“Please... just let us go. You can keep the Priestess.” Livius begged for their lives to the man hovering over them. Cyprianus was too weak to do it for them and even if Cyprianus was strong enough to answer this man, he seriously doubted there would be any begging to be heard from his older brother’s lips.

A burst of deep laughter came from the back of the man’s throat upon Livius’s words, a mocking sort of laughter filled with amusement, making the tears in Livius’s eyes multiply. It was hopeless, useless.

“Oh he’s so adorable... isn’t he?” The woman purred from the other side of the huge bed and sat herself down beside Cyprianus, her hand stroking through his hair causing his brother to jerk stubbornly which was all futile as an attempt to get away from her of course. Her eyes were lazily set on Livius sending shivers down his spine. Despite Cyprianus’s attempt to jerk from the woman’s touch, she found his thick dark brown hair again and her fingers lazily ran through it, combing it this way and that.

“Oh, we intend to... We intend to Livius.” That’s when Livius realized they knew his name and if they knew his name, they’d know Cyprianus’s name as well. “How do you know my name?” His eyes sought those of the kind one, the curly-haired one, praying that his questions would be answered but those kind eyes were wild, confused which Livius had not noticed before when the man had held him so comfortingly close. They were that of a beast. He’d see this look in a beggar’s eyes in the streets of his city. That beggar had mumbled things. That beggar had been insane.

Livius had to wonder right then: Was this kind one insane too? Insane like he suspected his brother had been? Guilt took hold of him instantly when the thought came to him and he winced. He knew now that Cyprianus had not been mad. This nightmare was very much real and it scared him now just as much as it had scared Cyprianus before. If only he’d listened to Cyprianus’s concerns. Suddenly he felt like his mind had been hit by something so strong that it made him twitch. It felt like he’s suddenly been stabbed in the back of his head. There was a voice in his head. One that was not his own. One that sounded very much like the elder man but he could not be sure.

I am inside your mind now, just the same as I was in Cyprianus’s when you came to take my precious Titiana. Don’t be afraid Livius. You and Cyprianus were chosen.

Livius’s eyes flashed to the man standing over him as tears rolled down his cheeks and the man leaned closer to stroke away the stubborn tears. “What are you?” Livius whispered in a shaky voice before he felt his body slump into the bed as easily as a puppet whose strings had been cut.... Then darkness engulfed his mind once more and he drifted off into the unconsciousness.

~

The burning was the first thing Livius recognized. Not that his ties had been undone but the burning rushing through his veins and making his heart pump at an immensely quick rate. Livius quickly let out a scream and arched upward into the waiting wrist held above him expectantly. The wrist had an open wound to it, the irony smell of blood making this apparent enough to him.“This will make it better, Livius. Drink.” It was the dark-haired man again who had brushed his tears away and brought him here. Livius was in so much pain that he didn’t hesitate to put his lips around the wound and drink from it. The blood tasted intoxicatingly good, just as it had done when it had been dripped through his parted lips.

He couldn’t resist fluttering his eyes shut and moaning against the wrist offered to him. It soothed the burning somewhat. Not everywhere all at once, but certain bits, like water washing down from above him. Just seconds into his drinking session, he heard his brother’s scream as the older arched up too, obviously in as much pain as Livius had been. The woman who had been consistently by his side now wrapped her arms around his arching body and guided his head, his lips to the open wound in her neck. Livius watched in horror as Cyprianus quickly drank, needing no words of encouragement from her.

It looked a sick thing to behold, something that was taboo. Something that shouldn’t be done at all and yet Livius could not bring himself to look away. Cyprianus’s arms seemed to wrap around the slender frame of the woman to pull her body closer to his. Livius imagined the blood tasted as good to Cyprianus as it seemed to his brother. It was irresistible. It felt like they had not drunk any liquid in such a long time and their thirst was being so splendidly sated by the sweetest wine they could have ever laid their lips to.

They were unbound now and Livius would have run. He wasn’t the one being held down. He would have run if the taste of the blood wasn’t so immensely soothing to something deep inside of him that was craving it. That something inside of him had not been there, he was sure, a couple of hours ago when he’d laid his head down to sleep in that tent out on the far too open field. There was another concern about running though, not that it would have even crossed his mind. How far could he get? These creatures were supernatural beings.

They ran like the wind and flew and were powerful and could talk into your mind and, and, and...Instead of running though, his hands came up to wrap around the wrist that contained such sweetness in its veins, when the dark-haired man pulled it back from Livius. He held a face like he was teasing a child with another taste of sweet cake a child.