Chapter 3: Morning After the Binding
Felix awoke to the slow, steady rhythm of a heart that wasn’t his own. It was a deep, silent percussion felt rather than heard, a vibration through the cool, solid form behind him. His cheek was pressed against fine black silk. His leg was thrown haphazardly over a thigh as hard as seasoned oak. One of his hands was fisted loosely in the front of a shirt he didn’t remember unbuttoning.
He was curled, entirely of his own sleeping volition, into the curve of Lord Caspian Voss’s body like a comma seeking shelter.
Heat flooded his face, a mortifying blush that swept from his chest to the roots of his hair. He froze, praying to any deity listening for the power of spontaneous invisibility. Perhaps if he stayed perfectly still, he could will himself back to the edge of the bed without detection.
The arm around his waist, which had seemed merely possessive in the dark, now felt like a bench vise. He dared to lift his gaze.
Caspian was already awake. He was propped on one elbow, his mercury eyes open and fixed on Felix with a scrutiny that felt surgical. The dawn’s weak, colored light from the tree-of-silver-fruit window fractured across his pale face, catching the elegant lines of his cheekbones, the dark fan of his lashes. He didn’t look sleepy. He looked like he had been watching for hours, studying a peculiar insect that had crawled into his sheets.
“You,” Caspian stated, his voice a low rasp unused to morning, “are a tactile nuisance.”
Felix jerked backward, disentangling his limbs with a graceless scramble. “I was cold! It’s a biological imperative to seek warmth. You’re basically a sentient tomb, so don’t act surprised.” He sat up, putting a foot of precious space between them. The grandeur of the room was softer in the grey light, revealing seams in the velvet, a fine layer of dust on a distant gilded mirror that reflected only the shuddering flame of a single candle.
Caspian sat up with an effortless, fluid motion. “Your biological imperatives are of no interest to me. The warding held. You are alive. That is the extent of my concern.”
“Lucky me,” Felix muttered, running a hand through his hopeless auburn curls. He felt grimy, exhausted, and desperately in need of a toothbrush. “So, what’s the agenda for the doomed spouse today? Orientation? A handbook on not getting eviscerated? Do I get a tour of the dungeons?”
“There will be a ceremony tonight.”
The words were flat, final. They dropped into the room like stones.
“What kind of ceremony?” Felix asked, his flippancy evaporating.
“The blooding.” Caspian swung his legs over the side of the bed, his back to Felix. He was a silhouette of elegant menace against the stained glass. “The contract is magically binding, but for the supernatural world to recognize it—for the protections to be fully anchored to your fragile mortal shell—the bond must be… made physical. Consummated, in a manner of speaking.”
A cold knot tightened in Felix’s stomach. “Consummated. You mean sex?”
Caspian glanced over his shoulder, one dark brow arched in contemptuous amusement. “Do not be revoltingly reductive. I mean blood. A exchange. My blood will strengthen you, tether your life force to mine. A taste of yours will… finalize the claim.”
The world tilted. Felix’s mouth went dry. “No. Absolutely not. You are not drinking my blood. I’ve seen the films. I know how this goes.”
“You know nothing.” Caspian rose to his full height, turning. The room seemed to shrink around him. “This is not a cinematic fantasy. It is a political and mystical necessity. Without it, you are a signature on a page, easily disputed, easier to destroy. With it, you carry my mark in your veins. Those who would harm you would have to answer directly to me. The threat becomes exponentially more… personal.”
“And my consent?” Felix shot back, standing on knees that felt weak. “Does that factor in anywhere? Or did that get waived with the fine print on the haunted marriage license?”
“Your consent was inscribed the moment you pricked your finger and smeared your blood beside your name.” Caspian took a step closer. The air grew colder. “The magic accepted it. The old powers do not care for your buyer’s remorse.”
“I was drunk!”
“Irrelevant.”
Felix’s heart was hammering against his ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. The clinical way Caspian spoke—of claims, tethers, political recognition—was more terrifying than any fanged snarl. This was bureaucracy with teeth. He backed up until his calves hit the bottom step of the bed. “There has to be another way. A loophole. A divorce lawyer who specializes in ancient occult matrimony.”
“There is not.” Caspian closed the final distance. He didn’t touch Felix, but his presence was a wall. “It will happen tonight at midnight. You will be prepared. You will be compliant.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Felix spat, tipping his chin up in a pathetic show of bravery. “You said my death would be an inconvenience.”
A long, pale hand came up. Felix flinched, but it didn’t strike him. Instead, cold fingers settled against his jaw, tilting his head to the side with an inexorable pressure. Caspian’s thumb brushed over the frantic flutter of Felix’s pulse at the base of his throat. The touch was terrifyingly intimate, a cataloguer assessing a thrumming, vital prize.
“No,” Caspian murmured, his eyes locked on that vulnerable point. “I will not kill you. But I can make the necessity of this very, very clear. Your fear is a tangible thing. It’s in this pulse. In the salt-sweat on your skin.” His thumb pressed down, just a fraction. The world narrowed to that point of contact. “The ceremony can be a swift, almost painless acknowledgment of a bond that already exists. Or it can be a struggle. I will have your blood either way, little thief. The manner in which I take it is your only remaining choice.”
His words should have sparked pure terror. They did. But underneath the ice of fear, something else traitorously uncoiled. A shiver that had nothing to do with the chill of Caspian’s touch ran through Felix. The blunt ownership in those words, the absolute certainty, the thumb resting on the engine of his life—it sparked a dangerous, unwanted current of submission. His sharp tongue failed him. A soft, helpless sound escaped his lips.
Caspian’s mercury eyes flicked up from Felix’s throat to his face, reading the conflict there—the defiance drowning in a wave of primal understanding. For a fleeting second, something shifted in the vampire’s ancient gaze. Not warmth, but a flicker of… recognition. A shadow of something long forgotten.
He released Felix’s jaw as if the skin had burned him.
“You will be brought appropriate attire,” he said, his voice returning to its detached, imperial chill. He turned and walked toward a door that seemed to materialize from the shadows of the wall. “Do not leave this chamber. The halls are not safe for you yet.”
He was gone before Felix could draw another breath, leaving behind only the scent of old roses and the thunder of a human heart, pounding not just with fear, but with the dreadful, captivating echo of a promise.