Sammy frowned. He hadn’t seen the vampire among the partygoers in the garden. In fact, there had been no bids at all when the auction had started.
The auctioneer had announced him, highlighting his abilities like he was some fancy new tech gadget. Then he’d concluded by slamming the gavel down on the podium.
With how quickly he’d been summoned, Sammy could only assume Henri had been in possession of the locket long before that. Meaning the auction had been entirely for show. Pageantry. A victory tour for others to admire his trophy.
He wondered if the same was true for Aerin and the rest of the captives. If they had been paraded across the stage for everyone to covet what already belonged to someone else.
Gross, but from what he’d seen of the mansion, he couldn’t say it surprised him.
“Please, sit.”
Pulled out of his thoughts, Sammy jerked his head up to stare at the vampire.
An order, thinly disguised as a request, Henri Delacour was clearly used to people falling over themselves to do what hecommanded. Too bad for him, Sammy had zero interest in obeying.
“I’ll stand, thanks. I won’t be here long anyway.” He had no doubt Dominic would tear the mansion apart brick by brick to get to him.
Henri’s smile broadened, revealing the tips of sharp, glossy fangs, as he rubbed his thumb across the surface of the locket. “But I insist.”
Jerked forward by an invisible force, Sammy gasped when his legs carried him to the sofa. His body turned without his permission so that he faced his captor, and a heavy pressure pushed down on his shoulders, forcing him to the cushions.
Shocked but unwilling to give the asshole what he wanted, he fisted his hands in his lap and stared back with a bland, neutral expression.
It wasn’t easy.
Clearly, the terms of the contract had been revised, benefits negotiated, and new constraints woven into the original binding spell. At least with Chandler, he’d been granted some degree of autonomy.
Now, he was truly little more than a paper doll, and he wouldn’t deny that scared the hell out of him.
“See?” Henri cooed. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” he muttered under his breath.
Of course, the vampire heard him easily, but he simply smirked around the rim of his goblet.
“I thought it would be nice for us to get to know one another,” Henri said a long moment later. “First, however, let us test your abilities. You can sense what it is I crave, no?”
“Nope, sorry.” Sammy shrugged. “No idea.”
While he spoke with purposeful glibness, he meant what he said. Now that Dominic had claimed him, he no longer acted like a mirror to other people’s desires.
“Now, now,” Henri chided. “Don’t be stubborn. Show me what you can do.”
Sammy shrugged, faking nonchalance and praying the vampire wouldn’t notice the way his hands shook. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Henri’s pale eyebrows drew together in a shallow V, the first outward sign of disapproval he’d shown. “Your eyes are lovely,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the relique again. “But I prefer blue. Show me.”
Pressure built behind his eyes and spread to his temples as two fundamentally different magics collided, each vying for space. He felt the blood magic press against him, compelling him to submit, but in the end, the threads of fate that bound him to Dominic proved stronger.
“Oh, well, that won’t do,” Henri commented, an edge to his voice now, and his smoky eyes narrowed to predatory slits. He gripped the locket tighter, digging his thumb into the aged pewter. “You belong to me now, Samuel. The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be.”
Sammy felt the pressure in his chest this time, fainter than before, weaker. “I don’t belong to you.”
“But you do. Say it.”
The words whispered in his mind, and his mouth moved to form them against his will, but they became lodged in his throat—thick, cloying, and bitter.
“Say it,” Henri repeated, a subtle snarl vibrating beneath the command.