Page 54 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

I turned to find Thea leaning against the porcelain sink, and at the sight of her sunken eyes and ashen cheeks, my muscles locked in place, refusing to take me from her side.

“I’m fine,” she reassured me.

Arawn seized my arm and nudged me past the door. “I’ll help her clean up,” he promised, then pressed closer, lowering his voice to a nearly inaudible snarl, “Just find out who did this and make them pay.”

“Hector, wait!” Thea gasped, lurching forward. “I just remembered. Camilla had a flask secured around her thigh. Could it be…”

I heard nothing after that. Inside me, something seethed; something dark and vengeful clawed at the prison of my ribcage. How lovely vengeance was, a beautiful void. Stronger than grief. Fiercer than sorrow. It made my bones smolder, my heart spit fire. And all of my devotion turned violent.

My sword found me a second before I burst into the drawing room. The lamplights exploded, and the eruption of startled gasps and shattered glass veiled the swift ringing of the blade as it cut through the air.

The Castle shoved Camilla back with a brutal gust, and her back hit the wall just as the sword wielded itself against her throat. Her face contorted, burning with a rage no tamer than my own. “What is the meaning of this?” she hissed when my fist found the hilt of the blade.

I kept it still. I pressed it down upon her. “Where is the flask?”

“Hector,” Espen warned, lunging for me only to come crashing into an invisible wall.

Blood started trickling down Camilla’s slender throat, the blade wedging itself into her flesh. My fangs itched from the desire to dig into her, empty her of substance just as the poison had done to Thea. “I will not ask again.”

“Enough!” growled Espen behind me, filling the room with the violent thrashing of his body as he drove it over and over against the Castle’s magic. “That’s enough!”

“Isay when it’s enough!” I thundered.

Camilla bristled, cutting her palms on the blade as she tried to push it back from her throat. The tendons stood out on her neck. Her lips curled over her fangs in half rage, half torment. The very hinges of her jaw loosened, viscous drops of venom trickling from the needle-thin tips of her fangs.

I did not falter. I did not think a single thought of mercy.

Her words were labored, hissing like water on hot stone, “Look at you turning on your own kind the second things get tough. How long did your conflict last? How long did it take for you to go against the people you’re supposed to protect? And for what? A girl you don’t even fuck? You’re insane if you think we’ll make you sovereign after this.”

“Give me the flask!” I roared, my mind too seized in fury to pay attention to her meaningless threats. My pulse struck in my veins.Who is she to speak of loyalty to me? What does she know of devotion so strong it could please the greediest of gods?

When she realized it would take the strength of a million demons to overpower me here, inside the Castle, where my bones and blood were soaked in its starstruck magic, Camilla stopped resisting and reached for the holster around her thigh, smearing her sea-foam skin with the blood from her palms.

There was a crowd roar buzzing in my ears. My fingers were shaking with a rage unknown to my body as I swiped the silvervial from her hand. Without hesitation I raised it to my lips. The taste was overwhelming. Salt and iron, tinged with the darkness of our curse. Vampire blood.

I tossed it away and whirled around. The sword in my hand rasped as it grazed the floor. “Who was it, then?” I snarled, resisting the terrible, catastrophic urge to let the blade take all of their heads with one single swipe. “Which one of you bastards poisoned my wife?”

No one answered. No one moved. No one even breathed.

But the Castle did.

In an uproar of motion, all the windows around the room boarded up, vaulting the moonlight away and trapping them in cold, enduring darkness.

Under the single stitch of light leaking through the busted doors, their shadows turned manic. Alexandria rushed to Lance’s arms. Dahlia recoiled in a corner. Roan slipped in front of Tieran to shield him from me while Collette reeled forward, dashing in full speed to grab Espen by the arm.

Frightened. They were all frightened and astonished, and I reveled in it.

“You will not lock us in here,” warned Collette in her raging snowstorm voice.

“Or what?” I spat, turning to Roan with a deranged smile. He stared back at me with blatant bewilderment, as if he could not comprehend how any of this had happened. “Your son has already pledged his loyalty to me.”

“Hedid,” Espen sputtered, his dark eyes narrowing into two blazing slits. “But the rest of uswillfight you, Hector. And you will not win.”

The sword at my side made a rapid, whirring sound. It thirsted for their blood as much as I did. “You have a lot of audacity to come into my house, harm my wife, and then think you’ll survive me, Espen.”

“He’s right, Father,” Roan intervened, his voice steady, reasonable. “What happened today,hereof all places, is unforgivable.”

Espen bared his fangs at me. “Yes, but we have laws.”

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