Page 14

Hector

A rawn’s demeanor shifted the second Thea left the room, his smile falling away like a veil.

Wordlessly, he got up to his feet, untucked his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, and used the hem to wipe the sweat off his brow. I was disturbed to see how thin he was under his clothes, how the skin around his stomach clung so closely to his bones that it looked translucent, a fragile piece of cloth marbled with purple veins.

Before I was able to ask him about it, he turned, quick anger rising in his eyes. “So how does pretend marriage work, exactly? Do you pretend-fuck her as well—”

On sheer instinct, I grabbed him around the collar, sending us both in a tumble against the wall. “Watch your damned mouth when you speak of her.”

He tried shaking me off, but he was too weak, his muscles too stiff. I could tell he hadn’t fed in a while. I just couldn’t tell why.

I took his jaw in my hand and shoved his head against the wall, forcing him still. “What in Tartarus is wrong with you, huh? Why would you say something like that?”

“Get off me,” he growled, digging the heels of his palms into my shoulders.

We struggled against each other, our breaths growing ragged, until he finally relented. “I’m sorry, okay?” he gritted out. “I was out of line.”

I pushed off him, my bewilderment complete.

Arawn and I had never fought. Among Dahlia’s cold disdain, Roan’s unwavering indifference, and Dain’s taste for physical violence, Arawn’s friendship, although reluctant at the beginning, had been precious to me growing up, even more so after Thea and I parted ways.

I would never forget the first time he stood up for me. We were thirteen years old, and all of our parents were up at my mother’s study, discussing matters we weren’t allowed to hear. Arawn, Dain, and I were helping Dahlia to gather flowers for a crown. It was spring, and she was sad that she was missing the festival back home, so we thought this would cheer her up a little. Of course, Dain, being Dain, took every opportunity he could to push me around and call me all kinds of unimaginative names. But I had grown immune to his cruelty, for he had never been very creative with it anyway. I’d also grown four inches that year, which, very boyishly, I’d mistaken for strength. I ended up punching him square on his jaw, and he retaliated by knocking me out senseless. Later that night, Arawn came into my room blood-bathed from head to toe, his pretty silk garments torn to pieces. “Let’s not pick a fight with Dain ever again , ” he had groaned, slumping on the bed next to me.

“I was not aware we picked the fight together,” I’d muttered ungratefully.

His smile had been the sun itself. “I think I broke his ribs. I’m telling you, the bastard will think twice before calling you a halfling again.”

Arawn… He was a lot like Thea, actually. Sharp-witted, magnanimous, adrift in an air of perpetual joyfulness. I’d never seen him like this before, weakened and starved and so angry he was shaking from it. In a way, Arawn looked exactly how I felt, and it was this simple realization that made me understand what was wrong with him.

Arawn was in mourning. Margaret wasn’t dead, but their love was, and loss, I knew well, took many forms and shapes. Everyone was always grieving something. There was no life without it.

“Arawn,” I said steadily. At last he pulled his bloodshot gaze back to me. “I think I’ve been a terrible friend to you—”

“How could you drag her into this?”

“Who?”

“Thea, damn it!” he snapped, pointing at the door she’d closed behind her. “This isn’t pretending for you, and we both know it. You let her stay here so the families will accept her because you still think you can have a life with her. Even though you know what you are. Even though you know she deserves better.” His voice broke. His eyes grew bleary with tears. And I knew he wasn’t talking about Thea anymore. “Your life is a prison. You have a single destiny. She can have many. She can be a hundred different things, and you can only be this one—this one dark thing that is more monster than human.”

I had never been very good with words. I was a lot like Father in that regard, reticent and overwhelmed by all the things I didn’t know how to express. If Mother had been an open field, he had been the roots beneath the soil. To survive in our world, he’d had to vault himself, bite his tongue, hide his true nature. Even with Mother’s protection, he’d still been the sole human in a society of vampires.

It was him I recognized in myself the most. So I didn’t bother with heartening soliloquies now. I only crossed the distance and braced Arawn’s shaking shoulders to show him that I was here and that I would be here for as long as he needed me to be.

I was not wounded, let alone surprised, by his words. I was already familiar with every wall and barrier that kept Thea and me apart. Time, for one, had never been our friend and never would be, for she was a flower and I was an evergreen. Our passings through this world would never look or feel the same. This was why Mother had been consuming the potion to make herself age faster, and this was also why they had both taken the Eternal Vow at their ceremony. It was to give themselves the illusion of having control over something as unequivocally uncontrollable as time.

And perhaps I did have a single destiny. I was bound to this Castle, to its power and the responsibility that came with it. But I was not the monster Arawn described, and especially not with her. How could I be? The best parts of me she made. The best parts of me were hers.

Yes, I was tempted by her blood. For all my humanity, I was still a creature of appetite. Day and night I was consumed by thoughts of her taste on my tongue, her surrender in my hands, my name as a sigh upon her lips. But that was only because I allowed myself to be consumed, to be tempted.

Endlessly, I indulged in the idea of her being mine, not because she was a human but because she was… Thea .

Blood had no part in it. I would have wanted her regardless. In every body, every shape. She could have been a vampire, a fairy, a cursed demonic thing. She could have been the ocean, the sky, the edge where the world came to an end, and I would have wanted her with the same supplicant’s devotion.

But Arawn had struggled with Margaret’s nature, always fighting for control, always wondering if a part of him was only drawn to her because of her blood. Until, in the end, his hunger grew greater than their love.

Arawn looked at me now, his face contorted. “Your love for her will kill you.”

Perhaps. But trying not to love her was a million times worse. It was a physical agony, and the more I resisted, the more painful it grew. That was the thing about unrequited love. It was hopeless; it was hurting you, yet you found nothing more agonizing than letting it go, letting all the love in your heart remain unfelt. To love her in suffering silence was better than to not love her at all.

“Then let it kill me,” I said, stirring him a little. “When I’m ready, I’ll crawl out of the grave and start again. And so will you.”

I wasn’t sure if Arawn was ready to start again, but the Castle seemed to know that I wasn’t. In the hollow of our silence, the forget-me-nots in the vase atop the table twisted and pulsed like a heap of microscopic hearts until seven red roses took their place, filling the room with the scent of her skin.