Page 12 of Bought for Blood

“I have no further information, my lord.”

She’s gone before I can decide whether that’s training or fear. Probably both.

Candles somewhere behind me. Carpet thick enough to swallow a footstep. I walk to the fire and stare into the flames. My hand is steady on the mantel. It shouldn’t need to be.

Somewhere below me, down through the warm floor and the cold one under it, a door opens. Footsteps. A guard’s boots, and beside them, bare feet, light and even, coming up.

Her heartbeat arrives before she does.

It’s the blood. Has to be. Sangrey, whatever that’s worth. Rare enough that a man like Vasile held his breath before saying the name out loud.

My jaw is tight.

Rare blood. And it’s been a long time since I’ve fed well. That’s all it is.

The footsteps stop just outside.

I wait for the door.

Chapter 5

Serenity

The guard doesn’t tell me where we’re going. He doesn’t need to. The corridor changes; concrete gives way to carpet, fluorescent to low amber, and the air shifts from harsh chemicals to something warmer and older. Wood polish. Leather. The faint sweetness of real candles burning somewhere close.

My wolf takes note.

The cuffs on my wrists hum steadily, the runes glowing faint blue against my skin. My arms are heavy, the vein in my elbow tender. My bare feet sink into carpet that feels obscene. My body notices the warmth before my mind does.

I shut that down. Feeling good in this place is a trap.

Feelinganythingin this place is a trap.

The guard stops at a door—heavy, dark wood, a handle that looks like real brass—and swipes his card. The lock clicks. He opens it without going in and jerks his chin.

I step through. The door closes behind me.

The room is wrong. . A fireplace, burning. A deep, leather armchair, beside a table that holds a crystal decanter and a glass. A rug that my feet want to curl into. Bookshelves lining one wall. The light is low and gold, and the warmth gets into me before I can refuse it. For one horrible second, my body sags toward it before I catch myself and lock my spine.

He’s standing by the fire. As I walk in, he turns to me.

My wolf drops against my ribs and goes silent. Not the conserving quiet of the ward. Silent. She’s seen something she can’t explain.

He’s tall. Taller than I remembered. And still. The stillness of something that has no heartbeat and no need to shift its weight. Dark hair, fine-boned face, everything about him precise except his mouth. His mouth is the only soft thing about him, and I hate that I noticed it.

His eyes are the same strange violet from the corridor, watching me across the room with an attention that has no heat in it and no urgency.

He smells like nothing.

That’s what freezes me. Everything in this world smells like something: blood, sweat, fear, bleach, the green-stem scent of the hedge-witch boy. This man smells like cold air. Like stone. Something old underneath both, and then nothing. No pulse in it, no warmth. My wolf can’t read him. She goes quiet, and I lose the feel of her entirely.

“Sit,” he says. His voice is low and unhurried. He gestures at the chair.

“I’d rather stand.”

“Your hands are shaking. No doubt the rest of you too.” He says it without judgment, without sympathy. Just the observation. “Sit.”

My handsareshaking. I hadn’t noticed. Blood loss, or cold, or something else. It doesn’t matter which. I sit because my knees make the decision before I do, because the chair is deep and warm and my legs have already stopped listening to me.