Her lashes brushed her cheeks as she looked downward again. The hazy sun painted on her abdomen now shone on a green meadow dotted with white flowers, all of it smeared and dreamlike, like an Impressionist painting. The man with the ring tugged the sheet down as he decorated her mons, the tops of her thighs, expanding the meadow over the terrain of her naked body.

Even in this state her body was trained to respond to a vampire’s touch. An unbidden tear rolled out her right eye, sliding along her temple. The Scot caught it on his thumb, made another reassuring noise. He bent, brushed his lips across her strapped-down forehead. It told her he was this vampire’s servant, for no vampire would ever act with such tender sentiment, especially not in front of Lord Brian. But he didn’t seem like any servant she knew. Stephen was obviously still playing with her mind, her own broken dreams weaving among his vicissitudes like creeper vines in a crumbling castle wall.

“Alanna, tell me what you feel.”

She never refused a vampire’s command, but Lord Brian asked her a question she’d never been asked. She couldn’t remember when she’d stopped thinking about it, or if she’d ever thought about it at all. Service was above ego, above individual need and want. There were only the Master’s feelings and needs. Yet she’d spent the past . . . she really didn’t know how long it had been anymore . . . resisting Stephen’s screaming command for her to die, to take her own life. Because Lord Belizar had told her no, Lord Brian had told her no. She refused to be a total failure. Perhaps she did have a will of her own, which meant she’d never been as good a servant as she’d thought.

“Alanna. Tell him how you feel.” The painter was giving her the command now. He pressed down on the wet paint, his thumb making slow, easy passes over her pubic bone, charging the nerves at the tops of her thighs. He gave her the command as if she belonged to him personally. Did he understand that had been the biggest loss to her? For the first time in so many years, she didn’t belong to someone. Cut out of the circle, no longer a part of anything.

“Do I need to tell you twice?”

“No, Master.” When the unplanned response rasped from her lips, the two sets of fingers stilled. Yes, she’d only called Stephen that, but it felt right. Maybe more right than it had with him, ever. That also didn’t make sense, but her mind and soul were broken. Sanity and logic were beyond her grasp.

She was too tired to dissect anything. She didn’t spend much time on such things even on a good day, and this was certainly not a good day.

“I feel . . .” Searching the scarred battlefield of her mind and soul, she latched on to the word that meant the end of her usefulness.

“Abandoned. He’s gone.”

Lord Brian had at last found a chemical combination that blocked the nightmares, but it also blocked Stephen’s access to her. She didn’t understand why they’d bothered to keep her alive after that. She’d proven too weak to resist his dismemberment of her soul, the scrambling of her mind. As long as she was taking those injections, they couldn’t use her to pinpoint his location.

However, during the weeks of her illness and months of recuperation, remarkable changes had occurred. The Vampire Council was now under new leadership. Lady Lyssa, last of the vampire royals, had staged a coup and knocked Lord Belizar from his position as head of the Council. She’d killed the only other made vampire on the Council, Lady Barbra, and installed Lady Daniela from the Australian territories to take her place.

Soon after Alanna had been moved to a regular bed to be fed and assigned a daily exercise regimen to recover atrophied muscle, Lady Lyssa had visited her. Alanna had struggled to leave the bed, go to her knees, but the vampire queen had forbidden it.

“You will preserve your strength.” Those cool jade eyes assessed her state, kept her pinned in place. “I command you to regain your health. I will determine what to do with you shortly.”

So now, at last, “shortly” had come. As she waited outside Council chambers, in this cold, silent hallway, Alanna couldn’t hear what was going on behind the solid doors. She should be able to hear the occasional murmur caused by a raised voice, which was why this hallway was kept clear during Council sessions. However, the blocker had a devastating side effect. The exceptional strength, speed and senses that came with being a third mark were neutralized. For the first time since she’d become Stephen’s third mark, at age sixteen, she felt merely human.

Lady Lyssa’s command to “regain your health” was the second hardest thing that had ever been demanded of her, but the queen was the closest thing to a Master she had now, however temporal that would be.

Alanna recalled the fingers on her stomach, the vampire attached to them commanding her to answer Lord Brian. She also thought about the Scot’s soothing tone. He’d spoken often while she was being painted by his Master. His accent was like music, the way he dragged out the vowels in some places, made them dense and strong in others. Fiiinal . . . Book was buek . . . Certainly was cairtenly. And the wonderful rolling rs . . .

The effectiveness of the blocker had brought on exhaustion and desolation, sending her into unconsciousness. When she woke, they hadn’t been there, and there was no paint on her body. She’d looked thoroughly for any trace of it, and found nothing. During the days that followed, where she remained mute unless Lord Brian needed an answer to a question, she realized the men touching her had been some strange mental defense against Stephen’s torment. But it felt more real than the most hideous nightmare he’d sent her, and since what made the nightmares so awful was how very real they felt, that was saying something.

“Alanna?”

She lifted her head to see Jacob, Lady Lyssa’s servant, standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard the heavy portal open. Exhorting herself to focus, be attentive as she should, she slid her weight to the balls of her feet and tried to rise gracefully in one motion. It worked, but the effort was phenomenal. She was still so weak.

Offering assistance to any InhServ was a deep insult to them. Requiring help was a mark of shame. But the broad-shouldered Irishman with steady midnight blue eyes was an odd sort, not the usual kind of servant. One never knew what he might do.

She stepped into the chamber. The dimly lit oval room with stone walls, iron chandelier and crescent-shaped table elevated on a platform was as intimidating as it was intended to be. Even the floor-length velvet tablecloth was the color of dried blood. It was easy to imagine black-cloaked Inquisitioners here, staring down upon hapless souls.

She’d expected to face the whole Council. Instead, only Lady Lyssa was present.

The oldest living vampire was a master at that eerie stillness that could make her almost invisible, except for the itchy feeling suggesting a predator was watching. Correctly realizing she didn’t need any props to make her more scary, the queen had the head Council chair positioned on the flagstone floor, not on the raised dais behind the table. An empty chair faced her, several paces away.

Alanna knelt, keeping the proscribed distance from a Council vampire. “I’m here to serve, my lady. What is your will for me?”

“You are aware of the dilemma your existence presents, Alanna. What do you think we should do with you?”

Even without looking up, she felt the weight of those jade green eyes boring into her. Lady Lyssa was barely over five feet. The porcelain skin and sharp nails, the long black hair she often kept clipped over one shoulder, enhanced her beauty, but they also reinforced how striking and untouchable she was. Except to Jacob, who stood behind her chair now.

An InhServ, when requested to respond, only offered opinions on how something should best be done to serve her Master’s interests. So Alanna framed her answer accordingly.

“I am a liability, because I cannot help you find my Master. He might use my mind to determine what your plans are, if I am kept in proximity to Council. I submit to your judgment and willingly sacrifice my life.”

“The treatment Brian found blocks Lord Stephen’s hold on your mind. The pain as well?”

Alanna flushed, her knuckles pressing hard into the cold flagstone. “Yes. I am too weak to bear the pain he inflicts on me when the blocker is not present. It blinds me to his location. I apologize for my failure.”

“You are apologizing that your will is not strong enough to overcome your Master’s?”

Alanna shook her head. “Forgive me, my lady. It’s clear I am not worthy of my training. I await your judgment.”

Please, just get it over with. Let this end.

Instead, she stiffened as a male hand closed on her elbow.

“You will permit Jacob to assist you.”

She couldn’t refuse the queen’s order, but her shame was nigh unbearable as Jacob lifted her into the empty chair. She’d become stiff, sitting on her knees. He put a woman’s cloak over her shoulders, a ruby-colored thick fabric that smelled like cloves. Had it come from Lady Lyssa’s chair? It had retained some of the body heat of the previous occupant, so it could be no other’s.

Pushed into a paradigm she couldn’t comprehend, she looked up at Jacob blankly.

“You’re shivering,” he said. “Your skin is ice-cold.”

Why would that matter? Staring at him, she registered he was handsome, not unusual for a servant, but there was a directness to his midnight blue eyes, the way he touched a woman, that suggested a knight of medieval times. It gave him a unique appeal, but what made him truly exceptional was how he used that quality to serve his lady. The relationship between him and Lady Lyssa, the last Queen of the Far East Clan, was barely whispered about even among servants—because of how forbidden it was.

He’d declared his love for her, but a servant was permitted to have that level of feeling for his Mistress. Alanna had never felt love toward Stephen, but dedication, loyalty and devotion were what he demanded. No, what was shocking was that Lady Lyssa had reciprocated Jacob’s feelings. Not just in private, where such a thing might rarely happen, and, if it did, a wise servant never spoke of it. The Queen had declared it before the whole Council.