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There was something nearly sweet about it.

Not sweet enough to counter the fumes rising from the plate, but sweet all the same.

“It’s blood or eggs. Pick one,” Raphael snapped, when I kept moving the food on the plate, trying to find some part that looked less noxious than another.

I picked the eggs.

Chapter Nineteen

We spent several daysin the house. Raphael certainly seemed annoyed at how slowly I was healing. No, annoyed wasn’t the right word. It was too mild for the expression that passed over his eyes every time I strained my back in some overly ambitious movement.

Despite whatever he felt, he made no move to rush me—or to leave and set off on his own. He brought food to the cabin but, mercifully, made no additional meals once I could stand to move through the kitchen. In a sense, his cooking really was healing. It motivated me to get well enough to save me from any of his further attempts to cook “eggs.”

The cabin was humble. The dust that covered the furniture alleviated my initial concerns that he’d murdered the previous occupant.

The days were slow, with nothing to do but sit around and heal. Raphael ushered me back to bed the moment I started breathing hard, informing me with no small amount of authority that “humans need extensive rest.”

“How would you know?” I grumbled when he made that declaration once again.

Raphael arched a single white eyebrow in my direction. “Iwasa human once, you know.”

Six hundred years ago. All vampires were turned humans. From a corrupt magic or what else, I couldn’t say. Yet it was hard to picture Raphael that way. That he ever could have felt as I did now: feeble, weak.

The reply was an invitation.

Did I want to know more about him? Ishouldn’t.

But I did.

“What were you like, as a human?”

Raphael stretched out on the chair beside my bed. From this angle, I could see his profile. It was late at night, so the window in the room was drawn. The light of the moons shone through, casting shadows on the planes of his face.

“I’d like to say much the same. Being a vampire doesn’t change one’s fundamental nature. But I suppose the years have made me warier. More self-reliant. As a mortal, I was… optimistic.”

He saidoptimisticthe way I saidvampireormonster. But as often as I called him a monster in my head, when the word passed my lips, all I could see were the human men who had delighted in my torment.

“Don’t look so surprised. Times were different then. Kingdoms were younger, magic was wilder. All one had to do was look around and see a world of possibilities at their fingertips. I had a good life and knew little hardship. Dragons wove through the skies, and as a boy I dreamed I’d ride one. Instead, I wound up on a different path.”

The path of a vampire. But before that… I tried to picture him, a small, ruddy-faced boy with bright blue eyes that dreamed of taming mythical beasts. Perhaps he was right that his nature hadn’t changed—arrogant as hell.

“What made you choose to become a vampire?”

Something in his face shuddered, but he didn’t end the conversation the way he usually did when that look appeared. “It wasn’t exactly a choice. Or maybe it was, but it didn’t feel like one at the time.”

I frowned. “Do you regret it?”

He grinned, fangs glinting in the moonlight. “Trying to cast me in a role where I’m some poor misunderstood vampire that despises his nature? I’m stronger, faster, eternal. There’s freedom in that—in having the strength and time to do anything you wish.”

So whatdoyou want?I bit back the question. It felt too personal.

Silence stretched. I knew it was my turn to share, but my throat was suddenly too dry to speak. Anxious, I fiddled with the chain around my neck. Raphael noted the movement and lifted his chin in its direction.

“What is that?”

I wrapped my palm around the pendant. The metal was cool against my too-warm skin. It felt odd to wear it instead of hiding it on my body, but there were only the two of us here, and Raphael wouldn’t recognize it. “It was my father’s. It’s the only thing he ever gave me.”

I certainly hadn’t been given a shred of his magic.