Page 112 of Forsaking All Others

“Could have fooled me.”

I frown and stop to look down at her, shaking my head.

“Are you referring to my nights with other contestants?”

“If the shoe fits,” she shrugs, apparently nonchalant, but I sense an undercurrent.

“Is it so wrong to bring a small amount of pleasure to women who only have weeks, perhaps days to live?” I murmur. “Women who came here knowing they’re risking their lives, for me.”

“Are you saying if they ask for it, you’ll oblige?”

“Where’s the harm?”

“You’re not a last meal request, Jag,” she scowls.

I laugh quietly, shaking my head.

“It’s no hardship. All the contestants are beautiful, desirable women. Every single one of them.”

I look her in the eye as I say this, and she blushes and drops my hand, turning to keep walking.

“So, what did this friend you’d known for centuries do against your house?”

“Not mine, my friend Falcon’s house.”

“Was she also his friend?”

“No,” I shake my head as I consider her question, “she was his procurer, ‘and half-sister’ he had no time for her, which ultimately led to her betraying his family.”

“So he didn’t care for her, yet you were the one to have to hunt and torture someone you called a friend. For him?” She frowns, “I suppose this Falcon is the same friend who somehow forced you onto these Games?”

“Something like that,” I scowl. “But I wasn’t forced to help him.”

‘Or was I? Didn’t my shame over my affair with Angie compel me to aid him in every way, even at my own expense?’

“So, you have vampire enemies still, even though the wars between the houses ended centuries ago,” she muses, unaware that her question about Falcon has bothered me. “Enemies who threaten your life.”

“Yes, many, many enemies,” I shrug, “some physical, some political, some emotional. The life of a royal vampire is not all you read in the tabloids.”

“I never thought it was,” she snorts. “That’s why it’s important that when I become your wife I also attain immortality.”

I sigh heavily as one of the rat-faced Starlen’s perennial sayings comes to mind.

‘Let the Games begin.’

83

I’m not moving until I get some answers.

We’ve been sitting here in the garden without the cameras for at least an hour, and I still can’t get a straight answer from Jag about why he won’t, at the very least, tell me how a vampire gives a woman immortality. Perhaps if he did I might understand why he’s so against it, and persuade him otherwise.

“Jag. I can’t understand your decision because you won’t give me the information I need. How does a vampire give his bride immortality?”

“He bites her,” he says quietly.

“That’s it?”

“More or less.”