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My skill at flattery was far less impressive than my adroitness with weapons and naked intimacy – but I couldn’t say that to the bride staring up at my ancestral home so cheerily.

She was a strange one, not complaining, not objecting.

A wiser woman would flee, if not from the foreboding castle, at least from the scarred wife she’d landed.

Instead of leaving me like a sensible woman would, however, Alwen was staring at the structure as if it were grand.

Maybe to her it seemed thus. I tended to see the ancient edifice as a crumbling pile of debt and decay, dressed in curses and ornamented by bad decisions.

Yet my smiling bride was gazing at it with the sort of wonder she seemed to reserve for heinous things.

Luckily for me.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be lady of the manor,” Alwen said, awe bleeding toward a sort of joy that I found rather disarming.

“Castle Mirador is not perfect,” I started to explain. “Neither is her master, as a matter of record.”

Alwen laughed. “You speak as if I’m unaware of the whispers, Christabel of Mirador.”

I flinched at hearing my full name spoken by my sweet bride with her hidden daggers.

I was helpless before her at that moment, filled with respect for her machinations and audacity.

One second of mad love, and here we were.

Married. Bound together. I could no more will my heart to stop than rout her out of it.

“We must release the horses,” I told her, gesturing at the path. “If we try to ride at this hour, we might as well step off the edge.”

She laughed again, a musical note that I was coming to value in a way I knew was a deepening of the bond. “I’ll follow you, Mirador.”

We stepped onto the path. It was longer than it appeared.

The switchbacks were blade-sharp, and the ground littered with what I hoped were sticks illuminated in the moonlight.

The occasional bone of my parents’ meals – rodents and serpents mostly – had been washed out of the rubble of the tower that functioned as their cairn.

The walk was as quiet as things ever were here at Mirador Castle.

Coyotes yipped and sang in the nearby canyon, and strange bird cries cut through the night.

Something wailed. I thought it was a creature, not a relative come home, but one never knew here.

Only one thing in the night was likely to be murderous, and I’d already tithed this season.

My wife’s breathing was not heavy. Nothing we’d done had taxed her. Not when I had hastily married her, not our abrupt departure from Helgren, and not the steep walk to the castle.

“You have a soldier’s stamina,” I remarked.

“And aim,” Alwen added.

“Ah, are we confessing now?”

“I know what you are,” Alwen allowed.

“Sister of Peace,” I rebutted.

“And yet you married me…” She continued at my side, calmer than most women when they learn of my predilections.

“I drink blood,” I blurted out, darting a glance at her.

“So I was warned.” She smiled. “Do you always marry your victims?”

“No. Never.”

We fell quiet as we continued the walk.

Ambiance matters. If one were to find her way up the winding road at the front of a cliff, following switchbacks that were designed to invite gasps, and focused attention lest one plummet to certain doom, the castle would be revealed slowly – as if a maiden were oh-so-casually lifting her skirt higher and higher.

At first the heart speeds slightly, but as more is exposed, gasping truly is the only option when the viewer glimpses an ankle, shapely calf, or a bared knee, if one were risqué.

Or in this case, the viewer would see a solid foundation topped by dark stones and eventually, at the summit, the ramparts.

Castle Mirador looked elegant when strategically revealed under the right lighting.

Like bruises on our fictional courtesan’s leg, Mirador’s evidence of a rougher past aren’t apparent in low light.

I knew the crumbling turrets and parapet walks with their missing stone and gaping roofs were hidden by shadows at this hour.

My home, such as it was, had seen better days. Then again, so had I. My armor hid more scars than anyone elegant was meant to see.

Alwen interrupted my gloomy thoughts. “Do you suppose we should’ve brought food?”

She pressed close to my side, but I didn’t answer at first.

“All I need is you,” I swore. That, like everything I said, was only half of a lie. Her blood would sustain me in a way food could not. Oddly, though, what I wanted was her kiss.

I had the bottle of wine and a few sundries from the saddlebags in hand. I hadn’t stolen the bags, and I’d released the horses. The money and provisions I’d kept. I gestured to the makeshift sack over my shoulder. “But I can provide for you, Alwen.”

She stared at me, shoved her hair back so her throat was bared. “In exchange for this?”

“If you are willing, but…what I most want, what I would give anything in my power to have, is a taste of your lips.” I stepped in front of her and waited.

ALWEN

Alwen ought to say no. She ought to focus on the mission. Those details were the reality she should be embracing, but Mirador was staring at her with hungry eyes. Her lips parted, a glimmer of white teeth.

“Is this about bedding me or my blood?” Alwen blurted out.

“My kind has a destined partner in the world, and mine – you – were hidden away from me. I knew on some level that you were out there, but I despaired.” She stood in front of Alwen, sharp-edged teeth plainly visible now, hiding nothing. Her fangs glimmered in the light of the full moon.

“I’ve been in the convent.”

Mirador nodded. “They undoubtedly knew you were meant for me.”

Alwen thought back to Mother Superior’s odd words. “Perhaps.”

“I am yours, Alwen of Mirador.” She stepped even closer. “Let me show you how happy we can be.”

“I don’t love you.”

“Yet.”

“I was sent to kill you,” Alwen pointed out.

“I will give you a little death as often as you want. Will that satisfy this obsession with killing?” Mirador’s eyes glittered at this short distance.

“Maybe.” Alwen let out her breath in a sigh. “Show me, and I’ll allow a kiss.”

And Mirador dropped to her knees in the dirt, gazing up at Alwen in adoration. “Perfection.”

She lifted Alwen’s skirt, pressed a kiss to the vein that pulsed under the sword strapped there, and guided Alwen’s leg over her shoulder.

It was scandalous to be doing such a thing out in the open along a path under such a bright moon, but Alwen reminded herself that the path led only to the castle.

Then Mirador pressed a kiss to the juncture of Alwen’s thighs, a lick, a small bite, and in a matter of seconds, Alwen thought of nothing at all.

“Christabel…”

MIRADOR

“Mirador. Christabel.” Alwen shook me roughly. “Wake up.”

I grabbed a sword from the hold above our heads. In a blink I was armed and upright. All traces of sleep were gone.

My bride was as naked as I was, but she was staring at the eagle currently perched on the windowsill.

“We’re going to have to talk about where you nap,” I muttered to the bird.

“You have a pet eagle?”

The beastly thing let out a loud noise, seemingly in objection. Increasingly, I thought the feathered pest might understand our language. It mattered little, though.

“She’s mine. She lives here now,” I told the bird.

I felt cheerier than I ever had in my lifetime, the bond fully and surely upon me. Her blood was still a sweet memory that brought a smile to my lips. I glanced at the tiny red marks on her inner thighs.

“How often do you need to eat?” she whispered.

“Monthly.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks pinked. “So I suppose you don’t want to—”

Her words got lost when I bent to cover her lips with mine, slanting gently over her still kiss-swollen mouth.

Alwen melted at my touch, and the longevity of my curse suddenly seemed like a gift.

We’d have centuries together, which I ought to tell her, but if I spent all of them adoring her, I would still want more.

She was my world now, my sun and moon, my pulse and breath.

When I pulled away from kissing her, I asked, “I must know everything, Alwen. Everything. What pleases you? Do you read? Sew? Sing? Garden? Do sums for pleasure? Dance?”

She laughed. “Most people start there.”

I shrugged. “I am not most people. You came to kill me, my love. I was entranced.”

“Madwoman,” she breathed.

“Sometimes.” I gazed in wonder at her, naked and in my sheets. “Tell me.”

“I love gardening, reading, and I enjoy a swordfight or fisticuffs. I cannot cook well. That was usually done by…” Her voice trailed off. “I loved the convent. The community.”

I paused. My home was vast and empty. I had enjoyed the years when my family was near, so I understood. “Would the sisters want the East Wing of the castle? There’s a turret, a hall, bedrooms and—”

“Truly?”

“Will they try to kill me?”

“No.” Alwen smiled. “That was to be my mission.” She suddenly gave a scowl. “Will you drink of them?”

“No.”

“Anyone in Helgren or elsewhere?” she pressed.

“Only you,” I swore, adding part of my vow aloud again. “If you have me, I will take only you.”

Alwen’s glower vanished. “My mission was to ‘contain’ you. Have I done that without your death, Mirador?”

“I am yours,” I swore again.

She gave me another kiss, this one at no prompting by my touch or word, and I thanked the Divine for sending her my way. Fate. The Divine. The Crown. The deadly Sisters of Mercy. I would be faithful to all and each because they had brought this wonder to my side.

“I will rebuild the library,” I offered.

Alwen beamed. “The convent will pay rent, of course. What you choose to do with it is up to you.”

“The decision is up to us ,” I corrected. “We can ride to them or send a messenger.”

The Sisters of Peace already knew where Castle Mirador dwelt. Our castle home was far from spectacular right now, but with work and grace, it would be repaired.

The eagle made a low noise and looked away. The bird settled on her nest, and I wondered if we could restore another room so she could have this one for herself. My castle would be filled with family, but that was no reason to ignore the one creature who had shared my home of late.

But then my wife pulled me close and whispered wicked requests of me, and I thought no more of anyone or anything else.

She might not know me fully, nor I her, but she already had my heart, my body, and my castle at her command.

In merely a day, Alwen had eradicated my loneliness and claimed my heart.

“Mirador?”

I paused in my kisses.

“Love me,” she ordered.

And that was the order I had waited to hear all my life. The destined keeper of my heart had demanded that I love her, and so I did, I would, and until our deaths, I would continue to do so.