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although she still didn't understand what had happened.
It was when they got back in the living room that she found her diary was missing.
Stefan lifted his head from the velvet-soft neck of the doe. The woods were filled with night noises,
and he couldn't be sure which had disturbed him.
With the Power of his mind distracted, the deer roused from its trance. He felt muscles quiver as
she tried to get her feet under her.
Go, then, he thought, sitting back and releasing her entirely. With a twist and a heave, she was up
and running.
He'd had enough. Fastidious, he licked at the corners of his mouth, feeling his canine teeth retract
and blunt, oversensitive as always after a prolonged feed. It was hard to know what enough was
anymore. There had been no spells of dizziness since the one beside the church, but he lived in fear of
their return.
He lived in one specific fear: that he would come to his senses one day, his mind reeling with
confusion, to find Elena's graceful body limp in his arms, her slim throat marked with two red
wounds, her heart stilled forever.
That was what he had to look forward to.
The blood lust, with all its myriad terrors and pleasures, was a mystery to him even now. Although
he had lived with it every day for centuries, he still did not understand it. As a living human, he
would no doubt have been disgusted, sickened, by the thought of drinking the rich warm stuff directly
from a breathing body. That is, if someone had proposed such a thing to him in so many words.
But no words had been used that night, the night Katherine had changed him.
Even after all these years, the memory was clear. He had been asleep when she appeared in his
chamber, moving as softly as a vision or a ghost. He had been asleep, alone…
She was wearing a fine linen shift when she came to him.
It was the night before the day she had named, the day when she would announce her choice. And
she came to him.
A white hand parted the curtains around his bed, and Stefan woke from sleep, sitting up in alarm.
When he saw her, pale golden hair gleaming about her shoulders, blue eyes lost in shadow, he was
struck silent with amazement.
And with love. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. He trembled and tried to
speak, but she put two cool fingers over his lips.
"Hush," she whispered, and the bed sank under new weight as she got in.
His face flamed, his heart was thundering with embarrassment and with excitement. There had
never been a woman in his bed before. And this was Katherine, Katherine whose beauty seemed to
come from heaven, Katherine whom he loved more than his own soul.
And because he loved her, he made a great effort. As she slipped under the sheets, drawing so near
to him that he could feel the cool freshness of night air in her thin shift, he managed to speak.
"Katherine," he whispered. "We – I can wait. Until we are married in the church. I will have my
father arrange it next week. It – it will not be long…"