Nightmaster. Susan Krinard
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“But I don’t understand why you don’t already know this, my lord. Opiri faced plenty of female soldiers during the War.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was merely interested in your experiences.” He smiled slightly. “I can imagine you as a soldier.”
Trinity tried not to let him see her alarm. “I’m not brave enough for that.”
Ares leaned over the table and touched her cheek. “I think you are. But that is of no consequence now. That life is over.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you’ll find it displeasing,” he said, stroking her face.
“I’m ready.”
He jerked his hand back. “You speak as though you must brace yourself for some unspeakable torment.”
Now that she had reached the crucial moment, Trinity lost her resolve to acquiesce so easily. “I owe you so much, my lord,” she murmured.
Ares bolted from his chair. “I don’t want your gratitude,” he said. “I want—”
He broke off, and Trinity held very still, aware that he had begun to lose his grip on the calm and rationality he seemed to value so highly. He strode to the other side of the bed and punched his finger on a keypad set in the wall. Wide shutters slid open, revealing another window.
“Come here,” he said.
Trinity rose and joined him. She looked out the window. The dome of the city curved below—smoky-gray rather than black from this angle—shielding Erebus from the sun.
Beyond the dome and the towers on the opposite side of the Citadel stretched the muted sky, the fields and the mountains, robbed of their color and vividness by the protective glass. Ares touched the keypad again, and suddenly they were looking directly into the interior of the city, thousands of roofs and open plazas and strange gardens under artificial lights. It was frighteningly beautiful.
“Nothing can touch you in this city,” he said. “No one can harm you. Not as long as you belong to me.” He turned to look at her. “And I intend to keep you, Trinity. Make no mistake.”
He pressed on the pad, closing the panel, and then returned to the table, slopping more wine into the glass.
“I will know everything about you,” he said, capturing her gaze. “Your mind, your soul, your body. You will never hold any secrets from me. But when you come to me, you will do it because you wish to.”
Trinity realized how vulnerable Ares had just made himself, vulnerable in a way that was almost human. She felt an uncertainty in him, bewilderment that he should treat any serf as he treated her...as if she mattered to him as a woman, not merely a slave. “I wish it now, my lord,” she whispered. And she did. More than was practical. Or sane.
“No,” he said, dropping into his chair. “You will sleep in the harem quarters tonight.”
It wasn’t going to work. Not now, not for Ares. For some reason he was holding himself back. She bowed and retreated.
“Trinity,” he said, stopping her as she moved to the door.
“Yes, my lord?”
“My name is Ares. You may use it when we are alone.”
“Thank you...Ares,” she said, bowing her head.
He made a sound very like a snort. “I told you before that such humility doesn’t suit you. Don’t play games with me. You can’t win.” He caressed the stem of his wineglass. “I do want to know your thoughts, Trinity. Your true and honest thoughts. I have had long experience with humanity. I walked the earth while most of my kind slept under it. But now I require a human of the Enclave to share her views and understanding of our people, and to explain her world to me.”
“Why?” she asked. “I will never give you information you could use against the Enclave, even if I’d ever had access to it.”
“I have no interest in acting against the Enclave. My life is as I wish it to be, and any disruption such as a new war would only disturb it.”
“An excellent reason for opposing the deaths of thousands of humans and Opiri.”
“Trinity—”
“Forgive me, my lord. I’m sorry for speaking out of turn.”
Suddenly he was on his feet again and striding toward her, and it was all she could do to hold her ground. He loomed over her, staring down at her like a hungry panther.
“Do not mock my liberality,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I can withdraw it in an instant. I can still take from you whatever I wish.”
“What I offered already,” she said, tipping her head back to give him easy access to her throat.
He leaned toward her, and she could feel his warm breath fanning over her flesh. Once again she imagined his teeth grazing her neck, puncturing her skin on that big bed, while he...
Oh, God, she thought. She couldn’t let it happen. No matter how decent, how reasonable...how sexually attractive and potent he was to her. She couldn’t let herself feel.
“Go,” he said, stepping back as if he didn’t trust himself any more than she did her own mind and body.
Stumbling out of the room, Trinity half ran through the office and into the Great Room. His abrupt dismissal didn’t matter. He wanted to probe her mind and absorb her knowledge—though she didn’t trust his reasons in the slightest—and was clearly fighting his own desire to take her. He’d given her a kind of power over him she could use to her own advantage.
She would learn everything she could about the workings of the Household. She would make friends of even the lowliest serfs. She would use any method necessary to find members of the Underground in Ares’s Household and contact those outside it.
And she’d become invaluable to Ares. So indispensable, so trustworthy and useful that she’d make it impossible for him to resist her.
He’s only the means to an end, she reminded herself. And she was a soldier of the Enclave who hated everything he stood for.
And always would.
Chapter 6
Ares summoned Cassandra six hours later, after Trinity had retired to rest. He ordinarily avoided taking blood from his Favorite more than once a day, but his body’s other hungers had become too demanding to ignore, and he knew that Cassandra would never object.
He had spent those six hours pacing his room, trying to concentrate on ancient human texts, receiving his client Freebloods, taking reports and drinking wine until he could drink no more.
Every hour he had considered calling Trinity to him. His entire body throbbed with wanting her. She moved him not only physically, but also emotionally, and that made no sense to him.
He had told her the truth: he wanted to know her thoughts, to hear her views of things about which he could not be objective. But, above all, he needed to understand why she could be so unwillingly attracted to an Opir, especially when he owned her very life. She had every reason to hate him, like any of the humans in Erebus. But he had smelled her arousal, heard the rapid thrum of her pulse when he came near. She seemed to be giving way to some primal urge within herself that had little to do with gratitude.
He wondered if she was drawn to him because he was different.
From the beginning of human civilization, when the first Opiri had begun to gather in groups and hunting parties, Ares had been branded an outsider. The earliest Bloodmasters had declared that he could not be full-blooded because of his hair and eyes—that he was, as Palemon had called him, a “freak of nature” and a throwback to some ancient, more primitive species no Opir wanted to remember.
Many had tried to kill him, but he was strong, and he