badass mage’ did you not get when I stole magic from Vasile? Because I could turn you into a toad. Or worse. Something with a tail and ears. A donkey. You might be hot as hell right now, but not so much as a donkey.”
“Many people find donkeys quite cute.”
“Who? Who finds donkeys cute?” she demanded.
He kept a straight face. “Little girls all over the world.”
She rolled her eyes and settled back down. He dropped his hand into her hair and began running his fingers through the silky strands. There was no change in her breathing. Her eyes were clear. Sleepy perhaps, but not a single hint of pain. How long did it take before the conversion started? It didn’t make sense that she wasn’t already going through it.
“I would like to check your body.”
“I’m certain you would.” Her tone was very droll.
He laughed softly because he couldn’t help himself. She was too funny, his woman. She was going to teach him fun whether he liked it or not. “I do not understand why the conversion is not taking place.”
“I’m too tired to move, so as long as it doesn’t require me to do anything differently, go for it.” She wrapped her arms around his thighs and closed her eyes.
Isai didn’t wait. He separated his spirit from his body and immediately entered hers as white-hot energy. He moved through her, examining every organ. There was no warring of bloods. No fight to reshape organs. Her structure was no different than any Carpathian born.
Puzzled, he returned to his body. He caught her arm, studying the mage mark. It was definitely a birthmark. She’d been born of Xavier’s lineage. “Julija, did you ever sleep in the ground?”
She frowned. “No, of course not. How would I breathe?”
“You told me you preferred the night and that you sometimes found you liked lying in the soil. Did the soil ever feel as if it rejuvenated you? Has it ever healed a wound?”
Julija didn’t answer him immediately. As usual, she gave thought to his questions. “It was a very long time ago, but I remember when I was a child and my father would slap or punch me, or Crina. She was the worst when I was little. She would beat me very badly. At the time we lived close to the forest in mountains. We’d already moved to the United States. I used to have this little fort I would hide in. I remember making a shallow depression and lying in it. I always felt soothed and at peace there. I thought it was because they never found me there. But when I went back, I wasn’t as stiff or as sore as I should have been.”
Was it possible for her mage blood and her Carpathian blood to give her both worlds? It seemed as though she was both. She clearly wasn’t undergoing a conversion. She could do anything a Carpathian could do. He had called her that, but only because he knew she was born with the Dragonseeker mark.
“When Sergey’s servants captured you and forced you into those underground tunnels where all the vampires were, did the Dragonseeker mark come to life?” The birthmark of the Dragonseeker—that small dragon—always warned when vampires were close.
She nodded and reached down with two fingers to rub at the little dragon positioned over her left ovary as if guarding the eggs of their future children. “It glowed red and became so warm it was almost hot. But my mage mark came to life as well.”
That brought him up short. He went very still inside. He had lived centuries. He had seen that mark before, of course. Of course he’d noticed it on her. She had both. The high mage’s birthmark was very distinctive and not all children born of Xavier’s line bore it. Most didn’t. Only the very, very talented ones.
“Your mage mark alerted you to the presence of vampires as well as your Dragonseeker mark?”
“Yes, it always has. The tail of the snake rattles and the scorpion’s tail always pulls up in preparation to sting.”
“You essentially have two warning systems?”
She rubbed at his thigh with her cheek and then tightened her arm around his thighs. “That’s exactly right.”
“Then how in the world did Sergey’s army manage to get their hands on you?”
She was quiet for so long he didn’t think she’d answer him. Finally, she shrugged. “Elisabeta. You may as well know. We have an extremely strong connection. I could feel her pain. This endless, hopeless despair