was snowing, or that there would be a fire or a hurricane or a smal tsunami.
She had given one of the star bal s a try, and found it a ridiculous soap opera that she couldn't understand in the least.
She wished, now, that she had never tried to stop Damon from coming here. She wished that he had pried her off before they had both fal en into the hole. She wished that she had grabbed Meredith's hand and just let go of Damon.
And this was only the first day.
Damon smiled at the surly guard. "What do I want? Only what I already have. An open gate."He didn't go inside, however.
He asked what M. le Princess was doing and heard that she was at a luncheon. On a donor.
Perfect. Soon there came a deferential knock at the gate, which Damon demanded be opened wider. The guards clearly didn't like him; they had properly put together the disappearance of what turned out to be their captain of guard and the intrusion of this strange human. But there was something menacing about him even in this menacing world.
They obeyed him.
Soon after that there came another quiet knock and then another, and another and so on until twelve men and women with arms ful of damp and fragrant brown paper had quietly fol owed Damon up the stairs and into M. le Princess's black bedchamber.
Jessalyn, meanwhile, had had a long and stuffy post-luncheon meeting, entertaining some of her financial advisors, who both seemed very old to her, although they had been changed in their twenties. Their muscles were soft with lack of use, she found herself thinking. And, natural y, they were dressed in ful -sleeved, wide-legged black except for a fril at their throats, white inside by gaslight, scarlet outside by the eternal blood-red sun.
The princess had just seen them bow out of her presence when she inquired, rather irritably, where the human Damon was. Several servants with malice behind their smiles explained that he had gone with a dozen...humans...up to her bedchamber.
Jessalyn almost flew to the stairs and climbed very quickly with the gliding motion that she knew was expected of proper female vampires. She reached the Gothic doors, and heard the hushed sounds of indignant spite as her ladies-in-waiting al whispered together. But before the princess could even ask what was going on, she was engulfed in a great warm wave of scent. Not the luscious and life-sustaining scent of blood, but something lighter, sweeter, and at the moment, while her bloodlust was sated, even headier and more dizzying. She pushed open the double doors. She took a step into her bedchamber and then stopped in astonishment.
The cathedral-like black room was ful of flowers. There were banks of lilies, vases ful of roses, tulips in every color and shade, and riots of daffodils and narcissus, while fragrant honeysuckle and freesia lay in bowers.
The flower peddlers had converted the gloomy, conventional black room into this fanciful extravaganza. The wiser and more farsighted of M. le Princess's retainers were actively helping them by bringing in large, ornate urns.
Damon, upon seeing Jessalyn enter the room, immediately went to kneel at her feet.
"You were gone when I woke!"the princess said crossly, and Damon smiled, very faintly.
"Forgive me, your highness. But since I am dying anyway, I thought that I should be up and securing these flowers for you. Are the colors and scents satisfactory?"
"The scents?"Jessalyn's whole body seemed to melt. "It's...
like...an orchestra for my nose! And the colors are like nothing I've ever seen!"She burst into laughter, her green eyes lightening, her straight red hair a waterfal around her shoulders. Then she began to stalk Damon back into the gloom in one corner. Damon had to control himself or he would have laughed; it was so much like a kitten stalking an autumn leaf.
But once they got into the corner, tangled in the black hangings and nowhere near a window, Jessalyn assumed a deadly serious expression.
"I'm going to have a dress made, just the color of those deep, dark purple carnations,"she whispered. "Not black."
"Your highness wil look wonderful in it,"Damon whispered in her ear. "So striking, so daring - "
"I may even wear my corsets on the inside of my dress."She looked up at him through heavy lashes. "Or - would that be too much?"
"Nothing is too much for you, my princess,"Damon whispered back. He stopped a moment to think seriously. "The corsets - would they match the dress or be black?"