Page 3 of Bitten & Burned

One

BALM AND BOND

Caer Voss, Sol, Verdune

Six Months later

I awoke with a stiff neck, having gone to sleep reading again. The books were neatly stacked on the table beside me; apparently, Vael had cleaned up before leaving the room.

I yawned, stretched, and winced as the burn bit deep into my left thigh. Not new, hells, never new. But, in that soft, sleep-glazed moment, I’d forgotten as if this gods-forsaken mark would ever let me forget for long.

Six months. That’s how long it had been since the sigil bloomed under my skin in the courtyard.

A sigil—I knew that much now. For what, I had no idea, but I doubted it was a specific “make this witch’s life miserable” curse.

It hadn’t necessarily zapped my ability to do magic, but it had severely lowered it.

It was as if something was blocking me from Inera, and to access her power, I had to jump through several hoops and leap out of a burning building.

Now, whenever I tried to do magic, it would start to tingle, the tingle making way for searing pain the longer I did magic. So, I’d had to figure out how to do things without it.

Cooking spells, cleansing wards, even the tiniest charms from the Solian hearth traditions—I’d learned to do them by hand, muttering prayers under my breath to my Lady Inera, who heard me but could do nothing for the cursed wound I carried.

I was not a fan, but I had managed just fine.

I sat up in bed, glancing around the room. Vael’s side of the bed was cold, but I couldn’t hear anything, so I called out.

“Vael?”

“Yes?” He ducked his head into the doorway almost comically fast.

I frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Cleansing my bookshelf. So I don’t get parchment weevils.”

I wrinkled my nose, drawing my knees up to my chin under the blanket. “Do you… have any reason to believe you might have parchment weevils?”

“No, and I don’t wish to procure them. Are you awake?”

“No. I’m fast asleep.”

“Rowena…”

“I know. Yes, I’m awake.” I shifted, the sting sharpening in my thigh.

It had never really healed. The flareups still came—sudden and sharp, a bite of heat deep in the muscle that made my teeth ache.

Tonight wasn’t bad, but the faint sting was always there, a warning hum beneath the skin.

Vael could ease it, and did when it got bad, with one careful bite, drawing the blood out from around the wound.

It stopped the worst of the pain, but it didn’t cure it.

All that particular act revealed was that this came from a blood curse. Blood curses outside vampirism were rare in Verdune, outlawed after the Stone War for their cruelty—but still, even centuries later, they appeared once in a great while. This one, apparently, was one of a kind. Lucky me.

Vael, being both a vampire and annoyingly clever, should have known exactly how to handle a simple blood curse.

It frustrated him more than he admitted that he couldn’t.

He’d been researching it for months: tracing pieces of the rune, finding matches for fragments, but never the whole thing.

Handmade, he thought—stitched together from different runes and symbols.

The kind of thing built to be untraceable.

“Are you hungry? Can I fix you something? I think I’m getting better at making those eggs you like.”

“Better is relative, but yes, I’d love some, if it won’t get in the way of your… literary fumigation.”

“Of course not, I’d love to make them for you. I feel I must correct you slightly… I’m not fumigating, but rather pretreating.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Fine, Vael.”

He chuckled. “Will my lady be taking her breakfast en suite this morning? Or will she grace me with her presence at the table?”

The table was a small one. Vael had mostly used it for tea until I came along with my human needs.

“May I split the difference and take it in the sitting room?”

“I shall inform the staff.”

I snickered. “Who is this said staff? This is a one-bedroom apartment.”

“Why, Fig obviously,” Vael replied in faux indignation.

“Fig, you say?” I reached down to scratch my cat’s ears where he lay at my feet. “I have the distinct feeling that you’ll be tackling this task alone.”

“Yes, well, I never said it was good staff.”

I laughed, and Fig mrphhed from where he lay, stretching out his tiny form as if he were waking purely to weigh in on the discussion himself.

“Would you like coffee or tea?” Vael called.

I was about to say ‘tea’, but my breath caught in my throat as a sharp pain stabbed in my leg. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything.

Gods, no… not already… I hadn’t even done anything. Nothing magic, nothing at all.

“Rowena?” Vael called. I’d have answered him if I didn’t know the next sound coming from my mouth would be a scream.

An acute, ripping pain bloomed along my thigh like a snakebite.

I rolled over into a ball and tried to think of something else. My work. Vael. Fig. Anything else.

Fig meowed, rubbing against me anxiously. I wanted to pet him, but I couldn’t move. He meowed louder, which seemed to alert Vael.

“Rowena?” he repeated, his voice low in my ear. He was at my side now, the mattress dipping under his weight.

“It hurts,” I whimpered. “Gods, why won’t it stop?”

“Witchling… let me help.” He brushed a wisp of hair from my face, his fingers lingering at my jaw before I turned into his palm.

“Please,” I whispered.

He nodded once, then rose just enough to guide me back toward the pillows. “There. Lie back. Straighten your spine for me.”

I obeyed slowly, my breath catching as Vael knelt between my legs, spreading them with deliberate care. His fingertips traced a slow path up my thigh until they hovered just inside. “May I?” he murmured.

I nodded.

When he bit down, I gasped—not from his fangs, but from the fire in my blood being pulled free in slow, measured draws.

Relief spread through me like warm honey, loosening every knot in my body.

It was the closest thing to true magic I’d felt in months, as though the gods themselves had finally answered—though I knew it was only Vael’s dark gift buying me a moment’s grace.

My hands fisted in the sheets, then in his hair. The panic unraveled.

“Breathe,” he murmured against my skin, his voice a steady anchor. His tongue soothed the punctures, and he lingered there, lips brushing my thigh in a way that was no longer purely medicinal.

Vael eased back, just far enough to look at me. His mouth was still close enough that I felt his breath, warm and unhurried. His eyes searched mine—steady, waiting, giving me the space to choose.

I didn’t look away. My fingers tightened in his hair.

The pain had subsided, but he didn’t move, didn’t touch me. The air between us thickened with tension, pulling taut until it snapped.

I yanked, and that was all the answer he needed.

He let out a low, rough sound—part groan, part surrender—and lowered his face between my thighs.

He lifted my legs over his shoulders with a grip that was both steady and sure.

His tongue found me, pressing in slow, deliberate strokes with the same precision with which he’d drawn the curse from my blood. This, however, was no healer’s touch.

It was just as gentle, but it stroked to enflame, not soothe.

His tongue flicked stiffly, tasting me and then devouring.

A moan rippled through his body as his hands tightened on my thighs, holding me in place.

I bucked my hips helplessly, and he flattened his tongue against me, alternating between flutters and flicks before closing his lips around my clit and sucking.

The world narrowed to the pressure of his mouth, the slick warmth of his tongue, and the merciless pull of his hands keeping me exactly where he wanted me. The coil inside me snapped—white-hot, blinding—and I cried out, shuddering against him.

Vael didn’t ease away until the aftershocks had wrung the last tremor from my body.

Then he pushed up over me in one fluid, predatory movement, panting like a man fresh from the hunt.

His face was wet with me, lips swollen, eyes so dark there was no trace of honey left—only darkness, raw and unrestrained.

He tore open the buttons of his waistcoat, dragging his shirt free from his trousers.

When his hands went for his fly, I batted them away, taking over with clumsy urgency.

The sharp sound he made when my fingers brushed him through the fabric went straight to my core. He stilled, watching with that dark, hungry focus, letting me shove the trousers open and push them down his hips.

I slid my hands under his shirt, palms skating over hard muscle before my nails raked down his back. He groaned—low, wrecked—and surged forward, pressing me down.

One smooth, deep thrust—slow enough to make me feel every inch—and then he was seated to the hilt.

Heat flooded through me, stretching, filling, claiming, until my breath caught in my throat.

The weight of him pressed me into the mattress, the steady push of his body pinning me there like he could hold me in place forever.

His breath hitched, head tipping back for a heartbeat before he looked down at me, eyes nearly black. “Good girl…have it… have all of me.” The words were a low growl, a command, telling me to take every inch and hold him there.

My nails dug into his ass, pulling him deeper, and the sound he made was nothing short of feral. His hips snapped once, hard, and the impact knocked a breathless laugh from me.

“Gods, Vael… if you stop now, I’ll hex you where it counts.”

The hex I threatened was only a memory, the kind of spark that once leapt eagerly at my call; now the words were theater, sharp edges dulled by the curse still etched into me.