Blood Countess (Lady Slayers #1) - Lana Popovic Page 0,1

shoving my way gracelessly in pursuit through the milling crowd. It’ll be crushed underfoot if I don’t find it, by a wayward boot snapping its spine or splitting its fragile skull. And after what it’s already suffered in its little life, I find that I can’t stomach the thought of such a brutal end.

Work-worn faces glower down at me as I push past, spewing a fug of liquored breath and indignant challenges at being jostled. I ignore them all, plowing onward. I’ve nearly reached the crowd’s lip when the kitten lollops out ahead of me—darting directly into the path of the countess’s chestnut geldings, between their falling hooves.

One of the steeds goes rigid, while the other rears a little, hooves stamping, eyes rolling white with senseless panic. The carriage lurches to a stop, abruptly enough that the countess loses her feet and thuds down to sitting with a startled, undignified yelp.

A chorus of gasps races through the crowd, followed by a silence so deafening that it somehow makes commonplace sounds—the creak of branches, the phlegmy clearing of throats, snatches of birdsong—unspeakably profane. My heart scrambles up my throat, wedges there like a mouthful gone awry. Though the countess is a new arrival, rumor has preceded her. By all accounts, she is sharp even by blue-blood standards, uncommonly quick to take umbrage to any perceived slight.

And I have disrupted her wedding day.

My heart cudgels my ribs as one of Lord Nadasdy’s soldiers leaps from his saddle, nimble despite the weight of his armor. He dashes out between the geldings, snatching up the kitten with one gauntleted hand. It dangles pitifully from his fisted grip, tiny limbs flailing as he offers it up to the countess, who has alit from the carriage in a dizzying swirl of damask skirts.

“What would you have me do with the creature, my lady?” he calls out, giving the kitten a careless little shake. A bored, desultory ruthlessness underpins his tone. “Will you suffer it to live?”

The inside of my mouth prickles with trepidation, as if I’ve been chewing on nettles. Please, I beg silently. Please don’t let her kill it.

The countess holds her hands out for the kitten, then cradles it to her chest, tipping its tiny face up to hers with a finger under its chin. I can see it go rag-doll limp in her grasp, ears flattening as if it knows its life might well be forfeit. “That depends, I suppose,” she muses as she strokes its head with long, pale fingers, each caress prolonged and deliberate. Finally, her eyes lift to spear mine. “On what its owner has to say.”

She crooks a slim finger at me, beckoning me closer. I stumble forward on legs like stilts, my knees threatening to give way. My vision shudders in rhythm with every heavy heartbeat. Not even my father’s explosive furies have ever left me this afraid.

“Now,” she says briskly when I stand before her. “Let us see what we have here.”

I dip into a clumsy curtsy, fearing for a breathless lurch of a moment that I will overbalance and tip forward. But I right myself at the last moment, licking my lips as I meet her eyes.

The world beyond us wavers like a heat mirage, until it seems to vanish altogether. Leaving me alone, marooned, pinioned by her gaze.

Her eyes are captivating, large and lustrous with a distant glimmer, like very deep wells—almost black, even darker than her raven hair. So dark, the pupils barely show beneath the swoop of shadow cast by her lashes. They fix on mine, unabashed in their appraisal, and my insides fist tight with surprise. I know who she is, of course. We commoners know all those who own the lands we occupy only by their leave. Countess Elizabeth Báthory, daughter of a baron, niece of the Polish king. Yet, highborn as she is, her beauty somehow takes me unawares. So formidable and unyielding that it seems to exert its own force. Though she’s only a few years older than my thirteen, she already wields it like a scepter.

I can see the answering flicker of recognition as she surveys me in kind. Her gaze trails over my eyes, which are cold and clear as a winter sky, then down the pale sluice of my hair, swept over one shoulder and only loosely braided. A boy whose attentions I spurned once told me I looked untouchable, like something carved from ice. Though my blood runs common as the silty mud of the