The wait was excruciating, but at last he lowered his head. My heart was beating fast, and I heard him draw in a deep, long breath.
“Honey. You always smell like honey,” he murmured in amazement, just before his sharp teeth broke the skin.
When he’d taken my blood before, Matthew had been careful to anesthetize the site with a touch of his own blood so that I felt no pain. Not so this time, but soon the skin went numb from the pressure of Matthew’s mouth on my flesh. His hands cradled me as he angled me back toward the surface of the bed. I hung in midair waiting for him to be satisfied that there was nothing between us but love.
About thirty seconds after he started, Matthew stopped. He looked up at me in surprise, as if he’d discovered something unexpected. His eyes went full black, and for one fleeting moment I though that the blood rage was surfacing.
“It’s all right, my love,” I whispered.
Matthew lowered his head, drinking in more of my blood and thoughts until he discovered what he needed. It took little more than a minute. He kissed the place over my heart with the same expression of gentle reverence he had worn on our wedding night at Sept-Tours and looked up at me shyly.
“And what did you find?” I asked.
“You. Only you,” Matthew murmured.
His shyness quickly turned to hunger as he kissed me, and before long we were twined together. Except for our brief encounter standing against the wall, we had not made love for weeks, and our rhythm was awkward at first as we remembered how to move together. My body coiled tighter and tighter. Another fast glide, a deep kiss, was all it would take to set me flying.
Matthew slowed instead. Our eyes met and locked. I had never seen him look the way he did at that moment—vulnerable, hopeful, beautiful, free. There were no secrets between us now, no emotions guarded in case disaster struck and we were swept along into the dark places where hope couldn’t survive.
“Can you feel me?” Matthew was now a point of stillness at my core. I nodded again. He smiled and moved with deliberate care. “I’m inside you, Diana, giving you life.”
I’d said the same words to him as he drank my blood and pulled himself from the edge of death back into the world. I didn’t think he’d been aware of them at the time.
He moved within me again, repeating the words like an incantation. It was the simplest, purest form of magic in the world. Matthew was already woven into my soul. He was now woven into my body, just as I was woven into his. My heart, which had broken and broken again in the past months with every sad touch and regretful look, began to knit together once more.
When the sun crept over the horizon, I reached up and touched him between the eyes.
“I wonder if I could read your thoughts, too.”
“You already have,” Matthew said, lowering my fingers and kissing their tips. “Back in Oxford, when you received the picture of your parents. You weren’t conscious of what you were doing. But you kept answering questions I wasn’t able to ask aloud.”
“Can I try again?” I asked, half expecting him to say no.
“Of course. If you were a vampire I would already have offered my blood.” He lay back on the pillow.
I hesitated for a moment, stilled my thoughts, and focused on a simple question. How can I know Matthew’s mind?
A single silver thread shimmered between my heart and the spot on his forehead where his third eye would be if he were a witch. The thread shortened, drawing me closer until my lips pressed against his skin.
An explosion of sights and sounds burst in my head like fireworks. I saw Jack and Annie, Philippe and Ysabeau. I saw Gallowglass and men I didn’t recognize who occupied important places in Matthew’s heart. I saw Eleanor and Lucas. There was a feeling of triumph as he conquered some scientific mystery, a shout of joy as he rode out in the forest to hunt and kill as he was made to do. I saw myself, smiling up at him.
Then I saw the face of Herr Fuchs, the vampire I’d met in the Jewish town, and heard quite distinctly the words My son, Benjamin.
I sat back on my heels abruptly, my fingers touching my trembling lips.
“What is it?” Matthew said, sitting up and frowning.
“Herr Fuchs!” I looked at him in horror, afraid he had thought the worst. “I didn’t realize he was your son, that he was Benjamin.” There hadn’t been a hint of blood rage about him.
“It”s not your fault. You’re not a vampire, and Benjamin only reveals what he chooses.” Matthew’s voice was soothing. “I must have sensed his presence around you—a trace of scent, some inkling that he was near. That’s what made me think you were keeping something from me. I was wrong. I’m sorry for doubting you, mon coeur.”
“But Benjamin must have known who I was. Your scent would have been all over me.”
“Of course he knew,” Matthew said dispassionately. “I will look for him tomorrow, but if Benjamin doesn’t want to be found, there will be nothing to do but warn Gallowglass and Philippe. They’ll let the rest of the family know that Benjamin has reappeared.”
“Warn them?”
“The only thing more frightening than Benjamin in the grip of blood rage is Benjamin when he is lucid, as he was when you were with Rabbi Loew. It is as Jack said,” Matthew replied. “The most terrifying monsters always look just like ordinary men.”
Chapter Thirty One
That night marked the true beginning of our marriage. Matthew was more centered than I had ever seen him. Gone were the sharp retorts, abrupt changes of direction, and impulsive decisions that had characterized our time together thus far. Instead Matthew was methodical, measured— but no less deadly. He fed more regularly, hunting in the city and the villages nearby. As his muscles gained in weight and strength, I came to see what Philippe had already observed: Unlikely though it might seem given his size, his son had been wasting away from lack of proper nourishment.
I was left with a silvery moon on my breast marking the place where he
drank. It was unlike any other scar on my body, lacking the tough buildup of protective tissue that formed over most wounds. Matthew told me that this was due to a property in his saliva, which sealed the bite without letting it heal completely.
The vampire’s ritual taking of a mate’s blood from a vein near the heart and my new ritual of the witch’s kiss that gave me access to his thoughts provided us with a deeper intimacy. We didn’t make love every time he joined me in bed, but when we did, it was always preceded and followed by those two searing moments of absolute honesty that removed not only Matthew’s greatest worry but mine: that our secrets would somehow destroy us. And even when we didn’t make love, we talked in the open, easy way that lovers dream of doing.
The next morning, Matthew told Gallowglass and Pierre about Benjamin. Gallowglass’s fury was shorter-lived than Pierre’s fear, which rose to the surface whenever someone knocked on the door or approached me in the market. The vampires searched for him day and night, with Matthew planning the expeditions.
But Benjamin could not be found. He had simply vanished. Easter came and went, and our plans for Rudolf’s spring festival the following Saturday reached their final stages. Master Hoefnagel and I transformed the palace’s Great Hall into a blooming garden with pots of tulips. I was in awe of the place, with its graceful curved vaults supporting the arched roof like the branches of a willow tree.
“We’ll move the emperor’s orange trees here as well,” Hoefnagel said, his eyes gleaming with possibilities. “And the peacocks.”