Page 15

Thea

I t was getting close to midnight, and I was sitting on the little cushioned chair before the vanity table, already dressed for the ball and battling with the mass of my curls, when Hector returned to the room.

“Finally!” I exclaimed, twisting around to face him. “What happened with Roan?”

“Let’s just say the Ravenors won’t be an issue,” said Hector as he sailed toward the bathroom.

I frowned at his relaxed back, confusion sloshing through me.

The image of Camilla standing up on the grand stairs haunted me still. The inhumanity of her face. The sharpness of her fangs. The way her moonstone eyes had hungered over me as if I were something to be consumed.

“Camilla,” was all I was able to choke out.

He veered, an unexpected gleam of calculation in his eyes. “You don’t have to worry about Camilla.”

Incredulity wrapped claws around my heart. “Because Roan said so?”

“Because he gave me his oath,” he revealed. “If Camilla decides to act out, Roan will stand by my side. And yours, of course.”

I pondered for a moment, chewing at my lower lip. “Will Roan succeed Espen? Is that why you value his loyalty so much?”

Hector shook his head grimly, as though he wished that was the case. “As the eldest Ravenor, Camilla is next in line, but since Espen doesn’t trust her to keep the peace with the humans, I believe Alexandria will take over. Unless, of course, Camilla fights her for the position. But that is highly unlikely.”

“You were in the study for a long time,” I persisted, finding all this convenience a bit suspicious. “Are you sure nothing happened with Roan?”

“I was just talking with Dahlia,” he said.

Oh. Oh.

He was just talking with Dahlia .

Beautiful, refined, aristocratic Dahlia.

How lovely.

I shifted to face the vanity again. “Your betrothed, you mean?”

He sighed. “We were never officially engaged.”

“Yes, why is that?” My voice cut harder than I wished it to. It betrayed me like the rest of my body. “She’s perfect for you, no? I mean, she’s practically vampire royalty.”

“Are you jealous, Dorothea?” Hector drawled, and as my eyes darted up, I was startled to find his reflection in the mirror. He bent over me, grabbing the back of my chair with one hand and the edge of the table with the other. His head tilted into the space next to mine, his hot breath swirling over the skin of my throat.

“Of course not,” I gritted out, but my fingers under the table were carving crescents in my palms.

“Looks good on you.”

“ What looks good on me?”

The beginning of a smile tugged at his lips. “Jealousy.”

“You’re so full of yourself,” I huffed. “It’s rather unbecoming for a grown man, you know.”

He eased into the space before me, resting his hip against the vanity table. The distance between us became an accidental brush of my shoulder against the side of his thigh. “Oh no, not unbecoming, ” he mocked.

I glared at him, broiling in frustration. “Don’t you think that as your wife—”

“Pretend wife.”

“As your pretend wife, I ought to know about your former dalliances?”

Subtle raise of his brow. Condescending incline of his neck. Gods knew I hated him sometimes. “Dalliances,” he echoed dryly.

“Well, there’s your mystery woman, and Dahlia—”

“Maybe I should ask about your dalliances as well,” he interposed.

“Would you like me to form you a list, Hector dear?” I hummed contentiously, knowing very well there was no such list. There had only been Killian. But he didn’t have to know that.

To my immense satisfaction, Hector’s haughty expression gave in to a morose scowl. “No, I would not like a kill list.”

“I said list. Not kill list, for sky’s sake.”

“Sounds the same to me.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“While you being jealous of the scenarios you’ve made up in your head is the epitome of seriousness, right?”

I ignored him, returning my attention to my disconcertingly feverish reflection in the mirror. I pinned up the last of my curls. Put on my earrings. Grabbed my perfume bottle. Hector refused to leave my side. He watched me with keen fascination, as if I were going through the most interesting tasks in the world.

“You must make haste. It’s almost midnight. We shouldn’t leave our guests waiting,” I urged, running the perfume wand from behind my ears to the dip of my collarbones.

Suddenly, Hector bent over me and took the underside of my jaw in his hand. My breath hitched at the abrupt contact, but I dared not move as he angled my head to the side and lowered his face to the crook of my neck. He inhaled deeply. Once. Twice. “Is this why you always smell of roses?” he asked as he pulled himself upright, completely unaware of the underlying sensuality of what he’d just done.

But I was aware. Terribly, painfully aware.

My hand shook a little as I let the wand slip back into the pink bottle. “It’s from Oliar’s Palace,” I croaked. “It’s this little shop in Thaloria. Esperida took me there on my sixteenth birthday and got it for me. I haven’t stopped wearing it since.”

At the mention of Esperida, the tension in the room changed, shifting from fickle and playful to heavy and mournful. When Hector spoke again, his voice was low, barely a murmur. “I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to the funeral. You should have been there, and it’s my fault you weren’t. I know an apology doesn’t fix what I’ve done. I know how cruel it was of me.” He turned his face away. “But… I don’t know, Thea. Maybe this is all that I can be.”

I tried to swallow around the boulder in my throat, but it was impossible. It was forged from things so much stronger than me. Sorrow and grief and bone-deep anger, for I knew this was not all he could be. “Did you hate me that much?”

“I could never hate you,” he whispered.

“Then why didn’t you write to me? And I’m not just talking about the funeral. I know you were too devastated to write then, but earlier—”

A sudden knock made us both flinch. Hector fixed his shirt quickly and rushed to the door, cracking it open only wide enough to give me a glimpse of Alexandria’s long, lustrous braids.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” she said courteously, and I was surprised by the deep quality of her voice, which didn’t match her youthful appearance. “Mikko and Delyth wanted to ask you something.”

As Hector opened the door fully, I saw the twins’ white-clad forms standing hand in hand before their mother, their wide, unblinking eyes pinned on Hector.

“Good evening, Lord Aventine,” Mikko said with an eerie formality for a ten-year-old.

“Please, you can just call me Hector,” Hector reassured him.

The boy did not return the sentiment. “Well, sir, we don’t mean any disrespect.”

“We really, really don’t,” Delyth contributed, with her high, ghostly voice ringing as solemn as Mikko’s.

“But could we be excused from tonight’s dinner?” continued Mikko, prompting a rather unsettling dialogue between him and his sister.

“For you see, Mother says it’s going to be a very adult evening…”

“Since Aunt Camilla will be there…”

“And as we’ve stumbled upon your observatory…”

“And discovered the most peculiar set of instruments…”

“Like your telescope, for example, that sees into other Realms…”

“Yes, how remarkably delightful to sit in your room and watch the fairies dance through the glass…”

“We would like your permission to spend our night there…”

“And promise that by dawn we’ll be in bed…”

“Is that alright with you, sir?” Delyth finished, and the two of them stared expectantly at Hector.

“Of course,” said Hector warily. “The Castle will set you a nice dinner up there.”

“We’re not hungry,” Mikko countered.

“For food,” clarified Delyth.

“Blood will suffice.”

“Warmed.”

The twins cocked their necks to the side and fixed their black, steady eyes on me. “Like it’s from the vein,” they said in unison.

Alexandria hummed a note of disapproval. “That’s enough, children.” Gently, she ushered them out of the room, and like a pair of ghosts, they vanished in the shadows, a mere swish of movement reverberating in their absence.

“Thank you for your understanding. I try to keep them as far away from Camilla as possible,” said Alexandria in an air of subtle but unmissable resentment. Then, as if to correct herself, she offered us a blithe smile. “Anyway, I’ll see you two in a bit.”

I released a breath as soon as Hector closed the door behind her. “Okay, these are some scary children.”

Hector said nothing, only cast his attention out of the window. It was clear that the remnants of our interrupted conversation were still weighing on him. But we had no time for it now. Midnight was approaching fast, the starlit wilderness of the night sky stretching endlessly over the Castle, the moon waxing and aglow.

“I should get ready,” muttered Hector curtly before disappearing into the bathroom.

Stifling my disappointment, I went to inspect my appearance in the standing mirror. The extravagant crimson layers of my gown glinted like burnished metal in the watery glass. It was the most exquisite garment I’d ever worn, with a rich bouffant skirt made of the softest velvet and a fitted corset dotted with lacy red roses along the neckline. The short puff sleeves came around the upper arms, stopping right where the shimmer of my white gloves began. A large oval-shaped ruby decorated my neck, held by three rows of pearls, matching the glowing pins in my hair. Never in my life had I looked more regal, more imposing, yet inwardly, I was as unstable as a vessel on water, floundering in waves of giddy nervousness and sick excitement.

I must have been standing there staring at my reflection for quite some time, for when Hector returned, he was already bathed and dressed for the ball. He was in all black again, except for the vest under his jacket that had a subtle pattern of crimson. His hair was still a little damp, and a few strands fell dark and sleek over the curve of his cheekbones.

“Will you tie me up?” I asked a bit absentmindedly, fixing the tiny ringlets along my forehead by curling them around my index fingers.

His figure loomed behind me, a flustered expression on his face. “What?”

I put a hand on my shoulder, indicating my back. “The laces, I mean.”

He blinked in slow understanding, then shook his head as if to push an unwelcome thought from his mind. “Right.”

When he shifted closer behind me, I was disturbed by a sudden ripple of awareness. I became attuned to every movement, every noise our bodies made. The rustle of my skirt against the fabric of his trousers. His hands gliding down my back to take hold of the laces. His hot breath dancing over the nape of my neck. I wondered if he could see the goosebumps that rose on my skin, if he could guess that under the layers of my gown my knees were wobbling.

I was so immersed in the crackling tension that I didn’t resist him when he pulled at the laces. I fell back against his chest. His arm came low around my stomach to keep me steady.

“Careful there,” he rasped in my ear. “Is it too tight? Bend forward a little. I can loosen it up for you.”

Flustered like a bee in spring, I stumbled out of his hold. “Let me see if I can sit down,” I mumbled. I could. The problem was not the dress. The problem was him, Hector, who had grown into a man capable of rendering me breathless just by standing too close to me.

Had I always wanted him like this? Was I simply surrendering to a desire that had lived with me for so long that I could no longer separate it from all my other feelings?

For once, I wished I had the answer.

“Is it okay?” he asked, genuinely worried. “We have time if you want to change—”

“It’s fine,” I sighed, skittering to my feet to smooth down the pleats of the skirt. “How do I look?”

He had looked at me thousands of times before, but when his gaze fell upon me now, it was something new. “You look…” He paused, taking a long, deep breath. “You look like my wife.”

Hector offered me his arm, and as I slipped my gloved fingers over the crook of his elbow, I stopped feeling so miserably anxious.

The night outside unraveled with a sweep of magic, strings of divinity glowing by the Castle’s many windows. My dress was beautiful. My feet were light. And all the wounds we had given each other stopped bleeding for a single perfect moment.