A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1)

by S.T. Gibson

You were the air I breathed and the blood in my nursing cup; I knew nothing else except the strength of your arms and the scent of your hair and the lines of your long white fingers. I lost myself so entirely in charting the contours of my love for you that there wasn’t any room for tracking time. There wasn’t any room to examine the past or the future; there was only the eternal now.

God, how I adored you. It went beyond love, beyond devotion. I wanted to dash myself against your rocks like a wave, obliterate my old self and see what rose shining and new from the sea foam. The only words I had to describe you in those early days were plunging cliffside or primordial sea, crystal-cold stars or black expanse of sky.

In my mind, I was God’s lovely angel of judgment, come to unsheathe the sword of divine wrath against those who truly deserved it.

The force of your love nearly drove me to my knees. I was no woman; I was merely a supplicant, a pilgrim who had stumbled across your dark altar and was doomed to worship at it for ever.

Love is violence, my darling;

After that whole debacle with the Harkers he was sullen for months.” “Who are the Harkers?” “Before your time, dear; just some dreadful Victorians.”

I was tired of the circumference of the whole universe living in your circled arms, of the spark of life hiding in your kiss, of the power of death lying in wait in your teeth. I was tired of carrying around the weight of a love like worship, of the sickly-warm rush of idolatry coloring my whole world.

Slowly, the noose of your love was loosening around my neck.