The ancient female healer, her skin like sun-dried parchment, turned her black, depthless eyes on Isadora. Her voice was the sound of dry leaves skittering across a grave.
"He is rejecting inert blood. His body knows it is a false substitute. He requires a living heart. A mortal tether to anchor him back to this world."
Her gaze dropped to Isadora's throat, a clinical, assessing look that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with... harvesting.
"The proximity must be absolute. The skin must be bare. The scent of your life, the heat of your blood, must be an invitation he cannot refuse."
Isadora's hands, trembling, went to the collar of her tattered, filthy prison tunic. She was to strip. Here. In front of all of them. In front of the sneering Valerius, the wounded Lucien, the horrified Seraphyne, and the cold, judging eyes of the Council members who were still, she knew, gathered somewhere downstairs.
