“She’s got blood fever.” Kaylin swept me up and carried me to the sofa. “I can’t stem it, but I know someone who can. I’ll head out and bring her back. Meanwhile, keep her temperature down.” And with that, he was out the door.

I thrashed as Rhiannon placed the ice pack on the back of my spine and a cool cloth on my forehead. All my instincts were on overload, my mind clouded with a haze of lust and pain from the intense sensations flooding my system.

Leo stood behind the sofa, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to do—everything’s going to hell and I can’t stop them from touching her, from doing what they want with her.”

“Then why are you still working for them? How can you stand by and watch them do this to my cousin?” Rhia’s voice was harsh against my ears, her emotion too much for me to handle.

“Argue somewhere else—I can’t bear listening to you.” I shot up, my skin crawling. “I need it dark and quiet. This is just too much. I should have just finished fucking him and gotten it out of my system.”

Rhiannon shot Leo an angry look. “Carry her up to her room and then come down to help me prepare a cooling poultice for her.” She grabbed the already warmed washcloth off my forehead and marched out of the room.

Leo collected me and carried me up the stairs, his lips pressed tight. He gently laid me atop my bed covers and whispered, “We’ll be back, with help. I’m sorry, Cicely. I’m so sorry.”

As soon as he left, I was able to calm my thoughts enough to search for Ulean. Are you there? I need you.

I’m here . . . oh, Cicely, I wish I could help you, but there’s nothing I can do.

Stay with me.

Cicely—Cicely . . . A different voice echoed off the slipstream and my wolf shifted. I pressed my hand against my stomach and almost cried, the desire and hunger were so great.

Grieve . . . are you there? I need you. I need you now.

Come outside. I’m here for you. I can feel you. Hurry.

I pushed to my feet and staggered to the window, where I shoved it open. There, in the far corner of the backyard, I could see the figure of a wolf, huge and silvery-gray, gorgeous and wild. He was staring up at my window, waiting.

I shuddered as the blast of air met the prickling of my body. My breasts quickened in the wind, nipples stiffening as I raised my nose to catch the scent of ozone and snow. Even the chill couldn’t dampen the heat flowing through me—I was a wild horse, aching to be broken, and nothing could stop the fire that burned through my veins.

Except . . . except . . .

I crawled onto the sill and, with only my pendant hanging around my neck, closed my eyes and dove. I came up, pulling aloft, spiraling over the yard, reveling in my flight. And then I dove toward Grieve, pulling up short to land gently on his back.

He glanced over his shoulder, his wolfen eyes glowing, and as I held tight with my talons, he loped into the bushes with me astride him, not into the Golden Wood, but to the other side of our property. As soon as we were out of the yard, I hopped off his back and shifted back into myself, as he did the same.

Grieve was full Fae; he could fashion his clothes out of magic if he wished, but I was naked and shivering under the slow drift of flakes that floated down to blanket the yard. He was wearing a fur cloak, and he pulled it off. As he wrapped it around my shoulders, I lost all caution.

“I don’t care, I don’t care if you kill me. I just need you—now, forever, in my life. I need you to be with me, to touch me, to love me.” I burst into tears. “I can’t stand this—I’m in pain.”

“I felt you call. I heard your shriek on the wind. What happened to you?” He turned me around, lifted the cloak, and crumbled to the ground. “How—how did your back get marked up?”

“I felt you being whipped. The blows transferred.”

He pulled off his shirt and turned. There were no marks on his body. “Myst was furious. The blows did not take. She couldn’t figure out how, and neither could I. Oh, Cicely, you took my punishment into yourself. I can’t let this happen anymore. I can’t chance hurting you again. We have to break the connection.”

“No,” I whispered. “Please, don’t. I can’t stand the thought of life without you. Myst is out to torture me—I know, Grieve. I know she was my mother when you and I were together before. I know she remembers and hates me for it. She’s trying to destroy everything and everyone I love.”

He gathered me in his arms, pulling the cloak around my shoulders to protect me from the cold. My breasts pressed against his body and I sought his lips. His teeth were sharp, needle-like, and he let out a soft gasp as I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him, deep and soulful. He tasted of dark wine and burnished leaves, and cinnamon and the promise of haunted moons rising high in the sky to light the ancient autumn.

Our kiss turned darker, and I dropped my neck back as he burrowed his face in my hair, trailing his lips along my skin, gently tugging at the skin with his teeth. And then I moaned and sought his belt.

“Please, I need to feel you inside me. I can’t stand this pressure any longer. I almost . . . I can’t go back to the house without release. Please, fuck me, Grieve. Make me forget about Lannan, about Crawl, about Myst . . . about the darkness that haunts both of our lives.”

And he laid me down on the fur cloak, and was naked in a flurry of sparkling light, and then he was over me, touching me, running his hands across my breasts, down my sides, sliding his fingers into my secret recesses. I let out a moan, opening my legs, hungry for him. Hungry and aching as the waves pounded against the shore, I reveled in the feel of his back under my hands as I pulled him between my thighs.

He gasped, kissing me again and again like he was a drowning man and I was his life preserver. “Cicely, it’s only you. I service Myst because I must, but it’s only you. I can’t touch her again—I hate her. I hate the rage that hits in the morning light. I hate the taste of blood in my mouth, but I crave . . . oh, how I crave.”

He slid into me, smooth, a perfect fit, and we rocked on the ground under the long winter’s night. I began to cry.

“Grieve, I have to get you out of there. If I can find a way, please, let me rescue you. I can’t stand that she perverts you day after day—you are not Vampiric Fae. You are Cambyra and that she turned you sickens me.”

A flash and there was a feral grin on his face, dark and clouded. “But I do crave, Cicely. I hunger for your blood even now. I want to drink from you.”

I shivered. I’d been drunk from far too much already. “You can’t,” I whispered. “I’m still low.”

“Low?” He pulled back, looking both angry and afraid. “What do you mean, low? What happened to you tonight, Cicely?”

And so I told him—almost everything. I did not tell him it was Crawl who had drunk from me, but that an elder vampire had gotten his fangs in me, and that Lannan had forced me to drink from him. I didn’t tell him that I’d let Lannan inside me, though. That would be a truth too far.

“You have blood fever,” Grieve whispered. “No wonder you’re so dry and parched. I won’t drink from you—not tonight. But I swear to you, one day and it won’t be long, I will personally rip Lannan Altos’s throat out and stake his heart and hand it to you on a silver platter.” And he began to fuck me hard, like I needed, thrusting deep and long and rough.

“Oh please, don’t stop,” I begged, reveling in the feel of his body against mine, of the grind of his hips against mine. We rolled over, and I was atop him, straddling his body. I threw his arms back, holding him against the snow, and he did nothing to stop me.

“I want you,” I whispered. “I want you forever, I want you in me, around me, with me. You are my beloved, no matter what Myst says. I will have you back.” And I drove myself down on him, head thrown back, letting our motion take me higher and higher. The heat in my body was channeling through me like a serpent, rising up to coil and strike.

“Myst can never hold a candle to your light,” he said, his arms wrapping around my waist as he moved to my rhythm. “It has always been you.”

And then the burning within rose to a head and I thought I was going to die, gasping for breath as I came, screaming like a wild creature in the night, letting out all my pain and anger and frustration in one rush that spiraled me up toward heaven, then dove back down into the depths.

As I fell onto his chest, spent, I glanced into his eyes. He murmured softly and wrapped his arms around me.

“I want you to drink from me. I want the last fangs of the day in my body to be yours, not Lannan’s or . . .”

“Or whose?” Grieve looked at me expectantly.

I gave him a quick shake of the head. “Never mind. But feed—drink, even just a few drops, please. Make me remember who I truly belong to.”

Grieve sat up, pulling me astride his lap. The fire within me still raged but the most painful part had been quenched, at least for now. “You’re sure about this? I will not hurt you.”

“I want to feel you drink from me. I want you to mark me.”

He slowly licked his way up from my nipple to my neck, then, with closed eyes, sank his needle-sharp teeth into my flesh. I cried out, but this time it did not hurt. This time it was ecstasy. The passion of pain, the passion of being owned, of feeling my life force enter his body . . . it all fell into one kaleidoscopic orgy and I came again, laughing wantonly as Grieve coaxed the blood from my throat.

As we sat there in the snow, his erection rose again, hard and eager, and I slid onto him, straddling his lap, rocking gently as he drank in droplets of my blood. I felt like one of the sacred harlots, finding my communion through fucking, the divine and sacred joy of merging bodies and spirits.

And then, slowly, we eased down from the heights. Grieve’s eyes were dark—the obsidian of the vampires with the sparkling stars of the Vampiric Fae, and I lost myself in the swirl of galaxies. After what felt like forever, I could hear someone calling my name from the house.

“I’d better go. Won’t you please come with me now? We can lock you up, keep you from the light.”

He shook his head. “She would hurt you and I wouldn’t be able to stop her. Not yet. If you can find a way, I’ll come, but I can’t be around you when the light-induced rage hits—I would stand far too much chance of injuring you or your friends. And Cicely, if I hurt you, I might as well kill myself. It’s all I can do to keep myself in check now. I love you, but I’m not safe and you know it.”

He put the cloak around my shoulders and pushed me toward the open yard. “Go, I will make sure you get inside without being harmed. And then, I must hie myself away before Myst discovers where I am.”

And then he pulled back into the shadows. Unwilling, I headed toward the house. Rhia saw me coming first and raced into the yard barefooted to guide me toward the door. Leo insisted on wrapping his arms around me and carrying me inside. As soon as we hit the light, Rhia cried out.

“You were with Grieve!”

I gave her a long look. “I had to be . . . it was either that or return to Lannan. And so help me, if that happened . . .”

Kaylin was back, motioning from the living room. As Leo deposited me on the sofa, the cloak fell away and I grabbed for it.

“I’m naked, dude.”

He ignored me. “I could not find a healer willing to come, but one did give me this.” He handed me a small vial of orange liquid. “This will manage the blood fever until it burns itself out of your body.”

I stared at it. Part of me didn’t want to drink it. The intensity I’d felt with Lannan, with Grieve, as my owl self, begged me not to quench the fire. Now I understood the appeal of being a vampire—if life continually burned so brightly, if every sensation led to a shiver, the temptation would be hard to resist.

After a moment, I looked at him.

“I know your struggle,” he whispered. “I can feel it. You are torn.”

“Yeah.” I held up the vial. “Is this safe? Do you trust who made it?”

He nodded. “Yes. She is safe.”

With another pause, I flicked open the lid and upended it down my throat. As much as the blood fever beckoned, my common sense won out. As soon as I drank it, the pounding waves of my pulse began to subside almost immediately.

Cicely, can you hear me?

Ulean—it was Ulean. Yes, I can. Why?

Because while you were outside with Grieve, you could not. While you were deep in the blood fever, you couldn’t hear me, though I could feel you. Now I know why vampires don’t like Elementals. We can sense their moods, but they can’t sense when we’re around. That is an interesting piece of information we should not forget.

I glanced at the vial. “Is this a cure?”

“No, but it will keep you calm until the fever burns out. Muted like this, it will only last another fifteen to twenty hours. You drank from an old vampire. Lannan is many things, but he is not young and he wields more power than you would give him credit for.” Kaylin settled in, looking grim. “This will appease the blood fever but not the other ramifications of drinking from him.”

“What are those?” I couldn’t imagine much worse unless . . . “He didn’t enthrall me, did he?”

“Briefly, yes, but it will subside. However, the fact that you drank from him will make it easier next time he drinks from you to bewitch you. And if you drink from him again, you will fall deeper under his spell.” His lips were set, grim. “Vampire blood can heal, but it can also enchant.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “I understand that . . . I’ve never before grasped the allure of the bloodwhores, but if they drink from their masters regularly, I can see . . . I can see how easy it would be to get addicted.”