Page 20 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

The smallest flicker of surrender bobbed up in his eyes—hot, unsteady—then he pulled back with a sigh and aimed for the door. “Once we land, I’ll go into town and arrange a carriage for you. It will take you to the coast. From there you can board the first ship to Thaloria.”

A certainty rose in me. I gathered my skirts and chased after him. “No.”

He paused. “No?”

“Ican’tleave.”

“Sure you can. You’ve left before.”

I wedged myself between him and the door and said the only thing that mattered anymore. “Hector. We lost them.”

That inexorable line between his brows deepened. Seconds passed. A minute. He didn’t say a word. He was a statue, cold and unwavering, his eyes like bits of stone. And perhaps his precious pride was contagious too, for I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of him watching me cry.

I turned to leave, my chest hollowed.

But then, “Thea,” he said. It was like a spell. My entire body stopped as he cast it. “Don’t go.”

In the end, that was all it took for both of our prides to melt away. Two words.Don’t go.

He curled a hand around my nape and pulled me into his arms. I clenched my teeth, pressing my lips together to keep them from trembling. “I…” I had no words. I had nothing but this striking, overwhelming sense of grief. My insides felt burned to cinders.

Hector pulled me closer, his body enveloping mine. The scent of his skin flooded me like the sorrow. “It’s okay if you want to cry,” he said in my ear. “I did.”

I wasn’t sure why I needed to hear this, why I needed permission to experience the full magnitude of my grief, but for the first time in a very long time, I let myself weep. I was inconsolable, incoherent. There was pain in me I didn’t recognize, wounds so old I could not remember where they’d come from. It was as though this one terrible thing had magnified all the others, and now everything inside me was torn wide and bleeding.

Hector made a low, soothing sound deep in his throat, his fingers combing through my hair. “I know,” was all he murmured. “I know.”

In that moment he could have told me anything, and it would have soothed me all the same. I could not explain it. His armsfelt more like home than any place, any house, any magic castle ever could. And somehow, as I wrapped my hands around his waist and pressed my face to his chest, my tears stopped tasting like despair.

When I was alone, my grief was a demon that I had to banish, to exorcise from my bones. But when we were together, it was a sacred thing, something we needed to honor, give it its own space, and live with it until it wasn’t so unbearable. Maybe the strength to move on lay in the surrender. Maybe it wasn’t time, the fading of memories that healed you in the end. Maybe it was the acceptance of the terrible thing that happened to you.

“I don’t want to leave,” I whispered, wallowing in the lovely familiarity of being held by a pair of hands that had held me before. “I came all this way because I need you right now. And I think you need me too.”

His fingers left my hair and cupped the sides of my throat, his thumbs at my jawbone. Something about his expression made me think that he was going to kiss me: the raw apology in his eyes, the softness of his brow, his lips that parted just so. But Hector only pulled himself straight, nodding for me to follow. “Come.”

I sniffled, still blinking tears from my vision. “Where are we going?”

“Well,” he breathed, casting me an almost mischievous glance over his shoulder, “if you’re going to pretend to be my wife, you better look the part.”

6

Thea

Every step Hector took was a transformation. Chandeliers flew up, broken crystals rearranged themselves into new, more brilliant patterns, hearths lit up and roared in excitement, flowers unfurled and blossomed, and curtains drew back to let the light in. It wasn’t the extravagant wonderland from my childhood memories where even the air was a thing of magic, but it was certainly a start.

The day outside had progressed to afternoon, and the sky was a sweep of yellow with a smattering of periwinkle clouds. In the distance, the colors faded into a dreamy, milky white as if we were heading toward the heart of a pearl.

I followed Hector down the corridor and up the winding stairs, wishing we could sit down and talk instead. I wanted to know everything. Everything he was feeling. Everything he was thinking. Everything he had done during the time we’d spent apart. He was right in front of me, yet I felt like I was observing him from a great distance. There were no walls between us I could break down, only vast, unexplored space. But even conquering the unknown didn’t seem impossible within these walls.

As we passed by the observatory, I was delighted to find that my favorite part of the Castle remained intact. The fountain ofthe universe’s wishes. Or at least, that was what I called it. It was made from the same peculiar stone as the facade of the Castle, pure white and ever-glistening. Its waters were the color of fresh moss, trickling from a tipped amphora into the round pool. The bottom was a mosaic of gold and green, littered with bronze star-shaped coins. Every time a star fell, a new coin appeared in the pool, and every few years some of the coins vanished, dissolving into stardust.

This is part of the original structure of the Castle, Esperida told me once.I believe that my star was very special before it fell—a king of the sky—and that these are the wishes the gods bestowed and still bestow upon it. That’s why the Castle can’t touch land. Where else would wishes belong but the sky?

How solacing it was to think that even the gods and spirits and nymphs had things to wish for and that we were not alone in our ceaseless dreaming. That was why I loved the Castle so much. Within its walls I was allowed to be incomparably marvelous and, at the same time, perfectly human.

Filled with nostalgia, I passed my fingers under the amphora and felt its divine water glide over my hand like liquid silk. Suddenly, two iridescent butterflies leapt from the amphora’s lip, fluttering their delicate wings around my hand. “Hector, look!” I exclaimed, but he was already gone, his tall silhouette a mere shadow in the distance.

I gathered my skirts and hurried after him to thefunniestpart of the Castle: a single stretch of corridor where the floor was the ceiling and the ceiling was the floor. Spots of upside-down gravity weren’t uncommon in the Faraway North, although we hardly ever had to battle such spaces in our own abodes.

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