without concern or threat. But the hairs at the back of his neck prickled with recognition even before he turned to look at her.
The first thing he noticed was her hair. Glossy and black as a raven’s feathers, it fell past her shoulders and almost seemed to move of its own accord as she spoke, tempting any man within reach to run his fingers through it.
But the hair framed something even more remarkable: a face of astonishing beauty by the judgment of human or Nightsider. Her chin was firm, her brows finely shaped, her eyes nearly black with the slightest tinge of deepest purple, her lips full. The skin of her face and bare arms was golden bronze. Hints of her figure appeared beneath the layers of her flowing, semitransparent robes—a hip here, a breast or shoulder there. Daniel had no doubt that this woman’s body was as sleek and perfect as her face, hair and voice.
And there was something more about her that Daniel felt all the way down to his bones: a profound charisma, a pull that Daniel had experienced before, and not only in Erebus.
Surely she couldn’t be what his senses told him. Not with hair like that or eyes so dark or teeth as blunt as any human’s.
But Ares’s hair was just as black, an anomaly among pale-haired, pale-skinned Opiri. And he knew of other anomalies. Daniel, for instance, lacked the sharp Nightsider cuspids of his kind, the half-breed offspring of a Nightsider father and a human mother. He looked nothing like a normal dhampir, and had no need for blood.
She was not what she was pretending to be.
“It is beautiful,” he said, as if he believed she was only another human sharing the view.
“It isn’t often that our fellow humans come here,” she said, every word as rich and smooth as sun-warmed honey. “I often wonder why that is so.”
Daniel gripped the railing, breathed deeply and unclenched his fingers. “Memories of a darker past?” he said.
She ran her fine-fingered hand along the railing and gazed at him until he had no choice but to look at her fully. Her eyes were not only striking; they were wise and perceptive and sharp with intelligence.
“Were you one of the original inhabitants?” she asked. “I do not recognize you as a former serf of Tartaros.”
“No,” he said. “I came here for refuge, after I escaped from another Citadel.”
“How long have you been here?”
Daniel leaned against the railing. “In Tanis? A few months,” he said.
“Not long enough to forget what your life was like before,” she said, sympathy in her voice. “This still must be very strange for you—a Citadel without masters and serfs.”
He smiled with one side of his mouth. “Can you read minds?”
“No. But I have had many years of experience in understanding people.”
Many years. Daniel looked at her out of the corner of his eye. How many? he wondered. A hundred? A thousand? Certainly far more than the twenty-odd years her body and face suggested.
“May I know your name?” she asked, moving closer to him.
It didn’t matter what he called himself, he thought. It was highly unlikely that anyone here would know him from Erebus, Delos or Avalon.
“Daniel,” he said.
“I am Isis,” she said.
He held his breath for a moment and then let it out slowly. How appropriate that her name should be that of a goddess, as Ares’s was that of a god.
If Ares had been here, she would certainly know.
“You have just come in from a shift in the fields,” Isis said, breaking the silence. “You must be tired, and hungry.”
He went on his guard. Her concern seemed a little too intimate. And she was standing too damned close, close enough that he could smell her fresh, citrusy scent and hear the beat of her heart.
“Where do you work, Isis?” he asked.
“In the administrative offices,” she said. “It is an easy job compared to the fields.”
“We all do what we’re best suited for,” he said.
“That is how it is supposed to be, is it not?” she asked, her lovely lips sliding into a faint frown. “The more difficult the work, the higher the reward.”
“You don’t agree?” he asked.
“‘Difficult’ is a subjective concept. Should one person be given more credit for being able to do what another person cannot?”
“There is no perfect system,” he said.
She cocked her head. “And I think you were no ordinary serf, Daniel,” she said, sliding her hand closer to his.
The comment was too personal, and definitely unwelcome. “I had a decent education in my Enclave before I was sent to the Citadel,” he said coolly.
“Or perhaps you were never a serf at all?”
He stared at her, suppressing his anger. This was the interrogation he’d expected if he’d been caught entering the city, but it wasn’t proceeding at all in the way he’d imagined.
But I was caught, he thought. This was no chance meeting.
“Oh, yes,” he said, very softly. “I was a serf, for many years.”
“In what Citadel?”
He was prepared for the question. “Vikos,” he said, naming a Nightsider Citadel in the area once known as northern Arizona.
“And you escaped?” she asked.
“Bloodlords don’t release their serfs.”
“Except here,” she said.
He pretended not to hear her. “Where did you come from, Isis?” he asked.
“I was never in bondage,” she said, looking down at her slender hands on the railing.
“Then why are you in an isolated Citadel instead of in a human Enclave?”
“Perhaps because I believe in what this city represents. There are many like me, or this place could not exist.” She met Daniel’s eyes. “Of all the refuges you might have sought when you escaped, you chose Tanis rather than a human compound or even another Enclave. Yet surely you have good reason to hate Opiri?”
“I don’t hate them,” he said. “My own fa—”
He broke off, appalled at what he had been about to say. It was she, this woman, who threw him so off balance with her allure and questions and keen observations. It was as if she’d known him before.
She came from outside, he thought. From some other Citadel, where she must have been a Bloodlady of distinction, an owner of many human serfs.
