Cyrus was seated at a small table in the center of the room. There were no corpses, as promised. Two champagne flutes and a large crystal decanter full of blood were laid out before him. He stood when I entered.
“Look at you.” His eyes glittered with genuine appreciation. “You’re more beautiful every time I see you.”
“You look pretty good yourself.” It wasn’t an empty compliment, though anything was better than his pirate outfit from before. He wore a simple, button-down black shirt and black pants, and his hair was tied back. He looked surprisingly modern, and I found it easy to imagine he was a different person from the man who’d wreaked so much havoc in my life.
Maybe that’s what I’d have to do. Live in denial to stand living at all. But I’d been doing that for far too long already.
I cleared my throat. “I’m glad to see the leather pants couldn’t make a return appearance.”
Clearly, he interpreted this as an insult. “I beg your pardon? Leather is very fashionable.”
“In 1997.” I sat in the chair Clarence pulled out for me and spread my napkin across my lap. “And I must tell you I’m not really big on the whole ‘Satan Goes to Versailles’ vibe you’ve got going on here.” He ignored me and poured some of the blood into my glass. It fizzed slightly as it hit the glass.
“Let me guess. Poison?” Knowing better than that, I took a sip and let the fluid roll slowly across my tongue, savoring its sweet flavor.
“Champagne. Think of it as a bloody mimosa.” He laughed at his own joke before he went on. “I thought we had reason to celebrate tonight.” He filled his glass and took a long swallow.
I eyed him incredulously. “What are we celebrating exactly?”
A wickedly satisfied smirk stretched across his face. “Your fall from grace.”
“Hold on there, buddy. I haven’t done anything yet.” I’d learned from past experience that he would try to tempt me, to appeal to the monster in me. I also knew I was more receptive to the possibility now than I had been when he’d tried to lure me before. But he didn’t need to know that. Then again, he probably already did.
Cyrus took another drink, his eyes never leaving me. “I do like that dress. You’ll have to wear it more often.”
“I don’t know.” I smoothed my hands over the silky fabric. “When I get the chance, maybe. It’s not really something I can wear around the house.”
“Why not?”
I laughed, until I realized he was serious. “Well, I’d feel overdressed, for one.”
“No one would mention it.” His champagne flute dangled from the tips of his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. “It befits your station.”
I huffed in annoyance. “My station. Because you said you could make me a queen, right?”
“I can’t make you a queen, that was a bit of a fib. More like a princess.” He made the remark without a hint of humor. “You’ve read The Sanguinarius?”
“Only about half of it. My copy was lost when my apartment burned down.”
“A pity. So, if I mentioned the name Jacob Seymour, you’d have no idea who I was speaking of?” Cyrus’s eyes were fixed on my face, as if he were trying to register something in my reaction.
He’d find nothing there. “No clue at all. Why, is he someone important?”
“Yes, you could say so. He was my father.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I merely waited for him to continue.
“My father was not a powerful man in life. He was an old man with two wives in the grave and ten grown children when he was turned. We were serfs, what you call peasants now. We farmed land owned by a wealthy lord and tithed most of our profit to the Crown.”
“In England?” I took a sip from my glass, enjoying the effects of light-headedness from the champagne and satiation from the blood mixed with it.
Cyrus nodded. “The vampire who sired my father did so on the condition that he use all the powers gifted to him to grow strong and overcome those who would rule him. Father took it quite literally. First, he killed the noble family who enslaved us. Then he killed and fed from his sire, and finally, one by one, he sought out those of our kind already in existence. The oldest, the strongest, the most fearsome. My father slew them all. He drank their blood and stole their power.
“And then, of his seven living sons, he chose the one he felt was the most ruthless and calculating, and he sired him.”
Cyrus straightened in his chair, pride transforming his face. “And while my brother slept, on the first day of his new vampire life, I killed him and stole his blood.” He paused, and his brows furrowed as if he were trying to remember something. “Then I stabbed him in the heart and took a handful of his ashes to my father to show him what I’d done. That I deserved the place I’d been denied.”
My heart racing, I reached for my glass and drank half of it down before I could speak again. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because my father has now successfully killed all the oldest known vampires. He is the leader of our kind.” Though he said this in all seriousness, he shrugged it off rather quickly. “His blood runs in mine, and my blood runs in yours. We are royalty, Carrie.”
I looked around helplessly as a tremor of—was that paternal affection?—passed across the blood tie.
“So, in a roundabout way, what I’m saying is that there’s good reason for you to wear the dress again.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I breathed.
A new, frightening possibility entered my mind. What if Cyrus wasn’t the man I thought he was at all, but merely a pawn under his father’s control? How much of the evil he inflicted on others originated from his own brain? He’d been a vampire for so long now, perhaps he couldn’t remember what it was like to be free from the blood tie.
Cocking his head, Cyrus regarded me with the amused smile of a man viewing a prize that was nearly his. “My God, but you’re lovely.”
The sentiment was a bit too heartfelt to sit comfortably with me. “Why do you say things like that?”
He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Because I mean them.”
I filed his words away under “Ploys to Disarm Me.”
He nodded to Clarence, and the butler stepped forward to clear the table.
Still hungry, I handed my glass over with some reluctance. “Are we finished?”
Cyrus stood and moved to take my hand. “No. This was just an appetizer. Now we’re on to the main course.”
He stepped behind me and covered my eyes with his hands. The feeling of him so close, his body brushing against my back as he led me from the room, set my nerve endings on fire.
“Where are we going?” I asked as if I didn’t know the answer.
“Look,” he whispered as he removed his hands.
A huge bed on a raised dais dominated the room. Elegant curtains of sheer gold-and-cream fabric hung from the dark wood canopy, and in the center lay a young man, bound, gagged and shirtless.
Although his hair was clean and trimmed, and he wore trousers instead of jeans, I recognized him immediately.
Ziggy.
“He’s for you.” Cyrus walked over to the bed and held his hand out to me.
Don’t react, I urged myself, picturing a brick wall in an attempt to keep Cyrus from seeing my thoughts. Pretend you don’t know him. Deny you’ve ever met him. Just don’t do anything to endanger