“We’re going to take this one step at a time, remember?” Marcus’s question reclaimed her attention. “First, you become a vampire. Then, if you still want me—”
“I will.” Of this, Phoebe was absolutely certain.
“If you still want me,” Marcus repeated, “we will marry and you will be stuck with me. For richer and poorer.”
This was one of their routines as a couple—rehearsing the marriage vows. Sometimes they focused on one line and pretended that it would be hard to keep. Sometimes they made fun of the whole lot and the smallness of the concerns the vows addressed when stacked up against the size of their feelings for each other.
“In sickness and in health.” Phoebe settled deeper into the tub. Its coolness reminded her of Marcus, and its solid curves made her wish he were sitting behind her, his arms and legs enfolding her. “Forsaking all others. Forever.”
“Forever is a long time,” Marcus warned.
“Forsaking all others,” Phoebe repeated, putting careful emphasis on the middle word.
“You can’t know for sure. Not until you know me blood to blood,” Marcus replied.
Their rare quarrels erupted after just this kind of exchange, when Marcus’s words suggested he’d lost confidence in her and Phoebe became defensive. Such arguments had usually been settled in Marcus’s bed, where each had demonstrated to the other’s satisfaction that although they might not know everything （yet）， they had mastered certain important bodies of knowledge.
But Phoebe was in Paris and Marcus was in the Auvergne. A physical rapprochement wasn’t possible at the moment. A wiser, more experienced person would have let the matter drop—but Phoebe was twenty-three, irritated, and anxious about what was about to take place.
“I don’t know why you think it’s me who will change my mind and not you.” She intended the words to be light and playful. To her horror, they sounded accusatory. “After all, I’ve never known you as anything but a vampire. But you fell in love with me as a warmblood.”
“I’ll still love you.” Marcus’s response was gratifyingly swift. “That won’t change, even if you do.”
“You might hate the taste of me. I should have made you try me—before,” Phoebe said, trying to pick a fight. Maybe Marcus didn’t love her as much as he thought he did. Phoebe’s rational mind knew that was nonsense, but the irrational part （the part that was in control at the moment） wasn’t convinced.
“I want us to share that experience—as equals. I’ve never shared my blood with my mate—nor have you. It’s something we can do for the first time, together.” Marcus’s voice was gentle, but it held an edge of frustration.
This was well-covered ground. Equality was something that Marcus cared about deeply. A woman and child begging, a racial slur overheard on the tube, an elderly man struggling to cross the street while young people sped by with their headphones and mobiles—all of these made Marcus seethe.
“We should have just run off and eloped,” Marcus said. “We should have done it our way, and not bothered with all this ancient tradition and ceremony.”
But doing it this way, in slow, measured steps, was a choice they had also made together.
Ysabeau de Clermont, the family’s matriarch and Marcus’s grandmother, had laid out the pros and cons of abandoning vampire custom with her usual clarity. She started with the recent family scandals. Marcus’s father, Matthew, had married a witch in violation of nearly a thousand years of prohibitions against relationships between creatures of different species. Then he nearly died at the hands of his estranged, deranged son, Benjamin. This left Phoebe and Marcus with two options. They could keep her transformation and their marriage secret for as long as possible before facing an eternity of gossip and speculation about what had gone on behind the scenes. Alternatively, they could transform Phoebe into a vampire before she was mated to Marcus with all due pomp—and transparency. If they chose the latter course, Phoebe and Marcus would likely suffer a year of inconvenience, followed by a decade or two of notoriety, and then be free to enjoy an endless lifetime of relative peace and quiet.
Marcus’s reputation had played a factor in Phoebe’s decision, too. He was known among vampires for his impetuousness, and for charging off to right the evils of the world without a care for what other creatures might think. Phoebe hoped that if they followed tradition in the matter of their marriage, Marcus would enter the ranks of respectability and his idealism might be seen in a more positive light.