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T roi framed his question carefully. “Did the curse last as long as you expected?”

“Yes,” she answered. “One hundred years. Well, minus seven days. I woke you before the mages of Anthros came for you.”

His chest seemed to tighten around his heart, and he was suddenly blind to his surroundings. All he could see were the faces in his memory.

His men had fought at his side every time they faced death and laughed with him every time they survived.

They had stood with him at his father’s funerary rites and toasted him at his fatal coronation banquet.

They were his brothers, not by blood but by bonds of loyalty more powerful than any he had ever shared with his own kin.

They lived only in his memory now.

No. Was she lying, trying to manipulate him?

Even as doubt crept in, a familiar sound reached his sensitive immortal ears through the shuttered windows of the house.

The gong at the Temple of Anthros. At midnight on each night of the Summer Solstice festival, the war mages beat out the year to celebrate their god’s long reign over the world.

Troi counted the reverberating beats. One millennium. Five centuries. Twelve years. It was the year 1512. Celandine was telling the truth.

Every human he had ever loved was gone.

The barest brush of emotion brought him back to the present. Although he could see it nowhere in Celandine’s hard gaze, deep within her, there was a thread of sympathy.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Rixor’s heirs still live?” Troi asked through gritted teeth.

“After you were turned, he laid claim to your principality. His direct descendant, Rixor IV, rules Galeo now. I’m afraid this forsaken manor is all that remains to you.”

None of that mattered. His men were dead, while the man who carried Rixor’s name lived.

“Where is he?” Troi growled.

“You can’t go after him in your current state. I can help you prepare, and on Summer Solstice, I can get you close to him for the perfect opportunity to strike.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “How? Are you a mage in the Order of Chera or an apostate who stole that staff?”

She weighed a spindle in her hand, and power stirred in her aura. “I suppose I am an apostate as of today. But until yesterday, I was a temple mage. I earned this staff, and I’ve slain unholy creatures with it before. I do hope we can keep this a cordial negotiation.”

He couldn’t place the magic he sensed in her. Ignorance of her abilities put him at a disadvantage. “You’ve been secluded in a temple for years. Why should I believe you can provide me access to a prince like Rixor?”

She drew herself up and looked him in the eye, her chin high, her face cold. He felt the truth in her aura. She had the Will to rule, and she had once been accustomed to being obeyed. Sitting there with her tousled hair and blood drying on her throat, she looked like royalty.

“I am Celandine Pavae,” she declared, “Princess of Aligera.”

Troi bit back an incredulous curse. Of all the women who might have woken him…

She was his greatest enemy of all. He had a scheming Pavo in his bed.

She gave him a smile that must have made her lovers grovel and her enemies quail. “Do you believe me now?”

Aligera had always been known for its wealth and ruthless political acumen.

That hadn’t changed in a thousand years, so he doubted it had changed in the last century.

She was one of the most influential women in all of the principalities, duchies, and city-states that comprised Cordium.

Or had been, before the present-day Rixor had dethroned her, it seemed.

“A Pavo princess brought low in the Temple of Chera,” he mused.

“Almost as humiliating as a Taurus prince turned into a Hesperine.”

Her point cut deep. He gave her a cold smile, showing his fangs. But she didn’t shrink from him in terror.

“You can take a Pavo princess out of her court,” he said, “but you cannot take the courtier out of a Pavo princess.”

She replied, “You can take a Taurus prince off his battlefield, but you cannot take the fight out of a Taurus prince.”

“I see we understand each other.”

“Indeed, there is no love lost between us. Our dynasties have been stealing principalities from each other for generations, when our own relatives weren’t stabbing us in the back.”

“Are you a descendant of the Rixor I knew?” Troi demanded.

Her gaze went to his fangs, and he could smell her sweat, but no fear showed on her face. “No. His family is a collateral line to mine. The bastard who now rules both Galeo and Aligera is my cousin.”

“Don’t expect my sympathy for your infighting.”

“I know better than to expect anything from you but hatred. Unfortunately, we are one another’s only way to get revenge.”

Revenge. Was that the red in his vision and the thirst burning inside him? It was.

A hundred years ago, he had wanted justice for his men. Now it was too late for that. Nothing was left but vengeance.

A base mortal desire. Contrary to the belief that his kind were evil beasts, immortals had much higher principles than humans. Vengeance was anathema to Hesperines.

But Troi remembered how to be human.

Celandine gathered the long curtain of her hair in her hands and laid it across one shoulder, tilting her head. “If you will assist me against our common enemy, I will give you as much blood as you need, anytime you want it.”

Troi’s gaze fixed on her bloodstained throat, and his mouth watered. Merciful Goddess. He had bedded the greatest beauties of Corona and feasted on the most powerful immortals. But he had never hungered for any of them as he did for the tired, vengeful woman before him.

Starvation had robbed him of his wits, and she was his first meal in centuries. There could be no other reason why he desired her so. Once he regained his full strength, he would be immune to this Pavo temptress.

“We need each other,” she said. “I can’t bring down Rixor on my own, and without my help, you won’t make it two steps out the gates before the Mage Orders capture you. But if we can tolerate each other for seven days, we will have our revenge—and then be free to go our separate ways.”

No matter what she was planning, he would play her games. She was his way to Rixor, and he would use her.

Troi bared his fangs. “I will destroy him.”

Her smile sharpened. “Then we have a bargain.”

They had a bond of gratitude. His Hesperine conscience whispered to him that he should do anything she asked of him without expecting anything in return. But those pretty Hesperine principles had not been made for the Tauri and Pavones.

“Tell me your plan,” he said.

Celandine knew better than to tell him everything now.

It was in her best interests to remain a valuable source of information, not merely blood.

“I will explain the details in good time. If we are to succeed, you must first be strong enough to use Hesperine magic, not to mention stand up without falling on your face. Right now you look like a carcass.”

He glared at her. “Is there anything for me to drink in this house besides the blood of a Pavo?”

“If there were, I wouldn’t be offering.” She rubbed her neck, putting on a look of disgust so her thoughts wouldn’t show on her face. Somehow, his mark had already healed, leaving behind sensitive new skin.

She wasn’t dreading his next bite. Curse her deprived body.

He beckoned to her. “Give me your wrist, then.”

“My wrist?” she repeated stupidly.

“There are plentiful veins there. I needn’t drink from your neck.”

Oh, how Celandine wanted to burn all the scrolls that had attested she must offer him her throat. She could have spared herself the experience of being pressed against his hard body.

“Clothes first,” she declared. “Then blood.”

The sooner there was more than a blanket covering him, the better. She slid off the bed with as much grace as she could muster after climaxing on top of him. Thank all the gods he had still been half asleep and would have no idea she had enjoyed his bite.

She marched to his wardrobe and rifled through his clothes. “Hedon’s horn. These aren’t fit to wear outside my great-grandmother’s hearth room.”

“I can dress myself, thank you,” he snapped.

She fished out a basic tunic and loose breeches—styles which hadn’t changed all that much in a century—then threw them at him. They hit him in the face and covered his sculpted chest. She yanked all the curtains closed around him.

While he dressed, she tried to ignore the rustle of fabric on skin.

She needed to armor herself against his wiles in more than her tunica, but she refused to put on that cold, coarse shroud ever again.

She fished out a deep brown velvet robe embroidered in gold and wrapped it around herself.

So soft and warm. She bit back a little moan of contentment.

When he pushed the curtain open, his movements were sluggish, his face sallow. Ha. The once-mighty warrior couldn’t even dress himself without exhaustion.

Unbidden, memories from the temple intruded on her thoughts. There had been times when she had collapsed from the fasting enforced on her for her small rebellions.

She padded closer and held out her wrist.

“Thank you.” His tone wasn’t even grudging.

He took her forearm in both his big hands.

His dark hair fell across his face as he lowered his mouth to her vein.

His lips grazed the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist. As his fangs sank in, she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from gasping.

This wasn’t as intimate as his drink from her neck, but pleasure still hummed through her.

It seemed she was always cold these days, but now warmth reached from her head to her toes and the tips of her aching fingers.

He swallowed hard and let out a sigh. Watching him drink, she thought of how it felt to steal a loaf from the temple larder and bite into warm, fresh bread after weeks of deprivation.

By the time he got his fill, dawn was creeping through the seams of the shutters. He slumped back against his pillows, his eyes sliding shut. The short summer night was over, and sunrise had banished him into sleep again, but only for the day.

Now Celandine had work to do. She hastened out of his room and retreated to the great hall. She would start here and search the entire manor for any clothing or supplies they could use for her plan.

She picked up her discarded shroud. The next thing she knew, she was tearing at the seams. The rending sound echoed in the great hall.

She ripped harder to hear it again. She shredded the robes into smaller and smaller pieces, tears running down her face.

When there was nothing left but scraps, she ground them under her heel.

It was over. She had escaped the temple. She would never go back to that place, no matter what fate awaited her.