Page 19 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“It’s not going to work.”

“And why is that, Lord Aventine?”

“Don’t you think you’d have my scent and at least one bite mark on you if we were married?”

My breath hitched. “You’d feed on your own wife?”

“I’dbitemy own wife because she would beg me to do so. Vampires don’t always bite to feed, you know. Sometimes they do it to pleasure their partners, and other times they do it to claim a human as their own.”

It was a cold, bitter feeling to realize how separate Hector and Esperida had kept me from their world and how blissfully I’d embraced my ignorance all these years. Perhaps they’d done it to protect me, to shield me from the darkness of their nature. Perhaps their clandestine universe stretched beyond the reach of human comprehension. Or perhaps they hadn’t believed me capable of overcoming my innate human prejudice against the unknown. Either way, I was sailing upon new waters now.

“I didn’t know that,” I whispered.

“Of course you didn’t,” was all Hector said. There was no resentment in his voice, but there was sadness in it—sadness for all the inherent differences that had rendered some parts of ourselves unknowable to each other.

“Is the bite…” I hesitated, embarrassment crawling over the skin of my face.

“Yes?” Hector encouraged.

“Is it really as euphoric as they say?”

The question didn’t surprise him. Still, his response held more nonchalance than it ought to. “So I’ve been told.”

It took me a moment to realize what this really meant. “You’ve fed on humans?”

It was impossible to imagine Hector drinking from the vein. In my mind, he had always been more human than creature, and yet, here he sat now with the unperturbed insouciance of an immortal, not a single human spark in his eyes.

“Why does this surprise you so, Thea? I am a vampire, after all, and there are more than a few willing humans out there.”

Deep in my chest, I felt the jab of something stronger than anger and more persistent than shock. I would have called it jealousy had it not been absurd to be jealous of any poor woman who’d find herself in the arms of a bloodthirsty vampire. Even if that vampire was Hector. Even if he pulled that faceless girl into his arms and caught her mouth with his before claiming her throat. Even if his hands roamed well past the curve of her waist and he alternated between drinking from her neck and stroking a gentle hand between her thighs. Or who knew? Perhaps he was skilled enough to do both at the same time.

Bells of mortification started ringing in my head. I had to dig my nails into the skin of my palms just to shake the untoward image off my mind. “I’m just… confused,” I croaked, which was a horrendous understatement of my current emotional state. “You said that you’d never drink from the vein. That the mere idea disgusts you.”

“Things change.”

“Evidently,” I clipped. “Or perhaps you took a lover. Your mystery woman.”

I meant it as a taunt, but the sudden shift in his expression told me I hadn’t fallen far from the truth.

Indeed, why was I so surprised? Hector was a grown man. Of course, he’d taken a lover. Probably someone older andexperienced who taught him how to fight minotaurs and drink blood from the vein and flirt like it was a sport.

I should be happy for him, shouldn’t I?

Then what was with this sick feeling in my stomach?

Hector stood from the couch only to cast his unforgiving gaze upon me. “Did you think I spent the past four years pining for you, Thea? If I said that I was miserable and alone and that life without you was not worth living, would you be more pleased?”

“Of course not,” I scoffed, skittering to my feet. “I just…I’ve never thought of you in that way.”

“Like a man, you mean.”

“Like a vampire,” I bit out. “A vampire who feeds on his lovers.”

The space between us narrowed to a grain of sand, his face dangling so close over mine that if I got up on my toes, our lips would touch. “Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think.”

“Yes, so it seems.”

My chin tilted up just as his slanted down, and whatever we meant to say became the air we exchanged. For a few moments the only sounds in the room came from the crackling fireplace and the howling wind as it sped past the Castle. Everything else was stillness and ache and a thousand unsaid things.

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