Page 45 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter forty-three

Mira

A s I suspected, concentrating was nearly impossible.

Day one of my class started with a demonstration and lecture on the history of gold granulation.

A visiting master jeweler was leading the class—a woman with olive skin, black hair twisted into a bun, thick black glasses, and a blistering sense of humor.

She spoke animatedly about the early Sumerian and Italian metalsmiths who first developed and refined the technique of creating uniform metal granules.

They would affix the tiny spheres to a surface using a non-metallic adhesive, allowing it to dry completely before applying heat, and any premature movement could ruin the delicate pattern.

Only then would they fuse the granules to the metal beneath, a painstaking but exquisite process.

The techniques and tools used by modern jewelers to create granulation were, remarkably, not so different from those employed by their ancient counterparts.

Each student had a designated jeweler’s bench, fully stocked with the necessary tools and materials to practice the technique, and by the final day of the workshop, execute a finished design.

I had my design for the final project—the pendant with the large oval emerald as the focal point.

After I explained my concept to the instructor, she offered thoughtful feedback—suggesting the most effective sequence of steps for building the piece, estimating how many fusing stages it might require, and warning me about the common pitfalls I’d need to avoid.

I got to work creating the granules. Starting with gold sheet that I passed repeatedly through a rolling mill until it was a uniform thickness of less than .

15 millimeters, I cut a delicate fringe into the edge of the sheet, each cut at the same interval right next to the other, then trimmed off the fringe, creating many small flat squares of gold, the length of the fringe piece dictating the final size of the granule.

With delicate tweezers, I placed each tiny square onto a hard charcoal block at intervals of about a half-inch apart and turned on the oxygen-acetylene torch at my bench.

Holding the torch above each piece, about an inch or so away from the surface, the gold curled up as the metal went from yellow to orange, and the surface turned liquid like mercury, spinning and dancing on the charcoal.

Once that stage was reached, the metal formed a perfect sphere each and every time, and I moved the flame onto the next square.

I kept at it until I had about fifty, divided by the sizes I needed.

It was a relief to be back doing something that could take my mind off the chaos of the situation with Baird.

But several times during the afternoon, my brain stopped cooperating, bouncing between the danger I might be in, the fact that no one would believe any of this if I’d tried to explain, and the most infuriating distraction—that every five minutes or so, I found myself thinking about climbing Baird Campbell like a flagpole.

That stupid smirk of his had lodged itself in my frontal cortex like a heat-seeking missile.

Focus.

Eight hours later—plus one deep cut on my finger from the jeweler’s saw—I’d finished the bezels, fused them to the backplate, and created the bail. The plan for tomorrow would be to create the granulation pattern after gluing the tiny spheres into the pattern I’d mapped out.

Baird was parked next to the curb outside the building when I walked out the door. I jumped into the passenger’s seat, apron still on, and leaned over to drop my tote bag on the back seat.

“Well, you look like a different person than the one I dropped off this morning. You look relaxed, your cheeks all rosy… In your element today?”

“I think the rosy cheeks are a byproduct of heating a few dozen tiny pieces of gold to nearly two thousand degrees for over an hour,” I said with an exhausted exhale. “But yes, definitely in my element.”

“Oh, lass…what did ye do to yourself?” he asked, concern softening his voice when he noticed the bandage on my finger.

Instinctively, I covered the finger with my other hand, defensive. “Is this going to be a problem? Can you smell it… the blood ?”

“I can smell it, aye,” he said. “But ye needn’t worry about that. I was just worried it hurt ye, is all.” He glanced at my finger. “I can fix that, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “What do you mean, ‘fix it’ ?”

“My saliva,” he said simply. “It can heal wounds—faster than you would heal on your own. When we get home, I can show you.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, suspicion still simmering beneath the surface—but I couldn’t deny my curiosity. Whatever this ability was that he’d just revealed, I wanted to know more.

“Okay—yes, I want to see that.”

I pushed food around my plate, appetite long vanished.

It was as if I was split in two—one part craving this strange domesticity with Baird, aching to ask him everything about the two centuries and more he’d walked this earth since being turned.

And the other…the other was caught in a relentless loop, circling back to Agnes.

To the creeping dread that I was nothing but her shadow.

A pale echo reborn in flesh, now tangled in a dangerous, catastrophic sexual chemistry with her grieving husband.

My feelings for Baird were clouding everything. How fitting, really—that the first man I’d ever felt truly connected to, the first who made me feel seen, whole, human —had turned out not to be a human being at all.

I looked down at the Band-Aid on my finger. The pad was saturated, dark with blood.

“Aye,” Baird said as he came up behind me at the sink. “I told ye I could heal that. Take off the bandage, and let me have a look.”

I peeled the damp strip away. The cut was deep but clean, not quite bad enough for stitches.

Still fresh, still angry-looking. I held it up to him—then, without fully knowing why, I reached up with my other hand and pressed my fingers on either side of the cut, forcing the blood to bead up again and spill down my finger.

Maybe I was curious. Maybe I wanted to test him. Or maybe it was something darker—a small defiance.

I saw it in his eyes then—fury. Not wild or uncontrolled, but focused, sharp, and directed at me.

I didn’t understand why. His entire body tensed, every muscle and tendon drawn tight as wire.

The look on his face was a collision of anger and hunger…

and something else. Hurt. I’d wounded him somehow .

He seized my hand—roughly—and brought it to his mouth. He lapped the blood from between my fingers, then ran his tongue slowly along the length of the cut.

The moment my blood touched his tongue, something in him shifted.

His body seemed to expand, subtly but unmistakably—broader, heavier, more powerful.

Like the breath he drew came from someplace beyond this world.

Some deeper realm. Some darker one. His pupils dilated, swallowing the green of his eyes until there was nothing left but immense blackness—an abyss, devoid of even a trace of humanity.

He was a supernatural animal, feeding. Every muscle in his body was drawn tight, trembling with restrained violence. When I glanced down, I saw it—the unmistakable strain against the front of his jeans. My breath caught.

My blood had done this. Had turned him into this.

In this state, he wasn’t Baird Campbell anymore. Not the one I’d come to know.

But within seconds, I could see him force his body to settle. The tension ebbed. His eyes cleared, shifting back to their usual brilliant green. He dropped my hand, and I watched as the skin on my finger knit together, the wound pulling closed like a zipper sliding shut.

I stared at him, my mouth half-open, stunned by what I’d just witnessed—what he had done.

In that instant, I understood: when he tasted the blood, it took everything in him not to lose control. I should have been afraid. Any sane person would be.

But I wasn’t.

Somewhere deep inside, beneath all the confusion and fear, I trusted him—not with my heart, maybe, but with my body. And my body…my body was alive. Heat coiled through me, rising with the pounding of my heart. What I’d seen—his power, his restraint—ignited something dangerous and electric in me.

And he felt it. I knew he did.

But he didn’t move.

He just stared at me, the betrayal etched on his face cutting deeper than anything he could have said. He looked like he hated me.

And I wanted him anyway.

I needed an exit. Air. Distance. Time to think—about what I’d done, and why I’d felt compelled to do it in the first place. “I think I’ll take a bath,” I said, and without waiting for a reply, I slipped from the room.