And destroy me.

The fog was thicker here, trapped between the sides of the rift, puddling in the middle to the point that it was almost exactly at eye level. Tendrils brushed my cheeks and curled around my face, making it hard to see, and the muffling quality wasn’t helping my hearing, either. But I was finding it hard to concentrate on the danger.

I was too busy concentrating on something else.

Why had he done this? It made no sense. No master vampire wasted that kind of power, particularly not when young and vulnerable. He’d said it, and I had no reason to doubt him: other vampires had been trying to add him to their collections. And why not? Such mental gifts were rare. Coupled with his looks and charm and name…he would have made an ornament to any court. It must have been a constant struggle to stay independent, to remain outside their grasp, to maintain a sense of self instead of being subsumed into someone else’s ambitions, someone else’s needs.

So why waste power that he needed so badly?

Why waste it on me?

“Dory!”

I heard something through the mist, but it was faint, like a distant echo. Or possibly not there at all. The ravine trapped sound, diverted it, made it seem like it was coming from every direction at once. And the mist was getting thicker, almost like it was pushing back at me, trying to close my path.

“Stop fighting me!”

The voice came again, but it didn’t make sense.

“I’m not fighting you,” I murmured. And I wasn’t. I wasn’t doing anything, my mind reeling with fear and confusion and…and something else.

Something impossible.

But there was no other explanation. I had been a child, and one rapidly approaching insanity at that. I couldn’t have helped him. I couldn’t have been anything but a drain. He should have left me, should have done what any other master would have and cut me loose. Or followed the advice of those so-called specialists and humanely put me down before I tipped over the edge entirely.

But he hadn’t.

And try as I might, I could come up with only one explanation for that.

I ran a hand over the smooth, fleshy texture of the wall. It was already healing the damage, even if it couldn’t close the gap. And somehow, it didn’t seem so horrible anymore. Didn’t seem horrible at all, in fact.

Slick and warm, it felt like what it was: a healing scar. Not that I had a lot of experience with those. Dhampirs didn’t scar, for the same reason that we couldn’t get tattoos or piercings or so many other things. Our healing abilities wiped them away, erasing them off our skin in a matter of days or weeks, as if they’d never existed at all. Leaving only fresh, new skin behind.

But the mind didn’t heal like that. The skin might forget, but the mind…remembered. To the point that sometimes it felt like my head was full of scars. Others couldn’t see them, but I could.

And every time I got too close to someone, I tripped over one.

The fog was thicker now, cloying, choking. Not mist anymore, not even really like gas. More like waterlogged sheets slapping me wetly across the face, as if I were trying to push through a field of soggy laundry. And serving as the perfect backdrop for dozens of images.

They appeared out of the fog, just the barest of flickers at first, and then more and more, crowding around on all sides. Most were unfamiliar, although it was hard to tell. They looked like flashes of old silent movies projected onto sheets that were blowing erratically in the wind. I saw a glimpse of a ballroom, of huge gowns spinning against flashing mirrors; I saw burnt tree limbs silhouetted against a ridge littered with bodies; I saw faces, so many faces.

And then I saw something I didn’t recognize at all, but that drew me forward like a hand. It wasn’t the most dramatic scene. It was actually one of the more plebeian. Just a room with stucco walls and flaking paint, and a large window open to the night.

Dusty beams of moonlight cascaded onto a dustier wooden floor, which was obscured by little in the way of furniture. Just a few plain benches around an elaborately carved table, its shiny dark wood and corkscrew legs making it look like it belonged in another room. Or maybe another house.

An easel was set up beside the table and a candle, flickering in the breeze from the window, sat on top of it. The stuttering light looked impossibly bright and warm against the cool blue tones of the room, shedding a golden halo over the floor and part of the table. And lighting up the corner—

—of a canvas.

It was set up in the usual place, looking out onto the canal and the dark water shining below. I never knew why; it wasn’t much of a view. Just the shuttered windows of the house opposite and the still, silent boats drawn up outside, tied to listing poles for the night. Because who needed transport at this hour?

Maybe the fine ladies and gentlemen populating the palazzos and bars and brothels, but not around here. This was a working-class neighborhood, filled with men who would be up at dawn, lading and unlading ships or working on construction crews. The women would be going to the markets to haggle over fish or to buy the spices to brighten up a stew for their men’s dinner. And the children, the children would be everywhere.

Ragged and dirty and shoeless—and lice-ridden, according to Horatiu, my tutor. He was mostly wrong about that, although I didn’t tell him so. And anyway, they were happy, laughing and chatting and staging mock stick battles on the bridges, like their fathers would do more seriously on feast days.

They were amazing, those children, running right along the very edge of the canals, yet never falling in. I could do that, too. And leap from boat to boat, crossing the water without ever needing a bridge, following them on their crazy, circuitous route around the city, laughing at foreigners and giving them bad directions and picking their pockets when they weren’t looking.

And using the coins obtained to buy food from the vendors, who knew where we got the money and didn’t care. And, oh, the food. I had never known anything like it. Veal liver fried in grape-seed oil and served on little sticks. Stuffed baby squid swimming in fish broth. Huge dishes of steamy polenta with fried fish and eggplant.

And then there were the sweets—oh, the sweets!—unlike anything I’d ever known. The Roma who had raised me before I found my father had made sure I ate, but food to them was mostly tough black bread and vegetable stew, with the occasional scrap of salted pork. But sweets…those were rare in camp, and they did not go to me.

Father had bought me my first sweet shortly after we “landed,” setting foot on this strangest of cities but not really on land, for it floated. Or so it seemed to me at the time. An impossible, magical place, and even the overcast, rainy day didn’t dim my spirits, or the brilliant colors of the waterside market we waded through.

I’d never seen so many people, all in one place, all at once. Rough sailors smelling of fish oil and sweaty workmen covered in plaster dust rubbed shoulders with pretty young slave girls following their mistresses about with baskets, slick con men doing sleight-of-hand tricks for credulous farmers, orphan boys in bright tunics shaking poor boxes, and old grandmas bent double, palms outstretched for coins. Not to mention the painted women in the doorways, with their hair done up in ringlets and their arms jingling with bracelets, calling out offers to passing men. And making rude gestures at the ones who refused.

Father pulled me away from one of them, saying something sharp to her in a language I didn’t understand. I didn’t care; I hadn’t been interested in her anyway, but in the vendor beside her. He was selling platters piled high with sweetened rice cakes, honey fritters topped with gingered almonds, clusters of nuts boiled with honey, and what the Venetians called calisconi—wonderful marzipan-filled raviolis that melted on the tongue. I hadn’t known what any of it was then, but the smell—

Oh.

The smell.

I had stood, transfixed, the pack of clothes I was carrying hitting the ground unnoticed. Horatiu began to scold me for it, but Father shushed him. And bought me one of everything. And then thoroughly scandalized Horatiu by letting me eat them in the street.

“Like she was some common child!” the old man huffed, his gray hair wafting about in a sudden breeze.

“We’re all common now,” Mircea told him from inside his hood, a gloved hand smoothing down my short dark hair.

“Speak for yourself.” Horatiu sniffed, and went to find us lodgings, while I ate and ate and ate.

I think they thought I would get full, sooner or later. I never did. There had been too many nights after I left the Roma, filled with clawing hunger; too many days of stumbling weakness; too many beatings for theft.

I hadn’t minded the beatings so much, but they usually took the food back, too.

But nobody beat me now, and there was always food. Father came back from the bars with bright coins jangling in his purse. And Horatiu went to the markets in the morning and brought home sea bass and shellfish, ducks and chickens, wine and oil, fruit and bread. But not so much the meats, like beef and pork, that the Venetians imported on their ships from our homeland, which were too expensive.

And no sweets.

But that was all right.

These days I got my own.

“Do you like it?” Mircea asked, stepping back from the canvas.

He must have been working on it for a while, judging by the sheet he’d wrapped around his waist, like the aprons the old women wore. And for the same reason—his clothes had to stay nice. He couldn’t part the wealthy tourists from their coins if he looked like he needed the money.

And he always made a mess. He said it was the sign of a great artist. I thought he must be the greatest of all then, because his hands were spotted a rainbow of colors. Like the sheet and the hair flowing over his shoulders and the skin of his chest, because he’d gone shirtless.

He saw me looking at his multicolored freckles and raised an eyebrow, daring me to say anything. I was going to anyway—I always did—but then he stepped to the side. Showing me the canvas.

And I had to bite back one of the words the street kids had taught me.

Because it was a portrait, and the portrait was of me. That wasn’t the surprise—Mircea had painted me before. But that had been a normal painting and this…well, it just wasn’t.