by Kayleigh Sky
Make something.
Anything.
He turned on a light. The space had changed slightly. From the earthquake, he guessed, but most everything was in its place.
The knife he’d driven through one of his maps when he’d decided to go after the treasure was gone, the edges of the map rolled inward to join at the center. He pushed out one end and rerolled it into a single tube. He glanced around again with a frown. Something was missing, but it eluded him. He pulled off his shirt, turned on the oven, and perused his stock of glass. A sheet of moss green tugged at him. He had no idea in his head, no image in his imagination. No form or figure, only… Isaac.
The dawn crept through the tiny windows, and sunbeams reached up the far wall. A car started, and the rhythmic scratch-scratch of a rake came and went. Hours passed. His stomach growled, gave up, and fell silent.
Later, he stared at the green and gold twist of glass, mesmerized, but not quite satisfied. It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t Isaac… yet.
“It’s beautiful.”
He turned in bewilderment to fill his gaze with the real boy. Flesh and blood standing beside the happy-faced Jessa.
“We’re here for our lesson.”
“Your lesson?”
“You’re teaching us to blow glass.”
“Oh.”
He nodded, discombobulated, and not sure this wasn’t a dream, but a dream too good to let go of—the kind that had gotten him through nights too dark to remember—so he held onto it.
He sighed. “Come here then.”
He had to give Jessa credit for lasting longer than usual. After an hour, he said, “Okay. The sun’s going down, and I have stuff to do in the garden. See you at dinner.”
Isaac’s gaze followed his departure. Jessa left the door open. Rune went to it and peered after him but spoke to Isaac who still stood near the hot stove. He’d kept using his shirt to wipe at the sweat that must have been running down his ribs. He blew his moppy bangs out of his eyes.
Rune closed the door and turned back to him. “How’s your room?”
“Rooms. Still nice.”
“Is that where you’re staying?”
Isaac shrugged. “Is it okay?”
Sleep with me. Stay with me.
“Of course. You make Jessa happy.”
A flash of pain crossed Isaac’s face. “I hope so.”
For fuck sake, you ball-less bastard, you’re a king.
“I don’t think of anyone but you, Isaac.”
Shock surfaced in Isaac’s eyes, slipping away a second later. “I wasn’t sure.”
“You kept me sane. I still can’t say I did the right thing, but I think I did, and without you… I lost hope so many times. I wanted to give up so many times. I’m sick of death. Of blood.”
A slow smile grew on Isaac’s face. “You know what I do for a living, right?”
“You’re a cook.”
His smile widened, and his cheeks flushed pink. “I want to be.”
“You are. I want you to stay with me, Isaac, but I’ll help you do whatever you want. I know you came home with me, but maybe that’s because of Jessa, or just wanting to be back in Comity. No matter what you want to do, or where you want to go, I’ll help you. Nobody should sacrifice everything.”
Isaac’s smile was gone, and he held Rune in his stare for a few long seconds. “For a smart guy, you aren’t very smart.”
Rune blinked, annoyance heating his blood a moment later. “Is that so?”
Isaac nodded. “Oh yeah. I didn’t come here because of Jessa. I love him to death, but he didn’t need me. He already had Otto. I was happy here, though. I didn’t leave because I didn’t like it. I got lucky finding Asa and getting a job at the manor, and I didn’t want to go to Essie’s, but I’m glad I did, because I’m the one who got the map. I’m the one who was supposed to. I didn’t refuse to give it to you because I wanted to go on a fuckin’ treasure hunt and almost die. I’ve been following you for over a year. How can you not know I want to be with you? I don’t care if you’re a king. You aren’t my king. You’re my fated. You need me because I don’t care you’re a king. You could have anybody you want, but you want me, and I need that. I love you.”
“I’m not your king?”
His voice was a whisper, as quiet as the steps that slowly took him across the room.
Isaac’s smart aleck face went shy again. “Maybe my boyfriend?”
“My swain,” Rune murmured. “My true heart. The truest heart I’ve ever known. You followed me when I thought I was alone.”
Isaac’s gaze rose as he stopped in front of him. “You don’t ever have to be alone again. I know what that’s like.”
Rune reached up, fingertips gliding across Isaac’s flushed cheek. “From now on, we are your family.”
He bent, and Isaac rose until their lips met. He groaned and wound his arms around Isaac’s back. Mine.
Isaac nodded against his mouth and tangled his fingers into his hair. His sweaty scent swamped Rune’s senses. “Take off your clothes,” he groaned. Mine, mine, mine…
“Mine too,” Isaac gasped.
“Yes. Now your clothes. Obey me.”
“You’re not my king.”
He nodded. “Please.”
Isaac grinned and nodded back. “Okay.”
Willowy. He was willowy, not skinny. The color of moonstone kissed with rose quartz. Eyes of moss. Made of the immortal elements of both their worlds. Rune stood back and feasted his eyes. Isaac’s blush deepened. He stepped from his jeans and cupped his dick and balls.
Rune cocked his head. “Do I scare you?”
“You have fangs.”
“You have my heart.”
A laugh spilled from Isaac’s lips. “That’s pretty. You should be a poet.”
He shook his head. “I’m an artist.” And then it came to him. The thing missing from his studio. “Where is the statue you put back together?”
“Is Jessa’s room. We bolted it to the wall.”
“I’ll have to go see it.”
Isaac squinted. “Can we not have a conversation right now?”
“What do you want?”
“You. Naked.”
“You’re not my king,” he murmured.
Isaac grinned. “Wanna bet?” he quipped.
Yes, Isaac was his king. His everything.
He stripped off his jeans, picked Isaac up, and carried him to the table where everything had started a year and half ago. He sat him on the edge, brushed the maps onto the floor, and climbed over him.
The heat inside Isaac combined with the muggy air still wafting from the cooling oven to drown him in gasps and sticky skin. Isaac’s thighs squeezed the air from his lungs. He stole Rune’s breath with a desperate kiss, dragging his head down. “Yes… Oh fuck…”
He drove in hard and fast. Nothing was going to last. He was going to shatter like the statue bolted to a wall. A strange panic fought with his lust until the image of the new statue, green and gold with shots of rose, floated through his thoughts. Isaac grunted and rocked underneath him, meeting his thrusts with wide, stunned, blown eyes. He clawed at Rune’s back, raking fire across his skin, his arms strong and sweat-beaded. Rune twisted his head and mouthed the salty taste. It stung his broken fang, and the pain cleared his head.
“Mine,” he growled.
His fated. His destiny. His sins. His redemption in the arms of his love. He threw his head back, the fire in him erupting, spilling out, and Isaac’s cry found him in the dark.
Mine.
54
Isaac’s New Home
Bettina was supposedly in her mid-sixties, but Isaac didn’t believe it. She appeared forty and had as much snark as Mal. But she was teaching Isaac how to cook vampire dishes, and after Isaac’s complaining that she cooked from memory and didn’t know exact measurements, she recited each one they cooked together in precise detail while he carefully wrote them down and added new pages to Marcus’s binder.
/> Maybe he’d find a job in a restaurant, or maybe he’d cook for the Seneras, or maybe a million other things.
He straightened in his chair. “I might open my own restaurant. We can serve human and vampire food. As soon as I get better,” he added.
Bettina snorted. “Well, in the meantime, you’d better take the tarts out of the oven before they burn.”
“Oh shit.” He jumped up and grabbed his oven mitts. The aroma of licorice flooded from the oven. They looked good, and he sprinkled the tops with sugar—his own contribution—and carefully arranged them on a tray.
“Very pretty,” Bettina said.
His cheeks hurt with the size of his smile, because Bettina was the queen of moon lace tarts. And this was the first time they’d been made here in several years. Rune said moon lace cost as much as caviar. Which Isaac had never had, and after learning what it was, didn’t want to have. He didn’t mind the moon lace tarts, though they had a strange, not quite licorice flavor.
Bettina raised her eyebrows. “Where are you putting them?”
“I have a special hiding place.” He was damned if Jessa was devouring all his tarts before dinner. “I’ll be right back.”
He carried the tray toward the receiving hall, but cut around it through the dining room. Rune had been in there for days, meeting with the families and their emissaries. Isaac hoped the meetings would eventually slow to a trickle because he didn’t think he’d seen Rune for more than an hour in the past forty-eight. But he wasn’t alone either—the air echoed with his name on a whisper. It struck him like a song one of his caregivers had sung when he was little. Unchained Melody, she’d called it. “That’s my favorite love song.” The lyrics were long gone from his memory, and only the melody hung in the air, but all that mattered was that it was a love song, and it was his.
No sound came through the thick walls. He took the back stairs to his rooms and Rune’s studio. He didn’t sleep here, but the rooms were his, and he loved to hide away for a few peaceful hours of reading. Sometimes he thought he should pinch himself, but he wasn’t going to do that.
He used his shoulder to push open the door to Rune’s studio and took the tray to the oven. For a moment, he was afraid it wasn’t big enough, but the tray slid in. Good. He was pretty sure Jessa would never look here, even if he did smell them in the kitchen and try to hunt them down.
Brushing his hands off on his jeans as he turned to head back out, his gaze fell on the green and gold statue. It stood on a stone plinth Rune had brought in a few days ago. Anchored to it. “As all things should be,” Rune had said.
That wasn’t how life worked, but Isaac didn’t tell him that. He just wrapped an arm around Rune’s waist and went upstairs with him.
When he returned to the kitchen, Bettina handed him a pitcher. “Here. Take this to the pool, and go enjoy yourself for a while.”
He accepted the lemonade. Slices of strawberries floated in it. “You don’t need my help?”
She raised an eyebrow.
Guess not.
A moment later, he crossed the sunny patio to the pool where Mal and Clara sat under an umbrella, Rowena sprawled in the shade of the table, while Jessa lay with his eyes closed on a chaise lounge in the slant of shade from another umbrella.
“Oh, good,” Mal called out. “We’re baking.”
Isaac thought it was barely eighty, but… vampires.
He gave Mal the pitcher, and she handed him a full glass back. After scrubbing Rowena under the ears, he sat on the edge of Jessa’s chaise lounge. A single eye opened, then both. A line creased Jessa’s forehead, and he sniffed.
“Why do you smell like moon lace?”
“I don’t.” He took a swallow of his lemonade.
Jessa’s frown deepened with suspicion, but he closed his eyes again. Isaac grinned at Mal’s wink.
It wasn’t too hot for him, and an afternoon sitting poolside with a glass of lemonade was close to heaven, a chance at a world far from his favorite dark and gritty detective novels.
A chance that only came around once or twice in a lifetime.
And he’d take it.
55
Home Again
The last vampire left the hall, Otto shrugging from his jacket as he followed her.
Rune bent his head side to side, stretching his neck. His muscles knotted, and he let out a groan as he rose from the throne.
The hall looked massive without anybody in it. Much of the castle was original, but he’d added three times to its size in the first few years after the Upheaval. Sometimes he’d wondered why since he hadn’t been a king anymore and didn’t need much of it. But the darkness of the inner rooms and the lofty ceilings reminded him of home. He’d kept the pit in the dungeon Qudim had used for his hapless enemies, but he’d instructed Uriah to hire workers to fill it now. Maybe Isaac could use the space as an extra pantry or wine cellar.
He strode through the hall in the direction Otto had taken and climbed the stairs to his room. Our room.
He yanked loose his shirt as he headed for the bathroom, steeping in the scents of Isaac. And licorice. Moon lace? Coming from somewhere. He glanced around the bedroom. So tidy. Isaac insisted on making the bed every morning.
“We have servants, Isaac.”
“I know. It’s creepy.”
“It’s a job. We pay them. You know, so they have money.”
Isaac’s face had turned mulish. “I like to make the bed.”
So the bed was made, the veranda doors open to let in the fresh air and the sound of splashes and laughter, the clothes he’d dumped on the floor the night before draped neatly over the back of a chair. Isaac’s doing. That had taken Rune aback at first, because he wouldn’t have called himself a slob before. “Nothing wrong with being comfortable.”
He’d chalked up comfort-points from all the times he’d spent in places where having a threadbare tent would have counted as a luxury.
His bedroom was a place to relax.
But his discarded clothes went into the hamper this time before he climbed into the shower.
He washed quickly, combed his fingers through his hair, pulled on a pair of jeans, and padded back downstairs.
“Hey, Bettina.” He kissed her temple. “Do I smell moon lace tarts?”
“None that I made.”
“And no Jessa?”
She chuckled, setting a peeled potato into a pot of water and picking up another one. “We’re keeping it a secret.”
“Where are they?”
Her chuckle turned into a laugh. She twisted a look over her shoulder. “Good try.”
Damn.
He went outside, the patio warm on his bare feet. For a moment, he stood still and let it soak in. Jessa’s voice rose from around the corner. “It’s mine!”
“I got here first.” Isaac.
“You did not.”
“For God’s sake,” Otto growled. “Sit with me.”
Rune moved on and rounded the corner. Clara smiled when she saw him but made no comment. Maybe she understood and was letting him have this moment. Mal sat in a chair beside her, sunglasses on despite the umbrella. Isaac lay back on a chaise lounge, hair and shorts wet, arms crossed over his chest, smiling a smug smile at Jessa, who sat with Otto on one of the chaise lounges. Otto sprawled, eyes closed, arm wrapped around Jessa’s waist. Would Abbalith work for Jessa? It didn’t matter. It stopped mattering on that warm spring day a year and a half ago when Otto had arrived on their doorstep with his cop partner. Remembering that brought the sound of Wen’s voice flowing through Rune’s head like a departing wave. Abomination… abomination. It was the first time he realized what Wen really thought of drainers. Of Jessa. But no. Never an abomination. And if Rune truly was a killer, he would have wiped Wen from the face of the earth right then. He’d hurt Jessa thinking Wen was the best they could do.
But that was over.
Isaac looked sideways at Jessa. “You won’t be mad at me forever.”
“Not after
I get even.”
They stared at each other, then burst out laughing.
“Hurry up now,” Bettina said, coming up behind him with a fresh pitcher of lemonade.
Rune trailed after her, marveling at the way Jessa’s hair caught the light, glowing like one of his Gold Star flowers. “They bloom twice.”
Rune liked that thought, because maybe this was Rune’s second bloom too, golden, though bought with blood. More precious than any other. Because this time…
This time, he had all the treasure in the world.
BONUS CONTENT
1
Bonus Content
Character Sketches, Notes, and Early Synopsis
* * *
What follows is some of the early, and also evolving, work I did throughout the writing of the Ellowyn Found series, so some of it might be rough (and unedited), but I thought I’d share the process. I never intended to write a trilogy, but I’ve always loved vampires and wanted to test my ability to write a mystery. Along the way I met one of my favorite characters, who has found a forever place in my heart. He was incredibly closed mouthed in the beginning. I knew almost nothing about him, not even how he looked, only that he was Jessa’s brother. Then one day I saw a picture, and it was like a lightning strike—Rune. From that moment on, he blossomed in my imagination and slowly took over the trajectory of the story. It became a trilogy that evolved as I wrote it. I never knew exactly where I was going and only vaguely began to suspect that Qudim was still alive in book 2 (which for many reasons, personal and otherwise, is my favorite of the books). So what you’re seeing here grew over the course of the year or so it took me to write all three books, which means that a lot of what you’ll read here won’t match what ended up in the stories. I often outline and seldom follow my outlines. Sometimes I do character sketches, sometimes I don’t. Every book has its own life and its own demands.