"But you are an entirely new territory, to all of our kind."
"What do you mean?"
"That you are a Queen is a frank miracle in itself," Gryphon said with grave solemnity. "There has never been a Mixed Blood Queen before."
"Ever?"
"Never in our entire history since the Great Exodus from the moon."
"The moon?"
"Four millennia ago, a disaster befell our moon. The seas dried up and mountains crumbled. Monère desperately departed their dying planet. Many came to this world, carving out an existence here, all hoping that one day the moon would return to its former glory and we could return to our home."
"Where do others of your kind live?"
"We carved out colonies across the face of the earth, in the forests, amidst the deserts, on islands, along the high steppes. Most remain pure, though some have lived among the humans, but it is not easy to live in isolation among them, away from our kind."
"So just how old are you?" It had been a question that had bedeviled me since he first opened his mouth and those delightfully quaint words and phrases flowed from his lips.
Gryphon laughed, a rusty sound that twisted my heart. It made me want to entice it from him again and again until his laughter came freely with ease. "Not that old. I am only seventy-five years old."
"Seventy-five! But you don't look more than thirty."
"What are you doing?" he asked as I bent over him and combed my fingers through the long, thick strands.
"Checking for white hair," I muttered, then jerked and moaned as he nuzzled my breast and drew a nipple into the warm, wet cavern of his mouth. "Oh, no you don't. I want some answers first."
"I have no white hairs," he said, giving my pert tip one last luscious laving of his tongue before drawing away. "Seventy-five is considered young among our people. A warrior is considered mature at one hundred and seasoned at two."
"Two hundred?" I said, squeaking like a mouse again, which drew a smile from Gryphon. He watched me, pleasure alighting his eyes as I walked naked to my closet. Drawing on a robe, I returned to the bed to perch beside him.
"Our average life span is three hundred years."
"And Mixed Bloods?"
His smile faded, elusive once more. "They possess the lifespan of humans. One hundred years, mayhap."
Again I felt a mixture of emotions. Pleasure at hearing that I would likely live until a hundred—a lengthy age that few humans reached—and pain that I would not live to three hundred. I felt cheated somehow.
"Do not worry. 'Tis my belief you shall live longer than that. More Monère blood flows within you instead of human blood, and your heart beats slower than those of your human kind."
"Fifty beats per minute."
"The few Mixed Bloods I have encountered have rhythms of sixty and higher, like other humans."
"So?"
"So do you not see that the slower one's heart beats, the longer one lives? A hummingbird's heart beats more than three hundred times per minute and they live briefly, gloriously, for one year. A turtle, on the other hand, possesses a rhythm closer to mine. It is not unusual for them to see two hundred, sometimes even three hundred years of life."
"So you're saying I will live longer than most humans."
He nodded, his eyes a quicksilver flash of ebon darkness. "That is my belief."
I took his hand and lay it against my cheek, my smile bittersweet. It was all a moot point. Two hundred more years to live with him would be a lovely prospect, but a longer life would be pointless without him. An amorphous aloneness and gray solitude was all I had know up till now. I had not truly begun to live until my eyes first fastened upon him. I wondered if my new life, my life with him, would be even more fleeting than that of a hummingbird.
"How much time do you have before the poison kills you?" I asked.
"No longer than a full cycle of the moon."
Thirty days. Shit. "When did she…"
"Yesterday."
Just one day, and how weak it had made him in that short period of time.
"What is it?" he asked, his hand moving down to stroke my neck, his thumb brushing against my pulse.
"I was suddenly worried about the proper care and nourishment of my Moonie," I said, forcing a smile to my lips.
"I wonder who your parents are," Gryphon mused.
"The only thing I have from them is the silver cross you saw." Retrieving the cross, I turned it and showed him the engraving etched on the back.
"Mona Lisa," he read. "Your name."
"Yes."
I watched as his eyes narrowed. "May I?" At my consenting nod, he took it from me and held it by the chain. Very lightly, delicately, he grasped the cross and examined it more closely. There at the base was another word etched so tiny, so meticulously, that human eye could not have detected it without the air of a microscope.
"Monère," he read. Carefully, he released the cross and returned it to me, rubbing his fingers together absently where he had touched the silver.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
"It hung upon my neck when they found me as a newborn and the name engraved on the back was the name I was given at the orphanage."
He gazed at the cross I clutched tightly in my hand and stilled into that sudden immobility, a deep stillness that was beyond human. "Your hand," he said with odd carefulness. "May I see it?"
I set the cross down and gave him my right hand. He uncurled my fingers. With reverence, he touched the mole there in the center of my palm. It was just a slight roundness, like a pearl buried halfway in my flesh. He held out his other hand and I passed my left palm into his care. He looked down upon the slight rising there, also, then gazed from one hand to the other.
"What is it?" I asked.
He did not speak for a moment. When he finally did, it was with a question of his own. "What powers do you possess?"
I shrugged. "I can see through the darkness and hear miles, around me, if I wished. My sense of smell is acute. I am fast like a cat, strong as a lion. With effort, I can control people's minds with my gaze. With my hands, I can detect ailment within the body and, to a small degree, ease some of the pain, but I have yet to obtain the ability to heal."
I waited for Gryphon to speak but he just stared down at my palms.
"Well?" I finally prompted.
He kissed each mole with careful deference and pulled me down until I lay beside him once more. " 'Tis my belief that you bear the mark of the Moon Goddess, her tears."
"The Moon Goddess? "
"Yes, a deity whom we worship. Our earliest ancestress, the mother of us all."
"And why do you say you believe? As if you're not sure," I mumbled against the hollow of his neck.
"You are most uncommon, my young Queen. We have only heard of the mark of the Goddess's tears through our lore and legends since the time of our Exodus. Those few Queens who were blessed with such marks were extraordinary healers and great warriors."
"So what happened to these blessed Queens?"
"Great gifts beget great peril. They were both blessed and cursed by their gifts."
"Sounds like a mixed review to me."
My stomach suddenly growled and I jumped. Gryphon gave that rusty laugh again and I rewarded him with a grin. "I'm starving. Do you eat? Or do you need to drink blood?"
His brows rose. "And would you offer me your lovely neck if I did?"
"Sure, if you needed it."
"Ah." He sighed, his eyes growing soft. "You are like a fresh breath of wind. No, we do not drink blood. We partake of food as humans do. Did you think me vampyre?"
"Yes," I blushed. "I craved your crimson blood the first time I saw it. I was overwhelmed with a desire to taste it. And when I did, my heart melted. It was the first time I'd ever felt such an urge."