Sunny: Mona Lisa Craving

I’d taken him not just into my body but into my heart. In the midst of sadness and loss, I’d found love again, unexpectedly. It was because I loved Dontaine that I needed to talk to him now. So that he did not continue to look at me that way—with love and happiness.

It had only been one day since we’d returned from my testimony at High Queen’s Council. And we’d spent most of it reassuring my people here that I would not be blamed or punished for Mona Louisa’s death, that everything was okay. But that was a lie. While things may be okay Council-wise—or as much as it could be after a stir like that— I wasn’t okay. And only Dontaine knew the truth of this.

I stepped back from my lover’s touch. Dropped my eyes from his compelling male beauty, from the tempting loveliness of his form, from the raw and tender heart he offered up to me with those expressive green eyes. I took a hard step back from it all and said, “We need to talk, Dontaine.”

A beat of silence. When he spoke, it was with quiet tension thrumming in his voice. “That never bodes well.”

I guess that was a rule that held true not only for humans but for the Monère also.

“I will dress,” he said quietly, and I retreated to a corner chair as he opened the armoire and began to pull on clothes. I would have stared out the window had there been one, but there was none in this simple cabin. I passed the time instead with an intricate study of the wood-planked floor.

I felt his presence as he neared and sat by my feet. There were no other chairs. I would have felt better had he stood instead of seating himself on the floor below me, a gesture that placed him lower than I, made him even more vulnerable to me.

My eyes lifted from my perusal of the floor, met his, and flicked away. I couldn’t say what I had to say to him while looking into those unshielded eyes.

“Dontaine.” Just his name for a moment, so lovely upon my lips. Then came the blow. “We cannot be lovers.”

He didn’t say anything, so I rushed to fill in the pregnant silence. “I care for you. You know that.” It was a truth that he’d seen in my eyes. “But you also know that there is something very, very wrong with me. You’ve asked no questions.”

“There has been no time. No opportunity.”

“There is now. Do you have any questions for me?”

A strained silence. Then he asked not what I would have asked after all that confused madness that had occurred two nights ago, but what was most important to him. “Why can we not be lovers?”

His hands, long-fingered and elegant, an aristocrat’s hands, were folded neatly around his bended knees as he sat there on the wooden floor. I focused on those hands, remembered how they had felt on me, in me, caressing me, and looked blindly away.

“You and I know that it was not my beast’s hunger that almost overwhelmed me at High Court.” Though that was what we’d told everyone else. Even Tomas, my other guard who’d been there that night, believed it to be true. “It was bloodlust, Dontaine. Demon bloodlust.”

“It is because of Halcyon, the Demon Prince. When you accompanied him.” Dontaine’s words, more of a statement than a real question, referred to the time when I had returned with Halcyon to Hell. When my Demon Prince had been so severely injured because of me…always because of me, it seemed…that he could not make the trip safely home by himself. Hell was a dangerous place, even for its ruler.

I closed my eyes, picking my answer carefully, tiptoeing among all the lies to pick a truth that I could tell him. “Not in the way you think. I wasn’t infected then. But you’re right, it does involve Halcyon.” It certainly involved his blood, which Mona Louisa had taken from him against his will, breaking one of their greatest taboos—drinking a demon’s blood. She’d blood-raped Halcyon. And I, in turn, had light-raped her. Now both of their essences dwelled within me. And all of this had to remain a secret. Unknown.

Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, Halcyon’s father, had killed a score of Monère warriors and their Queen—Mona Louisa, the demon blood violator—to keep this secret: that drinking their blood can multiply a Monère’s power, endowing them with demon dead strength. I did not want the next blood bath to be that of my men.

“It involves Mona Louisa, too,” I said, and told Dontaine nothing he did not already know. He’d seen my brown eyes turn blue, turn into Mona Louisa’s eyes. “How, I cannot say. Only that it was the reason why the High Lord of Hell killed her.”

“But he spared you. Does he know that you have some of their essence in you?”

A good question. The High Lord had seen me drain Mona Louisa of her light, her energy. He had spared me, believing that keeping my Monère secret—my extremely rare, extremely dangerous gift of Mortal Draining, that light-drinking thing I had done—would ensure the keeping of his demon secret. But the real reason he had spared me was because his son, Halcyon, had named me as his mate. Because after six hundred years alone, he had found love.

Still…that was before Blaec knew that his demon secret dwelled as a living presence within me. That it had infected me. That it evidenced within me everything they tried to keep hidden from the Monères. Would he still have spared me had he known this? I would know soon enough. Lucinda, Halcyon’s sister, had been at High Court, and her presence there had brought out the demon taint in me. There’d been no hiding it from her. She knew what existed within me—what was changing me—and would have reported that to the High Lord and to Halcyon. Death resided within me, most likely lay before me.

“Lucinda will have told them by now,” I said. “If the High Lord, or if Halcyon…if they come to kill me, you are not to try to stop them or seek revenge.”

Dontaine froze into a stillness that unnerved me.

“They will be within their rights, Dontaine. Do you understand?”

He shook his head, his voice sounding harsh and strained. “No. I do not understand.”

“It was something that I did. Something I brought upon myself. I’m sorry to lay this burden on you, but if anything happens to me, you are the only one who knows. The only one who can testify before the Council that I hold Halcyon and the High Lord blameless.”

“For executing you,” he said. “If two of our Queens are killed by demon hand, even if it is by the High Lord himself again, it will not sit well with the High Queens Council.”

“What will they do? Go to war with them?” My laugh was short and bitter. “They would be slaughtered. As would you, all of you here. Everyone I love and hold dear.” I closed the distance between us, gripped his hand tight. Felt his electric touch dance with shocking little jolts upon my skin. The sensation was sharper, more painful than normal, betraying his leaking distress. “Dontaine, promise me that you will not lift your hand against them if they come for me.”

A hard, painful jolt shot from his hand to mine, making me gasp. He drew his hand away so that we no longer touched. “Are you asking me, or ordering me?”

I searched his eyes, those green tumultuous depths. “You are my master at arms. With command comes great responsibility. You hold our people’s safety in your hands. Would you see your mother, your sister, killed for no purpose? Would you throw away their lives—your life—so easily? I ask it of you but if I must, I will order it. Must I, Dontaine? Must I demand it of you?”

His eyes dropped away from mine. “Mona Lisa…What you ask of me…”

I went into his arms then because I loved him. Because I was hurting him, and I did not want to. I went into his arms because the torment I glimpsed in his beautiful eyes just plain broke my heart.