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The door clicked open silently but the sound it made when she closed it Alina feared - was enough to wake the dead. Against her neck, and under her dark nightgown, the cross necklace her mother and father had given her felt cool against her skin. Body chilled in the night air. The body where her heart sat, beating in her chest like a butterfly flapping its wings.
It had been four weeks.
Four weeks since Nikolai had pressed the silver dagger in her hand and told her of the vampire that lived up in the high manor.
Four weeks since she had stormed into his home with dreams of defeating him.
Four weeks since the two of them had fought to a stand still, their powers clashing against each other.
Since the agreement. The bargain.
If she could get him to fall in love with her. In love with the humanity she offered - her light - he would walk into the sun and she would never have to see him again.
However -
If she was tempted by the darkness in him - in the shadowy undercurrent that he offered her - she would walk into the dark and not look back.
An easy bargain, she had thought. Alina was not easily charmed or swayed by simple things. But that was before. Before the dinners, before the night in his library, before things had spun wildly out of control for both of them. Not yet in whispers against skin, but in accidental brushes of hand to hand. A horse race in the moonlight. The fountain meeting.
Nikolai and the other hunters must have gotten itchy when they had not heard back from her. And so - and so - and so - that evening as the sun sunk under the dark sky - Mal had come blustering in. With so little foresight for what he was getting himself into. In the hopes of a rescue. A knight in shining armor that she had not needed since she had turned eighteen and she had stood between him, and a horde, her connection to the light stronger than it had ever been. When she had burned the army of the undead away. Ash.
So now it was her, and Aleksander’s darkened study, and the key she swore she had seen him store as he had locked Mal away with the promises of death to the person who had dared interrupt their wager.
She reached his desk and pulled out a drawer, another, another, another, shuffled papers and moved books about. Touched the top of each compartment, and found no key.
Frustrated, she leaned on his desk, palms against the grain. Which is when she heard it. The click of a lock. Without thinking, without thought, she summoned light to her hand and cast a ball of it towards the door that opened in front of her. The edge of it caught Aleksander’s cheek - as he turned to avoid it - and the flesh there sizzled. He stared at her as he brought his hand up and brushed the wound away with a flick of shadow, riding himself of the garish mark.
What is yours can heal you, her mother had told her, before a creature of the night had taken her.
“Alina.”
She stared at him and didn’t flinch at his intense gaze, “Aleksander.”
“Lift the book to your right,” he eyed his desk, and Alina stared at the stack of books that almost touched her fingers. She picked them up, “Feel.”
Under her fingers she felt the shape of a hidden panel, invisible to the naked eye. She glanced up at him one more time before she pressed down on it. A snick, as a hidden drawer, “Clever,” she mused.
Quickly reached for the drawer, but before she could Aleksander was in front of her, his hand on her wrist. Not meant to bruise, not meant to hurt, but to merely stop her. To make her consider, “Is that what you want Alina?”
Her hand had come up, between them, and a soft light spread out where it touched his chest. Not meant to burn, not meant to hurt, but merely as a promise. To make him consider, “I can’t just have you kill my friend, as much as it would give you pleasure to do so.”
He released his hand at the same time she removed hers, and he opened the drawer. Pulled out the key and stored it in the folds of the midnight black robe he was wearing. Tucking it near his heart. In the darkness his eyes flickered, “You know of the story regarding the snake, the woman, the man, and god, do you not?”
Alina walked to the other side of the desk to put room between them, “And the apple.”
“You do,” he smiled, but it was not kind, “Good.”
“Everyone knows of it,” she told him voice biting, “It is a rather universal story.”
In a blink, He found her again, on the side of the desk where she had strategically placed herself, “In it, a snake gives a woman an apple. Knowledge. And she shares it with man. So god - angry - casts them out of paradise.”
She was bored already, and turned from him to walk to the round table in the center of the room. A table that years ago must have been used for planning wars, for laboring over moves and tactics, with the map that had been carved into it. Before Aleksander killed the owners of this home. A table that Aleksander now used for his chessboard, to hold his wines and glasses, stacked high with books and items he had collected since taking ownership of the manor. She picked up the black king and danced it between her fingers, “I am already bored.”
Tutting, she put the cheese piece down on the board again, and turned to look at him. He was closer than before, having crossed the room halfway to her, “It has always been interesting to me, how man and god blamed the woman. For wanting to know true pleasure when she tasted an apple, for desiring to understand how truly sweet it was.”
Alina cocked an eyebrow, challenging him with her words, actions, “One cannot enjoy an apple without knowledge?”
“Of course not,” he continued, “You can eat it of course. And find enjoyment there, but without true knowledge of what it is you are eating, the red is not truly red. The flesh lacks the sugar that dances across the palate when you bite down.”
She leaned against the table, fingers curling around the edge as he grew closer, “Are you god then? Or the man?”
“I am the snake,” she laughed at his presumption, but he did not let it bother him, “The only one who truly understood what the woman desired.”
“The snake ran after giving the woman what she wanted. Leaving her to face the consequences alone,” Alina told him, “The creature was not without its own faults.”
His voice was pleased when he next spoke, “Are you asking me to stay?”
Aleksander had reached her now, and his fingers danced up her arm, leaving a trail of pin pricks in their wake, blood answering the siren's call of touch, “Are you telling me you won’t run?”
His eyes bore down into hers and he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I am.”
She leaned back, so she could look at him, his body now pressed so impossibly close to hers, “That still leaves the problem of the man,” she told him, “Locked in the cellar.”
“Men can be freed,” he answered with such conviction, “His paradise does not have to be the one found between the woman and -”
“The monster,” she finished for him.
She opened her legs, just a little, and he settled between them, fingers lighting touching upon her thighs, “Am I a monster now?”
With iron strength he pulled her closer into him still, space between them lost, “Only because you’re mine,” she replied.
Without warning his mouth crashed down onto hers. Devouring. Warm. She felt when he lost control, when a sharp fang nicked the corner of her lip, and split blood between them that he drank from her as if it was a precious nektar. She breathed into his mouth, panting softly. Wanting. Needing. Tangled his fingers in his hair as the old war table creaked under them, “Stay,” he spoke between moments, when he could find to remember his own mind, “Human, vampire, I do not care. As long as you stay. As long as you are mine.”
And Alina, who had drunk his wine, and read his books, and seen him smile in the moonlight answered, “Yes,” into the eternal night.