Demon Forged

heart, his life.
    And with a single misstep and a demon’s monstrous bargain, it had ended. Ended with the destruction of Alejandro’s honor as she traded her body for his life. Ended with Irena holding the demon’s head, his face a mirror image of Alejandro’s. Ended with Alejandro walking into a bedroom whose iron walls had been decorated by blood, seeing what she’d done to the demon’s body—and knowing how the demon must have used hers.
    And he’d known that he’d failed her. Utterly failed her.
    She’d cut off her braids one by one, tossed her hair and the demon’s head onto the bed, and asked him to burn it all. Then she’d walked away without looking back.
    Two centuries had passed before he’d seen her again.
    In the two hundred years since, every infrequent encounter had been accompanied by his wish that he’d never laid eyes upon her. And with every encounter, it was an effort to tear his gaze away.
    He made the effort now, turning to examine the memorial statue for a boy poet that stood beside a remnant of the ancient wall. Alejandro well remembered the gate that had once led into the city. It had already been falling to ruins in the late fifteenth century when, still a human, he’d journeyed to Rome. Now only a plaque marked the gate’s former location, and it described how Roman slaves had opened the gate to the invaders who’d sacked the city. Irena, he knew, had been one of the slaves, serving in a senator’s household.
    In his human life, Alejandro hadn’t been a senator, but almost the equivalent in the Spanish courts. Born into the position rather than elected—but still responsible for his people and his lands, even if it meant trying to protect them from the fanaticism of his king and queen. A politician, always maneuvering, staying a step ahead, making alliances with men he’d hated just to keep the long, dangerous fingers of the Inquisition from touching his people.
    For years, he’d performed that subtle dance. Every movement was calculated. He’d married as one step, made alliances as another. And when a demon had outmaneuvered him, he’d died for it.
    Irena’s hatred for politicians almost burned as hot as her hatred for demons. Alejandro thought she had forgiven him for being one only because he’d died protecting his wife and children.
    At the time, Alejandro’s youngest son had almost been the same age as the poet memorialized here. All of his sons had all grown into men, he prayed, but he only remembered them as boys. He had small statues of them in his cache—statues that Irena had made for him after he’d projected the image of his sons into her mind. She’d captured them perfectly, giving each figure details that were heartbreakingly realistic.
    Even after five hundred years, he found it too painful to pull the statues out of his cache to look at them, but he took comfort knowing they were there.
    Irena called out a loud greeting in Italian, and Alejandro’s gaze returned to her as she threw her arms around the vampire’s waist.
    When in Rome, they all did as Romans do. Among the public, Guardians almost always spoke the local language. Unlike her French, Irena’s Italian carried a Slavic accent, as it had when he’d heard her speak to the wastrel on the street.
    And his body reacted in the same way as the wastrel’s had. In those months Alejandro had spent with Irena, she’d spoken Russian—but even then, her voice held the flavor of something older. And just as it was Guardian custom to speak the local tongue, so it was for a novice to speak the language of his mentor. Alejandro had defied custom, and answered her blunt commands in Spanish to signal that he’d had as much to show her, that he was her equal.
    But after the demon’s bargain, when they’d finally met again in Paris, she’d greeted him in French. But for his name, she’d spoken nothing but French to him since, and Alejandro had replied in no other language.
    Four centuries had passed, yet he still responded to her husky accent. He listened for her every word and wished himself deaf. It was madness.
    The vampire smiled as he returned Irena’s embrace, but not enough to show his fangs. His broad hands splayed over the long muscles of her back, her pale skin bare but for the two leather ties that fastened her apron-like shirt. Over her head, Deacon’s flat gaze targeted Alejandro.
    The vampire didn’t appear apprehensive. Perhaps Deacon didn’t know Irena well enough to guess