True to her word, Sookie came to him the following night. Since she had told him that the bar in Bon Temps was keeping her busy, he hadn't expected her to arrive as early as she did, and he was discussing a new employee with Clancy. His back was to the front entrance, but he felt her enter even before he saw the sour look cross Clancy's face. He turned to confirm that she was there, then told Clancy to get lost.

"Hello, Sookie," he said when she sat across from him. He ran his gaze over her down-turned mouth and unhappy eyes. "Are you here to tell me how angry you are at me about our pledging?" No, it wasn't that. She wasn't angry. "Or are you ready to have that long talk we must have sooner or later?"

"No," she said, answering both questions in one.

Like a blind man I feel you deep down inside, sang the voice on the radio.

The bar was relatively empty at this early hour, and Eric savored the peaceful quiet that settled between himself and Sookie. On one hand, he wanted to force her to have the discussion that loomed over them. On the other, he wanted to prolong the simple pleasure of her company.

You've stolen my heart, and you've captured my soul, the song in the background continued.

Eric drank the last of his True Blood and edged the empty bottle aside so he could reach across to lay his hand on hers. Something was bothering her, and the feeling intensified when he touched her. "What happened today?" he asked her.

"Some FBI agents came over to my house to question me about Rhodes. That wasn't a big deal. But then, while they were there…" She stopped and took one or two deep breaths. "While they were there, I got a call that said Crystal, my brother's wife, had been…" Again she paused, clearing her throat this time and blinking back tears. "She had been crucified, Eric." Her tears fell to the tabletop as she lowered her head. "It was just in back of the bar, near Sam's trailer. I rushed over there, and it was the most horrible, horrible thing I've ever seen. The police were thinking that Jason did it, you know, because she cheated on him. But I know he didn't do it. It looks like it was a hate crime. There was so much blood…" Another deep breath, and she raised her eyes back up to his. "I stayed until they took her down. Sam is supposed to be on his way back to take care of everything else."

If this Crystal was Jason's cheating wife, then she was the cause of Sookie having to break her friend's hand. That was all Eric needed to know about her; he had no use for her. He wanted to know more about the FBI agents, but that could wait. After giving Sookie some time to compose herself, he squeezed her hand lightly with his fingers.

"Even for you, that's a busy day, Sookie. As for Crystal, I don't think I ever met her, but she sounds worthless."

"I don't know that anyone is worthless," she said with a slight frown. "Though I have to admit… If I had to pick one person to get in a lifeboat with me, she wouldn't have made even my long list." He gave her an affectionate smile, and she returned it with a small one of her own, though it faded just as quickly as it had appeared. "But she was pregnant, that's the thing. And the baby was my brother's."

She swiped her fingers under her eyes as another silence stretched between them. I don't know that anyone is worthless, she had said, and the comment took him back centuries, to a time when people's lives could be bought with pieces of silver.

"Pregnant women were worth twice as much if they were killed in my time," he said absently, and Sookie looked at him in surprise.

"What do you mean, worth?" she sniffled.

"In war or with foreigners, we could kill whom we pleased, but in disputes between our own people, we had to pay silver when we killed one of our own. If the person killed was a woman with child, the price was double," he explained. Sookie had leaned forward a little, obviously intrigued by this glimpse into his past. Her interest pleased him.

She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her free hand, her eyes clear as they moved over his face. "How old were you when you got married?" she asked. "Did you have children?"

He wondered how she knew that he had been married. Pam, perhaps. "I was counted a man at twelve; I married at sixteen. My wife's name was Aude. Aude had… we had… six children."

Aude had been a beautiful girl of fourteen when his brother, Leif, had married her. By the time she married Eric, only four years later, she was an eighteen-year-old widow with two dead children. Centuries later, he could still remember her as one of the kindest people he'd ever known, and she'd had a musical laugh that lit up her face. He had loved her as much as a sixteen-year-old boy could love an older girl he barely knew. Every day in the warmer months, he would bring her a handful of flowers from the field, and she would kiss his cheek. She always took great pride in cleaning his armor – almost as much pride as he took in learning how to please her when they lay together at night. But lovemaking had grim consequences in those days. Aude bore him six children in seven years, and she died before she saw her twenty-sixth year.

"Did they live?" Sookie asked, calling him back to the present.

"Three lived. Two boys and a girl." He smiled as he pictured three faces that were seared into his memory as clearly as Sookie's, frozen in time as he had last seen them. Aldís, a little girl who had looked just like Aude, who had jumped into his lap every night to demand a story. Eric, who loved playing with the horses, had just lost his first tooth. Leif had looked like the uncle for whom he was named. It felt intimate to speak of them after so many years, as if sharing the memory of them were equivalent to entrusting Sookie with their lives. "Two died at birth," he continued. "And with the sixth child, Aude died, too."

She and the new baby had seemed so healthy. Aude had smiled as she held the strong, kicking infant, a girl. They hadn't decided yet what to name her, though Eric had been planning to name her for her mother. But that night, the baby died, its soft skin burning with fever. Aude, too, was dead by sunrise.

Once again, Sookie's voice brought him back from the past. "Of what?" she asked quietly.

"She and the baby caught a fever," he replied with a shrug. "I suppose it was from some sort of an infection. Then, if people got sick, they mostly died. Aude and the baby perished within hours of each other." Sookie turned up the hand he had covered so that his palm rested in hers. He smiled at her, refusing to weigh either of them down with the past's long-buried grief. "I buried them in a beautiful tomb. My wife had her best broach on her dress, and I laid the baby on her breast." The broach had been a gift from him on her twentieth birthday.

Sookie's fingers were lightly stroking his palm. "How old were you?"

"I was in my early twenties, perhaps twenty-three," he said after a moment's thought. "Aude was older. She had been my brother's wife, and when he was killed in battle, it fell to me to marry her so our families would still be bonded. But I'd always liked her, and she was willing." He didn't want Sookie to imagine Aude as a wretched woman passed miserably from one brother to another. He knew how modern people looked at the past, as if everything were necessarily archaic and cruel, as if people's feelings weren't as deep or genuine or important. "She wasn't a silly girl," he went on. "She'd lost two babies of my brother's, and she was glad to have more that lived."

"What happened to your children?"

He knew what she meant. "When I became a vampire?"

She confirmed his suspicion with a nod. "They can't have been very old," she observed.

"No, they were small," he said. "It happened not long after Aude's death."

He told her about his ill-fated visit to Sefa and her family. Sefa, a strong-willed young woman of nineteen, had been in love with another man – a slave of her father's – but she had been willing to marry Eric because that was simply how things were. A woman like Sookie, born free to make her own choices, would have difficulty comprehending that old world. She wouldn't understand how a woman could love one man and agree to marry another. Born in the age of theater and romantic love, she wouldn't understand that love, for people of his time, had come later. They didn't fall in love and marry; they married, and then they learned to love. He and Sefa had liked each other, and that was a much more promising starting point than many couples got. As it turned out, however, his life took another course.

"It was the full moon," he said slowly, continuing his story for Sookie. "I saw a man lying hurt by the side of the road. Ordinarily, I would have looked around to find those who had attacked him, but I was drunk. I went over to help him." He gave her a wry half-smile. "You can probably guess what happened after that."

Her mouth was a grim line. "He wasn't really hurt."

"No. But I was, soon after after." Pain beyond imagining. He didn't want her to try to imagine it. His had not been a gentle turning, mercifully fast or in the arms of a lover. It had been brutal. "He was very hungry," he told Sookie simply. "His name was Appius Livius Ocella." He forced a smile. "He taught me many things, and the first was not to call him Appius. He said I didn't know him well enough."

"The second thing?" she asked, looking both curious and afraid to know the answer.

He remembered having his face shoved into the snow, and he cut the memory off right there. "How to get to know him," he answered her briefly.

He could tell from her face that she took his meaning. "Oh…" was all she said.

"It was not so bad once we left the area I knew," he said. "In time, I stopped pining after my children and my home. I had never been away from my people. My father and mother were still alive." His mother had never been the same after his brother Leif had died. Eric had only been able to pray that his own disappearance didn't cause her overwhelming grief. Even a thousand years later, he could conjure the memory of her scent when he, as a child, would run to her and burrow his nose into her neck. He explained to Sookie that he knew his children would be in safe hands with his siblings. "I had to stay away," he told her. "In those days, in small villages, any stranger was instantly noticed, and if I ventured anywhere close to where I'd lived, I'd be recognized and hunted. They would know what I was, or at least know I was…" Different? A walking corpse? "…wrong."

"Where did you and Appius go?"

Sookie had never shown an interest in his life before. Casual, personal conversations with him were something she had always seemed to avoid in general. Not always, he reminded himself. He called forward the restored memories of lying with her in front of the fire, listening as she told him about her life. She had trusted him, and she had let him in, just as she was doing now.

He told her about hunting in cities, in villages, and along the roads, and he could see the horror in her face, however carefully she tried to disguise it. This is what I am, my lover. She asked him if Appius had been good to him, and for a moment he didn't know how to answer. Appius had, after all, given him the gift of immortality. Appius had taught him how to survive… not just how to survive, but to thrive.

"He taught me all he knew," Eric said slowly. "He had been in the legions, and he was a fighter as I was, so we had that in common. He liked men, of course, and that took some getting used to. I had never done that." Again, he closed himself off from the pain so she wouldn't feel it. Pity was useless and insulting even for those who deserved it, which he did not. "But when you're a new vampire, anything sexual seems exciting, so even that I enjoyed." He smiled a little. "Eventually."

"You had to comply." Her guarded way of suggesting that Appius had raped him.

"Oh, he was much stronger, though I was a bigger man than him. Taller, longer arms." Yes, Sookie. He raped me. More than once. "He had been vampire for so many centuries, he'd lost count. And, of course, he was my sire. I had to obey."

"Is that a mystical thing or a made-up rule?"

"It's both," he told her. "It's a compulsion. It's impossible to resist, even when you want to." His mind wandered to those first dark, miserable nights with Appius. "Even when you're desperate to get away."

Sookie shuddered. "I can't imagine it."

"I wouldn't want you to," he said with all sincerity. Can't you see that it's why I saved you from Andre, from Felipe? He was tired of dwelling on unhappy subjects, so he willed himself to brighten and move on. "The world has changed a great deal since I was human. The past hundred years have been especially exciting. And now the Weres are out, and all the other two-natured." He shook his head and shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe the witches or the fae will step forward next."

"That would be wonderful," she sighed, a smile playing on her lips.

He couldn't blame her for imagining an idyllic little world where she could run into her great-grandfather at the grocery store. The only family she had, after all, was her pathetic excuse for a brother. And a husband, he reminded himself.

"My lover, it will never happen," he said. Her smile faded as he explained to her why the fae were so secretive and so few in number. He refrained from telling her that he was glad of it. She knew nothing of the violence and cruelty of her great-grandfather's people, and he hoped she never would. "Your great-grandfather is one of the few survivors with royal blood. He would never condescend to treat with humans."

"He talks to me," she said defensively.

Would she ever stop fighting the fact that she was so much more than an ordinary human? Did she really not understand that Niall wouldn't give a fuck about her if she didn't belong to his family? "You share his blood. If you didn't, you would never have seen him."

"I wish he'd help Jason out, and I never thought I'd say that," she admitted. "Niall doesn't seem to like Jason at all, but Jason's going to be in a lot of trouble about Crystal's death."

Not liking Jason was something that he and Niall could agree on, Eric thought with some amusement. She was looking at him expectantly, and he realized that they were back to the topic of the dead woman.

"Sookie, if you're asking for my thoughts, I have no idea why Crystal was killed. The police and the werepanthers, they'll track whoever did it." He remembered the police visit she had mentioned at the beginning of her story. "I'm more concerned about these FBI agents," he said, frowning. "What is their goal? Do they want to take you away? Can they do that in this country?" If they could, then no vampire marriage would stop them. Fortunately, Eric had other ways.

She shook her head. "They wanted to identify Barry, then they wanted to find out what Barry and I could do and how we could do it." She shrugged. "Maybe they were supposed to ask if we'd work for them, and Crystal's death interrupted our conversation before they could say anything."

Work for them? That was another matter entirely. If the government wanted to hire Sookie, would she refuse? He searched her face and found his answer there; it couldn't have been clearer. "And you don't want to work for them. You don't want to leave."

Their hands had been joined for most of the conversation, but now she withdrew hers and wrung her hands together. "I don't want people to die because I wouldn't help them… but I'm selfish enough that I don't want to go wherever they send me, trying to find dying people." Her eyes welled, and a tear began to creep down the line of her nose. "I couldn't stand the wear and tear of seeing disaster every day. I don't want to leave home." Now the tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she wiped them away impatiently with her fingers. "I've been trying to imagine what it would be like… what they might have me do…" She looked into his eyes as she fought for control of her voice. "And it scares me to death."

"You want to own your own life." Dear one, are you so young that you still believe you can own your life entirely?

She nodded. "As much as anyone can."

"Just when I think you're very simple," he said, returning her gaze with warm affection, "you say something complex."

One side of her mouth curved up in an attempted smile. "Are you complaining?"

"No." Quite the contrary.

He was about to continue when a customer appeared at the side of their table and held out a small notepad in one thick, shaky hand. "Could you please sign this?" she asked in a rush, almost as if she had rehearsed the five words over and over in her head before she spoke them. He smiled and obliged her, and she left them alone after she had thanked him.

Sookie's eyes followed the young woman, and Eric watched her curiously. "What was she thinking?" he asked.

She turned back to him. She looked surprised that he had asked. "Oh, she was very nervous, and she thought you were lovely, but…" Sookie paused as she chose her words. "Not handsome in a way that was very real to her, because she would never think she would actually get to have you." Of course not, he told her silently. I am already taken. "She's very… She doesn't think much of herself," Sookie concluded.

They sat quietly for a moment, and Sookie seemed lost in thought. In the background, the voice on the radio crooned, I can see you, but I can never reach you.

"As for these agents," he said finally, "you shouldn't feel obligated to accept any job they offer you. Unlike us, the humans give you a choice, I believe." His dry smile faded when he realized that she hadn't been listening. She was "zoned out," as he had heard it said. "Sookie?" he prodded. She blinked and looked at him. "Don't talk to the FBI people alone. Call me if it's at night. Call Bobby Burnham if they come in the day."

"But he hates me! Why would I call him?"

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "What?"

"Bobby hates me," she said with some reluctance. "He'd love it if the Feds carted me off to some underground bunker in Nevada for the rest of my life."

"He said this?"

"He didn't have to. I can tell when someone thinks I'm slime."

Slime? Slime? Eric ground his teeth. "I'll have a talk with Bobby," he assured her.

"Eric, it's not against the law for someone to dislike me."

She smiled at him – a genuine smile – and he laughed. "Maybe I'll make it against the law," he said, winking at her before he became serious again. "If you can't reach Bobby – and I am absolutely sure he will help you – you should call Mr. Cataliades, though he's down in New Orleans." The lawyer would be better than nothing. Perhaps even preferable, since he knew the machinations of human dealings.

Sookie asked about Cataliades, Diantha, and even Sophie-Anne's lawyer at the trial, and Eric answered her questions, rather surprised that no one had told her already. It had been months since the bombing, after all.

"I guess it takes a lawyer to get your money when the hirer is dead," she said somewhat bitterly when he'd told her about Glassport's whereabouts. "I never got mine. Maybe Sophie-Anne thought Glassport did more for her, or he had the wits to ask even though she'd lost her legs."

He frowned. "I didn't know you weren't paid," he said. He had even reminded the queen about Sookie's payment just before the takeover, after Sookie had mentioned it on the phone. It was possible that Sophie-Anne had simply never gotten to it in time. "I'll talk to Victor," he promised. "If Glassport collected for his services to Sophie, you certainly should. Sophie left a large estate and no children. Victor's king owes you a debt. He'll listen."

She sighed, and her shoulders sagged as if they were resting from a heavy weight being lifted. "That would be great."

Had she been in financial difficulty? It frustrated him to no end that she wouldn't share her problems with him… that she never asked him for help when she needed it. "You know, if you need money, you have only to ask. I will not have you going without anything you need," he said. "And I know you enough to be sure you wouldn't ask for money for something frivolous." How he would love to give her something frivolous. A necklace, perhaps, to set off her long, lovely throat. A new car. Half of Shreveport.

"I appreciate the thought. I just want what's due me," she said tersely.

By now there was a large crowd in the bar, and the two of them lapsed into silence as they observed the people around them. Eric sensed that she had said all she came to say. That always meant that she would be leaving… or hanging up the phone, as the case may be. Unless, as their earlier conversation seemed to suggest, she had come for more than just the usual business.

"Tell me the truth," he said eventually, pausing as she turned her attention back to him. Her eyes were perfectly clear, and she was feeling peaceful. "Is it possible you came here simply to spend time with me?" he asked. "You haven't yet told me how angry you are with me that I tricked you over the knife." He paused and gave her a chance to do just that, but she was waiting for him to continue. "Apparently, you're not going to… at least, not tonight. I haven't yet discussed with you all my memories of the time we spent together when you were hiding me at your house." At this, a blush crept up into her cheeks, and she glanced away. He waited until her eyes met his again. "Do you know why I ended up so close to your home, running down that road in the freezing cold?"

"No," she said. "I don't."

It was time to tell her everything. He should have done it long ago. There were times when he had wanted to – the drive back from meeting Niall, for instance. Tonight he wouldn't let anything get in the way.

"The curse contained within the witch," he said slowly, "the curse that activated when Chow killed her… It was that I would be close to my heart's desire without ever realizing it." My heart's desire, Sookie. You. "A terrible curse, and one that Hallow must have constructed with great subtlety. We found it dog-eared in her spell book." He was talking too much, he realized, and he stopped, waiting for her to say something.

Sookie seemed lost for words for a moment, but at last she said, "I think I just wanted some company. No soul-shaking revelations."

He was so blind-sided by his first thought – that she was telling him she didn't want to hear what he was saying – it took him a second to realize that she was answering his question about why she had come. He forced a smile. Wanting his company was better than coming for business, at least. "This is good," he said. Not good enough, but good.

"You know we're not really married, right? I know vamps and humans can get married now, but that wasn't a ceremony I recognize. Nor does the State of Louisiana."

Did she have any idea how cold, how brutal she could be? She called him ruthless without ever seeming to realize that she had her own ways of wounding. He had just told her that he loved her, and her only response was to reject "soul-shaking revelations" and declare that she didn't "recognize" their marriage.

"I know that if I hadn't done it, you'd be sitting in a little room in Nevada right now, listening to Felipe de Castro while he does business with humans," he said, making every effort to keep his voice level.

"But I saved him! I saved his life, and he promised I had his friendship… which means his protection, I thought."

"He wants to protect you right by his side now that he knows what you can do," Eric explained grimly. She didn't seem to understand that protection did not preclude using. With vampires, in fact, they were often one and the same. "He wants the leverage having you would give him over me."

"Some gratitude," she muttered. "I should have let Sigebert kill him." She shut her eyes, and he could feel her frustration. Or was that his own? "Damn it," she said in a tired voice. "I just can't come out ahead."

"He can't have you now," Eric reminded her with somewhat fiercer conviction that he intended. "We are wed."

"But, Eric…" She looked down and shook her head. "What if I meet someone else? What if you…" It gave him a bit of much-needed reassurance that she couldn't seem to bring herself to finish that sentence. "Hey, what are the ground rules of being officially married? Just tell me," she said, folding her arms on the table.

Rules? Only that he belonged to her, and that she could end it at any time she wished. Best not to explain all that just yet. "You're too upset and tired tonight for a rational conversation," he hedged. "Understand that he can't touch you now – that no one can unless they petition me first. This is under penalty of final death." He smiled. "And this is where my ruthlessness will be of service to both of us."

"Okay, you're right," she said, evidently resigned. Then her eyes flashed as she narrowed them at him. "But this isn't the end of the subject. I want to know everything about our new situation, and I want to know I can get out of this if I can't stand it."

Ruthless, indeed.

"You will know everything when you want to know."

She seemed satisfied if her nod was any indication. "Hey," she said suddenly, "does the new king know about my great-grandfather?"

"I can't predict Felipe's reaction if he finds out, my lover," he told her with perfect frankness. "Bill and I are the only ones who have that knowledge now. It has to stay that way."

He reclaimed her hand in an effort to reassure her. Even if she wasn't ready to admit that she loved him, she couldn't have any doubts that he would do everything in his power to protect her. Her face was relaxed when she told him she had to leave a few minutes later. He let go of her hand and leaned across the narrow table to kiss her. Pam shot him an indulgent smile as he followed Sookie to the door, and he returned it with a wink.

"Eric," Sookie said, turning to face him before she walked out, "when I'm back to being myself, I'm going to nail your ass for putting me in this position of being pledged to you."

He grinned at her, unable to help himself. Sookie would always be difficult, but he had never met a more delightful challenge. "Darling," he told her in his most honey-dripped tone, "you can nail my ass anytime."

"You two," he heard Pam say as he walked away, and he could imagine that her eyes were rolled to the ceiling.

He gathered his papers from the table and started for his office, but his eyes landed on the girl who had wanted his autograph. What the hell, he thought. Silence fell over her group as he approached and leaned close. "I couldn't say anything while I was with the other woman," he said, speaking in a husky growl, "but you look delectable this evening." He extended his fangs and tried not to laugh at the gasps around the table. "Take care," he purred at her.

He was still in high spirits when he reached his office, and he rummaged through his desk until he found what he was looking for: a leftover photo from the calendar shoot. It was risqué. Cheesy. Perfect. With a wide grin, he opened a blank card and thought for a few minutes. He almost wrote, "Let me know when you're ready to nail my ass," but he settled instead on, "I wait for the night you join me." He tucked the card and photo into an envelope, sealed it, and left it for Bobby to deliver to Sookie.

The message he left for Bobby himself was much more strongly worded.

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One word is changed from the original dialogue in the book because CH got Chow and Clancy confused. ;-)

Thank you for all your reviews!