King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1)(96)

Would he offer the same to me?

“Adrian, wait,” I said, and he froze above me, concern etched across his glistening face.

“Are you all right?” he asked, breathless.

I smiled and trailed my fingers along his cheekbone. “Take from me.”

I did not think it was possible for him to become any more still.

“Are you certain, Isolde?”

I nodded, and my eyes blurred with tears. “I am certain,” I said, feeling the truth of it in my chest. “I want every part of you. I want to invade your body. I want to be so heavy in your blood, you taste me when you bleed.”

Adrian shook his head a little, and then he slid from my body and sat up.

“Where are you going?” I demanded, rising with him.

“There is something you must understand about your bloodletting,” he said. “Before you agree.”

I waited, staring up at him.

“I told you that I begged for you?” he said.

I nodded.

“And you are here now because of those pleas.”

My brows furrowed, but I nodded anyway. He was acting as if I was a gift from the goddesses.

“Partaking of your blood means I…become vulnerable. Worse, it will make you a target.”

“I am already a target,” I said. I had been since I’d agreed to marry him. “But what do you mean…vulnerable?”

“By doing this, you become my one true weakness. If you die, I die.”

“No,” I said immediately. I needed him to be invincible. I needed him to be immortal. I swore I would never love if I had to lose. “Then we can’t. I won’t.”

“Isolde,” he said, and that gentleness returned to his expression. “I would never let anything happen to you, but I will also not exist without you again. More than that, though, I am willing to risk my life to be bonded to you the way I have always desired. I have waited centuries for this. For you.”

My heart felt like it would explode.

“Does anyone know? About the curse?”

“Only those who were there when it was made,” he said. “Ana, Daroc, Sorin, and Tanaka.”

They were closest to him, more trusted than anyone else in Adrian’s circle. I felt safe in the knowledge that no one knew beyond those four, and in the end, no one had to know of our bloodletting. There would be no evidence, no wound and no scarring, because Adrian could heal it.

I rose to my knees and twined my arms around his neck.

“Well then, you’ll just have to do a very good job of protecting me.”

I kissed him, and Adrian gathered me into his arms, guiding my legs on either side of his as he sat on the edge of the bed. He held my waist and slid into me, his mouth leaving mine to graze along my neck and shoulder. I clung to him and shuddered, letting him lead, and when his fangs elongated and pierced my skin, I gave a guttural cry. There was a second of pain before the pleasure of his mouth and his cock won over. They seemed to work in tandem, filling me with an ecstasy that took me under.

And then my mind was flooded with memories of Adrian.

Memories that had felt like dreams.

I met him beneath jasmine and kissed him under stars, and we made love in the dark, and that love ended in fire and damned the world.

I knew then who I truly was.

Who I had always been.

Yesenia of Aroth.

I was Yesenia of Aroth—not now, not in this body, but I had been her in another life, in Adrian’s life.

The tears came when Adrian released me.

“Isolde.” He cupped my face and kissed my mouth and my cheeks. “Tell me.”

“I know,” I whispered, and my body shook with sobs.

I couldn’t explain it completely. I did not have all the memories or moments, but the knowledge of who I had been and who I was now existed simultaneously in my mind. And Adrian—he had brought me back. When my mind had not remembered him, my body had.

“I know you,” I said and collapsed against him.

*

I lay draped over Adrian’s body, his fingers moving lightly over my skin as I wrestled with my strange thoughts, dividing them into past and present.

“But how did you get here? How did you become a…”

“Monster?”

I smiled a little. “A vampire.”

“I made a trade,” he said. “I begged the goddess Dis to let me live and seek revenge against everyone responsible for your death, and she granted my wish.”

I had a few memories of High Coven worshipping Dis as their creator.

“At the expense of desiring blood?”

“It is what I asked for—let me taste the blood of my enemies.” I heard him chuckle quietly. “Be careful of your words in deals with the divine.”

“You never speak of the goddesses,” I observed.

“Just because I was created by one does not mean I serve them. Gods become more human the closer you are to them,” Adrian said.

I sensed there was more he could say, but he didn’t, so I asked, “Do you hate her? For what she made you?”

“No. I quite like what I am,” he said.

We were quiet for a few moments, and then he spoke. “I spent a long time searching for you. When I saw you in the woods, it took everything in my power not to bite you then.”