She moved through the castle, with her forlorn candle, like a specter in her white dinner gown. At what point had her previous life become the dream and her nocturnal visions (those seductive midnight hallucinations) her new reality. She was herself now a night creature — his creature.

Had Mrs. Skinner suddenly appeared out of the darkness just then, as was her nightly wont, it certainly would have stopped Emma's poor heart altogether, but, thankfully, that stealthy spider — whether or not she was watching from some aerial web — kept herself hidden.

Sparing only a glance at the tarnished mirror on the hallway wall, her pallid face so small within the confines of its ancient silver frame, she continued on towards the grand staircase. Her flesh, glimpsed amidst the dusky patination, had seemed so pale in the lowlight, her eyes too large for her face and her nether lids smudged with shadow. Her impromptu portraiture had savored of death and she'd shuddered to look at it. A corpse bride fit for a vampyre's bed. The thought amused her a little.

"Well, if you're to be caged like the master's pet," she murmured to herself, "then you might as well enjoy it." She gave a self-deprecating snort. She had no intention of remaining indefinitely in this gilded cage, not once the first opportunity presented itself. No matter how fatally she loved him, and she did, she would eventually fly away. Albeit for the nonce she would bide her time and perhaps even take some pleasure from the physical aspects of his love, such as it was; but this she would do strictly on her own terms. Not his. As a white queen, not a pawn. And she would remind herself of this whenever the cold claws of self-doubt clutched at her heart.

Along the lacquered banister she trailed her fingers, each marble step taking her that much closer to exquisite doom, as though an invisible red thread had coiled its seductive length about her midriff and was now tugging her forward with languid inexorability. Even her taper flickered nervously in the hush. Or was it flammeous anticipation? Doubtless a little of both, she decided. There was not so much as a draft to be felt as she ascended now that the storm was suspended over the eerie Yorkshire wolds. Perhaps they would have fog by morning.

All too soon she was at the topmost landing and turning left instead of right towards the beckoning safety of her chamber. Sinistra for her tonight. How sinister that sounded. So morbidly appropriate. Nevertheless, she pushed on towards the vampyre's den, and by some foreshadowing coincidence her flame suddenly sputtered out, smote by an obscure gust, just as she reached the imposing door behind which, she knew, he awaited her.

Now she could not retreat even if she had wished to, for all was as black as pitch, save the alluring glow discernible beneath his door; moreover, she was as like to fall and break her neck as find her way back to her room, blinded as she now was. Death by misadventure seemed somehow more tragic than death by exsanguination (leastways it did for the moment), better that she take her chances here, for who better to keep her from such pedestrian calamities than Death himself. At all events, it was too late for second thoughts ... or any thoughts for that matter.

There was no need to knock, she shortly discovered. No sooner had her flame been snuffed than the door was swiftly opened to her. The master stood to the side of the doorway, tacitly inviting her in, halfway dressed and inscrutable, his neckcloth discarded and his white cotton shirt lying open almost to his navel. His cuff, she noted cursorily, still bore the stain of vampyre blood. She endeavored not to gape at the unconcealed ridges of flesh and sinew as she slipped passed him into his chamber, nor to stare at his flawless countenance. But she knew that if she lowered her unsettled eyes to escape the top half of him she'd only wonder about what awaited her beneath his black trousers. And no thanks to the 'literature' in his library, she now had a very good idea of the beast that lay therein. There was no help for it, she could look at none of him without her face filling with vinous heat. The door closed with dooming softness.

It was safer, therefore, to inspect his imperial bed. Or was it? The ebony bedstead was as wide and impressive as a sturdy Spanish galleon, it's four thick pillars hung with crimson brocade drapes. Each elaborate post was guarded by, indeed coiled with, a mahogany gargoyle dragon that seemed to glare with toothsome ferocity at the matching counterpane onto which she soon would spill her blood.

"Let the maid make her bed where the dragon lies," he'd said earlier. And now she understood his arcane words far better.

But Winterly suffered her not to avert her eyes from him a moment longer. A warm finger slipped beneath her chin and turned her face up to his searching gaze. "Not hen-hearted after all," he murmured. Thankfully there was nothing of smugness at his lips as he took her lifeless candle from her white fingers and set it aside.

"I believe, Lord Winter—"

"Markus," he bade her gently. "Tonight I am Markus."

"Markus," she whispered, nodding. "I believe there was little choice." He had ever been to her a piercing inevitability in her heart. She placed the chess piece in his hand. "The rook has taken the queen." Completely. Eternally.

But he mistook her meaning. "Don't be dramatic, there is always a choice." He released her abruptly and deposited the white queen non-too-gently on his ornate dresser beside her dead candle.

"Not when the devil himself beguiles—"

"Exactly!" he growled. "He has no greater weaponry than words; no power other than that which he is granted." Suddenly he was caging her in against the door, though he was careful not to touch her ... yet. "And I shall tell you something else for nothing: there is no devil. You mortals are your own devils ... and you create your own hells."

"And what of God? Is he merely fiction too?" she asked with all dubiety.

"Of course He exists, I've met Him... It was He that cast me from Heaven; and banished me to hell."

"Hell?! But you walk here amongst us!" Had he somehow escaped the Lake of Fire?

"Precisely. Did you never consider that this earthy realm is the Underworld?"

Was he lying? she wondered, her mind reeling. "Why were you cast out of Heaven?"

He gave a shrug. "Pride. Lust. Forbidden love. Take your pick. No matter which way one perceives it, I was neither wholesome nor selfless enough to serve Him."

Love?! Surely he could not mean—

"But Satan is the fabrication of man," he went on. "A means by which to cast the blame of omnipotent evil to a faceless entity — one that controls, possesses, and destroys. It is an excuse, and one which allows for mankind to shirk responsibility for their own misdeeds and depravities. The Destroyer, my dear, is mankind, not I." He then moved back and smirked to see her so unraveled by his nearness. By his revelation. "So, you see, you have a choice after all. You are here not because I forced you, but because you too crave the forbidden; yearn for what only I can give you."

"And what is that exactly?"

"Intrigue. Peril. We've had this discussion before — every woman wants a little danger." Out came the giant wings again with an almighty snap. At first they were only a shadowed blur before they stretched and became corporeal, stilling precariously overhead like frightening broad scimitars.

"A very little, perhaps!" she whispered, awe-struck. When he'd folded them behind him like a spurred black cloak, she finally felt equal to the task of forging on. "But I find myself mired within considerably more than just a little peril. And I cannot but wonder how much danger was of my own making ... and how much of it was by your design. I speak of your dark gifts."

"As to that, let us settle once and for all the matter of my ... power over you. I have no control over your thoughts and actions, Emmaline. You are your own master, and no devil but your own can take that power from you."

Still and all, it had, on more than one occasion, occurred to her that Winterly might have planted that seed of darkness in her belly somehow, embedded the corruption within her. Peradventure she had not been born with this 'sickness' — this spiritual deformity — after all, for it was not till she'd met him that she'd found herself ... fascinated and tempted by the esoteric; curious about the sleek deep shadows stroking and stretching cat-like within her. She narrowed her eyes skeptically at him. "Tell me, Markus, can you not control minds even a little?"

"Not even a little, my beautiful rose. Minds, even the weakest of them (which yours is far from being), are nowise under my influence. Certainly, I have particular ... talents in my repertoire, I won't deny that, but telepathy is not one amongst them."

Well, deep down she'd known the truth of it; moreover, lying seemed to be beneath him, he appeared to relish the truth in every situation. Indeed, he'd not been cast out of Heaven for lying. There was no need for lies when the truths were ugly enough. But she was neither relieved nor disappointed by his asseverations. Neither option was palatable, in the end, for if she was not the sick rose then she was a victim of mind-control; if she was not the latter then she was the former. The last, however, was by far the worst recourse, for to have one's mind tampered with was an odium she could never stomach. Fortunately, or tragically, however she chose to view it, she was now and forevermore his sick rose, and he merely the man — creature — to have awakened her to her own burgeoning twilight.

"But you did not come here to tergiversate, Emma. And, let me assure you, I mean to give you exactly what you came for."

He was right, of course, there was no use dilly-dallying, for she had every intention of meeting the dawn in his bed.

"Some Madeira, my love?" he asked, lifting a silver decanter from the side cabinet, a questioning arch to his black brow.

"I thank you, no. Your ... love—" she gave him an ironic twist of the lips "—chooses to remain abstemious."

In turn, he cocked his head in amusement. "Your abstinence does not, I hope, extend to the ... fruits of the flesh?"

Her cheeks flushed with the innuendo. "Well, no, I ... that is to say, I did not mean..." She fidgeted with her skirt, her bodice seeming to constrict around her lungs the longer he scrutinized her. Lord, she was making a hash of it! Why was he just staring at her in that devilish manner?! Why could she not untie her tongue from her tonsils? "Dash it!" she chuckled nervously, "On second thought, I will take a glass of Madeira."

"Excellent." He gave a sly wink and poured the amber liquid into the cut crystal. "It seems—" he replaced the decanter and approached her "—that I have a talent for mind-control after all." He was brave to tease her about that so soon.

She gave a soft snort as he slipped the delicate stem between her waiting fingers. Unsurprisingly, he took none for himself. He was, however, right to fortify her with wine, the night was yet young and her courage required whatever liquid reinforcement was to be had at his disposal. Except, of course, blood. That she would not drink. Not ever.

Pressing the crystal to her lips, she luxuriated in the tawny warmth of the wine as it rushed into her belly. He was barefoot, she noticed, and it occurred to her that she ought to do as the Romans do. Setting her crystal on the marble-top commode she removed her shawl and stepped out of her satin slippers, so that she now stood as barefoot as he atop the plush oriental carpet.

This pleased him, or so his grin communicated. But, not content to merely watch her, he took her wrist in his hand, his thumb stroking her palm, and with the index finger of his other hand outlined his initials on the underside of her arm. His insignia — the one she'd surrendered to Milli. "Intolerable," he said softly, an enigma in his tone. "How shall I mark you now, do you think?"

"Have you no other bracelets?"

Though he'd folded his silken lips over his fangs, it was no less a formidable smile that touched his mouth. "Think you I have them growing rampant on my bracelet tree?"

"Then how shall you—"

"Oh, I'll think of something..." He left her, chuckling cryptically to himself as he approached his bed, wings whispering insidiously over the floor.

"Do all vampyres have wings?" Did Victoria? she wondered.

He gave a sportive grunt. "Not all sanguisuges are made equal. There is, as I've said before, a tier — a vast difference between those like myself, The Fallen, and those that are vampyres; furthermore, an even greater disparity exists between vampyres and draugar."

"What are ... draugar?"

"The undead; those that serve us."

"So Mrs. Skinner—"

"Is a draugr, yes."

"Then you and Victoria are—?"

"Not the same." He was evidently becoming impatient with her dilly-dallying again.

"But you both look alike!" Save the wings, of course.

"Did it never occur to you that I might be wearing a mask. That I wear one still..." Indeed, he had intimated as much to her before. In the grove. "Should you like to see me as I really am?"

She did not! However, with a breathless nod of accent, she foolishly answered to the contrary.

"Perhaps later, my brave rose. One exploit at a time." His eyes then shifted pointedly to the grandiloquence of his bed. "How do you like it?"

"Do ... vampyres sleep at all?"

"Yes, but not I. The Fallen have no need of sleep."

She had surmised as much. "It looks rather more like a tabernacle than a bed."

He considered this, apparently delighted by the comparison, and seated himself at the edge of his monstrous fourposter. "A tabernacle, eh? How fitting, for I certainly mean to worship here..." He ran his hand over the counterpane, his black wings stark against the silky vermillion. "I worship pleasure, Emma." There was a long and weighty pause before he spoke again. "Remove your gown" — a flash of fangs behind the smile — "you'll not be needing it, I promise you." He gestured that she should join him at the bed.

With a bolstering glance at the dresser, atop which the white queen reposed, Emma nodded. Madeira, as it turned out, was no panacea for an anxious heart. Hers was clamoring like a hummingbird's. Nevertheless, she went to him and made no startled utterance as he, having grown impatient again, reached a hand out to draw her to him, maneuvering her between his thighs. He turned her around and proceeded thence to take his time unfastening each nacreous button that lay along her spine, allowing his fingers to brush sensuously against her nape. Once her gown was pooled on the floor, the same unhurried method was employed as he untied her stays, and that too was relinquished to the floor. He then plucked the pins from her hair so that the locks fell unbound around her shoulders like dark silk. When she had stepped out of the puddle of silk, pins, and whale bone, she turned around to face him in nothing more than her satin chemise.

It gratified her to see desire ripple within those liquid dark pools as he beheld her. In this moment they spoke more than his lips, those eyes. At what point had she become so accustomed to his eerie eyeshine? They were almost familiar to her now. "I want to consume you," they seemed to say." It was a gaze into which she might be lost forever — no more than a phantom derelict adrift in the fog of an eternal desert sea.

Emma stretched out hesitant fingers towards his wings, but halted just short of touching them, her stillness questioning. Like a carved god, he remained motionless, answer enough that she had his permission to continue her examination. They ruffled slightly beneath her touch, damask stretched across iron vanes, strangely unyielding and yet plush. "They're beautiful," said she at last. "What else can you do besides fly?"

Instead of answering her, his eyes flashed wickedly. The next moment the candles in the room were swiftly doused and the moonless night flooded the room. She could see nothing. It did not follow, however, that he was night-blinded too. She knew he could see her with his otherworldly sight.

"How remarkable," she whispered, not a little disquieted. The peculiar demise of her candle earlier was a mystery no longer unsolved. The darkness was such that her remaining senses were intensified, she could actually hear her own heartbeats in the hush. "Will you now bring them back to life?"

"You mistake me for the Nazarene." He spoke with irony heavy on his invisible lips. "I kill things, I certainly don't resurrect them."

Without warning, he was lifting her in his arms, and ere the frightened gasp escaped her she was supine atop the silks and feathered pillows. Each nuance of his touch — possessive fingers to heated flesh — affected her tenfold now that she could not rely on her eyes to follow his movements. All at once she heard the unexpected sound of ripping satin and the tug of her shift as he unwrapped her like a present. Her skin puckered instantly, whether from the startling cold caress of the nighttime air at her loins, or the touch of his questing eyes, she couldn't be sure. Merciful Heaven! She was now utterly bared to him.

"What is that mark at your navel?" he asked, voice low and thick.

Her body jolted at the sudden touch of his gentle fingers as they began gliding over her belly with maddening languor, her muscles tautening with anticipation of his going lower. Much lower.

"How should I know?" she whispered softly. "You won't light a candle for me to see by."

"But I see you best in the dark." His voice was thick with shadows, and hunger, the intonation of a sensual epicurean.

"That is ... perhaps one of the strangest things you've said to me yet." Though, if she was being honest with herself, he had said and done far stranger.

"I should have thought the strangest thing would have been my confessing to being, such as I am, a vampyre?" Lower still went his thrilling hand, roving at the vale of her hip before he paused and lowered his canines to press gently, insistently, at her inner thigh. "Answer me, Emma."

"Yes!" A soft moan slipped from her lips. "Far and away the strangest."

"And does it not follow that here, in the darkness, the shameless in you cannot hide from the devil in me."

"I shouldn't imagine I could keep that from you," she admitted breathily. "A wasted endeavor if I thought to try." She had ever been an open book to him, namely her fatalistic hunger, despite every best efforts to the contrary. "Light a candle, won't you? I dislike knowing that I am being watched in my blindness."

"As you wish," said he, leaning away to do as she asked. "You are to understand, however, that most ladies prefer to make love in the darkness."

"I am not most ladies, as you well know." She licked almost nervously at her lips, parched now with desire. "And is that what we're doing? Making love?"

"As much as can be hoped for between vampyre and mortal..."

The room flared suddenly with blessed light. She felt the waves of torrid awareness skim across her flesh, like the brush of shadows and warmth cast by the shifting flame, as he brought a candle towards her, placing it quietly atop the nightstand. His wide pupils were flashing with their otherworldly glow as he traced his eyes keenly, ravenously, over her contours. The thirst for blood; the hunger for flesh. It unsettled her, his needs, but she was feeling too much the hedonist at present to let it disturb her overlong.

Suddenly, he was leaning over her again, his shirt and trousers long since removed, her heart rate spiking violently at his nearness.

"I craved your flesh that night. I crave it still. And your blood most of all." The memory of those words, spoken in the midnight woodland, resurged suddenly in her mind's ear.

"And do you still—" she swallowed audibly "—want to eat me, Markus?"

"Always," he growled, before he swiftly lowered his head to avail himself of her parted lips.

🌟Finally we've come full circle from the excerpt! You know what happens next... 😈🌟

https://youtu.be/6C3ND1nitRs

👆🏼Ruelle, this song (Deep End) specifically, sustained this chapter. It's perfect!👆🏼