Page 34 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

Once again, she said nothing.

I sighed resignedly. “You should tell your father.”

Her throat bobbed. “Tell him what?”

“About Dain.”

Blood flooded her pale face. “Father won’t give me to a Valkhar. He thinks they’re brutes.”

Theywerebrutes. In fact, Dain, Kaladin’s only heir, was also a despicable bully, but I thought it was probably wiser not to remark on this now that I was hoping to strengthen my relationship with the Ravenors.

And at any rate, we all knew the real reason Espen didn’t want to unite the two families was Camilla’s history with Kaladin. The two of them had been lovers once, a pair as fearsome as passionate, until he betrayed her by marrying Sybella. His unfaithfulness didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, though. Back then, Sybella had been my mother’s closest friend, and in our world, having the favor of Esperida Aventine was like having the favor of a god. People did a lot of terrible things for proximity to power, and marriage, evidently, was one of them.

“Espen is a reasonable man,” I admonished Dahlia. “He doesn’t oppose your union just to hurt you. He thinks Dain has lured you in with false promises. It’s within your power to make him see the truth.”

Dahlia’s timid expression turned to stone as she snapped her coal-smoke eyes on mine. She looked so much more like Collette now. An eerie combination of light and darkness, white pearls, and the black depths of the sea.

“This is all Camilla’s fault, you know,” she seethed, her anger quiet but impatient. “She has filled my father’s head with all kinds of lies about the Valkhars. Dain is a good man.”

“I’m sure he’s good to you,” I said.

Her gaze took on an edge of unreality, as if her thoughts had reached the shores of another world. “I wish we could elope like you did,” she whispered. “But Thea is so much stronger than me.”

The irony was a blade. It twisted inside me. It bled me dry.

If only I had been able to see and understand the gravity of Thea’s dilemma the way I could see and understand Dahlia’s now, perhaps everything would have turned out differently. But ego loved to take hold of reason when you needed it the most, and now…

Now, it was too late. Wasn’t it?

I hated that there was still a question in my head, a secret hope in my heart.

Whenever I thought I was past my feelings for Thea, she always found a way to rekindle the spark of my longing. She was my autumn. My season of comfort, season of change. And every time she returned to me, unfailingly, inevitably, I fell.

12

Thea

Iwasn’t sure how or why it happened, but when I finally unlocked myself from the bedroom where I had a very respectable and much-needed emotional breakdown, I came downstairs to find Hector and Arawn sword fighting in the middle of the drawing room for the—completely irrational in my humble opinion—reason offun.

Whatever had occurred between Roan and Hector in the study had obviously reassured the latter enough to resume his role of genial host, if, of course, one could call genial the thrusting attack he managed on poor Arawn, who was barely able to refute it with a plunge of his sword. But unlike Hector, I’d received no such assurances and therefore remained very much on edge.

The vision about Kaladin still lingered on me in a persistent prickle at the back of my neck. For the first time in my life, a life filled with brief glimpses into mundane futures, I was confronted by the true gravity of my magic. Yet I did not feel powerful under its divine weight. I felt shell-shocked and helpless, for to see destiny’s plans without knowing if you were meant to follow or defy them seemed more like a curse than a gift to me.

However, if Hector had indeed come to some kind of agreement with Roan, then Kaladin didn’t stand a chance against him. Besides, I’d seen no blood in the vision, no weapons, no extreme physical violence. Vampires were prideful creatures. For all I knew, this fight was going to be about something as harmless as a rude remark and would end up being pacified by one of Arawn’s untoward jokes.

For the sake of my sanity, I allowed myself to believe that, rolling my shoulders to relieve some of the tension they’d been holding, as I took a seat by the fireside.

Arawn let out a low snarl as Hector warded off an impressive high attack with only one hand in the fight, the other folded gallantly behind his back. He didn’t fight like Esperida or Eron. He did not rely on the strength of his body or the steadiness of his blade. Hector’s miracle was speed. He was too fast for human eyes to follow, the gleam of his sword like thunder, a momentary flash in the air. His feet were never still, never hesitant. He was uncatchable.

With a swift brandish, he managed to nick Arawn’s neck, wringing another frustrated hiss from him. Unless their heads were no longer attached to their shoulders or their hearts were no longer residents of their chests, vampires recovered from any other injury easily, and so Arawn’s skin took only a second to reknit itself.

Still, Hector did not relent. He leveled his blade and spun around in a circle to add more power to his next blow, the hem of his shirt escaping the waistband of his trousers and revealing the sculpted muscles of his lower abdomen.

At once, I felt my face grow warm, my mouth desert-dry. “I think I’ll go start on dinner while you boys play with your swords,” I rasped.

Arawn whirled around, a garland of sweat gleaming above his fair brows. “Not so fast, Lady Aventine,” he drawled, and before Iknew it, he was tossing away his sword and grabbing me around the waist.

Hector came next, closing us both in a massive embrace, his force so formidable that we all tumbled over. It was a feat to untangle ourselves from each other, and for a few moments we just lay there before the roaring fireplace, panting and chuckling, Hector on my right and Arawn on my left, just as when we were kids.

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