Page 23 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

Aceremonialwristlet.

Hector squeezed his hand into its larger twin before helping me with my own. “And… we’re married now. Congratulations, Lady Aventine,” he announced dryly.

Running my fingers over the cold, sleek metal, I recalled his words from earlier, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d gotten these for us on an adolescent impulse. With a raw ache in my throat, I lifted my head and looked into his sunburst eyes. “You know I didn’t know, right?”

Understanding hardened his face. “Come on, Thea,” he said with a short, bitter laugh. “You knew. You were constantly mocking me about it.”

“I never mocked you,” I protested. “Sometimes I teased you, yes, but that was the only way I could get some sort of reaction out of you.”

“I told you I was willing to leave the Castle. I told you I would move to Thaloria so you could study magic. I told you I would follow you to the ends of the world. But you never believed me. You never took me seriously,” he said with the air of someone who wasn’t bothered much by it anymore.

“It’s not that I didn’t believe you. It was just a sacrifice I couldn’t ask of you. Not when I knew that one day I would have to betray myself to honor my family.Youought to understand this, Hector. You’re doing the same thing now, aren’t you?”

He kept his head high, his proud shoulders straight. “I suppose we’re all products of our families wishes.” With one long stride he reached the door, dismissing the conversation. “I haveto make sure the guest rooms are ready for tomorrow. I’ll move your things to my bedroom as well.”

I blinked, bewildered, before it dawned on me that we were supposed to be married now. Married people did not sleep in separate bedrooms. Not newlyweds, at least.

Considering how nervous I felt at the mere thought of sharing a room with Hector, maybe this plan of minewasridiculous, if not downright childish. I should probably move into an inn for a couple of days and return to the Castle after the ceremony. Yes, that would be the most reasonable thing to do.

So why was I staring at him like a flustered idiot instead of suggesting it?

“Alright,” was the only thing that came out of my mouth.

Did I like the idea of pretending to be Hector’s wife, or was it the allure of joining one of the most exclusive societies in the Realm that made me want to stay here so much? Of course, a momentary lapse of sanity wasn’t completely out of the question. I should probably write to Nepheli and advise her to get herself a new best friend, for this one had gone completely and irrevocably bonkers.

“How flattering that you’re wincing at the thought of sharing a room with me,” muttered Hector.

“I’m not—”

“Don’t worry, Dorothea,” he cut me off, pronouncing my name like it was some kind of a curse. “We’ll only have to make itlooklike we’re sharing a bed.”

“What’s going to happen to us if we get caught?”

“We won’t get caught,” he said doubtlessly.

I narrowed my eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

He leaned against the door, hands in his pockets. Something dark and thrillingly dangerous gleamed in his eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, Hector Aventine smiled, and it wasa cutting, deadly thing. “Because I’m good at pretending, and you love playing games. Let’s have some fun, Lady Aventine.”

7

Hector

Sometimes I thought I was born loving her. The same way people were born with hearts, I was born with an unremitting love for a girl that would never love me back.

I blamed my years before Thea for this, which were nothing more than a blur of colorless, meandering moments. One eternal night, sacred and sunless and unending.

Of course, the rarity of my condition had achieved the impossible. I could walk in the brightest morning sun, the hottest summer day. I could see the flowers tilt their faces toward the sky and keep the smell of scorched grass in my lungs. But I still liked to think that I only experienced true lightafterI met her.

There were no words good enough to describe what it was to bask in the light of her perpetual merriment. She taught me everything that mattered. How to laugh, how to be bold, how to unbind my tongue. With everyone else, words always evaded me, but with her, all I did was talk and talk and talk. About everything. About nothing. Either way, I knew I would not be judged.

When she told me her name, I smiled for the first time in my life. Dorothea: a gift from the gods.

Indeed, there was something divine about this girl. Her tender stare, her soft lips, her heart, which could only be compared to a forest, a place full of life and undiscovered mystery. Once, an eternity ago, I had hoped to dwell in that forest of hers, live under her skin in the secret pathways of her longings. And to this day I still wonder how every person who has ever met her managed not to fall in love with her even just a little bit.

Everything was different in her absence. Life became both harder and easier, for few things were more painful than the proximity to an unfulfilled dream. Away from her, I was free to follow my initial destiny, to become what I really was: a creature of the night.

I traveled far and long, the way the humans do, without the comfort and magic of the Castle. But I did not live as a human. I lived for the midnight hour, when the sky was tipsy with stars and the magic of the land rose like a layer of celestial mist to wipe away the mundane. I learned the taste of fresh blood, the taste of one’s surrender, and the dark, primitive need to take, take everything one was willing to give.

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