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I don’t know which called to me more, his music or his blood. Trapped in darkness, weak to the point of death, I woke only to suck his soul dry until the notes and droplets merged in my veins. Whoever he was, he was my inferior, my prey, and his life was my due. What’s the point of being a princess if you can’t kill your subjects?
His blood was spiced with wine; I could tell that much. As I listened, stilling my breathing and willing my heart to pump again, I realized that I didn’t know the song he was playing. It wasn’t any of the Freesian lullabies from my childhood, nor was it anything that had been popular at court. I could even pick out the sound of his fingertips stroking the keys without the telltale muting of suede gloves. Peculiar. No wonder I could smell him, whoever he was—he wasn’t protecting his delicious skin from the world. From me.
He stopped playing and sighed, and my instincts took over. I lunged toward that intoxicating scent. But the attempt to pounce was painfully foiled by . . . something. Leather. I was trapped, tucked into a ball, boxed and balanced on my bustled bum. When he started playing again, my hand stole sideways toward the musty leather. With one wicked claw, I began to carve a way out.
The tiniest sliver of light stole in, orange and murky. Fresh air hit my face, and with it, his scent. It took every ounce of well-bred patience for me to remain silent and still and not fumble and flounder out of whatever held me bound like a Kraken from the deep. My mother’s voice rang in my mind, her queenly tone unmistakable.
Silence. Cunning. Quickness. That is how the enemy falls, princess. You are the predator’s predator. The queen of the beasts. Now kill him. Slowly.
My fingernails had grown overlong and sharper than was fashionable in court, and the rest of the leather fell away in one long curve. I lifted the flap with one hand and dared to peek out.
The room was dim and mostly empty, with a high ceiling and wooden floors. Spindly chairs perched on round tables. Across the room, lit by one orange gas spotlight, was a stage, and on that stage was a harpsichord, and playing that harpsichord was my lunch.
Seeing him there, the princess receded, and the beast took over. Body crouched and fingers curled, I sidled out through the hole, my eyes glued to my prey. He hadn’t noticed the creature hunting him from the shadows. His eyes were closed, and he was singing something plaintive, something about someone named Jude. I wasn’t Jude, so it didn’t matter.
The refined part of my brain barely registered that I was dressed in high-heeled boots and swishing taffeta. I knew well enough how to stalk in my best clothes and had been doing so since my days in a linen pinafore and ermine ruff. As I slipped into the shadows along the wall and glided toward the stage, hunger pounded in time with my heartbeat and his slow keystrokes. It felt like a lifetime had passed since I had last eaten. And maybe it had. Never had I felt so drained.
I made it across the room without detection. He continued moaning about Jude in a husky voice so sad that it moved even the animal in me. I stopped to consider him from behind deep-red velvet curtains that had definitely known better days. But I didn’t see a man. Just food. And in that sense, he had all but arrayed himself on a platter, walking around with his shirt open, boots off, and gloves nowhere to be seen. Exposed and reeking of alcohol, he was an easy target.
He broke off from his strange song and reached for a green bottle, tipping it to lips flushed pink with blood and feeling. I watched his neck thrown back, Adam’s apple bobbing, and a deafening roar overtook me. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I was across the stage and on him in a heartbeat.
Tiny as I was, the momentum from my attack knocked him backward off the bench. The bottle skittered across the floor, and he made a pathetically clumsy grab for it. I had one hand tangled in his long hair, the other pinning down his chest, long talons prickling into his flesh and drawing pinpoints of delicious blood to pepper the air. I took a deep breath, savoring it. The kill was sure. I smiled, displaying fangs.
His red-rimmed eyes met mine in understanding, and he smiled back, a feral glint surprising me. Something smashed into my head, and he rolled me over and lurched to his feet with a wild laugh. Red liquid streamed through my hair and down my face, and I hissed and shook shards of green glass from my shoulders. The uppity bastard had hit me with his bottle. If I hadn’t already planned to kill him, I now had just cause.
As I circled him, I wiped the stinging wine from my eyes with the back of my hand. I was dizzy with hunger, almost woozy, and he took advantage of my delicate condition to leap forward and slice my forearm with the jagged ends of his blasted bottle. I hissed again and went for his throat, but at the last minute, something stopped me short. He didn’t smell so good, not anymore.
The beast within receded, and my posture straightened. My arms swung, useless, at my sides. His finger was in his mouth, and when he pulled it out with a dramatic pop, his lips were stained red with my blud. Now he just smelled like me. And less like food.
“Not today, Josephine,” he said with a cocky grin.
I struggled to stand tall and not wobble. Now that he had swallowed my blud, the beast wasn’t controlling me, and there was nothing holding me up. I was as empty as a cloud, light as a snowflake, beyond hunger. My heart was barely beating. And I felt more than a little bewildered.
“Oh, my,” I said, one hand to my dripping hair. “I do believe I might swoon. And you’ve ruined my dress as well. Your lord is simply going to draw and quarter you.”
I did swoon then. As the world went black, I felt his hands catching me, his delicious—if no longer maddening—blood pumping millimeters away from my own.
“Easy, little girl,” he said. I smelled wine and sadness on him and something else, something deep and musky and not quite right.
I was delirious as he gently helped me fall to the ground. I could barely mumble, “I’m not a little girl, and you’re the most badly behaved servant I’ve ever met.”
The world fell away, and his laughter and music followed me into my dreams.
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