Page 46 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

Tieran shoved my hands away, his white fangs gleaming silver in the dim. “You can get lost.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t want your pity, and I don’t want your judgment,” he growled. “You think just because Hector doesn’t feed on you that you’re better than us?”

Shocked to the marrow of my bones, I brought a hand to the base of my throat, curling my fingers under the last string of pearls. “He—”

“Don’t bother lying,” he spat, stepping forward to slant his death-touched face directly over mine. “I don’t know if Hector chose you for political reasons, if he was afraid to evoke Dain’s wrath by marrying Dahlia, or if he simply didn’t want to deal with her romantic delusions for the rest of his life, buteverybodyhere knows he doesn’t feed on you. You don’t have his scent, and you don’t have his bite, so don’t you dare judge me for something you can’t even comprehend.”

I wanted to be kind to him, for he seemed to be in great pain, and people in pain were often cruel without meaning to, but my anger overthrew my patience, and I pulled myself straight, forcing him to step back so our faces wouldn’t touch.

“Get out of my way, Tieran,” I said steadily, gathering my skirts in my fists. “I don’t care what you think about me, but I still am the Lady of the Castle.”

Tieran’s glowing eyes narrowed a fraction, his square jaw clenching as he stepped aside for me to pass.

My heart thundered as loudly as my heels clicked on the marble floor. I felt like I could no longer trust my eyes in the dark. I was in a new world, cold, bloodstained, and obscure, and it was erasing the one I’d known my entire life.

It was not a lawless world. But laws were chaos to the one who did not understand them.

17

Thea

They were all dead. The Ravenors, Arawn,Hector.

The dinner table was a confusion of spilled wine and melted wax dripping from skewed candles. The withered flower arrangements smelled of rot and mildew. The silk napkins were mere crumpled balls of dried blood. And they were alldead.

Some of them were slumped on their chairs, heads hanging back in unnatural, bone-snapping angles, while others lay with their faces pressed upon the drenched tablecloth, their eyes grotesquely wide, grey irises death-stopped in expressions of horror. All of them had the same bluish froth crawling out of their gaping mouths, the poison—the juniper—drying down the unmoving columns of their throats.

I was weeping—weeping and shaking Hector’s rigid body with such violence that he fell from his chair and collapsed to the blood-speckled floor. In my hysteria, I got down on my knees next to him and dug my fingers into the smeared collar of his shirt, ear-splitting sobs emerging from the very racking of my heart.

He was cold as ice, his lips red and purple, his stiff neck soaked in poison. I didn’t care. I hugged him to my chest,staining myself with his death, and begged any god who was willing to listen to please,please,bring him back to me.

But when the gods didn’t answer, my grief burned into rage, and I started screaming. I screamed with the fury of a thousand demons, and I almost didn’t hear the soft voice in my ear.

It’s just a bad dream.

How did one dream without falling asleep? How could this be a trick of the subconscious when I was still wide awake?

Wake up,the voice murmured again, a smell of sandalwood tickling under my nostrils.Please, Dorothea. It’s only just a dream.

Dorothea.There was only one person in the world who called me that, and he was lying dead in my arms.

“Hector?”I asked. My voice was so raw from screaming, I could taste the metallic tang of blood at the back of my throat.

Then the dining room spiraled in a distance, falling away from my vision fragment by fragment, their dead bodies misting through an expansive void.

Yes. Now open your eyes for me.

Slowly, I blinked. Once. Twice. The haunting whiteness started peeling off like sheets of old wallpaper, revealing colors and shapes and objects that barely made sense to me. A dark red canopy. A sunlit window. A glowing, crackling hearth. I stared at them blankly until sensation returned to my body. A hand was brushing back the curls from my damp forehead, and another was clutching my arm, lifting me up from the bed. Then a pair of sunburst eyes stumbled into my sphere of vision, and my mind exploded into consciousness.

“Hector!” I gasped.

His arms wound around my waist, hugging me so close to his chest that I felt his heart pounding right up against mine. “I’m here. Shhh. I’m right here.”

I drowned a sob in the crook of his neck. “I was so scared.”

“I know,” he murmured, untangling himself from me so he could use the heels of his palms to dry my tear-stained cheeks. “It’s over now. Please, don’t cry anymore.”

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