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

by S.T. Gibson

Her fingers tangled in my hair and she giggled as I brought her closer and closer to the brink, my ow...

Lying with her made me feel so vibrantly alive. It was almost enough to make me forget that I was already dead.

She was the picture of coquettish contrition, but I was beginning to know her well enough to know that it was, at least in part, an act. We all developed our tricks for dealing with you: my invisibility, her sweetness.

, for my part, tried not to hold against you how you came to love her. You hadn’t set out looking for a new bride. You had simply fallen in love, just the same way I had fallen in love when you had presented Magdalena and me to each other. I couldn’t blame you for that, could I?

I tried to banish the clamoring thoughts of how long you must have been writing letters to her without my knowledge or consent, telling her all about our life together. Winning her over to your side.

I tried to be generous with you, my love… but the seeds of doubt, once planted, put down deep and stubborn roots.

You never once thought I would have the strength to disobey you, did you? The possibility that my will was stronger than yours never even crossed your mind.

I just needed to know if you had been courting her for years, right under my nose, or if your fascination with her was as recent as you claimed. I found her letters, my love. And I found so many more.

The priest had told me that God was in everything, in the communion bread and in the cry of newborn babies and even in me. It had made me feel clean as newly fallen snow to hear him say that. But it had been a long time since I had felt clean.

“Please, God,” I begged, my tiniest whisper echoing through the cavernous cathedral. “Make me strong. I’m so tired of being weak.”

I was merely a supplicant, a pilgrim who had stumbled across your dark altar and was doomed to worship at it for ever.

You made it into an art form, this quiet sort of violence. You were so far into our heads your gentle suggestions so often felt like our own thoughts.

Love is violence, my darling; it is a thunderstorm that tears apart your world. More often than not, love ends in tragedy, but we go on loving in the hope that this time, it will be different.

I craved you like maidens crave the grave, the way death burns for human touch: inconsolably, unrelentingly, aching for the annihilation in your kiss.

There was nowhere for me to go. There had never been anywhere for me to go.

Alexi gave a little whimper, and for a moment I thought he was begging for the pain to stop. But then I realized he was asking for more.

“I need friends. Don’t you understand? The way I need blood, or rest. I’ll lose my mind without them.” “You have your sisters.” “We cannot exist only for each other!” Alexi screamed, right in your face.

“Yes. And if we should ever be parted, my prince, I would hunt you down across the continents like my own little rabbit, do you understand?”

“It would be easier if he hated us,” she said. “But he loves us all terribly. And if we go on letting him love us, that love is going to kill us. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

I saw every soft moment we had shared flicker over your face, and you were so beautiful. Desperate, vulnerable. Fear for your life made you look like a man who could really love and be loved, like you might hand over your heart and all its secrets without my having to crack your ribs open to get to them.

I was simply a non-entity when you weren’t looking at me, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the sweet water of your attention.

Constanta was beautiful enough to make an apostle out of an apostate, and I was no exception. I wanted to worship at the cathedral of her body until she cried out like ringing Sunday mass bells.

“Constance,” I said, my voice hoarse with desire. “Please.” “Use your words, Alexi,” Magdalena said, threading her long-nailed fingers through my curls. “Ask for what you want.” “I want both of you. At the same time. Please.”