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Of course, he knehy she'd played the prank on hiain So why did he feel this urgency to find her? He craved the sight of her, needed to have her scent fresh in his mind

This eve, he'd seen pretty woh he knew so little about Daniela, the blooding made him think of her constantly

It forced him to recall her vulnerability when she'd said she wanted to see hi tenderness the way she'd lifted her aro-lucky personality Women had trusted him with their pleasure but little else Yet Daniela had believed in him to reht, he could go to Blachmount and ask Myst how to contact her sister But then, Myst e that information If all else failed, he supposed he could try to find the Valkyrie coven, despite Daniela's warning that they'd kill hiht

Another source of his unease? He couldn't stop one down in Lore history for their deeds, or misdeeds After the continuous battles and hardships they'd all suffered, Nikolai had been reeneral, and Murdoch had been classed as the manwhore?

He also suspected that this bothered him solely because that was how Daniela saw him -

"What say you, Murdoch?" Rurik asked

"What? I didn't hear you"

"We were speaking of Brides and Valkyries"

Murdoch alhed "Were you, then?"

Rurik's scarred face creased into a frown He can tell so on with me - has knownwar compatriots who'd accepted that fateful deal Nikolai had brokered with Kristoff

But cunning Kristoff knew that these men were loyal to Nikolai and Murdoch, and alould be Deain, Kristoff had dispatched the other four - Kalev, Demyan, Markov, and Aleksander - in separate directions on the continent to search for the Daci, a rumored hidden enclave of natural-born vampires

Rurik alone remained, and only because of his weakness: an uncontrollable temper when in conflict Not the best trait for a potential ambassador

"I heard at Mount Oblak that Nikolai's Bride was fine beyond words," Lukyan said He was a bold and skilled fighter - as a Don Cossack, Lukyan had been bred for war - but Murdoch didn't trust hi off about him, even beyond the fact that he'd died on the other side of the same battlefield Murdoch had perished on "You saw her Is she that beautiful, then?"

"She is" But not more so than Daniela

"I haven't really looked at a woaze fell to the street below In his huiant, until he'd gone into battle; then he would go berserk He didn't wield a sword - he carried a war hammer

Rurik's father had often liked to say that the men in their family were descended from berserkers After Rurik had been turned into a vampire and learned this neorld existed, he'd had to wonder, literally descended from berserkers?

"Wouldn't matter if you'd looked at women, you'd only see half of them," Lukyan said with a ses He walked with a noring the Cossack's co this much skin the whole time?"

Murdoch understood his comrade's puzzlement He himself had been disinterested in women to the point of oblivion Until the Valkyrie

"Christ, look at that one," Rurik said in an awed tone Murdoch remembered that even before he'd lost his eye, Rurik had been unlucky omen He wondered if Rurik remembered that