Page 38 of House of Darkness (The Fallen Star #1)

ROMAN

Ileaned my head against the padded interior of the carriage, letting the steady clop of horse hooves and the gentle creak of the carriage fill my mind with a soft hum.

We had spent a few days in Greford, Sorin helping me pick up the pieces of myself and sticking them back together in a jagged bundle.

Now it was time to go home and face the mess I had left behind.

Isabella would be disappointed in me. Either she would yell and threaten, or her eyes would brim with tears and tell me she believed better of me.

I wasn’t sure which would be worse. Then Estrella blamed herself for my leaving.

I needed to apologize to her as soon as we got back, but the thought of facing her made my palms sticky with sweat.

“What are you going to say to her?” Sorin was looking out the carriage window as the sun crested the hills, bathing the landscape in pink and orange. Of course, he knew what I was thinking.

I groaned and smacked my head against the side of the carriage. “I don’t know. Get on my hands and knees and apologize until she pities me.”

Sorin snorted. “I’ll need to see that.”

I chuckled back half-heartedly, staring past that face I knew as well as my own to the thickening trees. We were nearly to the castle now. “Thank you, Sorin. For everything. I don’t know the last time I told you how much I appreciate you, but I do.”

He rolled his head toward me, his eyes dipped in bemusement. He rested his chin on the back of his hand. “What, are we gonna kiss and make up now? I get to be the top.”

I laughed at that, a true, deep-seated laugh like those he had always been able to pull out of me. “You’re an asshole.”

“As you know, the three F’s of vampirism. We’re always thinking about feeding, fucking, or fighting.” He winked. It was Sorin’s favorite saying, he’d come up with it years ago and was still trying to get it to stick. I intentionally refused to use it just to upset him.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t think about fighting, fucking, or feeding on me,” I chided. He feigned a hurt look just as the carriage hit cobblestone and began lumbering across the bridge to the castle.

Something settled on my consciousness like a weight as we entered the castle grounds.

An anxious buzz filled my ears, shoving out any other thought.

The very air felt tainted as it touched my skin, making my hair stand on end.

Sorin felt it too. We exchanged a glance, and before the carriage had fully come to a stop, I was opening the door and leaping onto the cobblestone.

Something was wrong. Several house employees were dispersed through the garden, bent over with taut shoulders and anxiously searching.

Their stress and panic was soaking into my consciousness like a toxic fog.

Isabella was standing on the stairway to the castle doors, chewing her nails and tapping her foot anxiously.

Her eyes were scanning the horizon, though I wondered if she had even noticed our arrival.

As I began to ascend the steps, her eyes finally locked with mine, and dread unlike anything I had ever felt settled over me at the sheer terror I saw there. Her eyes were glistening, her face stained with tears. She didn’t wait for me to reach her to start talking.

“I-I don’t know what happened. The door was just askew—I didn’t hear a struggle. No one heard a struggle! And now we can’t find anything! This is all I found, but it doesn’t tell us—doesn’t tell us anything about where they went!” She wailed, thrusting a slip of fabric into my hands.

I looked down at the ribbon laying across my palm. Sky blue, the same shade as Estrella’s favorite nightgown. She used it to tie her hair back into that cute knot on her head while she slept.

The edges of my vision blackened until the blue strip of fabric in my fingers was all I could see.

The ribbon was soft, but I hardly felt it against my fingers.

There was a sharp ringing in my ears, my mind, and my soul.

I saw Isabella's mouth moving, but I couldn’t process the horror of her words.

Estrella was gone. Estrella was... gone?

It was as though my wings had been cut away, leaving me to fall from the clouds above.

I fell forward, stumbling toward the door like if I simply made it to her room, she would be there waiting for me, wrapped in those sage green blankets where I left her.

My feet moved without me telling them to, guided by some invisible pull to the starlight of my life.

I didn’t realize I dropped the ribbon, but it didn’t matter.

Estrella had more, she didn’t need it right now.

She could get a new one, I could even take her to the city again once I checked on her. She couldn’t be gone.

Panic set in and my vision blurred. I never realized how large this room was—too large.

Each step felt like eternity was dragging its claws through my chest and tearing her away from the spot she held in my soul.

As though the longer it took for me to get to her room, the more likely it was that she could slip between my fingertips.

I tore off my jacket, leaving it in a pile on the marble floor so that my wings could unfurl.

I didn’t bother with the stairs, instead tearing to her room as fast as my wings would take me.

I made it into her room, but it all felt so surreal.

The ringing in my ears was unbearable, numbing everything.

The room was full of vampires—my employees searching for any clue as to what happened, Enso and Catina standing in the center of it all—but I felt so utterly alone.

I was alone. Estrella wasn’t here, her absence like a void sucking life from the very soul of the room. Of the castle. Of me.

Isabella was right, there was little sign of struggle.

No pot upturned, not a single painting off-center.

Yet the signs of what happened bared down on me like a blanket of lead, dragging me under and drowning me.

Her blanket was dragged halfway off the bed from where she had undoubtedly been torn from it.

A foul, unnatural scent tainted the room, even stronger than the foreign vampire smell that still lingered.

I choked on that smell as hysteria threatened to destroy me and everything else with it.

It was that bed. The last time I saw it, her beautiful body had been curled within its folds.

Her face had been flush with the pleasure I had given her.

The only scent then had been the decadent mixture of us coming together, coated with that fresh, sweet smell of lilies that was so unmistakably Estrella.

Now there was nothing, none of her warmth.

Even her lingering scent was muddled and tainted.

I stumbled forward and collapsed in front of that blanket where it had been discarded on the floor.

My fingers brushed over the soft fabric.

I could almost imagine how it had felt when it was wrapped around both of us, still warm from her body.

But it was all wrong. The male vampire’s scent was stronger here, as was the foul chemical odor.

He had touched her bed. Pulled her from it.

The place we had made our sanctuary was now destroyed.

“We’re going to find her, Roman. I’ve already dispatched forty soldiers to start knocking on doors and some of my best trackers are searching for their path.

Catina and I were only waiting until you got back before we left as well,” Enso’s voice was level, but lower than I had heard in a long time.

I finally managed to look at him, at the way his jaw was clenched, and his shoulders were tense.

I couldn’t bear to see him taking my failures onto his shoulders, not after he already lost one family.

I looked past him to that bed once more.

Where I had left her, alone and unprotected.

After I had brought her here to keep her safe, where she would never have to endure the horrors of her past again.

Yet she hadn’t been safe. I was too busy getting drunk to keep her safe.

I failed her, just like I failed everyone else.

This was my fault.

“I’ll start looking as well, brother. I’ll see if any of my contacts know anything.

” Sorin’s face began to morph, shifting to one of his many disguises.

His black hair grew down to his cheekbones in an instant and lightened to the color of sand.

The sight made me laugh, the sound hollow and broken. I failed her.

“Roman…” Enso knelt in front of me, his eyebrows furrowed. His hand found my shoulder, where he might have squeezed. I didn’t feel anything. “We will find her. You know that. She is family, and we won’t rest until she’s safe.”

My eyes refocused on him. He was right. I wouldn’t stop until I found her and brought her home. All I knew was fighting, and I would fight for her. There were only so many places they could take her. That was it—I’d just tear the city apart until I found her. I would find her.

Failure wasn’t an option.