He watched her, his eyebrows rising every so slightly. He tilted his head and closed his eyes and Irina could have sworn he swayed to the music. It wasn’t right. He should be scrambling toward her, trampling anyone in his way regardless of the danger. It was what happened when one was the target of a rusalka’s song.
The trolls around her stepped forward, almost hypnotized by the song and Irina reluctantly pulled back until the song was just music, no longer infused with the magic she held within her. She finished the last note and the cavern plunged into silence.
Across the room, Kirill opened his eyes and smiled at her and Irina’s sanity nearly snapped. She turned just as the room erupted in applause and dashed down the invisible steps, hoping they were still there. As soon as her feet hit the floor she ran up to the first female she saw.
“Ladies room?”
The troll cocked an eyebrow and pointed toward a curve in the cave. Irina dashed along the smooth stone wall, not daring to look around her for fear that someone would stop her and she’d have to stand there while Kirill made his way over. She couldn’t face him, not yet, not until she figured out what was going on.
She passed through a shadow and came to an abrupt halt when a bright light attacked her eyes. Though she was still obviously in the cave, she’d passed through a portal of some sort, she could tell from the tell-tale tingle on her skin. The stone had been polished to within an inch of its life. The
loos
were on the left, neat marble screens placed around them for privacy. On the right, the wall was covered by mirrors and stone basins with water that smelled of roses. Sconces lined the walls, a soft crackling filled the air along with the scent of burning herbs.
Irina stumbled toward the mirrors and stood there staring at her reflection. She reached behind her to grab a lock of hair, only partially relieved to find it was still dry. Images of Kirill filled her mind and she closed her eyes as if she could block them out.
“You worry too much.”
Irina opened her eyes, not surprised to find Magna’s reflection next to hers in the mirror. “You think?” she mumbled.
“Yes. I told you, the vampire’s attraction to you is not a result of any powers. Even the song of the rusalka cannot affect the dead.”
A sigh seemed to rise from the depths of her being and Irina slumped. “I know.”
“That disappoints you?”
“It annoys me.” A flash of anger sparked to life inside Irina and she clung to it with both hands. She raised her gaze to stare into Magna’s eyes in the mirror. “His vampiric powers work just fine on me. The bastard had me bespelled and damn near fed on me without so much as a warning. To make matters worse, he made me
enjoy
it.” She covered her face with her hands, furious at the blush heating her cheeks. “I can’t quit thinking about it and it only
get
worse.”
“It’s not as bad as all that.”
Irina dropped her hands. “I climbed into his lap in the carriage. Is that bad enough? For the love of the Great Goddess, I can’t quit thinking about him, can’t seem to keep from touching him when he’s around.”
Magna stepped up and braced her hip against the edge of a basin. “And you’re upset because you think that it’s because he’s bespelled you?”
“I’m sure that helped.”
“It didn’t happen. A vampire can’t bespell a rusalka.”
“I’m not all rusalka. I’m only one-eighth rusalka.”
“And what is your other heritage?”
Irina pressed her lips together. “That doesn’t matter. The point is, he bespelled me.”
“No,” Magna said patiently, “the point is he cannot bespell you. The point is, you are a
rusalki
, in whatever capacity, and besides that, perhaps even more importantly,
you
are a young woman. Sexuality is not some tame thing that happens when it is convenient, and it is much less so when you have siren blood in your veins. You are attracted to Kirill, and why not? He’s a handsome man, isn’t he? Attractive, well mannered for a vampire…”
“He’s a beast with a crown.”
“And yet here you are, attending a ball with him to help him gain favor with my king.”
“
It’s
part of a deal I made for the good of my people,” Irina ground out.
Magna shrugged. “Have it your way. But ignoring a healthy sexual appetite won’t make it go away. And it seems to be more than reciprocal. Keep a good head on your shoulders and it’ll tell you where to put the rest of your body.”
Irina’s jaw dropped as Magna winked at her and then swept out of the women’s room. Before she could fully recover, another figure crept in. She had red hair too, as did most of the troll women, but hers had more blonde in it than Magna’s. Her dress was a vivid purple, ringed with pale silver fur. She looked familiar, but Irina couldn’t quite place her.
“You’ll have to forgive Magna,” the woman said apologetically. “She fell for a vampire not long ago and I’m afraid it affects her judgment.”
“Since she seems to be encouraging me to jump into a vampire’s bed, I’d have to say you’re right,” Irina mused. She shoved away the unsettled feeling rocking her stomach and examined her reflection for any outward signs of her distress. Whatever she may be feeling inside, she certainly had no intention of letting Kirill see it.
“Well, I for one think you’re right to be wary,” the woman said. “Prince Kirill has his fingers in many pies…if you catch my meaning?”
Irina snapped her gaze to the woman’s eyes. The pity she saw aimed at her made bile rise in her throat.
“Oh?” she asked lightly.
“Yes,” the woman said gently. She frowned at Irina’s back. “Oh, my dear, your bodice ties seem to be slipping. May I?”
“Yes, please. You were…saying?’
“Hmmm?
Oh, yes, about the prince. Well, as you know he is quite…ambitious. He wants to be king and since his father is a vampire—”
“He may never get to the throne, yes, I know. But what does that have to do with other women?” She sucked in her breath as the woman unlaced her bodice and began to tighten it one strand at a time.
“Well, the prince gets power where he can. He spends night after night searching ancient texts, bribing people, torturing people…seducing people. Really, anything he can do to make an alliance or gain information. He really is a very intelligent man.”
“Intelligence isn’t everything,” Irina whispered. She grunted as the woman pulled at her laces. “I think that’s snug enough, thank you,” she said lightly, not wanting to insult the woman. She shook her head. Shadows danced at the edge of her vision.
“Of course I’m not saying you’re some light-headed virgin falling in love with a prince that you think is going to fall madly in love with you.”
Irina gritted her teeth, as much against the pressure of her laces as with the woman’s insinuation. “If I am light-headed, it’s because you’re pulling those ties…too…tight.”
The room swam and Irina tried to get a breath only to find there was no room in her bodice. She raised her arms behind her, scrabbling for her ties. The woman behind her held the laces away, pulling them even tighter as she leaned back.
“There are forces at work in this kingdom that you could not even begin to comprehend,” the woman said quietly.
She jerked on the laces and Irina would have gasped if she had the air. Her chest burned with the need to breathe and bright spots exploded in front of her eyes.
“The prince may have needed you to get to King
Risi
, but that is all. Your part is done and you are no longer needed.”
Tears leaked from her eyes as vertigo spun her around. Something hard crashed into her cheek and pain exploded in her head just before blackness ate her world.
“Such a large, gorgeous voice for such a tiny woman.
She’s too good for you.”
Kirill smiled tolerantly at King
Risi
, making sure to keep a healthy amount of space between him and the monarch. Irina’s song had exceeded Kirill’s hopes and the king was in fine spirits, smiling and laughing and even waving around the heavy gold medallion Kirill had gifted him with. If Kirill could keep far enough away
to prevent
Risi
from thumping him on the back in overly enthusiastic camaraderie, he’d consider the evening a complete success.
“Where is the lady anyway?” the king asked, standing from his throne to peer out over the crowd of his people. His craggy grey face contorted as he searched the room. “She took off quickly enough after her song.” He eyed Kirill and the vampire realized too late that the dais before the throne didn’t give him enough room to maneuver. The king’s thick hand crashed onto his shoulder, nearly buckling his knees with the force. “Perhaps those hungry eyes of yours scared the lass off, eh?”
He guffawed as Kirill tried not to growl. Trolls were not known for their stringent decorum, but if
Risi
kept touching him, Kirill feared he’d be pressed to say something unfortunate. Mountain trolls may as well be made of stone themselves for as heavy as they were and every time the king touched Kirill, the vampire felt the need to check for broken bones—and considering his vampiric strength, that was saying something. He forced a smile.
“Well, Irina is a lovely woman and she had such kind things to say about your people. I’m sure she’ll be heartened to hear that the tension between us is through and you and I are allies once again.”
The smile remained on King
Risi’s
face, but a light flared to life in the grey depths of his eyes that almost made Kirill back up a step. “Oh, Kirill,” he said slowly. He tightened his fingers on Kirill’s shoulder. “It is good that Irina was here to sing for us, else I would have had no choice but to go through with my original plan for entertainment, regardless of the lovely trinket you’ve gifted me with.”
Every nerve in Kirill’s body sang with awareness and his fangs slid from their sheaths. He calculated the distance between him and the exit to the cavern, counting four armed trolls between him and the mouth of the troll court. He had five blades on his person, each one sharpened to a razor’s edge and each one dipped in various poisons. Mountain trolls had thick hides, but the combination of sharp metal and poison should be enough to slow them down enough to let him escape. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but he could do it.
“And what was that, Your Majesty?” he asked, his voice betraying none of his sudden wariness.
“I was going to throw your dead body in a pit of boiling oil and see if you could swim out before you were cooked.”
The pulse of the troll king’s heart echoed in Kirill’s ears. It would take some tearing to get deep enough, but Kirill estimated he could kill him in less than three minutes, four if the king had had sex in the last six hours.
“Relax, vampire,” the king said, his voice lower and lacking the joviality of the moment before. “You won’t die by my hand tonight.”
“I had high hopes that we could move past the unfortunate events of a few months ago,” Kirill said quietly. “Unlike my father, I recognize the value of your people. I consider you a strong ally that I desire to have by my side, not a population of hoarders to be ignored. My father—”
“Your father never so much as blinked when my people pursued a treasure,” King
Risi
growled. “You sided with that mongrel prince against us and for what? He’s not a member of this kingdom, and he is not king of another. Do you expect me to believe for one moment that you had some grave need to hold my people out of Sanguenay? What can that prince offer you that
is
so much more than the King of the Trolls?”
“
Irina!
”
A piercing shriek interrupted whatever response Kirill would have offered. Even if he’d had a human’s hearing, that voice would have offended his senses. As it was he nearly winced at the shrill note of panic. The content of the shout registered like a bucket of
icewater
and Kirill leapt down from the royal dais and bolted through the room toward the voice.
A female troll stood in a room that had been set farther back in the cave—the ladies room, he guessed. She stood there staring down in horror at a pile of material on the floor. Kirill jerked his head back as he realized the crumpled form was Irina.
In seconds he was at her side, his hand cupping her cheek as he examined her face. Her pale skin had a bluish tint.
“Quiet down!” he roared, flashing his fangs and his glowing red eyes at the trolls crowding around him. Silence exploded in the room and he leaned closer to Irina. She wasn’t breathing. He slid his gaze over her body, dancing his fingers over her chest and down her stomach. Tiny swells of her flesh pressed up from between the laces of her dress and he realized her bodice had been pulled tight to compress her lungs. Without a thought, he reached into the depths of his cloak and withdrew a dagger. The blade sliced through the laces with barely a whisper, the fine blade cutting the strings with precision, not even touching the underlying cloth beneath.
Her chest didn’t rise and her face held on to its robin’s egg hue. Kirill growled and lowered his
head,
forcing breath into her mouth and then leaning back to press sharply on her chest in rhythmic motions. He repeated the process, trying to force the will to breathe into Irina’s still form by sheer willpower. Suddenly, on one particularly violent compression, Irina’s eyes flew open and she sucked in a sharp breath. Her hands flailed in the air, scrabbling to grasp Kirill’s arms. Irina stared up into his face, confusion and panic glazing her eyes.
“Irina, it is all right,” Kirill soothed, forcing his voice to come out calm and in control. He fought back his own panic and wrenched the edges of his mouth up into a smile. “It is all right, you are fine now.”
“What in the great rocks is going on in here?”
Kirill had to drag his gaze from Irina’s face to watch King
Risi
force his way into the ladies room, a thundering scowl on his face. When he saw Irina on the floor, he froze.
“Irina, what has happened?” he demanded.
“I’ll tell you what has happened,” Kirill spoke up, pulling Irina into his lap. She tensed briefly as if she would fight him but then relaxed against him. The shuddering quality of her breathing as she fought to re-oxygenate her blood fueled Kirill’s temper and he focused his ire on the king. “Irina was attacked in
your
court. If she’d been found a moment later, she could have died.”
The troll king crossed his arms. “Attacked how?”
“Her laces were bound to the point of cutting off her breath. She was suffocating.”
“She is not human, she would have been fine.” The king’s spoke in a confident tone, but Kirill could see the shadow of doubt in his eyes.
“Not if the person who did it was a magic wielder,” he countered evenly. “Physical bonds are easily touched with binding enchantments.” He didn’t add that troll women were known for their magic, but he let the implication hang in the air, looking around at the ladies room and fixing the king with a knowing look.
King
Risi
stared at him for a long moment, his gray eyes evaluating, weighing the truth of Kirill’s words. Kirill waited, his mind dancing over his options.
“King
Risi
, I would like to brush this off as the action of one rogue member of your court, a malicious prank that went too far. If we were allies, that would be the only logical assumption. However, if we are not allies, then I cannot help but wonder if this was an intentional message from you and your people that my companion and I are not welcome here.”
Irina went iron hard in his lap and Kirill tightened his grip on her, silently warning her to be silent. He had one chance to work this to his favor and one word from her could ruin it. If Irina’s reputation was as good as his research had indicated, then the troll king wouldn’t want it getting out to the other magic kingdoms that she’d been hurt in his home. It was a gamble, but it was the only chance Kirill had.
King
Risi
straightened himself to his full height, but Kirill didn’t miss the sigh that escaped him as he did so. Finally the monarch nodded. “We are allies. Please, accept my sincerest apologies.” He glared over his people. “And know that I will find who did this. And when I do, wherever you are, you will hear their screams.”
“I appreciate your dedication to doing what is just,” Kirill said, bowing his head at the king without lowering his eyes. “Now, I think I’d best get Irina to bed. She will need more care to recover from her frightening ordeal.”
Carefully keeping his triumph from showing on his face, Kirill gathered Irina into his arms and rose to carry her out. One glance down into her face gave him plenty of warning that once they left the troll court, the maiden in his arms would have something to say about his handling of the situation. He only hoped that her breath-stealing experience would somewhat weaken her voice.
The carriage door had barely closed when Irina loosed her tongue.
“You scheming, slimy, sanctimonious
bastard
!” she hissed. “You
used
me to manipulate King
Risi
into an alliance!”
“Which, if you will kindly recall, was the plan from the start,” Kirill reminded her calmly. “That is why you accompanied me, remember?”
“My chest is still burning from the grip of those laces, my lungs—
What
are you doing?”
Kirill smiled at her from where he was now kneeling on the floor. He slowly raised his hands to the shoulders of her dress, sagging slightly off her arms without the benefit of laces to hold the bodice tight. “You are right, Irina,” he said softly. “It was quite thoughtless of me not to check the…extent of your injuries. Your chest burns, you say?”
Heat filled Irina’s eyes, taking Kirill off guard. He halted his reach for her dress, feeling an answering heat swell to life inside him. The stinging slap to his face caught him completely by surprise and he shouted and threw himself back onto his seat. Irina grabbed the bodice of her dress, clutching it to her chest as she glared at him with eyes hot enough to catch the carriage on fire.
“There is a difference between asking someone for help and
using
their misfortune to your advantage,” she choked, her voice raspy. “It is not unlike the difference between trying to force an ally and trying to make a friend.”
A flicker of annoyance fluttered over Kirill and he settled back against the carriage, contemplating Irina in all her outraged glory. “Irina, it surely has not escaped your notice that I desire to succeed my father as king?”
“I’m not blind.”
“All right.
And may I assume it has also not escaped your notice that my father is a vampire, and thus I am unlikely to succeed him in a…natural manner?”
“I’m not batty, Kirill, I know that you are building a force that will enable you to take the kingdom from your father by force. But what I don’t understand is why someone as intelligent as you, can’t see that there are other ways to go about it. You don’t have to be so conniving, so damned…disrespectful.”
It was an effort not to raise his eyebrows and betray his condescension. Fortunately, as
conniving
as he was, Kirill was not so easily controlled by his emotions.
“You believe I should work on making friends with the people I desire as allies?”
“It’s a thought. May I point out that it was my friendship with the trolls that gave you the in you needed.”
“And if you had needed King
Risi
to go to war with you, would your friendship have accomplished that?”
Irina frowned. “I wouldn’t have asked him.” This time he let his face betray his thoughts, crooking an eyebrow at her. Irina scowled. “I’m not saying that he wouldn’t have.”
“But he wouldn’t. Irina, you are wonderfully gifted at forging friendships, but you must understand that I am working on a much bigger scale. I don’t need one person to like
me,
I need one person, who controls many more people, to be obligated to help me if I need it. I need to be able to count on that help at times when to not have it could mean my death.” He shook his head, his brain toying with her idea. “Some of the individuals I must form alliances with are female. Can you tell me, my dear Irina, what would happen if I tried to form friendships with all those women?”