Carmen Dominique Taxer

“Ida tried not to sigh.“What do you think of your husband?” he asked.“He was rather short,” Ida said without thinking. When Aubrey didn’t respond, she thought that maybe she ought to elaborate and she said, “And beardy.”That was as much as she could remember of him in the midst of the chaotic events. He was short, bearded, quiet. But mostly short.“He used to be an officer,” Aubrey said.“So I have been told,” Ida tried, again, to keep the cheek from her voice though she was quite certain that she was failing.“In the Varangian army,” Aubrey continued.She resisted the urge to comment on how she didn’t care.”

“Whatever binds us, ripples through us all. We might not all be shadow, but we are all human. I remind myself every night. I am a man. I always will be.And I will always, fiercely, defend my loves, to the very end.Let it come.”

“We blended and look to what it has brought us.I planted lilies on your grave. The rain is already splattering them with dripping dew.May they last another hundred years, Gerard.A hundred years of lilies.”

“She reached forward and lifted her uncle up into her arms. He was still too weak to resist, and she comforted him with a stroke of her fingers through his greying hair, softly kissing his lips, tasting the blood with a shiver of anticipation, and moving her kisses to his cheek, the line of his jaw, the crook of his neck where his pulse thundered to push the shadowy blood to its destinations.“Know that, when I do this, I’m doing it, to ease your suffering,” she whispered, lips pressed to his skin, her fangs pressing behind them hungrily.”

“I know what you’re doing,” he whispered to Raphael, whose movements only became more fervent, and the thought slipped from the boy’s mind so that he became dazed and undone with pleasure, staring up at the ceiling, watching as it blurred and became indistinct, and he felt the rising rush of pleasure, until he cried out in a sharp gasp.And the pleasure went on and on, as it did, unbearably, until either Raphael took pity on him, or he pushed his Genitor away. Whichever it was, the pleasure that was leaking into pain, stopped, and he was lifted and laid down on the stone, cold and hard under his spine, and Raphael was bent over him, kissing up this time, up to his lips, flicking his tongue at them, and whispering: “Don’t question my love for you. Ever again.”

“Father and the child were no longer speaking, but they sat together in silence. The child was at his feet, and he sat, up in his throne, his eyes on the sky as well.It made her smile. They existed beneath the same stretch of stars. They loved the same night blanket above them.She looked at him, taking the opportunity to relish in his distraction to study him, his midnight hair, his pale body, only barely covered by the cloak, the fur of it distractingly like his hair, his lips just parted enough that his fangs were visible, his deep violet eyes, his long, elegant fingers, stroking the…She swallowed back pain that rose up her throat as she watched Father stroking the boy’s hair. Sitting together like that, the similarities between them were bewitching. She frowned, glancing once, disdainfully at the wavy-haired child with the slanted green eyes, walking to her Father’s throne and bending her knee in a bow.There was a sound like a chuckle, and she looked up at him. He was smiling at her. It warmed the quiet cold in her chest.“Come,” he said in his sonorous voice, and the darkness whispered with it, a thousand voices in varying degrees of age, gender, depth and lifted sweetness, all speaking together. She moved closer to him, sitting where his arm wound around her shoulder, fitting them together like childish toy blocks.”

“Dmitri’s nerves calmed as he walked through the hedgerow maze, easily finding his way to the centre, sitting awhile.He had walked the grounds three times, before he finally went into the graveyard, looking for Sveta’s grave. It was easy to find. Easier since he had been to it every night since her passing. When he closed his eyes, he could still see her, strawberry hair blowing in the afternoon autumn wind, face flushed with laughter, eyes sparkling.She’d been a plain girl too. But she’d loved him.”