Page 24 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

But not once in four years did I forget her.

There were many odd things about life, but nothing like being haunted by someone alive. Absence, I discovered, only made the longing greater.

Everywhere I went, I found things that reminded me of her. A delicate wisp of lace. A bejeweled gown. A comb with roses along its dainty arch. I told myself that one day, I would summon the heart to send her a wedding gift. I would write to tell her that I was sorry for the things I said that day. I’d been young and proud and selfish, and I’d only thought of myself. I would tell her that I had only ever wished for her happiness and that she could always count on me to stand by her, take care of her, protect her. I would write things that, after a while, read less like an apologyand more like a love letter. And so I only gathered gifts and never the courage to send them.

Whenever I would think of her with him, my whole body would clutch in anguish.Do you laugh with him like you laughed with me?I asked her in these unsent letters.Do you lean over to brush his hair off his eyes while he reads? Does he know why your breath catches when you gaze at a sunset? Did you really not know that to me you were the most important person in the world? How could you not know? Everyone else did.

As I entered my bedroom now, I couldn’t help but stare at the dead bouquet of roses by the windowsill. They’d been soft pink once. Mother’s favorite. The Castle used to swim in pink roses all year round. Except for when Thea visited. Then I would ask the Castle to make the roses red, because red roses would always remind me of how we met in the Dragonfly Forest.

She had stung herself trying to pluck a bud, and the scent of her blood had driven me half-mad, abandoning the squirrel I’d been chasing to hunt for her instead. But when I found her, my hunger vanished, the curse inside me put into deep sleep. I’d only felt worry staring at that tiny human girl with the bloodied fingers and the bright yellow cape.

“Have you lost your mind? Who tries to pluck a rose with their bare hands?”

“Someone who isn’t afraid to get stung,”she had declared with a haughty little raise of her chin.

And that was it. I took her to the Castle to bandage her wounded fingers, and after I was done, she leaned in and kissed my cheek as a thank you. My heart had never beaten faster. We were the same age, but I didn’t feel the same as her. She was so confident in her body, so striking in her mannerisms, while I was a mere awkward heap of muscles that could hardly hold her stare for longer than a minute.

So I promised myself that one day I would become a man worthy of her. And I tried. I tried to forge myself into someone that could make her happy, but in the end, she chose the possibility of someone else over the certainty of me. At least, that was how I saw it at eighteen. It took me a while to realize I was mostly at fault. I never spoke of love to her. I never fought for her the right way. That was why I lost her. That was why I kept writing letters asking her all thewhat-ifsin the world.

Now she was here again. Fuller. Softer. The kind of woman that could bring a man to his knees with a simple tilt of her neck, a hint of a smile.

Only that love didn’t make any sense to me anymore. Everything stood meaningless and distorted. Even the Castle weighed on me. It was no longer my home but my grave. The tomb in which everything I had once held precious had been buried.

I’d known about the Vow. I’d known that one day I’d lose them together. That was how they’d wanted it. Still, I never thought of their death. No one ever thinks of death until death becomes all you can think about.

What tormented me the most was that I never got a goodbye, a last word, an affectionate final glance. I was away traveling when it happened. The last significant memory I have of my parents was of my nineteenth birthday: the three of us down in the kitchen attempting to master the art of baking, their laughter as effortless and brilliant as the bob of a flame in absolute darkness.

I remembered feeling so incredibly, comfortably loved that I almost didn’t want to leave the next morning. I wanted to stay in our little universe forever, here, in our castle in the sky, where even melancholy came with a sweet serenity, and everything was invariably secure and tenderly familiar. But I’d drowned myself in work after Thea’s engagement, and Father insisted I get outand see the world. Adventure and discovery and all that. So I left. And when I came back, there was nothing for me here but a legacy I wasn’t nearly worthy enough to carry.

As I swept a blackened rose petal off the floor, I didn’t want to ask the Castle to make it lush and red again. I wanted to be buried under the ruins of my life. I wanted to shun myself from all light and beauty. I wanted my pain to turn into emptiness. How I wished to be numb, to close my eyes and slump into an endless sleep where the ghosts of my family couldn’t reach me and things like love died in the darkness.

I didn’t ask the Castle to do it.

Yet, when I looked up again, the roses on the windowsill gleamed pure red in the twilight.

8

Thea

We were still so high in the sky that the air smelled of opals and pearls, the night growing liquid with moonlight.

“When will the Castle land?” I asked nervously, stepping out of the bathroom to find Hector turning down the bed, wearing only a pair of linen shorts and a billowy nightshirt.

We didn’treallyhave to share a bed tonight. No one was here apart from the two of us. But after dinner, Hector moved all of my things to his bedroom, and I simply didn’t object. It wasn’t like we hadn’t slept next to each other before. In fact, we would always fall asleep shoulder to shoulder at the observatory after hours of drowsy pointing at twinkling constellations.Thea, look! Look, the Ysorias are winking at us!

Part of me was glad he suggested it. I longed to occupy the same space as him, to have something of our youth back, to regain the lost time. So why was my heart making so much noise?

“Tomorrow. Midday, I think,” said Hector drowsily, my half-undressed presence in his bedroom leaving him utterly unaffected.

Well, half-undressed was probably an exaggeration. My nightgown was richly layered with a modest neckline and a hemthat billowed around my ankles, far from the scandalous sort I used to wear whenever I spent a night with Killian.

I missed Killian sometimes. He was one of Queen Eloise’s personal guards, and we had a wonderful little fling last spring, which ended sadly and abruptly after he started pressuring me about the future. But the whole reason I’d stayed at the Thalorian Court after I broke my engagement with Jasper was because Ididn’tknow what I wanted for my future.

I didn’t know what my life was for nor what I was supposed to do with it. The only thing I did know was that I needed more time. Time to learn who I was and who I wished to be, for I had already spent so much of my life being other people. It was a terrible thing not to know who you were. Everyone always took it as an invitation to take ownership of your void.

But the good thing about Killian was that he was a simple and straightforward man, and I never felt all muddle-headed and tongue-tied whenever I was with him. With him I didn’t feel the way I felt when I was with Hector.

It saddened me to think that every boy I’d ever met had been compared to him. No one was as smart as Hector or as interesting or as thoughtful. No one knew or understood me like he did. Oftentimes I asked myself,Then why not have him? Him, who compared to no one.But the answer was always the same.Havingsomeone meant there was a possibility oflosingthem too, and there’d been nothing I’d dreaded more than a life without Hector.

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