It felt like cool brown silk flowing over my fingers. And, as always, touching him felt more than good. It felt right, steadying. And right now, I could really use some of that.

“You were talking about when you were a boy.”

“Ah yes. The trials of childhood,” he mused, that hand slowly stroking my thigh. “One of my first memories is of being thrown out to play in the snow, completely naked.”

“Naked?”

“Hm. It was not too bad when the sun shone, but after dark—”

“After dark?”

“—it became somewhat . . . frigid.”

I stared at him. “How old were you?”

He shrugged. “Three, perhaps four.”

“But . . . but why would anyone do that?”

“To demonstrate my fitness to the people. I was my father’s heir, and although he had no throne at that time to leave to me, he had absolute confidence that it would one day be his.”

“Yes, but to risk a child—”

“Life was about risk then. And there was no childhood, in the modern sense, when I was young. Not for peasant children, who started work in the fields by age seven. And certainly not for those of us in the nobility.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“Some of it was. There were puppet shows on feast days and sledding in the winter. And I could ride an unsaddled horse at age five at a full gallop, as could my brothers. Well, except for Radu,” he said, talking about his youngest brother. “He was deathly afraid of the creatures and took rather longer to come to terms with them. I should know; I taught them to ride.”

“Them?”

“He and Vlad,” Mircea said, his smile fading. I didn’t say anything, but inwardly I cursed. It was rare enough for Mircea to talk about his family, and that particular topic was almost certain to make him shut down. But to my surprise, this time it didn’t.

“Radu had absolutely no seat at all,” he said, after a moment.

“Neither do I,” I admitted. Rafe had tried to teach me, but had finally given up in despair.

“But you do not need to lead charges in battle, dulceață. He did! My father finally solved the problem by tying him onto the largest horse in the stable, and promising that he should remain there until he could ride it properly.”

“And did he?”

Mircea looked up at me, baring the long line of his throat as he leaned back against the chair. It exposed a vulnerable area, a traditional vampire sign of trust. “With amazing alacrity.”

I stared down into those velvety dark eyes, fascinated by the pleased humor on the handsome face, by the crinkle of the eyes, by the white, even teeth and the glimpse of tongue behind them. Without thinking, my hand stopped combing through the thick silk of his hair and dropped to his nape, before sliding forward to curve around his throat.

Most vampires would have moved away or at least flinched. Mircea just looked up at me, eyes bright, but no longer with amusement. There was something dark in those depths, something fierce and possessive that made my breath come faster and my hand tighten over the pulse that beat strong and steady under my fingertips.

His heart didn’t need to beat, of course, but he knew I liked it, so he rarely forgot. Like he always remembered to breathe when I was around, to blink, to do all the things that made him seem human, even though he hadn’t technically held that title for five hundred years. But he was human to me.

He would always be human to me.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that when we are in public, dulceață,” he murmured, stroking his hand up and down my leg. “It makes me wish to cut the evening short.”

“How short?”

Those fingers suddenly tightened. “Very.”

And for a moment, that sounded like a really good idea. Really, really good. But if I left with Mircea now, I knew how the rest of the evening would go. And it wouldn’t involve a lot of talking.

I licked my lips and stepped away a few paces. “You were telling me about your mother?”

Mircea didn’t say anything for a moment, but when I looked back, he didn’t appear annoyed. If anything, his body seemed to have relaxed, and he was smiling. “Princess Cneajna of Moldavia,” he said easily. “Tall, with raven hair and green eyes. Radu took after her, not in coloring but in a certain delicacy of feature.”

“What about you?”

“They said I resembled her more in temperament, although I never saw it. She was more . . . fiery. More highly strung. I remember her as beautiful and passionate, proud and ambitious.”

I bit my lip. I thought that described Mircea perfectly.

“I always thought I was more like my father,” he told me.

“How so?”

Mircea’s head tilted. “He was a . . . prudent sort of man, a diplomat, for King Sigismund of Hungary. He was around your age when he was sent as a special envoy to Constantinople to discuss a possible merger between the Roman Catholic faith and the Orthodox. It never happened, of course, but he impressed the Holy Roman Emperor with his tact and judgment.” Mircea smiled. “Although probably not for his piety.”

“He wasn’t religious?”

“No more so than was politically expedient. My mother was the devout one in the family. Forced her poor sons into the care of the Dominicans for part of our education.” He shuddered.

I smiled. “You don’t like monks?”

“I always have suspicions of any man who can willingly turn his back on the finest of God’s creations.”

Brown velvet eyes met mine, and a shot of something warm and electric shot right through me, making my pulse pound harder in my throat—and other places. I decided I really wanted that drink now. Luckily, another of the ubiquitous floating trays was headed my way.

I moved forward and reached for a glass, at the same time as a man on the other side. My hand brushed the flute, toppling it and sending a splash of golden liquid onto his pristine white shirt. He looked down and I looked up, an apology on my lips. And that was where it stayed, as both of us froze in stunned recognition.

Because we knew each other, and neither one of us was supposed to be there.

Chapter Nine

I stared at the thin, vaguely horsey features and pale blue eyes of the mage in front of me, and hoped I was imagining things. He looked a little different in a well-fitted tux instead of seventeenth-century slops, his sandy blond hair slicked back instead of falling messily around his face. But it was him. The guy I’d once helped Agnes apprehend before he could blow history to kingdom come.

If I’d had any doubts, they were erased when he suddenly gave a screech, knocked the tray of drinks at me and bolted. A choking mass of thick, blue-black smoke boiled through the room as I stumbled back. Someone fired a gun and someone screamed. And then everything slowed down—literally.

The whole room suddenly looked like it was on slowmotion replay. I fell back into Mircea, my gown fluttering lazily around me, as the serving tray arced high in the air above. Glasses scattered, golden liquid sloshed and the silver surface flashed in the candlelight for a long moment....

And then sped back up and hit the floorboards with a crash. But it was barely audible over the sound of rapid-fire gunshots, breaking glass and the collective panic of a crowd unused to danger. Not that I was having much of a different reaction, and I was plenty used to it. I hit the ground instinctively, only to have Mircea grab me around the waist and jerk me back.

That was lucky, because the crowd took that moment to decide on the better part of valor, and there was a stampede. Ladies in fine gowns and men in tuxes forgot about elegance, threw away decorum and fought to be the first out the door. The place where I’d been kneeling a second ago was suddenly a mass of swirling hems and pounding feet.

“What happened?” Mircea asked, pushing me behind him.

“Agnes,” I gasped. The smoke burned at the back of my throat, making it hard to talk, hard to breathe. “She can manipulate time for short periods, stop it . . . slow it down . . . and she must have recognized him—”

“Recognized who?”

“The guy from the Guild,” I said, desperately trying to spot him in the crowd. But the smoke made it difficult to see anything, and most of the guests were taller than I was. I hiked up my skirts and scrambled onto a nearby table.

“What guild?” Mircea asked, but I didn’t answer. I could see over the crowd now, but not through the smoke. But there was something going on near the back of the room—spell fire lit up the haze in spots, like strobes on a dance floor. And most of the colors were in the red and orange range—offensive magic, war spells; not the soothing blues and greens of the protective end of the spectrum.

I hopped off the table and ran.

Mircea grabbed me before I’d gone a yard—and then flung us to the floor as a stray curse blistered the air overhead. It crashed into the window behind us, shattering the glass and sending fire running up the brocade curtains. More smoke, thick and smothering, added to the mix, threatening what little air was left in the room.

“Let me go!” I choked. “He’ll kill her!”

“Kill who?”

“My mother!”

“Who will?”

“The asshole from the Guild!”

“Listen to me.” Warm hands framed my face and dark eyes met mine. I felt the usual reassurance Mircea’s presence caused ramp up a few notches, soothing my fears, calming my mind—and depriving me of my edge. “Whatever is going on, it doesn’t succeed,” he assured me. “Nothing of importance happened tonight. My men were told specifically—”

“Nothing did happen,” I said, furious because I no longer was. “But something is happening. And if you don’t listen—”

But Mircea wasn’t. He’d pulled me to my feet as we argued and slipped an arm around my waist. And now he started to push his way through the crowd toward the nearest exit.

And then, just as suddenly, started to back up again.