Manny knelt in the bloody sand of an arena. Before her stood a man with an angular face, dark hair, and blood red eyes. He was huge, larger than life, looking down at her with a slight smile on his face.

In the stands around the arena, two dozen people watched them, watched her to see if she was good enough. But she didn’t know what she was meant to be good enough for. What… What could she even do to influence their judgment?

Before this man—this beautiful, terrible man—she couldn’t do anything to change… anything. She was weak, she was frail, she was… She was nothing. She was worth less than the sand at his feet, because at least that was worth standing on.

She looked around, at the crowd in the stands. What would happen to her if they didn’t approve of her? What if he didn’t approve of her? Would she be cast out? Oh, gods, she would, wouldn’t she? She’d be cast out, thrown away. If she wasn’t loved here, she wouldn’t be loved anywhere.

The man started to move, to walk away. And she was desperate to follow him. She scrambled to her feet and started to run after him. She wanted to scream that he needed to slow down, that he needed to wait for her, but the words just came out as a cry.

She couldn’t keep up with him. He was moving quickly, and whenever she tried to keep pace, she would slip or stumble. She fell back into the sand, and… and she realized she was bleeding. Badly.

Blood was gushing from a cut in her neck, turning the sand below a deeper, wetter red. She looked up towards the man, but to her horror, he’d already gone. And the people in the stands had turned their backs to her.

She was bleeding, she was dying, and she was alone. She was terrified, screaming, sobbing, begging for help.

“—please!” The cry left her throat, desperate and frightful, as she lurched up in bed. She… She wasn’t in that arena anymore, she realized. That had just been a nightmare. Though… the reality of what she’d been going through, of Darim drugging her and beating her halfway to death, then being executed where he stood by that man, Vincent? That wasn’t much better.

She looked around the room. It was a little bigger than the one she shared with Zorah, with one ajar door in front of her, and one door to the left, completely closed. The bed itself was lavish, with soft sheets and thick, dark red blankets on top of that. Behind her, above the bed’s headboard, a window of colored glass cast the room in purple and red light.

Disturbingly, she’d been changed while sleeping, into a black nightgown. The last thing she could remember was being put to sleep, and she hadn’t exactly been given a chance to get dressed, first. She felt herself, touching the ribs she was sure Darim had broken. She found them tender, but manageable.

Cautiously, she started to slip out of the bed. She was pleasantly surprised to find a thickly piled carpet underfoot, and less pleasantly so when she felt a weight of metal resting on her left ankle.

She pulled her leg back up onto the bed, and looked at her foot. The effort hurt enough to make her frown, but no more than that. A solid gold band ran around her shin, half an inch tall, and perhaps a third as thick. It was decorated with glowing runes, and didn’t seem to have any joints or way to take it off. It was certainly too small to slip off.

“What the fuck are you?” She mumbled to the thing. Whatever it was supposed to be, she’d be taking a pair of clippers to it and selling it the moment she got out of… wherever she was.

She got out of bed fully, this time, her feet sinking into the carpet as she walked around the room. Closets, chests, and shelves lined most of the walls, and she checked all of them. The vast majority of them were empty. A few were locked, and couldn’t be checked. The closed door, too, was locked.

That only left the ajar door. Though, as she approached it, she saw her own shadow from the stained window, and it occurred to her that she could probably break that and escape that way. The mental image of razor-sharp broken glass combined with her nightmare about her throat getting cut, made her rethink that.

She slipped out through the door, stepping on the oddly warm wooden floor outside and glancing to either side. To the right, the hallway was dreary and uninviting looking, with unlit lanterns, and a closed door that spanned the width of the hallway. To the left seemed much more inviting, with lit lanterns casting pleasantly warm light, and the doors partitioning the hallway in that direction were all open.

Cautiously, she started in that direction. She was aware she was being led to a specific place, but didn’t see any alternative to going along. The floorboards didn’t creak as she walked across them, and they remained comfortably warm to the touch as she walked.

She rounded a corner, and one door leading off of the hallway now stood out as wide open, with flickering light pouring out from within, projecting the shape of the door on the opposing wall. She approached it and cautiously looked inside.

It was a small library. Bookshelves that were tall enough that she couldn’t reach the top two rows lined the walls, and a gallery walkway let Manny peek up to see even more books. A vibrant fire burned in a fireplace directly opposite the door, with sofas, a low table, and comfortable chairs around it.

On one of those chairs sat a man she could only assume to be Vincent, his head down and reading a book. Manny could tell he was content with reading the book, but anticipating… something. Was he waiting for her?

That… made sense, she supposed. The only place to go in this building was towards him. But she didn’t think she actually wanted to do that. This man had killed without hesitating, and had oozed a need to possess and dominate. She was afraid of him. But…. He’d also only done that to save her from someone who would have beaten her to death.

“Are you going to keep standing there, Manny? Or are you going to come in?” He asked. That rough voice was definitely Vincent.

She swallowed. “You… didn’t invite me in,” she lied.

“How rude of me. Rest assured, you have an open invitation into nearly every room in this house. Come here. Let me check your wounds.”

He was amused and concerned, she could feel it pouring off him. And he looked up at her with those starkly red eyes. How could she ever have thought they were brown? She reluctantly approached him, that fear wrestling with… something else.

He was pleased when she got close, and patted the spot next to him on the sofa with a hand that was decorated with a single golden ring. “Sit,” he instructed.

“Why?” Manny asked.

He didn’t like that. “Because you’re hurt, and should rest,” he patiently told her. “Because I want to have a conversation with you about what I’m sure are some very confusing thoughts and feelings.”

Manny shook her head, and took a slight step back from him as the fear won out.

That hurt his feelings. “You really don’t have any reason to fear me, Manny,” he softly said. “Gods, you have good reasons to fear everyone except me.”

“What?” She asked, perplexed. “What does that even mean?”

He smiled, and she could feel it was sincere. “Well, I’m the one who saved you from other people, not the other way around. I brought you into my home, and have been nursing you back to health for days now.”

She approached him, hesitantly. She didn’t feel that need to dominate her from him now, only an undercurrent of concern for her, and a wistful fondness. After a moment, she sat down. His smile grew, and that wistful fondness turned to satisfaction. It felt… it felt good, and she smiled back at him.

“That,” he said, pointing at her. She could feel excitement bubble up in him, and that satisfaction only surged. “That smile. That’s what I want to talk about, Manny.”

“You want to talk about my smile?” She asked. She was confused, but couldn’t banish it from her face.

“I do,” Vincent told her, gesturing around them. “I want to explain… all of this to you. I want to explain the silk nightgown, and the nagging thoughts. Those feelings that aren’t yours.”

He didn’t just like to talk about this. He loved it. It was as if just by talking, he were finally doing something he’d anticipated for a long time, and she was at the center of it. She leaned forward, looking into those red eyes, eager to listen to every word of it.

“And I’m not going to lie to you, Manny. I’m always going to be as honest as I can be, even though that’ll involve some words I think might scare you, at first.”

Manny nodded. “Okay,” she said.

Vincent smiled at her and reached forward, tapping her temple. “We’ve… We’ve got a bond, Manny. One of the best, most precious things in the world. It’s why you’re smiling, it’s what lets you get excited when I’m excited, and how you understand me so well. It’s why it’s so easy for you to set aside fear and trust me.”

Manny nodded at the words, knowing they were truthful. She didn’t trust him completely, but… she knew he didn’t want anything bad for her.

“I’ve got powers, obviously,” he continued. “You’ve already experienced a few of them yourself. My gaze can hypnotize—”

On instinct, Manny averted her eyes from his once he said that, instead looking down at her own hands. He luckily didn’t mind, but she was hesitant to look at him again. “Like a demon?” She asked, recalling the cautionary tales against them from her childhood.

“Quite a lot like one, yes,” Vincent said, with a little chuckle at a joke he didn’t bother sharing with Manny. She still felt the humor of it, though, and chuckled along with it. “I know some of them have relationships with mortals that look very much like what ours will be.”

“What ours will be?” Manny asked, repeating his odd intonation. There was an eerie certainty to his voice when he said that. Like he already knew she’d go along with whatever his plans were. And she felt that certainty, too. She felt it just like she had after they’d kissed.

“It will be wonderful,” Vincent promised. She knew he meant that, but… she wasn’t sure someone who was bent on domination’s definition of wonderful would match hers. She scooted away from him on the sofa. Unlike her averting her eyes, she could feel he didn’t like that. It felt bad.

“What does that mean?” She asked. “I… I remember what it was like when you kissed me, Vincent. I remember being terrified, and I remember running, and I remember passing out while you talked about being my master. I think I’ve got lots of reasons to be afraid of you.”

“You’re wrong,” Vincent cooed. “You’ll never, ever be safer than you are with me. You can feel that, can’t you?”

Reluctantly, Manny nodded. She could feel she was safe with him. But… in a way she didn’t like. She was safe with him the way a possession was safe with its owner, not in the way a person was safe around another. “What are you?”

“You can’t tell?” He asked, amusement as apparent in his voice as it was obvious to her through whatever bond he’d made with that kiss. “I’m pale as snow, I live in a manor with tinted glass windows, and I’ve got fangs and hypnotic red eyes.”

Manny swallowed. She was starting to put the pieces, and did not like the picture they formed.

“I’m a vampire,” Vincent said. “And you, Manny, are my thrall.”

Manny got up from the sofa once she heard that, and backed away from him. “I’m not your anything!” She spat at him.

“Oh, but you are,” he purred. She could feel that as much as he didn’t want to hurt her, he did deeply enjoy telling her this. “I chose you. You’ve tasted my blood, and the pact’s been made. You’re mine, Manny. You can already feel the effects. I know you can already see part of my mind. You’ll learn to love what I love and hate what I hate soon enough. You won’t be able to stop yourself from loving me.”

She could see him rise from the sofa, and she cast her eyes down into the fireplace. She didn’t know what to say to him. “You’re… You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not,” he said. “And you know that.”

Infuriatingly, he was right. She could feel that he meant that. Just like his absolute certainty he would get to dominate her, he was certain she would love him for it. “You’re… you’re evil,” she tried.

“Oh, I absolutely am,” he told her. “I do despicable things to people just to stay alive, and you’ll be begging me to let you help me do them before the new moon.”

It was so fucking difficult to deny anything he said, when the certainty he felt about it leaked into her mind like rain through a rotting roof. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—just… meekly submit to him, though. So she shook her head, and growled, “no!”

“The easiest thing for you would be to just lean into it,” he said. “to just embrace my gift to you, and—”

“Gift?” Asked Manny, derisively. He despised being cut off, she realized, and it made her feel bad enough to lose her line of thought.

“But…” He patiently began,” I understand that that’s almost impossible. You need time, guidance, and love.” Manny bit her tongue. She so very badly wanted to object to a vampire’s love. She wanted to reject it, rage against it. “You need a master,” he added.

“I don’t need you,” Manny said, and he utterly disbelieved her.

“Yes, you do,” Vincent told her. “You need a master. If I were to let you go, our bond would drive you mad in weeks. You’d be back here faster than you can imagine, begging me to help you make sense of it.”

If. She mentally repeated. If he were to, not when.

“But I won’t let you torment yourself like that, Manny,” Vincent promised her. It was almost reassuring. “That band around your ankle will put you to sleep if you stray too far from me, and…” he trailed off. “And I realize I’m probably overwhelming you.”

“That’s… that’s one way to put it,” Manny quietly said.

“Do you know how to cook?”

Manny was so stunned by the unexpected question that she looked up at the man. His eyes were still that same, vibrant red, but they didn’t seem to do anything to her. He had a gentle smile on his face that seemed completely at odds with everything he’d just said, but matched how he felt perfectly. “What?” She asked.

“Do you know how to cook, Manny?” Vincent asked again.

Manny shook her head. She didn’t know how to cook, but… she didn’t know how to answer a question like this after a conversation like that, either.

He nodded to the door she’d come in through with his chin. “Follow me, then,” he said. “I’ll show you how to make something, and then we can talk more, afterwards.”

Manny followed Vincent more out of a sense of aimlessness than any desire she had to do as he said, or even be near the man. After unlocking one of the doors blocking the hallway past the library with a little silver key, it was a straight shot to a truly lavish kitchen.

Clean work surfaces of black marble lined an island and several counters, and large fires were already burning in both an oven and a stove. Herbs and spices lined little shelves in jars, and a clock hung on one of the walls.

The most remarkable thing, though, had to be the fountain. Water perpetually poured from a pipe that jutted from the wall, hitting the stone of the basin below it. Manny curiously approached it, and saw a substantial pit had been cut into the stone from years of water hitting it, and flowing out. She could feel Vincent’s amusement at her reaction to it.

He likes impressing me. Good to know…

Like most fountain water in Astoria, it was positively frigid when Manny touched it. Just being near it made her parched, and she’d already started to cup her hands when Vincent spoke up. “The cupboard above you, Manny.”

Manny glanced at him, then at the cabinet he’d indicated. She opened it, and was greeted by rows upon rows of glasses and goblets in a dozen varieties. She picked out the least ornate one, a pewter tankard. She sensed he disapproved of it.

“Not that one, Little Elf.”

She turned to him, and gave him an exasperated look. “Why? Not fancy enough for a rich prick like you?”

The insult, surprisingly, bothered him less than her choice had. “No, Manny. Because it has lead in it. I keep that set around for guests that like it, but… I wouldn’t want to spoil how you taste.”

A massive point in favor of you, she decided about the cup, then held it under the stream of water until it was full, and gulped it down. The water was fresh and sweet, and Vincent’s disapproval of her doing that was strong enough to make the aftertaste bitter in her mouth, and spoil her thirst.

“Did that help?” He asked. “Did that make you feel less helpless, Manny?” She didn’t want to dignify that with a response. “If you’re still thirsty, I’d suggest one of the glasses.”

“No,” she quietly said, still eyeing the tankard. After a moment’s hesitation, she rinsed it off under the endless stream of water, then put it to one side to dry. He liked that, she quickly learned. And she felt good about doing it in turn.

“As you wish,” he said, slightly smiling at her. “What would you like to eat?”

She blinked at him. “You’re letting me… choose?”

He shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I? I have preserves, salted meats, and a garden in a greenhouse. If you want something, and it’s not fresh fish, I can probably make it for you.”

“Why do you have that?” She asked. “Don’t you drink…”

He raised an eyebrow, amusement and loss both lingering in his mind. “Well, I do like normal food. I also usually entertain people a few times per month, my staff needs to eat, as does my stock, the day or two I ask them to stay to recover. And, of course, you need food, too.”

Manny got the distinct sense you didn’t necessarily refer to her. She decided she didn’t want to press the man that had effectively kidnapped her for details, and risk his ire. Instead, she tried to think of what she wanted to eat. Her entire life, she’d eaten what was given to her, or what was cheap. Being allowed to choose was oddly intimidating. What foods did she even like?

“Do you have apples?” She asked, as a memory of celebrating Shala’s holiday on the summer solstice made itself known. She and the other kids had been given a kind of pastry with applesauce in it, and that had tasted like brown sugar and cinnamon. She’d adored it. Since then, she’d occasionally seen it at the university’s bakery, and been utterly repulsed by what it cost. When he nodded, she described the pastry to him.

“A… turnover?” He asked. He was proud of himself, Manny felt. Presumably at identifying what in the world she’d meant. “I should have a recipe for that somewhere. We can try to make that, if you’d like.”

“Try?” Manny asked.

“Well, baking’s not easy,” Vincent said. “But we can try it, if you want.” When Manny nodded to confirm that yes, she did want it, he smiled at her, and pointed at a door. “I’ll go find a recipe book. Meanwhile, you get some apples from the pantry and cut them up.”

Before Manny could ask where she might actually get a knife, or even think about whether she was willing to do that in the first place, Vincent turned and walked away, leaving her to figure it out for herself.

She started by looking for a knife. Even if she wasn’t going to help him cook, she still wanted one of those on hand very, very badly. She rifled through drawers and cupboards for a few moments. He had so much stuff in his kitchen, she quickly realized. Entire drawers full of cutlery, in several styles. A bunch of little forks and spoons that she could only guess were actual silver and worth stealing, as well as less delicate, more familiar utensils.

She fished out a serrated steak knife with a wooden grip, and hastily tossed that to one side, then kept looking until she found something that actually looked like it would do the job of cutting an apple. The one she settled was a big, sharp monster, and just holding it made her feel safer—and it was perfectly suited for chopping apples. So, that’s exactly what she did, as she dove into the relatively dark walk-in pantry, and quickly found a wooden crate of apples that were getting a little softer than she’d like for eating them raw, but still looked edible.

She put one on the marble countertop, lined up the knife, and… and then she stopped. What in all the hells was she doing? Was she really about to help a kidnapper—a gods-damned vampire, at that—bake fucking apple pastries? A man that had talked to her about how she tasted, that was already treating her like a pet? Like she wasn’t a threat?

By tearing Darim’s throat out like an animal, he’d given her the perfect example of how to treat people that hurt her, she realized. She had a big knife, and now she had time to sneak around, find the right spot to spring on him. All she had to do was deal with this monster, and she could worry about getting that band off of her ankle, and get some help.

Or… maybe just get Zorah, and clear the place out, together.

That idea brought a grin to her lips. She and Zorah could live like queens by selling his possessions. The silverware alone would probably support them for a few months, maybe even a year. Who knows what kind of things he had hidden away in other parts of this manor. Hadn’t he promised that priestess gold for putting her to sleep? He had. He’d promised the woman gold, and lots of it.

So he’d probably have far, far more than even that.

“I know that look,” his voice suddenly came, pulling her gaze towards him. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a smirk on his face, and a leather-bound book in his hands.

“L—look?” She asked, feigning ignorance. She could tell he saw right through it, and felt his dislike of the attempt just as strongly.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, stepping closer. He looked her up and down, then glanced at the knife in her hands, as well as the crate of apples. “The biggest knife in my kitchen in hand, but no food cut? Staring off into space, lost in thought? I know a scheme when I see it, Manny. I’m just not quite sure what the scheme might actually be, yet.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Oh, please,” he scoffed. “You’re either planning to kill me, kill yourself, or rob me and flee.”

She tried not to show any reactions to his eerily accurate guesses. “I…” She started, but she trailed off when she couldn’t think of anything wise to say.

“Do you want to, Manny?” He asked, and took a menacing step forward, gesturing at the knife. He wasn’t… He wasn’t angry, she knew. Not in any way she understood the feeling, at least. He was too calm to call it that. “Do you want to try to hurt me with that?”

Manny looked down at the knife, clenching it in an unsteady hand. Then she looked up at him. She didn’t understand what he was trying to do. She felt cornered, and was absolutely considering it. “What do you… What do you mean?”

“Well, all of my thralls consider it at some point, in the beginning—to use violence to solve the Vincent problem,” he told her. His voice was infuriating to listen to. He spoke softly, like he was trying to soothe her with it, even as his body language told her he wanted to terrorize her, and his emotions laid somewhere in the middle. “But you can’t use violence to beat me, Manny. The absolute worst case scenario for you would be to succeed.”

“What?” She asked.

“Well, say you manage it, Manny. Say you can drive that knife so deep into my chest it kills me. Do you know what I think that would do to you?” By now, he was close enough that she could do just that. Instead of taking advantage, though, she backed away. “You’d feel me die, Manny. And from what I know of other vampires’ deaths, that would drive you insane.”

“I’m tougher than you think,” Manny spat.

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” he agreed. “An elf with a human name, who doesn’t speak Aldressan, working for scraps? I’d wager you are the most resilient thrall I’ve had yet. But even you would shatter from that kind of trauma.”

“I… I don’t think you dying would bother me that much,” she said. She could feel that remark hurt him, and she looked down at the floor.

“But of course, you wouldn’t succeed,” he continued. “You might manage to cut me, like my dear Isabelle did, a century ago. But you won’t manage more than that, and that would hurt you far more than it would hurt me.”

He paused, offering Manny the opportunity to retort. She didn’t say anything. It would only give him more things to use against her.

“The remorse would haunt you, Manny. What little resolve you might think you have to fight me would crumble as soon as you felt the pain, and you’d freeze. You’d beg me to punish you for it soon enough—to be allowed to atone for it. And I don’t want that for you, Little Elf.”

Manny snorted at the absurdity of what he’d said. “Beg you? To punish me?! You’re fucking nuts,” she spat. But his feelings betrayed that same terrifying certainty. When she looked up at him, she saw eyes that were sympathetic, but relentless. He really did believe every word of what he said. And she was already beginning to, as well.

“And I will punish you if you attack me, Manny,” he said. The threat was like ice into her spine. She was a hair taller than him, but… gods, did she feel small. “I’d have to, for both our sakes.”

She could feel the turmoil of mixed feelings within him. He relished spelling these things out to her like it was some kind of awful, perverse courtship. And he detested the thought of having to make good on the threat.

She was trembling, and looked down at the knife again. A few moments ago it had made her feel strong, and mighty to hold such a big blade. Now it only served to make her feel weaker than ever. She… she regretted even picking it up. It had been such a tremendously big mistake to do that, to even think about hurting him.

Hot tears started to well up in her eyes, turning the world blurry. Tears of shame, tears of furious hate, and tears of sheer remorse. She… she would not cry in front of this creature. She couldn’t. He would use it against her, would—

“Manny?” He quietly asked. She sniffled and blinked away the tears, then looked up at him. “Would you like me to take the knife from you?”

It… It wasn’t even an order, or a demand. It was an offer. It was a way to reverse course, to fix her mistake. And she was so, so grateful for it. She flipped her grip on the knife, pointing the blade towards herself as she offered it to him.

For a moment, he only eyed it. “Please take it,” she urged. She didn’t want him to change his mind, didn’t want him to decide she’d already crossed a line with her mistake. “I’m sorry,” she added.

He liked that. Gods, he really, really liked that. It was a little bud in the back of her mind that flowered into elation when he grasped the knife. As she felt the weight of the thing leave her hands, the weight of what she’d been contemplating was lifted from her mind alongside it. He wasn’t angry, he wouldn’t punish her. Instead, he was happy—he was pleased with her!

And it felt fantastic. It was a rush of euphoria, of satisfaction. It made her grin, and giggle, and weak in the knees. And when he smiled at her, it made her want to touch him. She hesitated for just a moment, then lurched towards him. She grabbed the collar of his loosely-buttoned shirt, and pulled him close, pressing her lips to his.

He liked that almost as much. It drew out the rush of euphoria, extending it and letting her savor it longer. She explored his mouth with her tongue, eager to get to know more about him, to learn what else he might like. The inside of his mouth was a little colder than hers, but that didn’t bother her one bit. She felt his fangs, sharp and slick. He’d used them to kill, to protect her—had torn Darim’s jugular right open for daring to hit her, and… and she’d thought about killing him and stealing from him to repay that heroism.

The euphoria started to wear off, and she came back down from the high. The kiss lingered for a little while longer, then she wiped her mouth on the skin of her wrist once it broke.

“Lovely,” he purred. “And… for the record. You’re forgiven.”

“Thank you,” she whispered to him. She loathed to imagine what it might be like when he didn’t forgive her for something. She imagined if the lows were anything like the highs, his promise that she’d beg to be punished wasn’t nearly as far-fetched as she might have liked.

He used the knife to gesture to the counter where Manny had left the apples, and the cook book he’d put close to it. “Why don’t I handle cutting the apples, and you can see what the rest of the recipe calls for?” He offered.

A pit formed in her stomach. A hole from which anxiety and shame bubbled up. He… he wanted her to read? She… gods, how in the hells would she tell him she couldn’t? How would she tell him without upsetting him?

Manny approached the leather-bound tome cautiously, like she expected it to come to life and bite her. She half wished it would, and save her from humiliating herself even farther. It… it wasn’t that she was too stupid to read—she knew she was pretty clever. It was that she’d never had the opportunity to learn.

When on paper she’d been old enough to learn to read, she’d in reality barely learned to talk. The other kids in the schoolhouse—all of them humans—picked it up so easily, and eventually the teacher had given up on her. Then, by the time she’d matured enough to be able to handle it, she’d already been left behind.

Zorah, Shala bless her, had tried to teach her. Gods, had she ever. But she’d just not had the time or patience to teach letters to an elf in the throes of puberty. And now… She stared at the book, mortified.

To her side, Vincent looked up from chopping the apples, and eyed her, curiously. “Manny. Check the recipe,” he repeated. It wasn’t phrased like a light-hearted suggestion the second time. He expected her to obey.

“I can’t,” she whispered, so quietly that she half hoped he wouldn’t hear. This wasn’t just the stress of the day, or the ever-more confusing mess of feelings Vincent evoked in her. This was something that upset her no matter what the circumstances were.

“You can’t?” He asked. He wasn’t necessarily displeased by her answer, just… confused. “Manny, can you not read?”

Gods, she couldn’t deal with this right now. The short time she’d been awake had been so trying already. The emotional whiplash was leaving her tired, and numb, and ashamed. Ashamed that she’d had that sudden surge of affection towards this man, ashamed that she gave a damn what he thought of her.

She turned, and started to walk away as quickly as she could. She steeled herself against his displeasure. She was very, very quickly learning to anticipate what this man did and did not like, much to her own chagrin. She expected this would be part of it. She was halfway to the corner that led to the room she’d woken up in when she heard him call out—

“I’ll teach you!”

She stopped dead in her tracks. Not at the offer itself, she’d heard that line before. But at how he felt about it. He… He wanted to teach her. Not only that, she realized. Because not only did he want to teach her, he… He also seemed to understand just how difficult it would be to live up to that promise.

She turned back, looking at his silhouette in the kitchen’s open doorway. “What?” She asked.

She could feel that he wanted her to come back, and stay close. Glancing down at the weight of gold on one leg, she found herself wondering if she would have just collapsed before she’d even made it to the bed. That might be preferable to letting this monster so obviously manipulate her, she realized. But… being taught to read? Gods, did she want that.

She started towards him, and again, she could feel how pleased he was. She tried to force it down, to somehow avoid it so it wouldn’t make her smile like an idiot again. She didn’t want to feel good about any of this. She’d think of a way to get away from him.

“We’ll start tomorrow,” Vincent told her as he turned away. After browsing through his cookbook, he started to gather the ingredients. Apples, butter, flour, brown sugar, white sugar, salt, and even more spices.

She felt like a useless idiot, just standing there and watching while he cut the apples, and did everything to make what she’d asked for. But she couldn’t just offer to help. That… that would be wrong. It would be downright perverse. This man made her feel small, and weak. He’d kidnapped her. Teaching her to read wouldn’t make up for that.

So… She shouldn’t help him with this baking. Because she hated this man, right?

Manny’s mouth was watering when Vincent pulled the tray of turnovers from the oven. Steam billowed out, smelling of apples, cinnamon, and sugar. The pastries looked a little different from how she remembered them, but they smelled exactly right.

“You look excited,” he commented, eyeing her.

“I am,” she said, only briefly meeting his gaze, before she looked back to the tray of pastries. He used a pair of tongs to stack them in a metal wire basket, and tisked at her when she tried to take one. Part of it was that he didn’t approve of her rushing to scarf down his cooking, but there was something else to the gesture. “Are you… worried?” She asked.

He nodded. “You’ll burn yourself something fierce, Little Elf. These need a long time to cool off. The filling is probably boiling, right now.”

Something within her wanted her to defy that. To be contrarian for the sake of it. But she could feel he wasn’t exaggerating. He really did think she’d hurt herself by just digging in. She was already opening her mouth to ask what she should do to pass the time instead, when she caught herself. She would not volunteer to take orders.

“Let’s go for a walk, Manny,” Vincent told her, gesturing down one of the corridors that led from the kitchen. “I want to show you your new home.”

Manny eyed the hallway he indicated, suspiciously, then looked down at her own bare feet. “You want to take me on a tour in a nightgown and no shoes?”

He nodded. “Exactly.”

She looked down the hallway again, lit only by the lanterns now that the sun had set, and then at the basket of pastries. She… didn’t want to leave it behind, she realized. At the orphanage, it would surely have been gone the moment she looked away. And in the decade she’d spent living in whatever housing was cheapest, she’d not exactly grown more trusting that anything not nailed down or behind a lock would stay where she left it.

He seemed to notice her reluctance, and she felt a surge of amusement at her expense. “Would you like to bring our dinner, Manny?” He asked with an infuriating chuckle.

“Don’t laugh at me, you smug fuck,” Manny growled, crossing her arms. “You live here in your manor, with your giant pantry. You can’t fucking imagine what it’s like to live a life like mine.”

The chastisement was surprisingly effective. He frowned, and she felt him take the criticism to heart. He felt bad about the joke, she knew. She just wished she didn’t feel like she should be apologizing to him for it.

“You’re right, of course,” he said, far gentler than before. “I don’t know a thing about the life I’ve saved you from. But I would very much like to hear about it. Why don’t you take the basket, and tell me while I show you around?”

Manny considered that. It was tempting to snap at him for saying he saved her from anything, but… she would just make herself feel bad if she did that, and the offer to bring the basket wasn’t mockery, this second time. So she picked it up, and followed him.

As everywhere else in the manor she’d seen so far, the wooden floors in the new areas were warm to the touch, and pleasant to walk over. She followed Vincent past several guest rooms on one side, and a large dining hall on the other.

“I’m an orphan,” she began, a little hesitantly. “Apparently a priestess found me bundled up, in between my parents who… were dead. She took me to the monastery in Astoria, and they raised me there. They named me Magnanimity, and just put me with the other kids. The other exclusively-human kids.”

“Oh,” he said, softly, as they crossed a foyer. An open door showed a few lived-in looking rooms with bunk beds inside.

Servants quarters? Manny guessed.

“So… I had a hard time of it. The kids teased me for being tall, and stupid. I missed out on almost everything because I wasn’t ready for them when I got the chance, and the caretakers thought I was too old by the time I was ready.”

As Manny spoke, she could feel indignation building up in Vincent. He understood what she meant, and what had happened to her. The anger he felt, and her vindication came together into a mess of feelings that left her excited above all else.

“They… They understood I was different. They just didn’t understand how different. They let me stay until I turned nineteen.”

“That’s like kicking a twelve-year-old out,” he quietly said. “Monstrous. They should have seen you for the child you were. They just didn’t care.”

Manny couldn’t keep the smile from her face. He was angry about what they’d done to her, genuinely angry. They’d wronged her, and this man—this bizarre man—he cared about that. Manny had long since learned to smother that anger until it was only resentment, but his was fresh and hot.

“After that… I just tried to survive. I stole, and took handouts, and…” She considered mentioning Zorah, but decided against it. She didn’t want to draw attention to her, not with this man. She was sure he would like her, if she told him about her. But she didn’t want him to like her, if that meant he’d take an interest in her. “I eventually realized cleaning was easy, and paid relatively well. So I did that, bouncing from job to job, until I got the one at the First University. And that was fine, until my boss decided he’d beat me to death.”

“Well, no more of that,” he said, gesturing down a staircase into an attractively decorated basement. “You’re safe here.”

In the basement, a single large bath was buried into the tiled floor, with two smaller, free-standing tubs in the corners. He intoned a spell to light a handful of candles spread around the room, giving off just enough light to see the space. It was a beautiful, ornate chamber, with bright stone walls, and a strip of the colored glass windows along the ceiling on two of its walls.

“Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to use this at your leisure,” Vincent promised. “You’ll just need to signal one of the servants to draw you a bath, and they’ll take care of it.”

“Servants?” Manny asked, recalling the bunk rooms they’d passed.

Vincent nodded. “I have a staff of people. Loyal and vetted. I sent them away today for your benefit, but they’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Manny found herself softly saying, before he extinguished the candles, and they moved on.

The rest of the tour flew by, Vincent explaining what the various rooms in the O-shaped building were for, when it wasn’t obvious. He had a study, greenhouse verandas, something called an observatory up on the roof, and the courtyard at the center of the building could apparently have a black lace canopy drawn across it during sunny days.

They were in what he’d confirmed was her room, and he used a key to open the locked door to the left of her bed. Predictably, it led to another, nicer bedroom which could only be Vincent’s? It had three doors—one in front of his bed into the hallway, the one back to her room, and one to a room they hadn’t covered in the tour.

His bed didn’t have the many thick blankets hers did, rather just a set of purple, silken sheets. He sat down on it, and patted it, inviting her to join him.

“I am not getting in bed with you,” she scoffed.

“Nor am I asking you to,” Vincent easily retorted. “I’m inviting you to sit down, so we can share those turnovers you’ve been carrying.”

“Oh,” said Manny, looking down at the basket in her hands before sheepishly joining him on his bed. He wordlessly took the basket from her hands, then offered her one of the pastries. It was still warm to the touch, and smelled like heaven. She took a greedy bite, and sighed in sheer delight as she savored finally getting to taste it again. Crumbs rained down into her lap, and a moment later, that disapproval nagged at the back of her mind again. Though it was much, much gentler than in it had been the kitchen, and tempered with understanding and validation.

“Sorry,” she told him, mouth full of applesauce and pastry.

He gave her such a beautifully sincere smile. “I don’t mind, Little Elf. I’m just glad you like it,” he quietly said, before he took a much smaller and more graceful bite of his.

She finished her first turnover quickly, though that still meant going slower than she otherwise would have. Cautiously, she reached into the basket for a second one, gauging whether he would allow it. He thankfully did, and she took a few bites of that before she paused, and looked behind them at that third door, to the left of his bed.

“What’s back there?” She asked, mostly to make conversation. The deep, all-consuming grief she felt radiate from him as soon as she mentioned it made her wish she’d chosen any other topic.

Vincent stopped eating, and stared down at the thickly-piled and crumb-laden carpet floor of his bedroom. Thinking about that room hurt him so, so very badly. And… and she found herself wanting to make him feel better. She reached out, cautiously, and stroked his arm with a few fingers.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I asked.”

He swallowed, and looked at her with a brave face, but that didn’t help. Looking at her, however, did. She smiled at him. “Don’t be sorry you asked, Manny,” he told her. “What’s back there is tremendously important. I… I’m just not ready to talk to you about it.”

“Okay,” Manny said, quietly. She glanced back at that door, and now that she understood how it made him feel, she could only assume what laid beyond it was truly horrible. She vowed not to ask about it again, to not stoke that fire of pain any further, out of fear that it would burn her as much as it burned him.

“You should get some rest,” Vincent told her. He sounded distracted, now, and his mind was clearly still on that door. “The healing spells we used to help you recover from that monster’s beating took a toll on you, and you’re still paying it.”

Manny reluctantly nodded, getting up, and walking back into her bedroom. He told her to close the door as she did so, and she obeyed. She just wished that would shield her from that pain he seemed to want to wrestle with all alone.

She settled into the bed quite easily. It was far, far more comfortable than the one in her room with Zorah, and the warm food in her belly made it very compelling to lie down. She laid awake, though, until Vincent was able to move past whatever hurt him so.

She admonished herself for that. Why, why should knowing her kidnapper—her self-appointed master—was in pain have to keep her up? In the heat of the moment, it was easy to feel sympathetic towards the man. But the truth was that she didn’t care if he was in pain.

And she would never call him her master.