He was here in the doorway, his reflection clear in the mirror across from her. Him. Not just any Blood Knight, but the one she had secretly coveted from among the Seven. The Knight she wasn’t ever supposed to see in person, face-to-face, was less than five feet away, leaving her breathless.
There was no mistaking this creature for any normal mortal male. No chance in hell. His incredibly handsome, aquiline-featured face had Blood Knight chiseled all over it.
There was no use trying to play dumb, either, when they were both far from the classification of mortal and knew it.
“What have you done?” he asked again, the deepness of his voice sending shockwaves of familiarity through Avery.
His question seemed intimate, spoken as if he knew her well and cared about what she did, when neither of those things was true. He hadn’t known she existed until this moment. She had promised herself things would stay that way until she found the right time to change it.
Slowly, and without answering the impertinent query, Avery reached for her shirt.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said.
It was too late to ask how he had found her, and the answer wouldn’t have helped. Like often called to like, and she had gotten too close. But the effect his presence had on her was as unwelcome as he was. Icy shivers crept up the back of her neck. Her insides churned. Blood Knights had been designed to lure the eye and tempt the soul, and angels weren’t immune to those things because those seven Knights carried in their souls some beauty of the heavens.
Get out! Avery wanted to shout, studying his image in the mirror. I don’t have time for this.
As handsome as these Knights had been as mortal men, their famous features had been further enhanced by the grace of the renewed blood in their veins and the importance of their golden Quest. They were, however, ignorant of the fact that some of the immortal blood pulsing through all of them had been hers, unwillingly shared. And that, like a butterfly, she had been captured, ensnared in a net.
This magnificent Knight was muscled, honed, taut, elegant and rugged in equal measures. He stood well over six feet tall, his appearance formidable in every sense of the word. An aura of crackling power surrounded him, announcing that this was a man who had broken from his mortal bonds by stepping into another realm of existence.
He spoke again. “Are you all right?”
His throaty voice sounded like a sweep of crushed velvet, and affected her more than she’d care to let on. They were measuring each other, and she needed time to calculate what might happen next.
She had seen this Blood Knight many times in the past, and always with the same kind of gut-clenching reaction. Frozen in the body of a twenty-something-year-old, he had matured since his inception. His face was more chiseled than she remembered. Bright blue expressive eyes were alight with a worldly, intelligent gleam.
She knew those features well.
In that doorway, too close for comfort, stood the sun-kissed immortal with golden streaks of light in his mane of brown hair whose piercing gaze usually saw through shadows without seeing her.
Perceval had been his mortal name, way back in time. This was one of Arthur’s knights, a warrior champion who’d had a coveted seat at Camelot’s Round Table and been a major player in the Grail Quest. The intense heat of his observation began to melt her chills.
“What’s it to you?” she finally asked, slipping her shirt over her head. “I don’t believe you were invited to this party.”
Speaking calmly was a chore when this Knight’s allure bordered on the mystical. Of all the Seven, he had always been special to her. Her attraction to him had both excited and repelled her from the beginning, and from afar, further complicating the fulfillment of the personal vows she had taken.
Because of that, he was the most dangerous Knight of them all to have found her. She had to be careful, remain calm, when her heart was thrashing. More time was necessary before she turned to face him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who’s asking?” Avery returned.
The energy circling the room was expanding, pressing against the walls, humming in her ears. She was trapped, and therefore had to speak to him. No alternative presented itself when he filled the doorway.
She saw in the mirror that he was staring at her back and at the damp towel beside her.
“What’s wrong with your blood?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with it.”
“It has no color at all.”
“What’s that to you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, or like you.”
“No,” Avery agreed, sliding her arms into her sleeves. “Other than your comment being incredibly rude, I’m sure you haven’t seen anything like me.”
Glossing over her feisty comeback, he tried again to engage her. “Where do you come from?”
She was fairly sure he didn’t mean the city or region of the world, but something deeper and having to do with her origins...as if she’d blow more of her cover and cough up her secrets because he asked her to.
Turning halfway around, she parried, “Is this an interrogation? Are you London’s supernatural sheriff?”
“Only an interested party.”
“Where I came from is none of your business.”
“Maybe it isn’t. What about your scars?”
“Rude again, and definitely not your concern.”
Persistence was another well-honed Blood Knight trait.
“Is there anything you can tell me about yourself that might help me to understand what you want here?” he asked in a lowered tone that caused Avery’s new tats to ache more than they already did.
“It’s late,” she said. “Maybe you have a job to do that doesn’t include wasting time in a tattoo parlor.”
“Not tonight. Everyone got a free pass in your honor.”
“Do you suppose the bad guys will thank me?”
Don’t let him in. Do not get close, Avery’s mind warned.
Remember who you are, and get away.
None of that was easy at the moment, however. She wasn’t just confronting a Blood Knight. She was confronting an old set of wishes long ago tamped down. This glorious creature had always made her want to forget her rage and her vows to keep clear of him and the others like him. The pressure she felt to fight her way out of the room was outrageous.
If she’d had her wings, the real ones, she could have bested this Knight in seconds. Although he was incredibly strong, she would have been the strongest. Wingless, she was unwhole, halved, severed from the rest of her kind with her strength vastly diminished.
“Go
