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Hector

R oan was leaning against the wall opposite the bedroom, somber, weary, and glaring at me.

The moment I shut the door behind me, he wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Glad to see you’re entertaining yourselves while the rest of us are busy burying my aunt.”

I hated that he could smell her on me, smell the exact depth and complexity of her pleasure mingling with my own unspent desire. This was why I’d promised myself I’d wait, so we could have this precious moment undisturbed and to ourselves alone. But as always, I’d been unable to resist her.

She touched me, and the world fell away. There was just her and my heart that kept missing beats and my hands that could not bring her close enough. And then I tasted her, and I found myself starving. I’d been starving for her for so long, languishing in snowstorms of fascination, that I still had trouble believing this had happened at all. That what I felt on my fingertips was the satin softness of her skin, that the honeyed taste on my tongue was of her pleasure, that the sweet reverberations in my ears were the sounds of her wanting me.

I didn’t think people could belong to other people, but no part of me felt like mine anymore.

It was a struggle to concentrate, to keep my expression dispassionate and surreptitious. Even my voice betrayed me when I finally spoke, “I assumed you were going to return her East.”

“She had no such preferences,” Roan said curtly, his eyes pinned on an indistinct distance. “We buried her by the cherry trees before the sun came up.”

“You did not ask me to attend.”

A line of apprehension carved between his brows. “They said I shouldn’t disturb you. They’re… scared of you, Hector.”

I gave him a hard, remorseless look. “They should be. They tried to hurt my wife, frame me for murder, and steal my home. If I were them, I would be terrified to even sleep within these walls.”

It took Roan several moments to meet my gaze in the pale semidarkness of the corridor. The tapers on the candelabras were sparsely lit, and there was an odd, bone-piercing chill out here. Odd indeed, for if the Castle was linked to my emotional state, the whole floor ought to be broiling right now. I had the strange sense ever since the incident with Thea that the Castle’s magic was slipping from my hold. It obeyed me still, dutiful and resilient as a king’s general, yet I felt distanced from it somehow, which scared me more than I cared to admit, for my whole life I’d been an Aventine before I’d been Hector. I scarcely knew who I was without it.

Roan cleared his throat, deciding not to comment on my rather menacing statement. “I require your help.” I cocked a brow, and he continued more warily. “Tieran needs more blood.”

So that was why he was here. The Castle was out of blood, and the sun was high and dazzling in the sky.

I gave Roan a sympathetic nod. “Go get some rest. I’ll get him more blood—”

“You must know, I didn’t do it,” Roan blurted out in one ragged breath. “I didn’t kill Camilla.”

My hand fell from the doorknob, tension shooting up my spine. At the end of the corridor where the largest of the mirrors trickled with water, I could have sworn an invisible presence watched me tentatively, waiting with bated breath to see what I would do.

Shaking the strange notion from my head, I turned to Roan again, and this time I made sure my face betrayed nothing, not a hint of the suspicion that coiled in my gut.

Yes, Roan had given me his oath, but I no longer believed that to be anything other than a well-devised part of a much larger plan. After all, how could I accuse of murder the only man that had willingly given me his loyalty? For all I knew, he’d encouraged Camilla to poison Thea, pretending to be on her side, just so he would give me the appearance of a motive. Camilla wouldn’t have suspected him, for she had never even respected him. Stoic little Roan , she used to call him. Stoic little Roan, who always smiled amicably and fixed her mistakes, and who believed everything could be solved with a firm handshake and a brief exchange of words.

When Roan realized I was not going to respond, let alone give him the peace of mind he’d come here for, he pressed closer. From this distance I could see the bruised and pierced side of his neck, and I wondered how much of his blood he’d had to give to Tieran before he summoned the courage to ask for my help.

“There is a reason I swore to stand by your side, Hector,” he ventured in a measured but tenacious manner. “I do believe you’ll become a great ruler. Not despite your humanity but because of it. I know I haven’t always been accepting of your kind, but my years with Tieran opened my eyes to a side of humanity that was utterly unknown to me. This is why I fell in love with him. He’s so perfectly, wonderfully human. Even now, even like this.” His voice became strained, his composure slipping from him like a handful of water. “I wouldn’t do this to him. I wouldn’t make him suffer like this.”

Unease crept under my skin, for the words rang too genuine, too vulnerable. I’d been certain Roan would do anything for Tieran, even murder his own aunt. But what if anything didn’t mean killing the reason his husband was suffering but instead allowing her to exist just so he wouldn’t suffer any worse?

If that was true, if Roan hadn’t done this… Then who? Dahlia? Was she really capable of such brutality?

“I can’t believe I’m not the only one awake at this ungodly hour,” Arawn’s exhausted groan sounded from across the pathway, his disheveled form separating from the shadows.

“And what are you doing up at this ungodly hour?” I shot back.

“Hoping to find some blood in the kitchen,” he grumbled, stifling a tremendous yawn. “How is it possible we’re out already?”

“Sorry,” exhaled Roan. “Tieran needed it.”

“I’m going hunting right now,” I reassured them, drifting further and further away from the dreamscape of my moments with Thea. “How is Dain?”

Arawn merely shrugged. “His pride got the worst of it.” Leaning in, he gave me a conspiratorial little wink. “Besides, he has Dahlia to lick his wounds.”

Roan smacked the back of Arawn’s head.

“That fucking hurt,” bristled Arawn.

“And that is my sister you’re talking about,” growled Roan.

“Wanker.”

“Dimwit.”

I sighed at the ceiling, inwardly praying to whoever god was willing to listen. “I can’t believe we’re the future of vampire society.”

◆◆◆

B ack at the bedroom, it was a different world. Bright, clear, ineffably lovely. Dorothea had drawn back the curtains, and the eager spring sun was soaking the overlapping rugs in unsteady golden pools. The Castle was floating a bit higher than usual, and the view out of the dewed glass was a cotton-candy daydream.

When she turned, an instant pang of desire went through me. The sunlight caught her face, her neck, the top of her breastbone before it disappeared beneath the white cotton of her nightdress. Everything about her was gleaming and reflecting as if she were celestial, a girl made of nothing but magic and reveries. The rest of the room stood transfigured in relation to her.

“Is everything alright?” she asked sleepily.

“I have to go hunting.”

She nodded, trudging toward the bed with half-lidded eyes. “I’ll try to get some sleep before the ceremony.”

I caught her wrist just as her knee dipped into the mattress. “Are we okay? No regrets?”

Her smile was a drowsy sunrise, slowly lighting up the valley of her face. She got on her toes and pressed a kiss to my lips. Brief. Soft. Yet it ignited a fire in my bones. Now all I wanted was to splay her on this bed, kiss vows up her thighs, and have the fullness of her breasts in my hands again.

“No regrets,” she promised, and I believed she meant it.

She looked… content. More than I’d seen her be in a long, long time. There weren’t any words good enough to describe what her happiness did to me, only that it made me feel reassured and healed in channels of my heart that had stood scraped raw for years now.

As she climbed onto the bed, the nightdress clung to the curve of her hips, gliding over and between her thighs in a way that made me inwardly groan. I’d been with women before. One woman, to be precise—a comfortable and clandestine affair that only existed when I happened to be in Kartha, which ended permanently and unobtrusively after my parents’ death. But that was beside the point. The point was that I should be able to show a bit more restraint in a situation like this. If only my good reason and sober composure didn’t evaporate into thin air every time I breathed near this girl.

“I was wondering,” Thea prompted as she settled between the row of pillows.

“Yes?” I encouraged.

She looked at me curiously. “What happens next?”

I shook my head, chuckling. “That is a very funny thing for a seer to ask.”

“I know,” she admitted, her gaze growing bleary, far-off. “I just wish I had the answer.”

I thought for a moment. I thought the way Mother would, allowing this small part of me that was undeniably hers to rise to the surface, a surface that was not perfect or unmarked by any means, but at least a brighter place than this pit of sorrow and regret that had opened up inside me ever since I lost them. It was strange trying to think like her, but it was also comforting. A revelation, even. I was no longer afraid to confront her absence or admit that my need for her guidance hadn’t died with her.

In moments like this, I wished I could talk to the Castle. Really talk to it, not just watch it bring to fruition my every desire and command. But the Castle was quiet, quieter than usual, its grief ancient and unyielding compared to my own mortal one.

I was beginning to understand why so many places in the world stood haunted and why so many morbid stories followed them even centuries after the tragedies that had befallen them. People had the ability to change and therefore the ability to heal. Places were eternal. And so were their wounds.

In the end, no voices of wisdom reached me from the great beyond. There was only me. Imperfect. Scarred. A heart full of human hope. And for the first time in my life, this didn’t seem too terrible of a fate.

“I don’t think there is a next, Dorothea,” I finally said. “I think there is only now.”