Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) by Karin Cox Page A

orphaned one die.” The young doe nudged her again, bleating. “It meant milking the others to feed her. But we are all shepherds, or were once. You will learn that soon enough.”
    “Shepherds?”
    A line of deer following her, she walked to a gnarled tree and removed a pail that hung from one of the higher branches.
    I watched her calm a doe, gentling its ears with one hand until it let her place the pail underneath so that she might milk it. The orphan approached me and nuzzled my hand. Its lips were warm against my palm. How long had it been since I had touched an animal that wasn’t a bat? The black mare at St Martin de Re, I supposed. It felt good that the deer did not shy away from me but trusted me as it did her.
    “I thought we were swans,” I said, still wondering what she meant by shepherds.
    Skylar laughed. “Patience, Amedeo. It will all come in time.”
    And I had time—a month at least. Would she make me wait for every scrap of information?
    “Kisana told me you all learn the Cruximus by rote.” I kept my eyes on the deer. “You know the Sphinx’s riddle, but you won’t reveal it.” My eyes called her on her lie.
    She looked up at me sharply and then took the half-full pail and helped the orphan drink from it, focused on the doe’s greedy sucking.
    “Patience,” she cautioned. “You will not be permitted to read the Cruximus or to hear the oracle of the Sphinx until they are sure of you and until you have made a blood-troth. They do not trust you yet.”
    “Yet you do?”
    She let the deer lick a smear of milk from the back of her hand before stroking its back. It shook itself to fend her off and skittered away, kicking its dappled rump in the air. “I know you better,” she said finally.
    “You think you know me better.”
    Her head snapped up like a deer’s, nostrils flared. “And what do you know, Amedeo? In all the centuries you have lived, what has eternity taught you?”
    Her voice remained calm despite her words, which maddened me.
    “Not to trust those who lie to me.” I lashed out, although I could not tell why I felt the need. “And sorrow.”
    She sighed and watched the deer graze. “You are a deep well,” she said eventually. “One must take care not to drown in such a well, or in one’s own sorrows. Perhaps I should not have brought you here, but if you will let me, I might teach you more than the Sphinx’s riddle. Might be I could teach you happiness. Silvenhall was a happy place ... once. It might be again.”
    The sky was beginning to lighten at the horizon, tipping the steep pillars of rock with bronze and rose.
    Tiredness overtook me. Why did I continue to challenge her? She was right: maybe she should not have brought me here. I glanced across at her, at the dawn light that struck her face. Her expression was serene, unreadable. I envied her that. Was it happiness, I wondered, or something else? Trust? Faith? She seemed to know her fate before it found her. I fought at my fate and the bleak fates of others. Maybe she was right. I had been too much alone, too unhappy. A pit of sorrows. Yet whose fault was that but Silvenhall’s? And had I made fewer mistakes than she?
    I stole another glance in her direction. If she was listening to my thoughts, her face did not betray her eavesdropping. She had wronged me by bringing me here, and she was keeping more from me, but despite it I felt drawn to her. I saw little kindness for me in this place, but for her. Could she be happiness too?
    I shook my head. I had known happiness once, hadn’t I? And it was not in a Crèche. It was in letters tucked under my pillow, in passionfruit, and in poetry. Sabine’s wings above me, her rumble of laughter. All of those things were happy.
    “And complicated.”
    Skylar had been in my thoughts again, and I heard hers as clearly as a bell.
    “How irritating that is!” I snapped, setting off alone down a stone path that led to a copse of wild lemons.
    “I am sorry. I do not mean to