Vampyre Bride ✔️

XXVIII⎮A Pact With A Dragon

Milli stumbled backwards and gave a shriek of fright.

For her part, Emma stood transfixed. "Kassiel," she whispered, all amazement.

When he'd disclosed his ... otherworldly nature to her last night — or rather, this morning — he'd not intimated anything about wings! Though, really, she ought not to have assumed that just because he was a fallen angel that he would not still possess his wings. They were truly stunning, and frightening, to behold. Even the feathers appeared unlike a bird's — an empyrean luster gleaming gem-like across the indurative black surface. At the carpal bends — the highest joints of his wings when they were folded behind him, as they were now — were vicious-looking black barbs that jutted out from his steely ... plumage. No, indeed, nothing of a bird's fragility here; these wings might very well cleave a man's skull!

Victoria, meanwhile, had fixed a shocking glare to Emma, having distinctly heard that name, of all names, pass softly from Emma's astonished lips. To her brother she said, "You told her?!"

"Is that not my prerogative?" he answered his sister impassively, watching as Milli threw herself into Emma's arms. "Am I not master here?"

"I want to go home!" Milli sobbed into Emma's shoulder.

"That is now quite out of the question." Victoria made to approach Milli, but the girl balked. "My dearest Milli, am I not still your loving friend?"

"A friend," Emma seethed, stepping between the vampyre and her sister, "would not have so 'lovingly' availed themselves of 'dearest Milli's' lifeblood."

The lash struck true, and Victoria's attentions were transferred at once to the elder Miss Lucas. But being the recipient of such a hellish glare was nothing to witnessing that same glare transmute into something entirely more sinister. The whites of Victoria's eyes were engulfed suddenly by inky shadows, seeming to stretch out like black veins from each iris, so that her unholy orbs gleamed like onyx from one side of her lids to the other.

Milli was instantly beset with hysteria, her panicked incredulity affecting horrific tremors in her entire body. She dug her whitened fingers, now claw-like, deep into her sister's arms as she backed away from Victoria.

Winterly gave an impatient growl. "Do cease your theatrics, Victoria."

She swung around to face him, a pointed look at his great wings. "I was merely following your example!"

"Markus," Emma's voice was almost inaudible, but to the vampyres it rang out like a clap of thunder. It had been a calculating step, on her part, to use his name against him. The name he urged her so often to use.

It worked instantly, his eyes shift towards her like black lightening. Curious. Watchful. Waiting.

She ran her tongue out over her parched underlip and took a bolstering gulp of air. "Am I to ... understand that Victoria imagines my sister her p-property?"

"You are," he replied. "She marked your sister the night you first crossed my threshold."

Though Emma could see no obvious marks, she doubted not his claim. Her jaw clenched with the dire implications of such an obscene reality.

"I myself," he continued, "have marked you, but not with blood." He bent his eyes to the bracelet that sat heavily on her wrist. "There is my sigil, as I explained. It is merely that, and that alone, which imports to the nocturnal world to whom it is that you belong."

"But I will not truly belong to you unless it is by my will to be ... owned." Again she swallowed. "So let us strike a bargain."

Victoria gave a nasty hiss. "A god does not make bargains with a—"