Page 4 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

Letting out a ragged breath, I readjusted my grip on my suitcase and pulled my cloak a little tighter around my gown, my only armor against the twinging cold of early spring.

At first, the night had been all chill and gloom, eager to gather the innumerable shapes of the forest and blend them into one daunting silhouette. My journey became a continuous stumble into prickling brambles and nests of stinging nettles, boughs laden with cobwebs swooping down to claw at the hood of my cloak. Then the clouds turned, and the moon was revealed, full and reddish, creeping across the misty sky. Moonlight painted a much eerier path for me, large shadows leaping out of every corner. But I soon grew grateful for them, for even shadows were better company than the abysmal hollows of the night.

The Door I’d gone through was the kind of portal one could only find in a Curiosity Shop, since Curiosity Shops tended to form around them, but, as all mystical passages had limits to the instructions you could give it. I’d chosen to be taken East and on land (Kartha was a coastal kingdom, and Ireallydidn’t feel like braving the great Sandrea Sea), and so the portal had opened up somewhere in the strip of forestland outside the capital’s walls.

But, of course, my dear Nepheli couldn’t simply leave me to my fate, so she had provided me with a pouch of soporific dust, which, allegedly, could knock even a grown demon out, and a stardust compass to guide me to my desired destination. The needle of the compass was made of actual starlight, the very magic Nepheli carried in her veins, and it pointed to the exact place its owner’s heart wished to go.

I pulled it out of my pocket and consulted it once more, its silver face glowing like a lantern in the night.

Although it looked like I was on the right path, it didn’tfeelright. The dark crested down on me, making everything seem sharp and deadly, the mountains in the hazy distance looming as foreboding and solitary as a dragon’s lair. Even the windwhistling through the boughs of the trees sounded menacing. There was so much noise. The angry rush of the river, the animals lurking in their hollows, the fallen branches snapping underfoot. And then there were the other, invisible terrors, which I did not dare think of.

Suddenly, the distant howl of a wolf tore through the fog-dazed air. I jumped out of my skin, my yelp so loud it prompted the band of blackbirds, nestling on the tree above me, to shoot up into the sky, their disgruntled flapping amid the branches showering me in a waterfall of pale petals.

“It’s okay,” I hummed to myself, shutting my eyes to shun the fear from my mind. “Everything is fine. Nothing is going to eat me.”

I was not going to give up, I was not going to turn around, and I wasnotgoing to run because if I’d learned anything growing up next to creatures of the night, it was that one should never allow themselves to get chased if they didn’t wish to get caught.

When I opened my eyes again, a single pink blossom was twirling in the air before my face. It landed gracefully upon the radiant needle of my compass, and, filled with curiosity, I lifted both my gaze and my impromptu lantern to shed some light overhead.

The forest was mostly hemlock and birch, their ancient bodies rising high and lush in their early spring bloom, but the foliage was different in this part of the path, unwinding into a sea of almond and cherry trees, their pink and white blossoms drifting like snowflakes through the air. Their trunks were gnarled and twisting in all directions, huddled together so closely their branches formed a low, narrow arch. I had to duck my head and cradle my suitcase to my chest to be able to pass through it. The ground below my boots was all dotted with fallen petals, glowing pale in the dim. The black velvet of my gown swished over them,disturbing their continuous pattern and revealing patches of fluffy, dew-kissed grass.

A few more strides and the boughs started to thin. The blossoming saplings gave way to wild undergrowth, and the path opened up fully.

On this side of the trail, several trees were reduced down to stumps, large and uneven as age-fallen columns, with silver moss sprouting around their protruding roots. The bell-shaped mushrooms that sprang from their sides were diaphanous and opalescent. I was familiar with them since the Dragonfly Forest was littered with this type of fungi, and I knew that had it been day, they would gleam like crystals in the sunlight.

This sudden evidence of magic heartened me a little.

The Castle had to be near.

After a while, the wilderness of mushroom-flanked stumps faded into a moss-covered stone path with all kinds of curling weeds erupting between the split cobbles.

Squinting against the moonlight, which was ample and radiant despite the thick clumps of fog that attempted to obscure it, I got the barest glimpse of something that resembled stone but wasn’t. Something hard like granite, shimmering like opals, and white as the purest pearl.

I put down my suitcase, tucked the compass into my cloak pocket, and, sucking in a deep breath, I finally craned back my neck.

There it was, hovering a few feet above the ground, the most magical thing a mind could ever conceive. The Castle.

Its dreaming spires and soaring towers untangled from the mist-dazed gloom to reveal a stained glass rose window, breaking the moonlight into an ocean of uncanny red beams. Below, the structure unraveled into a series of flying buttresses, serving as a frame to the facade, white stones curving into exquisite pointed arches and ribbed vaults that transcendedeven the most artful levels of human detail and reached into the realm of the divine. The arch of its massive door was spangled with dead roses, the darkened blooms crawling out of the cracks in the wall with thorns as long and thick as fangs, making the black surface look like the mouth of a yawning monster.

A chill shivered across my skin. The Castle from my childhood and adolescent memories was a cheerful wonderland, full of color and mystery and endless possibility. Within its ornate chambers, I’d seen whole worlds. Rooms swimming in rivers and alcoves draped in desert sand. I’d taken peeks into other Realms, kingdoms where fairies ruled over humankind, and universes where the constellations had different names.

Now it stood eerie and frightening above me. And reeking of death.

Perhaps it was the little magic in my veins, or perhaps it was my exhaustion and fear to blame, but the most horrid thought bobbed up in the dark of my mind.Leave while you can. Bad things are going to happen here.

I ignored it, clenching my fists at my sides. But when several minutes passed without the Castle letting down its stairs for me, a terrible fear began to expand in my chest.

How I wished I could turn back the clock and see the Castle in its ceaseless bloom again. The way its door would crack only a little open as if to hide a wonder that not everyone was meant to see was a feeling I had come to know intimately. Even these past four years that I’d spent away from the Castle that feeling, that comfortable excitement that I often compared to diving into a brand new book, still found me in my dreams. Constantly, I was overwhelmed by the image of me standing before the Castle’s door, waiting breathlessly to hear the hinges loosen and Esperida to appear like a fairy guarding the entrance to another Realm: ageless, moonlit, mischievous as a child. And then thatinitial burst of joy when Hector would dash down the stairs and close me in his arms.

“Please,” I whispered shakily. “Please, let me in. I’m worried sick about him.”

I brought to mind Hector’s face from the last time I saw him. Memory was infamous for smoothing the edges of the past, but I would never forget the way he’d looked at me that day, the way the curve of his mouth had turned into a stern line, and the way his hair had fallen over his watercolor eyes as he’d slanted his hard face over mine.

“Go, then. And don’t ever come back.”

These were the last words he spoke to me. Yet here I was.

I heaved a sigh, gazing past the bone-white spires of the Castle at the spill of stars across the sky. I did not regret the decisions that had formed my life, for if I hadn’t joined the Thalorian Court, I would have never met Nepheli and therefore wouldn’t have gained some of the most joyful and irreplaceable memories of my adult life. But gods, what wouldn’t I give to be able to tell the ignorant eighteen-year-old version of me that following a path others chose for you didn’t make life easier or simpler, nor did it magically transform you into someone good.

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