Page 18

Thea

T hey were all dead. The Ravenors, Arawn, Hector.

The dinner table was a confusion of spilled wine and melted wax dripping from skewed candles. The withered flower arrangements smelled of rot and mildew. The silk napkins were mere crumpled balls of dried blood. And they were all dead .

Some of them were slumped on their chairs, heads hanging back in unnatural, bone-snapping angles, while others lay with their faces pressed upon the drenched tablecloth, their eyes grotesquely wide, grey irises death-stopped in expressions of horror. All of them had the same bluish froth crawling out of their gaping mouths, the poison—the juniper—drying down the unmoving columns of their throats.

I was weeping—weeping and shaking Hector’s rigid body with such violence that he fell from his chair and collapsed to the blood-speckled floor. In my hysteria, I got down on my knees next to him and dug my fingers into the smeared collar of his shirt, ear-splitting sobs emerging from the very racking of my heart.

He was cold as ice, his lips red and purple, his stiff neck soaked in poison. I didn’t care. I hugged him to my chest, staining myself with his death, and begged any god who was willing to listen to please, please, bring him back to me.

But when the gods didn’t answer, my grief burned into rage, and I started screaming. I screamed with the fury of a thousand demons, and I almost didn’t hear the soft voice in my ear.

It’s just a bad dream.

How did one dream without falling asleep? How could this be a trick of the subconscious when I was still wide awake?

Wake up, the voice murmured again, a smell of sandalwood tickling under my nostrils. Please, Dorothea. It’s only just a dream.

Dorothea. There was only one person in the world who called me that, and he was lying dead in my arms.

“Hector?” I asked. My voice was so raw from screaming, I could taste the metallic tang of blood at the back of my throat.

Then the dining room spiraled in a distance, falling away from my vision fragment by fragment, their dead bodies misting through an expansive void.

Yes. Now open your eyes for me.

Slowly, I blinked. Once. Twice. The haunting whiteness started peeling off like sheets of old wallpaper, revealing colors and shapes and objects that barely made sense to me. A dark red canopy. A sunlit window. A glowing, crackling hearth. I stared at them blankly until sensation returned to my body. A hand was brushing back the curls from my damp forehead, and another was clutching my arm, lifting me up from the bed. Then a pair of sunburst eyes stumbled into my sphere of vision, and my mind exploded into consciousness.

“Hector!” I gasped.

His arms wound around my waist, hugging me so close to his chest that I felt his heart pounding right up against mine. “I’m here. Shhh. I’m right here.”

I drowned a sob in the crook of his neck. “I was so scared.”

“I know,” he murmured, untangling himself from me so he could use the heels of his palms to dry my tear-stained cheeks. “It’s over now. Please, don’t cry anymore.”

“You were dead.”

“It was just a dream.” He searched for my eyes, a line of worry carving between his brows. “Wasn’t it?”

I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t remember falling asleep. I remembered coming into the bedroom, breathless and shaken from my encounter with Tieran, and running to the bathroom to remove my jewelry so I could splash my face and neck with cold water. Then I’d slumped on the bed with my dress still on, throwing a forearm over my eyes. A tingling sensation had crept over my skin, spider-thin prickles spreading from the base of my spine to the roots of my hair. And before the nightmare had closed over me, I’d felt the familiar pull of my magic, a tug coming straight from the core of my soul.

What if this hadn’t been a dream?

What if it were a vision?

I jolted back, my body breaking out in fresh chills. “Hector… I have this terrible feeling,” I choked out, and even the sound of my voice was eerie in my ears. “He’s here. I can feel him. I can feel him watching us.”

Hector’s dark brows drew closer, twin shadows unraveling over his cheeks. “Who?”

“Death.”

If Hector shared my fear, he did not show it. His face in the pale morning light looked weary but unyielding. He curled a hand around my nape and pulled my face to his. “The Castle protects me, and I protect you,” he said with implacable certainty. “You know I won’t let anyone hurt you, right?”

Yes. Yes, the Castle would never let anything bad happen to Hector. He was going to be fine. We were all going to be fine.

I repeated the words in my head, surrendering my body to his arms. Even within his infinite warmth, this cold, deathlike feeling refused to lift off me. It kept on slithering under my skin, draining my veins of blood and filling them with ice.

Carefully, Hector took my hand in his, his expression darkening. “What happened here?” he asked, passing his thumb over my bruised knuckles.

“I punched Tieran in the face,” I admitted shamefully.

“What did he do?” he demanded.

“Nothing, he just startled me in the hallway,” I reassured him, and when the murder in his face didn’t budge, I pressed him into more urgent matters. “Hector, they know we’re not physically intimate.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“We can smell that sort of thing.”

More confusion swept through me. “Yet they don’t question our marriage?”

“They think I married you because you’re a human,” he explained. “There’s been a lot of commotion ever since Mother died.”

“You mean that cult in Elora?”

Hector shook his head grimly. “The King of Elora stated that if we violate any of our treaties going forward, there will be no further negotiations between us. There will be war. The vampire sovereign marrying a human is a declaration of peace at this point.”

Such news always arrived late to the Faraway North, for our little kingdom was a universe of its own, eternally swathed in layers of mystery and magic. Even maps of Thaloria tended to be unreliable, as the land constantly changed. Still, I was shocked by the amount of things I didn’t know about Hector’s life. I could see now that his world, much like Thaloria, had existed next to mine vaguely and mystically, belonging more to myth than reality.

Hector squeezed my hand gently, drawing my attention. “Are you okay, Thea? Did Tieran say something to upset you?”

“I think I was the one who upset him. During dinner.”

“Ah,” he understood.

“The way I reacted… I insulted him, didn’t I? I must have looked appalled.”

“It’s my fault. I should have warned you about them.” He released a long breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “My head is all over the place.”

“How is Camilla allowed to do this to him?”

Hector’s whole body tensed at the mere mention of Camilla, the muscles of his throat narrowing. “Because she’s his creator.”

His creator.

The words dropped over me like a premonition, making the skin of my neck crawl. “I thought it was forbidden.”

“It is. Tieran is an exception.”

“How so?”

“Roan and Tieran got married three years ago, while Tieran was still a human. He was a physician, and at the time he was treating a patient with a rare lung disease. It proved infectious.”

I cupped my mouth, stifling a horrified gasp.

“Tieran was dying, and he was dying horribly. So he asked Roan to turn him.”

“And why didn’t he?”

Hector’s gaze fell away from mine. “He loves him. Who would condemn someone they love to this life?”

“Hector,” I sighed, my heart sinking. “You’re not damned.”

“Of course I am,” he said very quietly. “We’re all born godless and cursed. That is the substance of our condition. But for the turned ones, it’s even worse. The balance between man and creature is more unstable. So Roan refused him, and Tieran, desperate to stay by his husband’s side, turned to Camilla for help.”

“And Esperida allowed her to turn him?” I asked, unable to hide the accusation in my voice.

“Mother only had one weakness,” whispered Hector.

“Love,” I realized.

“Love,” he echoed. “Tieran was willing to do anything to stay by Roan’s side. Even curse himself. Mother could not find it in her heart to refuse him.”

“But why is Camilla still doing this to him?”

“It is rare, but sometimes turned vampires become addicted to their creators’ venom. Tieran is in constant pain. Her bite is the only thing that soothes him. Of course, rehabilitation is still possible, but Camilla has made sure Tieran needs her more than he needs his next breath. She’s fixated on vampire blood, and no one is going to be more willing to indulge her obsession than her own turned one.”

I recalled the look on Tieran’s face when Camilla sunk her fangs into him, pleasure and agony strung together. No wonder Roan looked at Camilla with such blatant hate in his eyes. Not only had she turned his husband into a vampire, but she had also turned him into an addict.

“Why did Roan drink from him too?” I persisted, hopelessly trying to understand things that seemed to hover just beyond my reach.

Hector shrugged. “I’m sure Tieran drinks from Roan as well. It’s very common between vampire partners.”

My face warmed as I imagined Hector with some faceless woman in his arms, drinking from her neck in a blissful stupor. Reflexively, I traced my fingers over the side of my throat. “If you bite me, will I become addicted to the venom?”

He smiled a little at my curiosity. “There are humans who actively seek out the bite, but research has proven this is due to an addiction to adrenaline rather than the venom itself, considering how unstable vampire urges can be. Actually, I attended a lecture on this while I was visiting Kartha.” His tiny smile turned tender, his eyes as soft as dappled light. “I was astonished by how many people were there, and I ended up writing to my parents about it. I’m glad I got to tell them one last time how proud I was to be their son. They planted this seed, and now the roots of knowledge are spreading all across the Realm. ”

“There is so much I don’t know about you,” I murmured, hugging my knees to my chest.

He didn’t pretend it wasn’t true. “You were always here, but you were never really…”

“A part of your world.”

For a moment he was silent, pensive. “Does it disgust you? My world?”

He asked it so gently, with such profound understanding in his voice, that I could not believe I’d spent the past four years thinking he hated me. I could tell Hector the cruelest things, and he still wouldn’t know how to hate me.

“Sometimes,” I answered truthfully.

“Does it scare you?”

It did. I couldn’t help it. Humans were designed to be afraid of the things they didn’t understand. But perhaps we were also designed to overcome them. “Tell me,” I prodded, staring at his parted lips, his fangs that gleamed pure white in the daylight. “What is it really like? Being a vampire, I mean.”

He didn’t have to think much about it. “It’s all so incomparably bright. And hauntingly dark.”

“Beautiful and terrifying then.”

“Yes.”

“Like getting lost in the woods.”

“Yes.”

“Or falling in love.”

He blushed a little. “ Yes .”

Hope, small and unexpected, bloomed in my chest. “Being human is a lot like that too.”

The intensity of his attention magnified. Here, in this sun-dazed room, there was nothing else to see but each other.

“Come here,” he rasped.

My breath hitched. “Why?”

He responded by seizing my wrist and hauling me right into the warmth of his arms.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you trust me?” he asked, raising my wounded hand to his mouth.

He’s going to heal me , I realized, and a strange thrill stole over my body. My throat was too tight for words. I merely nodded.

“Say it,” he pressed, his eyes on mine bright and unsteady. “I just want to hear you say it for once.”

The words were easy to utter, unlike all the other truths that remained unsaid between us. “I trust you. With everything I am.”

His lips found the spot above my knuckles, and my heart leapt from my chest to beat to the exact spot where his mouth connected with my hand. His fangs pierced my skin, not a bite but a nick, brief and light enough to inject me with only a drop of venom. The tip of his tongue lapped over my skin to soothe the sting. But there was nothing to soothe. My hand was left unbruised. I felt no pain. Only a bright, acute rush of something indescribable . Something that tasted of euphoria and smelled of ecstasy. The room spun, yet I was not dizzy. I was flying, slipping through the ceiling and drifting amid the clouds.

Even in weightlessness, I was aware of the innermost workings of my body. The blood in my veins ran hotter. The breath in my lungs turned heavier. The pulse at the base of my throat grew wilder. A molten, trickling sensation slid low, then lower in my body until I had to press my thighs together and bite down on my lip to stifle an outcry of what I knew was desire but felt like agony. For a second, I knew exactly what it was to be him, to have this… appetite . To crave. To yearn. To want for all the dark little things to crawl out of the night and claim you.

“Are you alright?” Hector’s voice was unfamiliar in my ear. Not low and rough but clear like water running through a glade, inviting you to a midnight swim.

“I feel a bit strange,” I mumbled, blinking fireflies from my vision. The only light in the room came from the window, but my eyes were swimming in undulating spots of luminosity. The temperature grew warmer too, spring shifting into summer. My skin dampened. My breasts grew heavy and tender against my corset.

“That’s normal,” said Hector. His eyes were the only dark things in the room. “It’s your first time.”

“Hot,” I sighed.

“What?”

“I feel hot. Will you get me out of this dress?”

He gave me a very peculiar look, which I didn’t bother deciphering. I was drowsy and feverish, and I just wanted him to hurry up and free me from this corset already.

“Are you wearing anything underneath?” he asked, an odd wariness to his voice.

I nodded eagerly. “My chemise.”

“Good,” he said, exhaling. “Good. Okay.”

I tried twisting around so I could offer him better access to my back, but my skirts kept getting in the way.

“Hold still for a moment,” Hector muttered, moving behind me like a shadow.

A fierce rip sounded in the room, and the garment finally unlatched from my body. “Oh sweet relief,” I panted, fanning myself with my hands and not feeling mortified at all that Hector was holding up my ripped corset like he didn’t know what to do with it. “You know, that’s how Lorn Verlion rips bodices too. Although his wife rarely goes to sleep after it.”

Hector bristled between his teeth, throwing the ruined garment on the floor. “I’m sure your fictional lovers make up in vigor what they lack in manners, but I will not be following their example tonight.”

His words didn’t make any sense to me. I watched his lips move and heard his throat make all sorts of sounds, but I could not understand any of them. I was wonderfully groggy, eyes and limbs leaden with sleep.

I fumbled with the tangle of covers until Hector stopped me, closing his strong hand around my arm. “Don’t lie down yet.”

Confusion sloshed through my blissful mind. “I was joking about Lorn Verlion . Not that I don’t want to do this with you—”

“Your hairpins, Dorothea,” Hector grumbled. “You’re going to hurt your head, and then you’ll no longer be able to make all these ridiculous scenarios up in there.”

“Oh, we don’t want that,” I agreed ruefully.

Hector brought me back so I could sit between his spread legs. I assumed he was going to use his vampire speed and be done with it in a second, but he took his time, freeing my curls one at a time, his featherlight fingers raking through my hair.

“I love this,” I murmured.

“I love…” I didn’t hear what he said after that. My eyes fell shut, my breathing slowed, sweet darkness closing over me. I must have dozed off for a while because my mind was completely blank when I felt Hector’s hand squeezing my shoulder. “You can lie down now.”

“Are you going to sleep too?” I yawned.

He stood from the bed so he could work off his vest and shirt. “In a little bit.”

“Are you going to sleep here?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“In this bed?”

His fingers paused on the cuff of his shirtsleeve. “Do you wish me to go?”

The opposite. I wanted him out of his clothes and into this bed so we could hold each other close and talk until we became too exhausted for words. Just as when we were kids.

Despite the nightmare, nothing sinister had happened here tonight, and yet I was overwhelmed by this inexpressible need to return to something innocent. As if a part of my soul had been tainted somehow, and the only way I could restore it to its initial state was through the familiar.

“No, I don’t want to be alone,” I admitted.

His lips quirked. Mischief sparkled in his eyes. “Do you want me to hold you? Is that why you’re interrogating me about tonight’s sleeping arrangements?”

“Maybe.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ll have to ask nicely.”

Supercilious wanker. Ever since he was twelve years old.

Still I asked, “Will you hold me?”

Hector cocked a brow.

“Please,” I added bitterly.

Finally, he climbed back on the bed, his lips pressing together to hide a satisfied grin.

“Sometimes, I think you’re the most arrogant man I know,” I claimed as I crawled into his arms.

“As opposed to who? The pretty boys you distracted yourself with at the Thalorian Court? Please, Dorothea. I’m the only man you know.”

“You’re aware that you’re kind of a pretty boy too, right?”

“Really? And here I thought I had the general attractiveness of a bat, ” he threw back my words.

I glared at the sliver of bare skin showing between his unfurled shirt. “Aren’t you going to change?”

“I’ll wait till you fall asleep. Now close your eyes. It’s been a long night, and a longer one is coming.”

“Are the Valkhars arriving tomorrow?”

“Night after that.”

“What are you going to—”

“ Sleep , Dorothea,” he cut me off, pronouncing my name in a way that gave each letter its own unique inflection.

“You’re the only one who calls me that.”

“I know.”

“Why do you do it?”

We were so close that my own body followed the movement of his shoulders as he shrugged. “I just like it. It’s long. It lingers on the tongue. It gives you time to taste it.” Every word he spoke vibrated against my skin. I had the urge to cup his throat, feel his voice with my fingertips the way he felt my name with his tongue.

Exhaustion tugged at my eyelids, but it took me a while to fall asleep. There was an ache pulsing deep inside my chest, an anxious, secret agony. The future seemed very daunting all of a sudden, full of choices I didn’t know how to make and bridges I didn’t know how to cross.

How would I return to Thaloria, to my studies and my life at the court with Nepheli, after all of this?

I learned once how to live without Hector. But right now, I wasn’t so sure that I could do it again.