Page 51 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“You’re aware that you’re kind of a pretty boy too, right?”

“Really? And here I thought I hadthe general attractiveness of a bat,”he threw back my words.

I glared at the sliver of bare skin showing between his unfurled shirt. “Aren’t you going to change?”

“I’ll wait till you fall asleep. Now close your eyes. It’s been a long night, and a longer one is coming.”

“Are the Valkhars arriving tomorrow?”

“Night after that.”

“What are you going to—”

“Sleep, Dorothea,” he cut me off, pronouncing my name in a way that gave each letter its own unique inflection.

“You’re the only one who calls me that.”

“I know.”

“Why do you do it?”

We were so close that my own body followed the movement of his shoulders as he shrugged. “I just like it. It’s long. It lingers on the tongue. It gives you time to taste it.” Every word he spoke vibrated against my skin. I had the urge to cup his throat, feel his voice with my fingertips the way he felt my name with his tongue.

Exhaustion tugged at my eyelids, but it took me a while to fall asleep. There was an ache pulsing deep inside my chest, an anxious, secret agony. The future seemed very daunting all of a sudden, full of choices I didn’t know how to make and bridges I didn’t know how to cross.

How would I return to Thaloria, to my studies and my life at the court with Nepheli, after all of this?

I learned once how to live without Hector. But right now, I wasn’t so sure that I could do it again.

18

Hector

Ifilled my arms with her that morning. I felt her small hand on my stomach, the warmth of her cheek against my chest, the softness of her hair as I touched my lips to her forehead. It was a shock how perfectly she fit there. How effortlessly she stretched her limbs against mine, nestling closer.

I did not dare move. I just held her until the light started greying around noon. It was going to be a stormy night. The air smelled electric, angry clouds unfurling around the Castle’s white spires.

Soon I would have to get up and go hunting for tonight’s dinner. I would have to prepare myself for the Valkhars. Keep an eye on Arawn. Have a long conversation with Espen about Camilla’s behavior. But none of these things mattered now. In her presence, I was solely absorbed by contemplation of her. It had always been like that. The mere sight of her inspired an inexhaustible amount of desire in me. From vulgar to reverent, she was the sole protagonist of my fantasies. Her eyes. Her lips. The curve of her hip and how it would fit in my hands. The fullness of her breasts against my sternum. Her damp thighs wrapped around my waist. And then other, bolder images—fantasies I sometimes did not dare to conjure even in the privacy of my thoughts.

Now she stirred, and my heart stirred with her, a quick drop of my pulse to my stomach.

I thought to myself,How could I ever let her go? I thought,I will follow her to the ends of the world before I lose her again.

19

Thea

The night howled with wind and crackled with lightning, but as dinnertime approached, Hector was left with no choice but to go hunting again while I was burdened with the daunting responsibility of entertaining our guests.

The Castle didn’t seem to be in a particularly attentive mood, either. Some corridors had gone completely dark, others cold and creaky. Combined with the raging storm outside that pelted the windowpanes like some kind of portent of doom, the entire place appeared haunted. I could not escape the sense that under the layers of the Castle’s magic, something was breaking.

Dahlia must have also noticed the Castle’s inexplicable unraveling, because she was practically shaking when she suggested we girls have some tea in the drawing room, which was the cheeriest and warmest chamber at the moment. A suggestion that got disrupted by Arawn’s determination to remain glued at my side—Hector’s instruction, no doubt.

So here we were, with him sitting beside me on the small pink couch, while Collette, Alexandria, and Dahlia were huddled together in the one opposite to ours.

They were all dressed in springtime shades of yellow, the layers of sparkly chiffon looking more like buttercream frosting than actual fabric. Indeed, they looked as sweet as the array ofcakes, scones, and marmalades that the Castle had set out to accompany our rose tea and milk.

Camilla had settled at the bay window, reading some ominous-looking book that had the wordtorturein the title, which I shouldn’t complain too much about considering it had kept her quiet and distracted for the past thirty minutes.

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