Come to Me (26 page)

Now he had offered to share with her his deepest shame—not because he wanted her to know, or thought she needed to, but because it provided an excuse for him to put distance between them, and to let him do so without hurting her feelings.

Her
feelings
! What care had he for her feelings? Two weeks ago he had been ready to use her as a tool for his vengeance. It was frightening how well she had insinuated herself into his life in such a short span of days, despite all his efforts to keep her at a distance. Her very presence itself inside his tower; her questions; her forays into the courtyard, where she annoyed the men with complaints about bathing and clothes and the shed—forays which had him listening from the window, needing to watch her, and laughing quietly at the consternation she caused.

"Are you sure you want to tell me?" Samira asked.

He came back to the present with a start, realizing that the silence had gone long, another goblet of wine disappearing down his throat while he mused in near terror on his attraction to her. "I want to tell you," he lied.

She took a sip of her wine and tucked her feet under the hem of her skirt. "All right."

He found the words to start his story sticking in his throat. He didn't want to think about the past, didn't want to relive it by describing it to Samira. His gaze went to the window, where night was falling. He should light a candle; he should save this, perhaps, for morning, when he had more energy. He should—

There was a touch upon his knee. "Nicolae? Are you all right?"

He looked down at Samira, and forced his mouth into the brief semblance of a smile. "I was just thinking about where to start." He took another swallow of wine, threw his reluctance to the wind, and began.

"We engaged Dragosh and his army in battle in a valley outside Suceava, our capital. That he had come so far into our lands is a measure of his confidence, backed as he is by Transylvania and thus Hungary, and by Vlad of Wallachia in the south.

"By nightfall we had turned the battle in our favor, and Dragosh and his forces began their retreat, fleeing up the valley toward the Tihutsa Pass through the Carpathian Mountains. My father ordered that we pursue them to the pass, but no farther. He wanted them out of Moldavia but thought it' too dangerous to pursue Dragosh into the mountains and into his own lands."

Nicolae took a deep breath. "I didn't obey. I was full of the heat of battle, of the victory that felt incomplete without Dragosh's head on a pike. I thought my father was being a weak old man, afraid of risking little in order to gain much. I heard his orders, and I ignored them.

"Do you realize how deep a transgression that is, not only for a commander to disobey his king, but for a son to disobey his father?" he asked.

Samira bit her lower lip and nodded. "I have made such a mistake myself. The Queen of the Night was not pleased. Not at all. I'm lucky to yet live."

He nodded, curiously relieved that she should so thoroughly understand, and from her own experience. "I took a dozen men with me and pursued Dragosh through the pass. He didn't know we followed; in such small numbers, it was stealth upon which we relied.

"Dragosh retreated to the fortified city of Bistritsa, on the edge of the Carpathians. The people there are a mix of Catholic and Orthodox, some supporting Dragosh, others resenting the efforts of both Dragosh and the Hungarians to convert the people to Catholicism. I knew we would not be without friends there.

"We borrowed caftans from Orthodox villagers outside the city, broke into smaller groups, and entered Bistritsa, intent on finding Dragosh."

He shook his head. "It was not the best thought out of plans. I was full of passion and determination, and was convinced that my way was the right one. My men put their faith in me, believing my words when I promised success, and risking their lives and their careers as they obeyed my orders rather than my father's."

"They must think highly of you," Samira said.

"They did. Most of them paid for their faith with their lives."

He tried to shake the thought away, remembering the faces and voices of comrades now lost. "We entered the city and thought ourselves clever as we visited taverns and the market square, gathering information on Dragosh's movements. We thought we would go unnoticed.

"As evening fell, a beautiful black-haired woman approached me and introduced herself. Mara was her name. She said she was Orthodox, and had heard we were seeking information on Dragosh. She offered us shelter, and said she had friends who could shelter my comrades and help us plan an attack.

"I went with her back to her home. It was small but richly appointed, and she served me dinner. I was anxious to rejoin my men and meet with the friends of whom she had spoken, but Mara said her friends wouldn't come until after midnight. She said there was nothing to be done until then, except to keep her company. She was, she said, the widow of a merchant, and had been long without companionship."

Nicolae smiled wryly at Samira. "She put her hand on mine when she said that. I still had the fire to find and kill Dragosh burning in my blood, but Mara turned it easily enough to a different sort of passion. It seemed a dangerous thing, to bed a woman at such a time, but perhaps that served more to enflame my desire than to quench it. I knew even as she started to undress me that I was being foolhardy; that my place was with my men. I knew, and yet I let myself be distracted.

"Her hand was on my cock when I heard a troop of armed men go by in the street outside. I tried to go look, but she stopped me. 'It's the nightly patrol, it's nothing,' she said, and then she knelt down and took me into her mouth."

Nicolae looked at Samira, expecting her to be shocked at hearing such a detail. Of course she was not. Instead, she was nodding.

"A clever woman," Samira said.

"Too clever for a young man without the wit to wonder at such good fortune. I was reaching my climax when the soldiers burst in. Mara turned her head aside and spit, and cursed them for not arriving a minute sooner. They got a good laugh out of that. I stood there stunned, still dazed by my climax, my cock rigid and wet in the air for all to see." He shuddered at the memory.

"Dragosh came in then, and pointed at my cock with his sword. 'You won't be needing that ever again, Prince Nicolae. You should thank me, that I let Mara give you such fine use of it one last time. She does know how to use her mouth, doesn't she?'"

Nicolae shook his head. "Mara was a prostitute, hired to keep me busy while they found my men and murdered them. Not all of them, though. Some escaped, thank God.

"They hauled me to one of the towers in the wall, and Dragosh ordered me tortured. It wasn't to gain information—I had none of value. It was personal. He kept talking about his sister Lucia, and how I would never lay my filthy dog paws on her. He was like a madman, obsessed by the thought of me with his sister, even though she and I had never met, and the betrothal had been his idea."

"He…" Nicolae swallowed, humiliated even to think of what he was about to tell Samira. "He had Mara don a blond wig and a long chemise, and called her Lucia. He had her kneel on top of a table, and then he made me…
made me caress her. Touch her. Mara would rub herself against me, and sooner or later…"

"You responded."

He nodded. "With Dragosh watching. Each time he saw that I was getting aroused, he and his men would beat me. He'd scream nonsense at me, calling me a werewolf, a hound of Hell, and accusing me of being in league with the Devil. He said that the blood of Raveca had gone rancid in my family's veins, and turned us into monsters. It was as if he literally believed it.

"As I weakened, he would have Mara come lie with me and caress me. He seemed to need see to her half-naked with me; needed to see me touching her. During the beatings his men broke my arm, and my leg. When the thrill of beating me wore thin, he had burning oil poured over me," he said dispassionately, trying not to recall any more of the details. Mercifully, much of the torture was a blur in his mind; much of the pain inflicted upon a body that was not conscious. There were blank spaces in his memory, for which he was grateful. The parts he could recall were horrible enough.

"Constantin tells me it was three days later when he, Andrei, Petru, Stephan, and Grigore—all that remained of the original twelve men I'd brought with me to Bistritsa—found out where I was and fought their way in to rescue me. We had to go over the wall to escape the city, which is when my leg broke a second time. I was all but dead by then, though, and don't remember anything.

"They had horses waiting and spirited me away, back through the mountains, back to Bucovina where they brought me to a monastery to be healed by the monks. I wouldn't have survived the journey all the way back to Suceava, and my father's palace.

"When it was clear that I would live and soon be able to travel, my father sent a message. He said I was not to return to Suceava; that I was not to return to him at all. I was banished, with those men who had followed me, to the ruins here at Lac Strigoi. My father said it was all the kingdom I was fit to rule: an island of the walking dead."

"That was harsh of him," Samira said.

"No. If he had wished to be harsh, he would have banished me from Moldavia. I would have had nowhere to go where I could hope to survive. He gave me a place of shelter, when I deserved none."

"You paid a high enough price for your mistake. Too high a price."

"I yet have my life, and a chance to redeem myself. When I received his message, I swore that I would do whatever it took to regain my place in his esteem. And I swore that I would never again let passion—be it the passion of battle or the passion for a woman—distract me from what I needed to do.

"Do you understand now?" he asked her. "Do you see why this cannot happen again between us?" He felt that he was almost pleading with her, hoping that she had the strength to resist, where his will was but a fragile thread.

"I understand," she said softly. She got off the floor and sat beside him on the bed. She touched the scar along the side of his face, looking so sad that he feared she was about to weep. "I am so sorry that this happened."

"Don't be. It wasn't your fault. I have no one but myself and Dragosh to blame."

She closed her eyes, as if struggling with some inner pain of her own, and then opened them again, her brilliant blue eyes meeting his own. "I don't agree that your vow against passion is what is needed, but if that is what you want, then I will do my best to help you fulfill it." She put her arms around him and hugged him.

He was motionless in her embrace, frozen by surprise and dismay. He didn't want motherly hugs from her. He didn't want her to go along with what he said. She was a succubus, for God's sake!

He was living with a succubus, and he'd just persuaded her to behave like a nun? What kind of fool was he?

What type of fool had she been, letting Nicolae talk her into keeping her hands off him? Samira wrapped her blanket more tightly around herself and tried to find some comfort in its embrace. She was laying on her pallet, eyes heavy with the need for sleep, as Nicolae spent yet another night working into the small hours, studying his texts.