Emma hurried from the wharf like a thief, the light from the inn beckoning her back. She stumbled along the cobbled alley, blackened under the starless night, back to Church Street whence she'd instructed the driver to wait for her.

A terrible north wind howled along the Esk, drowning even the roar of the waves that battered the jetty scars, its icy breath rushing up the river as though Boreas himself had come down from the mountains of Thrace, wings billowing like storm clouds, to snatch her up. Even the creeping fog appeared like the hiemal harbinger of his formidable temper. The god of the north wind—the winter god. Winterly. A premonitory fear rippled across Emma's cold flesh as she threw a furtive gaze to the sky behind her.

Owing to the perilous cold that saturated the night, and perhaps to the late hour as well, she was not surprised to find Church Street deserted even of Whitby's nocturnal denizens. What did alarm her, however, was that her vampiric coachman was nowhere to be seen. Emma gave a wretched sneeze and pulled the cloak tight around her neck lest the cold bite her with invisible fangs. As it was, she felt it drain the warmth from her numb fingers; felt it tear chilblains into her cheeks with icy nails.

Shivering, Emma began the long walk back to the castle, determined not to die this night—leastwise not of the cold. Or if she must, she thought, let it not be like some forsaken indigent on the roadside. And why was this, of all nights, the blackest? She lifted a wary scowl to the welkin, silently cursing the clouds that smothered the moon like a valance.

At the sudden awful caw of a raven, like as not disturbed by her muttering, she shrieked and fell. It gave another reproachful complaint from its shrouded espial and then all was quiet once more. Too quiet. She had not yet moved from where she'd frozen on the road, where her legs had buckled beneath her. She dared not. Even the raven had ceased its frightful prattling. Evil bird!

There came a soft thud behind her, accompanied by an ominous ruffling. Emma held her breath, but could not turn to look over her shoulder for fear that even that small movement—the rustle of her cloak—would interfere with the sound of impending danger. All the creatures of the night seemed disposed to still themselves, even the blasted crow, so that she might listen to whatever hunted in the darkness.

Again she let out a wild shriek. And this time it was not for nothing. Iron fingers had appeared beneath her legs to swoop her from the ground, and thence into the night. Her screams died in her breast as her hair, loosened by the violence of the wind, whipped about her face. She was soaring up into the sky, clutched within the talons of Winter incarnate.

"Release me!" Her cries were swallowed by the brume that hung over the city.

Nevertheless, Winterly heard her. "Do not tempt me, woman." His voice was thick with the sibilance of cold rage.

She bit her tongue and dug her claws deep into his greatcoat, cowing under the violent flapping of his demoniac wings. He held her pressed firmly against his chest as he cleared the lofty mist that lay like cobbled silver beneath a breathtaking moon. Emma gasped with the sight of its empyrean splendor; basked in that pulsing, heavy glow, and, for a moment, forgot her terror. In all her life the moon had never appeared so large and infinite. The stars—her ladies in waiting—glimmered across the vast swell of woolen wisps that stretch thick across the sky. Here, above the world, so close to heaven, there existed only she, the stars, the moon...and Markus.

Braver now, under the reassuring warmth of the moon, Emma shifted her gaze to the vampyre in whose arms she was suspended. His eyes glittered like obsidian, boring into the very depths of her troubled soul. She hastily broke the contact and, instead, watched as the castle spires loomed through the clouds, jutting like black fangs.

Without warning, Markus tucked his colossal wings and plummeted through the clouds as though he meant to impale the earth like an arrow. Emma swallowed the scream that lunged up from her chest, yet she dared not shut her eyes. At the last minute, as the courtyard hurtled towards them, Winterly stretched his wings back out, so that she felt her blood drop suddenly from her head to pool into her slippers. The stars were now swimming not in the sky but around her peripheral, the bile surging up past the scream that had lodged in her chest. They were now mere feet from terra firma, gliding over the green towards the waiting castle. She had only to reach out her hand over the lawn to feel its coarse coat against her fingertips. Perhaps if her fingers were not still frozen shut over his lapel...

Just as she was certain he meant to fly them through the stone wall, he swooped up at the last minute and brought his boots down hard against the window ledge, the force of his landing shuddering the iron casement and disturbing the fire in the hearth.

Emma scurried, boneless, past the open sashes, slapping at the billowing drapes with one hand while the clammy palm of the other lay pressed against her trembling lips. The ale tossed inside her, hot and forceful—a tempest bent on release; bent on spilling its rage upon the world. Where she disgorged the storm was of little moment, she only knew it would stay down no longer. She latched her white fingers onto the nearest repository—a painted bowl two feet in diameter—and whimpered pitifully as her stomach discharged itself into a waiting vessel, taking with it all her dignity. Once she'd spent a little of her misery, she lifted her head and dragged the back of her hand across her mouth with an abject shudder, utterly disgusted and humiliated. Emma sat back on her haunches a moment, unable to meet the gaze that probed at her heaving shoulders. She contrived to ignore the vampire behind her, and her yet unsettled stomach, and, instead, examined the pretty blue goldfish painted delicately across the milky porcelain beneath her fingers.

"Bent o'er that ancient bowl, I wot there sits a wretched soul." The words seemed to echo ominously from the glazing as though the night air had stripped them of all warmth.

She rested her hot cheek briefly on the edge of the 'ancient' bowl, regretting its defilement.

"That," said Markus, alighting from the window with an audible leap, "was a gift from His Majesty, Ming Chengzu." His fingers brushed atop her head, tucking the dark locks back from her face as she retched once more into the Ming bowl. "Were he, and his golden carp, not dead these four hundred years past, he would have been gratified, I'm sure, to wot you have discovered a use for it heretofore unfathomed." Though his fingers were gentle, his voice struck like cold marble.

"You mock me, sir," she whispered miserably into the bowl, pushing his hands away. At length she recovered herself and stood to face him, squaring her shoulders against the wrathful twist of his smile.

"Pray, where were you tonight?" The question rustled between them like a silky threat.

"On an errand." She folded her arms as if to muffle the sound of her lying heart. "Where were you?"

"An errand," he rejoined. "I give fair warning, I do not need to sip from your veins to know when you speak false." He tapped his fingers on his chest, mimicking the anxious tempo of her heart.

"My heart races so because you frightened it half to death with your abduction."

"Abduction was it?" He stalked past her, divesting his coat with a terse shrug. By now he'd already tucked his wings beneath his flesh. He thence planted himself in his favorite chair, leveling her with keen dispassion. "On the contrary, I delivered you from the cold; and, what is more, from certain death, you foolish woman." He tapped his steepled fingers together with a dilatoriness that belied the menace in his tone. "Or do you imagine only London roads to harbor cutthroats and highwaymen?"

"Then it is my good fortune—" affecting a mordant curtsy "—that I did not die of fright during my rescue." She set her teeth when he deigned to offer only a careless shrug of his shoulders. "Have you nothing more to say in defense of your wicked behavior?"

"I dare say that it is most curious to find a lady benighted, in the dark hours, on a lonely country road. A man is like to question the nature of her business." He leaned forward. "Indeed, he would be foolish to trust the character of such a woman."

"She never sought his trust, and he has done naught to win hers."

"Has he not?" He narrowed his gaze. "I have exposed who and what I am—doffed my disguise—to only two mortals in all the centuries I have dwelled upon this wretched earth. What is that if not a yielding of trust."

She swallowed, feeling cornered by the raw intensity of his gaze. "That, I grant you, is no small boon, but what of your lies?"

"When have I lied?" he growled.

"Omission is—"

"Omission is necessary! Live as long as I have and even you, sweet little maid, will find yourself watched by nameless enemies. Omission is one form of defense that we, the ageless, must learn to master. Never forget, my trust is earned."

"Why did you not explain what I am to you?" Her fists clenched damply beneath the folds of her skirt.

"And what are you to me?" he asked softly.

"A vessel in which to incubate your vile brood."

He leaned back in his chair, thoughtful. "I see you have entertained a little witch to whisper in your ear." With an impatient wave, his ornate white cuff falling down his wrist, he gestured for her to go on. "What else did the little witch have to say?"

"She had much to say." But Emma pursed her lips mulishly.

"And you, doubtless, glutted yourself on those slanted truths." After what seemed an eternity, Markus rose from his red velvet armchair and prowled towards her. "By all means, uphold the word of a witch over a vampyre's."

"What need has she to lie? She has only ever wanted my safety."

"You believe her to be benevolent and bounteous at your own peril. Even your precious witch has motives yet unknown to you." His shirt was unfettered, the back longer than the front, and his black pantaloons were tucked into his boots. He was striking no matter what he wore; moreover, it was the essence that filled whatever corporeal form he took that was so transcendentally striking and alluring. "My own motives I have already expounded."

She could not be sure whether it was fear or desire that disturbed her poor heart to flutter so fatally. "Ay, you expound them in riddles." She took a step back from him.

"You reek of fear," he said, lip curling in distaste. "You have never feared me before."

"Of course I have."

"No." His eyes became suddenly engulfed in black. "The scent of fear is cloying and ripe. It overmasters every emotion. Your blood is saturated with it." He parted his lips some small degree as his fangs dropped with hunger. "It calls to me."

"How dare you treat me like some common prey!" Her hand flew up to slap his cheek, but he caught it swiftly.

"Then do not act the prey." Still and all, the blackness instantly retreated from his eyes. He placed a mocking kiss on the inside of the wrist he still detained.

"Careful, you show your cloven hoof."

"I never truly contrived to hide it from you," he countered, dropping her hand.

Perhaps it was time she tested that claim. "What power do you wield over me now that you have tasted my blood?"

He gave her his back and moved to close the window, drawing the curtains across the glazing once he'd secured the latch. "Consider that it is you who wields the power, not I." He turned to face her. "Power over me."

How those words affected her. How she longed to believe him. But, no, she would not allow his...omissions to distract her. "Does it give you the ability to know my whereabouts?"

He inclined his head. "Ay, no matter the distance."

"Then...why did you take Milli?" Her voice faltered with disappointment. "Why did you secret her away if you knew it was in vain? Victoria knows, by virtue of the dark gift, where my sister is cloistered. Can you deny it?"

"I cannot."

"Then our bargain is of no effect." She hastily banished the tears from her eyes with an angry swipe of her sleeve.

"How so?"

She regarded him as though he were touched in the head. "As I've said—"

"I vowed to keep her safe." He pointed a long finger towards the writing desk and stationery. "You have only to write and allay your doubts, madam; but know this"—his jaw clenched with some fell emotion "—you may write till your eyes grow weak with age and you can write no more; you may write till you have exhausted all the paper in all the world, and still you will always find your Milli in good health, for I will it so. No creature living, or undead, may impede my will, least of all Victoria. What is her limited power to the vastness of mine? Nothing! Milli is safe and will remain so. If you insist that my word holds no water then perhaps you want it held with blood?" With that, he pressed his fangs cruelly into his wrist. At once the crimson rills flowed into his voluminous sleeves.

"Stop!" She besought him, horrified.

"In sanguis veritate." He held his wrist out to her, drawing the cuff away from the bite. "Drink, Emmaline, and take the knowledge you seek." He moved purposefully towards her till she had backed herself against the wall of cannibals. "No creature surrenders its blood without some undesired forfeit to himself; no vampyre gives his blood to just anyone. Drink. Drink and you will know."

Emma dropped her wide eyes to the sanguine stain on his proffered wrist. She gave a stiff shake of her head.

"Or do you fear the truth?"

🌟If you're still with me and haven't given up on me due to my awful and unreliable updating, I want to thank you from the depths of my fatigued little heart. And excuse my vulgar latin.‼️By the by, I have an instagram account (authorjeaninecroft) that I think my fellow littérateurs might like‼️ I hope you'll join me there for some sneaky peeks? Love you guys! Thanks again for your ongoing and tireless support!🌟