vivid, worthy of the most precious stones.

‘On August 28th, eighteen years ago, you first heard your voice, didn’t you?’

He inhaled sharply, his eyes wide. ‘How the hell do you know that?’

I tried to smile, but I only managed to grimace. ‘Autumn told me because I have a voice too. And I first heard it in Trafalgar Square.’

‘My God,’ he mouthed, running a hand down the back of his head, ruffling his already messy hair.

I nodded. ‘The night I was born, you hear your voice. The night I meet you, I hear my voice. When I get here, I start following you in my dreams. If your mother had never died, you never would have killed the hunters in Trafalgar Square and I never would have ended up here. You should have killed me that night. But you didn’t. You’ve saved me god knows how many times after that. Is that why we’re tied? What does it even mean to be tied? I just don’t get it. I don’t get any of it.’ I slumped against him, frustrated that voicing what I did know and did understand wasn’t solving anything. Why me? What do I have to do?

He sat listening with a polite but detached expression, staring past me to the closed doors to the ballroom. I followed his gaze until my eyes rested on the black veins that ran through the white marble, thicker there than anywhere else.

‘We’re in a chess game,’ he muttered. ‘But we’re not in control. We are just the pieces.’ His voice trembled and a chill ran up my spine, like a ghost had passed through me.

‘Then who is in control?’

‘Fate. Time. Things we don’t know about,’ he whispered. ‘We’re not meant to understand any of it. So don’t try and make sense of it. Just play along.’

‘You make it sound like they are actual people or something.’

He shrugged, pulling me towards him as he stretched out his legs on the stairs, tugging my leg until I straddled his thighs, facing him, knees resting on the cool marble of the step below the one he was sitting on. He wrapped his arms around my lower back, his hands slipping just below the waistband of my jeans and tracing patterns along the elastic of my knickers. I felt a blush rush to my cheeks and my heart pick up.

‘I’ve been thinking too,’ he said and I could see his tongue running itself across the tip of his fangs as his lips parted. ‘The Athenean court is a lot stricter than here. Morally stricter.’

I shook my head, not following his meaning. ‘So? I can be good.’

It was his turn to shake his head. ‘They have a different definition of good. Lots of things are considered scandalous that we consider normal.’

‘Like?’

‘Like … like how two people can’t be publicly affectionate or sleep together unless they are officially courting. So, considering that, I thought that maybe, after things have settled down obviously, because there will be a lot of attention from the press if we’re together, well, maybe … only if you want, obviously—’

I cut him off with a wave of my hand as the irises of his eyes were tinged with a pale pink. I half-laughed, half-smirked, and he pouted.

‘Don’t smirk, you’ll turn into me.’

‘This is too good not to smirk,’ I breathed, breaking into an even wider grin. ‘Kaspar Varn, are you asking me out?’

He grimaced and his eyes became an even darker shade of pink. ‘I think we have skipped the dating stage, so I was more thinking girlfriend. But we don’t have to publicly announce it right away, maybe around Christmas time—’

I cut him off again by placing my hand over his mouth and shifting forward in his lap, using my other hand to push him onto his back. I followed him, hovering just above.

‘In a relationship with the daughter of the man who ordered your mother’s death. How controversial.’

‘In a relationship with a girl I’m tied to. How sensible. In fact, how responsible,’ he replied, chuckling. I joined in. But my laughter turned to a muffled squeak as he pressed his hand to my mouth and started to roll over, the hand behind my back cushioning me as I rolled onto the steps. He appeared above me and brushed a few strands of my fringe out of my eyes. ‘In a relationship with a girl I would have been an idiot to let go yesterday. A girl who breathed life into this place. A girl who made me feel again. How natural.’

My heart clenched and my eyes stung as a thousand different emotions hit me in one wave, overpowering the fear, the uncertainty and the anger at him for the previous morning. It was a mixture of emotion I recognized, but hadn’t felt in a long time. And this was stronger. It was real. It was palatable: it tasted metallic as he pressed his lips to mine a second time. It was cold too as I wrapped my arms around his neck and he tried to press his entire body to mine; and as his hand slipped under my T-shirt, it was a jolt of desire.