Damon was making his way up the beautiful rose-covered trel is below the window of the bedchamber of M. le Princess Jessalyn D'Aubigne, a very wealthy, beautiful, and much-admired girl who had the bluest blood of any vampire in the Dark Dimension, according to the books he'd bought. In fact, he'd listened to the locals and it was rumored that Sage himself had changed her two years ago, and had given her this bijoux castle to live in. Delicate gem that it appeared, though, the little castle had already presented Damon with several problems. There had been that razor-wire fence, on which he ripped his leather jacket; an unusual y dexterous and stubborn guard whom it had real y been a pity to strangle; an inner moat that had almost taken him unawares; and a few dogs that he had treated with the Saber-tranquilizer routine - using Mrs. Flowers's sleeping powder, which he'd brought with him from Earth. It would have been easier to poison them, but Jessalyn was reputed to have a very soft heart for animals and he needed her for at least three days. That should be long enough to make him a vampire - if they did nothing else during those days.
Now, as he pul ed himself silently up the trel is, he mental y added long rose thorns to the list of inconveniences. He also rehearsed his first speech to Jessalyn. She had been - was - would forever be - eighteen. But it was a young eighteen, since she had only two years'experience at being a vampire.
He comforted himself with this as he climbed silently into a window.
Still silently, moving slowly in case the princess had guardian animals in her bedchamber, Damon parted layer after layer of filmy, translucent black curtains that kept the blood-red light of the sun from shining into the chamber. His boots sank into the thick pile of a black rug. Making it out of the enfolding curtains, Damon saw that the entire chamber was decorated in a simple theme by a master of contrast. Jet-black and off-black. black.
He liked it a lot.
There was an enormous bed with more bil owing filmy black curtains almost encasing it. The only way to approach it was from the foot, where the diaphanous curtains were thinner.
Standing there in the cathedral-like silence of the great chamber, Damon looked at the slight figure under the black silk sheets, among dozens of smal throw pil ows.
She was a jewel like the castle. Delicate bones. A look of utter innocence as she slept. An ethereal river of fine, scarlet hair spil ing about her. He could see individual hairs straying on the black sheets. She looked a little like Bonnie.
Damon was pleased.
He pul ed out the same knife he had put to Elena's throat, and just for a moment hesitated - but no, this was no time to be thinking of Elena's golden warmth. Everything depended on this fragile-shouldered child in front of him. He put the point of the knife to his chest, deliberately placing it wide of his heart in case some blood had to be spil ed...and coughed.
Nothing happened. The princess, who was wearing a black negligee that showed frail-looking arms as fine and pale as porcelain, went on sleeping. Damon noticed that the nails on her smal fingers were lacquered the exact scarlet of her hair.
The two large pil ar candles set in tal black stands were giving off an enticing perfume, as wel as being clocks - the farther down they burned, the easier to tel time. The lighting was perfect - everything was perfect - except that Jessalyn was stil asleep.
Damon coughed again, loudly - and bumped the bed.
The princess woke, starting up and simultaneously bringing two sheathed blades out of her hair.
"Who is it? Is someone there?"She was looking in every direction but the right one.
"It's only me, your highness."Damon pitched his voice low, but fraught with unrequited need. "You don't have to be afraid,"he added, now that she'd at last gotten the right direction and seen him. He knelt by the foot of her bed.
He'd miscalculated a bit. The bed was so large and high that his chest and the knife were far below Jessalyn's line of sight.
"Here I wil take my life,"he announced, very loudly to make sure that Jessalyn was keeping up with the program.
After a moment or two the princess's head popped up over the foot of the bed. She balanced herself with hands spread wide and narrow shoulders hunched close to her. At this distance he could see that her eyes were green - a complicated green consisting of many different rings and speckles.
At first she just hissed at him and lifted her knives held in hands whose fingers were tipped with nails of scarlet.
Damon bore with her. She would learn in time that al this wasn't real y necessary; that in fact it had gone out of fashion in the real world decades ago and was only kept alive by pulp fiction and old movies.
"Here at your feet I slay myself,"he said again, to make sure she didn't miss a syl able, or the entire point, for that matter.
"You - yourself?"She was suspicious. "Who are you? How did you get here? Why would you do such a thing?"
"I got here through the road of my madness. I did it out of what I know is madness I can no longer live with."
"What madness? And are you going to do it now?"the princess asked with interest. "Because if you're not, I'l have to cal my guards and - wait a minute,"she interrupted herself.
She grabbed his knife before he could stop her and licked it.
"This is a metal blade,"she told him, tossing it back.
"I know."Damon let his head fal so that hair curtained his eyes and said painful y: "I am...a human, your highness."
He was covertly watching through his lashes and he saw that Jessalyn brightened up. "I thought you were just some weak, useless vampire,"she said absently. "But now that I look at you..."A rose petal of a pink tongue came out and licked her lips. "There's no point in wasting the good stuff, is there?"
She was like Bonnie. She said exactly what she thought, when she thought it. Something inside Damon wanted to laugh.
He stood again, looking at the girl on the bed with al the fire and passion of which he was capable - and felt that it wasn't enough. Thinking about the real Bonnie, alone and unhappy, was...wel , passion-quenching. But what else could he do?
Suddenly he knew what he could do. Before, when he'd stopped himself from thinking of Elena, he had cut off any genuine passion or desire. But he was doing this for Elena, as much as for himself. Elena couldn't be his Princess of Darkness if he couldn't be her Prince.
This time, when he looked down at M. le Princess, it was differently. He could feel the atmosphere change.
"Highness, I have no right even to speak to you,"he said, deliberately putting one booted foot on the metal scrol work that formed the frame of the bed. "You know as wel as I that you can kil me with a single blow...say, here" - pointing to a spot on his jaw - "but you have already slain me - "
Jessalyn looked confused, but waited.
" - with love. I fel in love with you the moment I saw you. You could break my neck, or - as I would say if I were permitted to touch your perfumed white hand - you could curl those fingers around my throat and strangle me. I beg you to do it."
Jessalyn was beginning to look puzzled but excited.
Blushing, she held out one smal hand to Damon, but clearly without any intention of strangling him.
"Please, you must,"Damon said earnestly, never taking his eyes off hers. "That is the only thing I ask of you: that you kil me yourself instead of cal ing your guards so that the last sight I see wil be your beautiful face."
"You're il ,"Jessalyn decided, stil looking flustered. "There have been other unbalanced minds who have made their way past the first wal of my castle - although never to my chambers. I'l give you to the doctors so that they can make you wel ."
"Please,"said Damon, who had forged his way through the last of the filmy black hangings and was now looming over the sitting princess. "Grant me instant death, rather than leaving me to die a little each day. You don't know what I've done. I can't stop dreaming of you. I've fol owed you from shop to shop when you went out. I am already dying now as you ravish me with your nobility and radiance, knowing that I am no more than the paving stones you walk on. No doctor can change that."
Jessalyn was clearly considering. Obviously, no one had ever talked to her like this.
Her green eyes fixed on his lips, the lower of which was stil bleeding. Damon gave an indifferent little laugh and said,
"One of your guards caught me and very properly tried to kil me before I could reach you and disturb your sleep. I'm afraid I had to kil him to get here,"he said, standing between one pil ar candle and the girl on the bed so that his shadow was thrown over her.
Jessalyn's eyes widened in approval even as the rest of her seemed more fragile than ever. "It's stil bleeding,"she whispered. "I could - "
"You can do anything you want,"Damon encouraged her with a wry quirk of a smile on his lips. It was true. She could.
"Then come here."She thumped a place by the nearest pil ow on the bed. "What are you cal ed?"
"Damon,"he said as he stripped off his jacket and lay down, chin propped on one elbow, with the air of one not unused to such things.