Page 41 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“Why aren’tyoudrinking, Hector?” Camilla’s icy voice cut through the air. “Not in a celebrating mood, or are you just too full on your darling wife?”

“Camilla,” snapped Collette.

“It’s okay,” I hummed, hiding a sly smile behind my wine glass. “I’m flattered that the famous Camilla Ravenor is so jealous of my husband.”

Arawn choked on his food, and everyone broke out laughing.

“Ah, she bites back,” purred Camilla, leaning nearer. Near enough that I could smell the heady scent of her skin and the distinct metallic tang of blood. “I like the ones who bite back.”

“Cover your fangs, Camilla,” warned Hector with deceptive calm.

Camilla regarded him with a look of chill contempt, her eyes like jagged stones. “Let me guess. Otherwise, you will remove them from my gums.”

“Of course not,” said Hector blithely. “But I can’t promise she won’t.”

Intrigue sparked in Camilla’s spectral face. “Vicious little fawn, then,” she decided.

I arched a brow. “You shouldn’t allow yourself to get so easily deceived by appearances, Camilla. I may look delicious, but I’m no fawn.”

As Camilla raised her glass in a mocking salute, I realized she was not easy to offend, which was rare for a vampire of her age and status. In fact, the more I studied her, the more perplexedI became by her cold indifference not only toward me but also toward everyone around this table. She spoke her mind, and if the others didn’t like it, she simply didn’t care. In a way—a very unsettling, unpredictable way—she was above them, above, perhaps, the very laws and social graces that constrained the rest.

This was what made her so dangerous. This was why Espen would sometimes look at her with an expression of indignation, Collette with distaste, Dahlia with caution, Alexandria with frustration, and Roan with a sharpness that often verged on hatred. The dynamics between them were as intricate as precarious, and I wasn’t sure how this was going to affect Hector’s ascension to sovereignty, only that it somehow would.

For a while we all enjoyed our dinner, talking about the fineness of the wine, the richness of the food, the blood that tasted as sweet as the figs on our plates. Then came talk of their own affairs: the situation the Valkhars were dealing with and the vampire who was recently caught in Kartha feeding on a human child. Espen said the vampire was executed by the order of the king. Lance asked if they beheaded him or if they cut out his heart with a hunter’s blade. No detail was too gruesome amongst a company of vampires.

The cups were emptied and poured again. Their lips grew red with blood and wine, their elegant faces shining like gemstones, their laughter like the clearest water. I’d never felt more out of place in my life. I kept catching myself staring at them, mesmerized, frozen in my seat. They were all so unbearably radiant, like living works of art. Yet to be in their presence was less of an inspiring experience than a frightening one. There was terror in their beauty, or perhaps they were only so beautiful because of it.

I forced myself to participate despite the inexplicable rise of apprehension in my blood, but, at last, I became so disengagedthat I ended up getting startled when a low grunt sounded from my left.

Tieran, who was seated between Roan and Camilla, wasbleeding. His wrist had been sliced down the middle and was now dripping dark red inside a tall crystal cup. For a stomach-turning moment, I thought it was for Camilla, but to my further dismay, Roan was the one who raised the cup to his lips. He swallowed slowly as if to savor the taste before leaning down to run his tongue along the gushing incision, not a drop of blood wasted.

Tieran’s face softened with affection when Roan offered him his wrist in return, but he only managed to shake his head before Camilla drew him into her arms. Impatiently, she untied the collar of his shirt, exposing his bone-pale throat.

Then she bit into him.

Her fangs sank deep enough to tear through nerves, bobbing up and down to widen the wound. Tieran moaned quietly, his scarlet eyes falling shut as his head lolled back, right into Camilla’s palm. Her fingers curled firmly around the roots of his dark hair, her other hand clutching down his unfurled shirt.

My whole life I’d never seen anything so subtly horrid. She was devouring him, right in front of us, twisting in her seat and pulling him closer until the blood overflowed her mouth and started trickling down his throat. Tieran grew listless, leaving sounds that only he could know if they were of severe agony or unimaginable pleasure.

In a sick panic, I gazed around the table only to find that no one, not even Hector, was paying the slightest attention to them, the conversation meandering from one matter to another as if a man wasn’t being bled dry right before our eyes.

My mind stuttered.

Was I imagining this? Were my human eyes deceiving me somehow, distorting the scene into something more grotesque than it actually was?

Everywhere I looked, I saw red. Wine and meat and blood, blood, blood. I was sickened by it. Bile churned in my stomach and welled up my throat, the iron tang crawling deep into my lungs.

Camilla was careless as she released Tieran, and more blood gushed out of his wound to stain his white shirt. A few droplets hit the table, dark red and viscous. Lance’s pale eyes fell on them, and something torn between lust and hunger braced his face. Before I knew it, he was turning in his seat to bite into Alexandria’s neck, his big hand closing firmly around her delicate jaw.

Some sort of sound must have escaped me then, because several pairs of eyes snapped in my direction at once, their attention bright and painful, like a peal of thunder.

Camilla leaned back on her chair, collected as a priestess on Solstice Night. Her lips and chin were smeared with blood, thick droplets gliding down her throat. With a slow, almost sensual sweep of her finger over the tops of her breasts, she gathered the blood and licked it clean with vicious delight. “Hasn’t Hector taught you not to stare at vampires while they feed?” Tracing her still-dripping fangs with her tongue, she reached across the table and snatched my wrist in her claws. “They might take it as an invitation.”

It happened lightning-fast. Hector sprang up, vanished momentarily, then reappeared behind Camilla’s chair. He bent over her like a death creature, dark and enormous, and dug his fingers into the stained column of her throat, to the exact spot where her pulse beat the strongest.

For the first time since Camilla entered the Castle, she seemed alert, her eyes rounding, her long pearlescent nails digging into the ivory tablecloth before her.

Then the light dissolved. A ripple of wind snuffed out the floating candles, and a sheet of frost crept along the walls and arched over the table. Crackling icicles dangled over our heads, precarious and sharp as daggers.

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